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SEIZE BP!
[While this is a good beginning to a fight to put safety first--for workers and the planet--we must recognize that the whole thrust of capitalism is to get the job done quicker and cheaper, workers and the world be damned!
It is workers who are intimately aware of the dangers of production and the ways those dangers could be eliminated. And, if, say, a particular mine, factory, industry can't be made to be safe, then it should be abandoned. Those workers effected should simply be "retired" with full pay and benefits. They have already been subjected to the toxins, dangers, etc., on the job.
Basically, safety must be under worker's control. Workers must have first dibs on profits to insure safety first.
It not only means nationalizing industry--but internationalizing industry--and placing it under the control and operation of the workers themselves. Governmental controls of safety regulations are notoriously ineffectual because the politicians themselves are the corporation's paid defenders. It only makes sense that corporate profits should be utilized--under the worker's control--to put safety first or stop production altogether. Safety first has to be interpreted as "safety before profits and profits for safety first!" We can only hope it is not too late! ...bw]
SEIZE BP!
The government of the United States must seize BP and freeze its assets, and place those funds in trust to begin providing immediate relief to the working people throughout the Gulf states whose jobs, communities, homes and businesses are being harmed or destroyed by the criminally negligent actions of the CEO, Board of Directors and senior management of BP.
Take action now! Sign the Seize BP petition to demand the seizure of BP!
200,000 gallons of oil a day, or more, are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico with the flow of oil growing. The poisonous devastation to human beings, wildlife, natural habitat and fragile ecosystems will go on for decades. It constitutes an act of environmental violence, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.
BP's Unmitigated Greed
This was a manufactured disaster. It was neither an "Act of God" nor Nature that caused this devastation, but rather the unmitigated greed of Big Oil's most powerful executives in their reckless search for ever-greater profits.
Under BP's CEO Tony Hayward's aggressive leadership, BP made a record $5.6 billion in pure profits just in the first three months of 2010. BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-09. It has a long history of safety violations and slap-on-the-wrist fines.
BP's Materially False and Misleading Statements
BP filed a 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, which repeatedly assured the government that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities." In the filing, BP stated over and over that it was unlikely for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill causing serious damage to beaches, mammals and fisheries and that as such it did not require a response plan for such an event.
BP's executives are thus either guilty of making materially false statements to the government to obtain the license, of consciously misleading a government that was all too ready to be misled, and/or they are guilty of criminal negligence. At a bare minimum, their representations constitute gross negligence. Whichever the case, BP must be held accountable for its criminal actions that have harmed so many.
Protecting BP's Super-Profits
BP executives are banking that they can ride out the storm of bad publicity and still come out far ahead in terms of the billions in profit that BP will pocket. In 1990, in response to the Exxon Valdez disaster, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Oil Pollution Act, which immunizes oil companies for the damages they cause beyond immediate cleanup costs.
Under the Oil Pollution Act, oil companies are responsible for oil removal and cleanup costs for massive spills, and their liability for all other forms of damages is capped at $75 million-a pittance for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits in just the last three months, and is expected to make $23 billion in pure profit this year. Some in Congress suggest the cap should be set at $10 billion, still less than the potential cost of this devastation-but why should the oil companies have any immunity from responsibility for the damage they cause?
The Oil Pollution Act is an outrage, and it will be used by BP to keep on doing business as usual.
People are up in arms because thousands of workers who have lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of BP's actions have to wait in line to compete for lower wage and hazardous clean-up jobs from BP. BP's multi-millionaire executives are not asked to sacrifice one penny while working people have to plead for clean-up jobs.
Take Action Now
It is imperative that the government seize BP's assets now for their criminal negligence and begin providing immediate relief for the immense suffering and harm they have caused.
Seize BP Petition button:
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Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0rAwk4lFE&feature=player_embedded#
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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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LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Documenting the reality of immigration and the families left behind.
ANSWER Coalition Film Showing & Discussion
Thurs. May 6, 7:30pm
ATA Theater, 992 Valencia St. at 21st St., SF
$6 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Letters From the Other Side is a much-needed examination of the collateral damage of immigration. The film interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film's director with the personal stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico.
Letters From the Other Side provides the human context that has been missing from the immigration debate and offers a fresh perspective, painting a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments unwilling to do anything about it. 2006, 73min.
Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
Jueves, 6 de mayo, 7:30pm
El Teatro ATA, la calle Valencia #992, esq./calle 21, S.F.
Cerca del BART, estación de la calle 24
Donación sugerida $6
Película y Discusión de la Coalición ANSWER
TARJETAS DEL OTRO LADO
Documentando la realidad de la inmigración y las familias dejadas atrás.
Tarjetas del Otro Lado es una exanimación esencial sobre el daño colateral de la inmigración. La película entremezcla video-mensajes pasadas sobre la frontera entre México y EE.UU. por el director de la película con historias personales de mujeres dejadas atrás en un México post-NAFTA.
Tarjetas del Otro Lado proporciona un contexto humano que se encuentra perdido en el debate inmigratorio y ofrece una perspectiva nueva, pintando una portada compleja de familias separadas por la economía, comunidades muriendo gracias a la globalización, y gobiernos incapaces de resolver el asunto. 2006. 73min.
Para más información: 415-821-6545
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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Please join us for:
Tear Down the Walls
an evening of music and performance benefiting
The Prison Activist Resource Center
Uptown Body and Fender
401 26th Street
Oakland, CA
(between Broadway/Telegraph)
Saturday, May 8
7pm - midnight
$10-1k suggested donation
Featuring:
Angela Davis
Lisa Marie Alatorre of Critical Resistance
and Jack Bryson
And performances by:
Citizen Marty Payne of the Caribbean Allstars
Elana Dykewomon, spoken word
Raks Africa, belly dancing
Mbele, cuban folklore ensemble
Sassy Crew!
Medea Sirkas, Synchronized Strutters
Drag King Sensations: Momma's Boyz
O Zone and J~milli~on
Erica Benton, singer/songwriter
dancing with DJ Ponyboy
A silent auction with Death Row artists Kevin Cooper and James Anderson, jewelry and beadwork by Rickie Blue-Sky, Hoof and Horn Leather and more!
beverages by Linden Street Brewery
Come celebrate 14 years of community action work against the Prison Industrial Complex!
For more information, please contact PARC at
(510) 893-4648 or via our website at www.prisonactivist.org
The Prison Activist Resource Center is an all-volunteer, grassroots prison abolitionist collective committed to ending the injustices of the criminal (in)justice system and advocating for prisoners rights. We publish a national Prisoner Support Directory that is sent to prisoners free upon request.
All proceeds of this event will go toward the Prison Activist Resource Center
Endorsers: All of Us or None, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Critical Resistance, East Bay Prisoner Support, Freedom Archives, KPFA Women's Magazine, Legal Services for Women with Children, Oakland 100 Support Committee, SF Dyke March, Out of Control, Slingshot Collective, Sparks Fly, and Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network.
This venue is wheelchair accessible
If you are unable to make it to this event, but still interested in supporting PARC, you may donate safely through our website here:
http://www.prisonactivist.org/donate
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Please post and distribute widely -
A message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal -
Accusing Cop Is a No-Show, But...
Holly Works Still Faces A Felony Frame-up!
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All -
DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST HOLLY WORKS!
Holly's Trial Continued to May 10th.
Demonstrate & Attend Holly's Trial!
Monday, May 10, 2010
8 AM - demonstrate to drop the charges!
9 AM - attend Holly's trial
Alameda County Courthouse
12th and Oak St, Oakland CA
Holly Works is the last remaining defendant of the "Oakland 100," who were the victims of a vicious and arbitrary police crackdown against the protests in Oakland over the police murder of Oscar Grant, on New Years Day, 2009. (More on Oscar Grant, see below)
Holly's trial was to have begun on April 5th, but the officer, Christopher Cox, who accused Holly of assaulting him with a deadly weapon, apparently had more important things to do on April 5th than repeat this blatant lie in court. He was a no-show!
But, instead of tossing out this garbage "case" when the cop failed to appear, the judge promptly "continued" it to May 10th.
A local musician, bakery worker and activist, Holly was walking with a friend in Oakland in January 2009, to the protest against the police murder of Oscar Grant. But... She was arrested before she even arrived at the protest, and at least an hour before the protest had started! She was detained and fraudulently charged with... assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer!
Originally charged with assaulting the cop with a knife, Holly had no knife, and so a convenient change was made. Since she happened to have a screw driver in her purse, Holly was accused of using this to assault the officer.
A total fabrication! The charge against Holly was made up by the police on the spot, right in front of her! Later, while sitting in a police van, Holly overheard cops on the radio discussing what excuses to use to arrest people in the upcoming protest.
The purpose of the Oakland 100 prosecutions was to tie up protesters with time-consuming prosecutions, and intimidate and silence opposition. Holly particularly was victimized partly in order to blame violence on out-of-town white radicals, "anarchists," etc., who it is said came into Oakland to make trouble. But Holly is a local Oakland activist! She was walking from her home, just a few blocks away from where she was arrested. And she didn't do anything!
Holly in auto accident! Meanwhile, Holly was the victim in an auto accident last Saturday, April 10th. The other driver admitted fault at the scene, but Holly suffered severe whiplash, her head hit the windshield, and her car was totaled. Treated and released at Highland Hospital, she's OK, but... let's send her a little love!
Donate to Holly's Defense! Send Holly a little love, and solidarity, by donating to her defense against the felony frame-up she still faces. She has a good lawyer, but little money to pay him. Donations can be made by Pay Pal at Holly's web site:
www.supportholly.org. Donate to the defense of Holly (Works) Noll at this site. Please be as generous as you can!
Oscar Grant was a young black retail grocery worker in Oakland, and the father of a young daughter. He was out with friends for New Years Eve, 2009, when he and some others were detained by BART police. He was shot in the back at point blank range by a BART cop, as he lay face-down on the Fruitvale station platform early in the morning.
Cell-phone videos taken of the incident by witnesses on the station platform were posted on the internet, and protests erupted in Oakland. Over a week later, the officer, Johannes Mehserle, was finally charged with murder. He was one of the very few police officers ever to be charged with murder in one of the huge number of killings of black males by police in California. Mehserle was granted a change of venue, and is now being tried in Los Angeles.
DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST HOLLY WORKS!
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • 510 763-2347
www.laboractionmumia.org. 12 April 2010
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INVITATION TO A NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
United National Peace Conference
July 23 - 25, 2010, Albany , NY
Unac2010@aol.com
UNAC, P.O. Box 21675
Cleveland, OH 44121
518-227-6947
www.nationalpeaceconference.org
Greetings:
Twenty co-sponsoring national organizations urge you to attend this conference scheduled for Albany , New York July 23-25, 2010. They are After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bailout the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and World Can't Wait.
The purpose of the conference is to plan united actions in the months ahead in support of demands for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq , and money for human needs, not for wars, occupations, and bail-outs. The peace movement is strongest and most effective when plans for united actions are made by the whole range of antiwar and social justice organizations meeting together and deciding together dates and places for national mobilizations.
Each person attending the conference will have voice and vote. Attendees will have the opportunity to amend the action proposal submitted by conference co-sponsors, add demands, and submit resolutions for consideration by the conference.
Keynoters will be NOAM CHOMSKY, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics; and DONNA DEWITT, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations.
The conference's website is www.nationalpeaceconference.org and you will find there details regarding other speakers, workshops, registration, hotel and travel information, and how to submit amendments, demands, and resolutions. The action proposal has also been published on the website.
Please write us at UNAC2010@aol.com for further information or call 518-227-6947. We can fill orders for copies of the conference brochure. Tables for display and sale of materials can be reserved.
We look forward to seeing you in Albany on July 23-25.
In peace,
Jerry Gordon
Secretary, National Peace Conference
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Rachel Carson's Warnings in "The Sea Around Us":
"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself. . ." http://www.savethesea.org/quotes
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Operation Small Axe - Trailer
http://www.blockreportradio.com/news-mainmenu-26/820-us-school-district-to-begin-microchipping-students.html
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[Mumia's Birthday was April 24...bw]
Birthday Message of Thanks to the Movement
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
It may surprise you that for years I did not celebrate a birthday. Now, that's partly because of the everydayness, sameness of prison. It's also because I really didn't remember the day. And I was often surprised by a card from my mother, or from my children, or my wife. They surprised me that they remembered. Of course, that was years ago. But the freedom movement has grown. So has the significance of that movement; for the movement has kept me alive and engaged in struggle. For that, I thank you all. That's because movements can make social change. Some years ago, many years ago, the anthropologist Margaret Meade said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Here's the magic, it's that we were there. I thank you for all you have done and all you intend to do. I love you all. On the Move! Build the movement! From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
-Prisonradio.org, April 24, 2010
http://www.prisonradio.org/audio/mumia/2010MAJ/04Apr10/April24thMessage2010fromMumia.mp3
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Shame on Arizona
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law that will authorize officers to pull over, question, and detain anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" to believe is in this country without proper documentation. It's legalized racial profiling, and it's an affront on all of our civil rights, especially Latinos. It's completely unacceptable.
Join us in letting Arizona's leaders know how we feel, and that there will be consequences. A state that dehumanizes its own people does not deserve our economic support
"As long as racial profiling is legal in Arizona, I will do what I can to not visit the state and to avoid spending dollars there."
Sign Petition Here:
http://presente.org/campaigns/shame?populate=1
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URGENT: Support the Fight of Florida Students & Teachers Against Privatization of Public Schools and Resegregation and the Assignment of Students and Teachers in Black and Latina/o Areas to Permanent, Legal, Second-Class Status
Over 1500 Miami/Dade Teachers staged a sick-out and rally today (Monday, April 12) to demand that Governor Crist veto Senate Bill 6.
"If passed, this law will hasten the privatization of public education and the proliferation of charters in Florida, penalize teachers who teach the least privileged students and punish students who perform poorly on standardized tests (particularly English language learners) by withholding a high school diploma from even those who have earned the highest grades," said Ceresta Smith, a teacher from Dade County.
The 1500 teachers who called in sick assembled in Tropical Park, where they were joined by an additional 2500 supporters, including parents, students and community members.
"If passed, SB6 would assign both teachers and students in black and Latino areas to a permanent, legal, second-class status. In the south, where many charters are all white, the charter school movement has increased segregation - SB6 would accelerate this trend by widening the doors to publicly funded, privately-operated schools such as those that the segregationists founded in the 1950's to avoid the mandate of integration ordered by Brown v. Board of Education," said Shanta Driver, spokesperson for BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), the civil rights organization that sponsored a March on Washington to Defend Public Education last Saturday, and is supporting the fight of Florida teachers.
The teachers plan to caravan to Tallahassee later this week to protest at the Governor's office.
For more information and to support and build the movement, contact BAMN National Coordinator Donna Stern 313-468-3398 or letters@bamn.com.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) (313) 468-3398 letters@bamn.com
Equal Opportunity Now (NOW) Caucus
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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
Birthday Message of Thanks to the Movement
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
It may surprise you that for years I did not celebrate a birthday. Now, that's partly because of the everydayness, sameness of prison. It's also because I really didn't remember the day. And I was often surprised by a card from my mother, or from my children, or my wife. They surprised me that they remembered. Of course, that was years ago. But the freedom movement has grown. So has the significance of that movement; for the movement has kept me alive and engaged in struggle. For that, I thank you all. That's because movements can make social change. Some years ago, many years ago, the anthropologist Margaret Meade said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Here's the magic, it's that we were there. I thank you for all you have done and all you intend to do. I love you all. On the Move! Build the movement! From Death Row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
-Prisonradio.org, April 24, 2010
http://www.prisonradio.org/audio/mumia/2010MAJ/04Apr10/April24thMessage2010fromMumia.mp3
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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).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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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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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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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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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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On June 30, an innocent man will be given a second chance.
In 1991, Troy Davis was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and seven out of nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their testimony.
He was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. But it's not too late to change Troy's fate.
We just learned today that Troy has been granted an evidentiary hearing -- an opportunity to right this wrong. Help give him a second chance by telling your friends to pledge their support for Troy:
http://www.iamtroy.com/
Troy Davis may just be one man, but his situation represents an injustice experienced by thousands. And suffering this kind of injustice, by even one man, is one person too many.
Thanks to you and 35,000 other NAACP members and supporters who spoke out last August, the U.S. Supreme Court is granting Troy Davis his day in court--and a chance to make his case after 19 years on death row.
This hearing is the first step.
We appreciate your continued support of Troy. If you have not yet done so, please visit our website, sign the petition, then tell your friends to do the same.
http://www.iamtroy.com
I will be in touch soon to let you know how else you can help.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP
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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) Fire on the Bayou: Non-Stop River of Oil Heads to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida
Bill Quigley
Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights
April 30, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/fire-on-the-bayou-non-sto_b_559268.html
2) Tax on Oil May Help Pay for Cleanup
"...the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 imposed a tax on oil companies, currently 8 cents for every barrel they produce in this country or import. The tax adds roughly one tenth of a percent to the price of oil." [Ain't it convenient! They "tax the oil companies who then are permitted, nay, encouraged to pass the cost on to the consumer, i.e., we're the ones who's gonna pay--not the oil companies. What a great racket capitalism is!.....bw]
By MATTHEW L. WALD
May 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02liability.html?hp
3) NOAA Warned Interior It Was Underestimating Threat Of Serious Spill
By Dan Froomkin
First Posted: 05- 3-10 04:48 PM | Updated: 05- 3-10 08:13 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/noaa-warned-interior-was_n_561615.html
4) Another Win For Insurers
By Dr. Susanne L. King
Monday, May 3, 2010
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/may/another-win-for-insurers
5) Dick Cheney and the oil spill
Posted by Michael Tomasky
Monday 3 May 2010 13.38 BST
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/may/03/usa-dickchen
6) Greek Workers Protest Austerity Plan
By DAN BILEFSKY and DAVID JOLLY
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/europe/05greece.html?ref=world
7) A Moment Kent State Won't Forget
By REGINA GARCIA CANO
May 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04kent.html?ref=us
8) Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and ANDREW POLLACK
May 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?ref=business
9) Army to be sued for war crimes over its role in Fallujah attacks
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Parents of children with birth defects say Britain knew of US chemical weapons use
May 4, 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/army-to-be-sued-for-war-crimes-over-its-role-in-fallujah-attacks-1961475.html
10) It is vital America discloses what weapons were deployed
By Alastair Hay
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/alastair-hay-it-is-vital-america-discloses-what-weapons-were-deployed-1961474.html
11) A New Era: Here Come The Suns!
By Dave Zirin
May 4, 2010
edgeofsports@gmail.com
12) After Gulf Coast oil spill, scientists envision devastation for region
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2010; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050402980.html?nav=emailpage
13) Concerns Up and Down the Food Chain
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/science/earth/05ecology.html?ref=us
14) Washington, D.C., Approves Medical Use of Marijuana
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05marijuana.html?ref=us
15) Agency Told Tylenol Maker of Many Quality Concerns
By NATASHA SINGER
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/business/05tylenol.html?ref=health
16) Dispersant 'may make Deepwater Horizon oil spill more toxic'
Scientists fear chemicals used in oil clean-up can cause genetic mutations and cancer, and threaten sea turtles and tuna
By Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 5 May 2010 19.52 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/dispersant-deepwater-horizon-oil-toxic
17) The ocean is a rich blue. But suddenly we see what this crisis is all about
By David Usborne
There may be few indicators to the scale of the US oil slick from land, but from the air it is a different story
May 6, 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-ocean-is-a-rich-blue-but-suddenly-we-see-what-this-crisis-is-all-about-1964502.html
18) Recovery Still Incomplete After Valdez Spill
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/06alaska.html?ref=us
19) 'Los Suns' Join Protest, Then Stop the Spurs
By BILLY WITZ
May 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/sports/basketball/06suns.html?ref=us
20) The Echoes of an Execution Reverberate Loud and Clear
By LARRY ROHTER
May 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/arts/television/06radio.html?ref=us
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1) Fire on the Bayou: Non-Stop River of Oil Heads to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida
Bill Quigley
Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights
April 30, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/fire-on-the-bayou-non-sto_b_559268.html
The Coast Guard estimates 5000 barrels of crude oil a day, 210,000 gallons a day, are pouring out of a damaged British Petroleum (BP) well in the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Eleven people died in the explosion. The oil rig burned and sank. The exploratory well, which is 50 miles away from the coast, continues to powerfully disgorge oil from the bottom of the 5000 feet deep surface of the Gulf.
Oil has now reached the Louisiana coast. The Associated Press (AP) reported there is an oil slick 130 miles long and 70 miles wide in the Gulf of Mexico. Birds covered in thick black oil have already been recovered. Efforts to stop the oil have not proven effective. The AP reports the oil is expected to reach Mississippi on Saturday, Alabama in two days and Florida in three.
Late Friday afternoon, the Mobile Press Register reported a confidential government report prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Ops concluded that if the pipe on the Gulf floor "deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought." An uncontrolled release of oil "could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf."
Plans to set parts of the Gulf on fire have been pushed back by bad weather. The unprecedented idea was to burn up the oil spill before it reached land. "This is a great tool," promised a BP representative.
In response, one long-time Louisiana resident said, "You know you're in very serious trouble when the solution is for BP and the feds to set the Gulf on fire."
Worst hit in Louisiana are the coastal areas of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes - just now limping back from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
On Friday afternoon, federal and state officials held a joint press conference in Louisiana. Curiously, they held their conference with BP representatives. Officials characterized the situation as dangerous and unprecedented. Government representatives said they were pushing BP to increase its efforts to stop the oil because current efforts have not been effective. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano flatly acknowledged that the U.S. is working closely with BP.
BP has caused a lot of trouble lately. The Pulitzer Prize winning news site Pro Publica reported BP "has found itself at the center of several of the nation's worst oil and gas-related disasters in recent years." BP recently plead guilty to federal felony charges related to a massive explosion in Texas where investigators found ignored safety rules and a disabled warning system. BP is also accused of responsibility for several recent spills in Alaska.
Why then would federal and state officials hold a joint press conference with BP, given the multinational corporation's role in the unfolding disaster? Perhaps the reason was hinted at by a comment from the Secretary of the Interior in which he cautioned that the U.S. depends heavily on oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. Even though the White House protested that the oil spill is not President Obama's Katrina, a public partnership between the perpetrator BP and the government certainly has the potential to become a "Katrina moment."
Louisiana is trying to deploy 6000 members of the National Guard. Air Force planes have been called in to spray chemicals on the oil. National Guard soldiers in Louisiana are currently "engaged in the planning of the effort to evacuate and provide security and clean up for the coastal communities expected to be impacted by the spill." They are also planning for the protection of medical facilities, fuel distribution, interstate highways, and power facilities.
Louisiana has already started setting up its shelter program for people with special needs who may have to be evacuated because of concerns about air quality.
Official states of emergency have already been declared along the coasts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Along the Louisiana coast, people fear the loss of the fishing industry. In New Orleans people worry about air quality.
Thousands of pelicans, herons, egrets, ibis, frigate birds, and rarities like grebes and albatrosses are at risk from the river of oil. Dolphins are birthing at this time so their offspring are at risk. Shrimp and oyster fishing grounds are being closed.
Air quality for humans is another serious issue. The New Orleans area, home to hundreds of thousands, has already been blanketed by a chemical odor.
The head of the Louisiana State Health Department Jimmy Guidry said the smell is an irritant, affecting people with lung conditions and asthma. He said it is normal for the smell to arrive before air quality checks could detect anything harmful. Officials with the Louisiana Health and Hospitals and Environmental Quality said changes in air quality can cause nausea, vomiting or headaches for people who are sensitive. Air sampling was started by the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday and water sampling started Friday. No reports have been made public so far.
Governor Jindal has asked that the feds declare a commercial fisheries failure for Louisiana. The state supplies about one-third of the seafood harvested in the lower 48 states - about $2.85 billion worth a year. Louisiana has put price gouging laws into effect forbidding the raising of prices on gasoline, petroleum products, hotels, motels, and retailers.
Jindal told the press Thursday that he has asked several times for a detailed plan of how Coast Guard plans to handle the situation, but he has "not seen a quantifiable plan."
In an ominous note, lawmakers, according to USA Today, say they have been told that not only is light crude headed towards the coast, but so too is heavy asphaltic oil.
"This isn't a spill. This isn't a storage tank or a ship with a finite amount of oil that has boundaries. This is much, much worse," said Kerry St. Pe, the former head of the Louisiana oil spill response team. The Gulf spill is really a river of oil flowing out of the bottom of the Gulf according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
In 1975, the New Orleans group, The Meters, released their album Fire on the Bayou. The album cover featured an apocalyptic orange and yellow painting of a bayou ablaze. In 2010 the idea of a fire on the bayou may well be coming true.
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2) Tax on Oil May Help Pay for Cleanup
"...the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 imposed a tax on oil companies, currently 8 cents for every barrel they produce in this country or import. The tax adds roughly one tenth of a percent to the price of oil." [Ain't it convenient! They "tax the oil companies who then are permitted, nay, encouraged to pass the cost on to the consumer, i.e., we're the ones who's gonna pay--not the oil companies. What a great racket capitalism is!.....bw]
By MATTHEW L. WALD
May 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02liability.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The federal government has a large rainy day fund on hand to help mitigate the expanding damage on the Gulf Coast, generated by a tax on oil for use in cases like the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Up to $1 billion of the $1.6 billion reserve could be used to compensate for losses from the accident, as much as half of it for what is sometimes a major category of costs: damage to natural resources like fisheries and other wildlife habitats.
Under the law that established the reserve, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government, although they are responsible for the cost of containing and cleaning up the spill.
The fund was set up by Congress in 1986 but not financed until after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989. In exchange for the limits on liability, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 imposed a tax on oil companies, currently 8 cents for every barrel they produce in this country or import.
The tax adds roughly one tenth of a percent to the price of oil. Another source of revenue is fines and civil penalties from companies that spill oil.
The result is a rainy-day fund, which over the years has been used mostly for spills that exceed the liability caps by relatively small amounts. But the trust fund managers have warned that a single big spill could make a sizable dent in the reserve.
The money is also used to prepare for spills, including anticipatory measures like stockpiling oil containment booms. And Congress can use money from the fund to reimburse the Coast Guard and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for their spill-related expenses.
"The idea behind creating it was that we wouldn't have to wait on money to clean up an oil spill," said Michael C. LeVine, the Pacific senior counsel for Oceana, an environmental group.
A federal supervisor at the scene of a spill can authorize states to spend up to a quarter-million dollars on the spot.
The president can authorize up to $50 million a year without Congressional approval.
When a rich and well-insured company like BP is responsible for the spill, the government will seek reimbursement of what it spends on cleanup from the company and its insurers.
Experts say the fund is invaluable in spills involving smaller companies, which may not have money for cleanup, or in cases where the identity of the responsible party is not instantly clear.
But damages in oil spills can run to big money.
"One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it really might not be," said Mr. LeVine, who is based in Juneau, Alaska.
Companies that lose business - fishermen who cannot fish, or hotel owners who cannot rent out rooms - can seek damages. So can governments that see tax revenues decline.
A count made by the Department of Homeland Security last August found that since 1991, there had been 51 instances in which liability exceeded caps.
In most years it was a handful; in 1999 there were 11, because of a typhoon in American Samoa that wrecked eight fishing vessels that spilled oil.
Numerically, cargo vessels and fishing vessels are the biggest culprits, but oil tankers and barges cause the most dollar damage.
The fund's single largest expense so far came after a tanker in the Delaware River, the Athos I, spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil in 2004.
Money can be sought by the states for expenses like restoration of a damaged wetland or compensation for loss of use of a resource.
Payments are limited by the amount actually on hand in the fund; if this spill depletes the trust fund, it might take time to replenish it for future use.
The balance was projected to rise to about $1.9 billion from the current $1.6 billion - but that was before the spill.
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3) NOAA Warned Interior It Was Underestimating Threat Of Serious Spill
By Dan Froomkin
First Posted: 05- 3-10 04:48 PM | Updated: 05- 3-10 08:13 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/noaa-warned-interior-was_n_561615.html
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration officials last fall warned the Department of Interior, which regulates offshore oil drilling, that it was dramatically underestimating the frequency of offshore oil spills and was dangerously understating the risk and impacts a major spill would have on coastal residents.
NOAA is the nation's lead ocean resource agency, and the warnings came in its response to a draft of the Obama Administration's offshore oil drilling plans. The comments were Web-published in October by the whistle-blowing group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
But NOAA's views were largely brushed aside as Obama went ahead and announced on March 31 that he would open vast swaths of American coastal waters to offshore drilling -- a plan now very much in doubt as a blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico spews out an estimated 200,000 gallons of oil daily, for the 13th straight day.
The memo, which NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco wrote was based on the agency's "extensive science, management and stewardship expertise related to oceans, coasts and marine ecosystem" recommended that Interior conduct "a more complete analysis of the potential human dimensions of offshore production."
NOAA complained that the draft report overstated the safety of offshore oil production by using information on frequency of spills from 1973 to 2004. NOAA pointed out there was a "substantial increase in spill volume in 2005, primarily due to spills associated with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some of the damaged rigs and pipelines damaged during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons continue to have episodic releases, and repairs have not been fully completed."
Citing Interior's own data, NOAA scolded it for asserting that it had "been many years since any substantial environmental impacts have been observed as a result of an oil spill caused by the [Outer Continental Shelf] production and transportation activities."
NOAA also wrote that the administration's "analysis of the risk and impacts of accidental spills and chronic impacts are understated and generally not supported or referenced, using vague terms and phrases such as 'no substantive degradation is expected' and 'some marine mammals could be harmed.'"
Story continues below
NOAA didn't even take comfort in the fact that new technology and laws had reduced the frequency of major spills in the U.S. overall since 1990. Analysts including the Congressional Research Service "have questioned the trend in spills, suggesting that '[r]ecent annual data indicate that the overall decline of annual spill events may have stopped' and that '[t]he threat of oil spills raises the question of whether U.S. officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill. There is some concern that the favorable U.S. spill record has resulted in a loss of experienced personnel, capable of responding quickly and effectively to a major oil spill.'"
UPDATE AT 8:10 p.m. ET: NOAA officials Monday evening stressed the parts of their memo that were heeded by Interior. "NOAA's critical concerns were addressed in the comprehensive national offshore energy plan -- new drilling leases in the Arctic and the Aleutian Bay were halted," spokesman Scott Smullen told HuffPost. "In addition, the plan included more detailed assessments of the environmental impact on marine habitats and endangered species, as well climate change and ocean acidification."
Jeff Ruch, the head of the public-employee whistleblowing group, said that as in many other regulatory agencies, Obama political appointees in the Interior Department's notoriously troubled Minerals Management Service (MMS) have not taken enough steps to reverse the anti-environmental and anti-science policies of the Bush years.
"For the most part, the Obama team is still the Bush team," Ruch told HuffPost, noting that beyond a thin layer of political appointees, offices like MMS are run by managers who were "promoted during the Bush years -- In many instances, promoted for basically violating the law. And from what we can tell, their conduct hasn't changed."
Futhermore, Ruch said, Obama "sees environmental issues as a political bargaining chip."
Indeed, Obama's decision to increase offshore drilling was widely seen as a way of getting some Republican support for the administration's climate change bill.
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Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.
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4) Another Win For Insurers
By Dr. Susanne L. King
Monday, May 3, 2010
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2010/may/another-win-for-insurers
The passage of the "health insurance" bill has been a huge political success for President Obama and the Democrats and has been compared to the historic passage of Medicare and Social Security. Unfortunately, this bill is not in the same league as those successful programs, which provide medical and financial security to every elderly and disabled American. This is not a "health care" bill; it is a "health insurance" bill, which will hand out $447 billion in taxpayer money to insurance companies as subsidies to purchase inadequate insurance products. And the bill will require millions of Americans to buy these substandard products. The insurance companies are the big winners in this legislation.
We did not need to create this scenario to obtain the useful measures in the bill, like additional funding for community health centers, expansion of Medicaid, reduction of the "donut hole" in prescription drug coverage for Medicare patients, and allowing young adults to stay on their parents' health insurance plans until age 26. These fixes could have been done separately. Instead, they were inserted into a 2,000-page bill that will further enrich and empower the insurance industry.
Sen. Max Baucus recently praised his aide, Elizabeth Fowler, former vice president of the giant health insurer Wellpoint, for her pivotal role in crafting this legislation. While middle class families were struggling to pay their escalating health insurance premiums, rising deductibles and co-payments, Wellpoint's profits increased by $2.3 billion in 2009, 91 percent more than the previous year. Not content with this level of profiteering, Wellpoint's subsidiary, Anthem Blue Cross of California, seeks to increase profits even more by raising its premiums by an astounding 39 percent this year.
Wall Street loves the law. Mutual fund analysts say it is beneficial for health industry stocks, particularly for pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, because there are no "onerous cost controls." Health insurance company stocks continue their upward trend, and CEO salaries remain astronomical.
In addition to the bill's handout to the insurance industry, this legislation has many shortcomings:
* Twenty three million people will remain uninsured, which translates into 23,000 unnecessary deaths every year.
* Millions of middle-income people will have to buy health insurance policies, costing up to 9.5 percent of their income, but covering an average of only 70 percent of their medical expenses, because of high deductibles and co-payments.
* People with employer-based coverage will still not be able to choose their doctors and hospitals, and eventually face steep taxes on their benefits as the cost of insurance grows.
* Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, as we have seen here in Massachusetts after the passage of Chapter 58, which did nothing to contain costs.
* The insurance regulations are riddled with loopholes, as one might expect when insurers helped to craft the bill. For example, older people will be charged three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies that have more female workers will continue to pay higher rates until 2017.
The American people did not have to be saddled with an expensive package of individual mandates, taxes on workers' health plans, sweetheart deals with insurers and Big Pharma, and a perpetuation of our current dysfunctional and unsustainable system. President Obama did not seize his chance to inherit the mantles of Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson, with their historic fashioning of legislation for Social Security and Medicare. This bill's passage reflects political considerations, not sound health care policy.
Sooner or later, our nation will have to adopt a single-payer national insurance program, an improved Medicare for all. We could save $400 billion annually in administrative costs, enough to provide comprehensive coverage for everyone. And only a single-payer system provides the tools for cost control, like bulk purchasing, negotiated fees, global hospital budgeting, and capital planning.
Polls show that almost two-thirds of the American public supports this approach, and a recent survey shows that 59 percent of U.S. doctors do as well. Inevitable price increases by the insurance industry will expand the popularity of the single-payer movement. Ultimately we will have a national health insurance program. Single-payer health care is the only coverage that is universal, comprehensive, and affordable.
Susanne L. King, M.D. is a Lenox, Mass.-based practitioner.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/otheropinions/ci_14972514?source=rss
By Dr. Susanne King | The Berkshire Eagle
This is not a "health care" bill; it is a "health insurance" bill, which will hand out $447 billion in taxpayer money to insurance companies as subsidies to purchase inadequate insurance products. And the bill will require millions of Americans to buy these substandard products. The insurance companies are the big winners in this legislation.
Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602 € Find us on a map
Phone (312) 782-6006 | Fax: (312) 782-6007 | email: info@pnhp.org
(c) PNHP 2010
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5) Dick Cheney and the oil spill
Posted by Michael Tomasky
Monday 3 May 2010 13.38 BST
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/may/03/usa-dickcheney
As we know from our own comment threads right here on this very blog, right-wingers are expert at taking a few facts from situations that appear to be superficially similar but really aren't upon reflection or closer examination and using them to attack liberals.
And so, in the last few days, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has become Obama's Katrina. Um...look, I'm as pro-pelican as the next guy, and obviously I don't mean to gainsay the scope of this environmental catastrophe, which will end up being staggering.
But Katrina killed about 1,500 humans. And no, it's not George Bush's personal fault that they died, either. But I still rate Katrina a far bigger tragedy for that reason.
And now it turns out, according to an environmental lawyer whose interview on Ed Schultz last week is getting a lot of circulation, that this leak may well be traceable in part to...Dick Cheney.
How? It's hardly as far-fetched as it sounds. From the Wall Street Journal:
The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.
The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week...
... regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, in effect require them. Norway has had acoustic triggers on almost every offshore rig since 1993.
The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.
The U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn't require the use of acoustic triggers.
The Journal's report doesn't come out and say this, but the environmental lawyer, Mike Papantonio, said on the Schultz show in an interview you can watch here that it was Cheney's energy task force - the secretive one that he wouldn't say much about publicly - that decided that the switches, which cost $500,000, were too much a burden on the industry. The Papantonio segment starts at around 5:00 in and lasts three minutes or so.
In the interests of disclosure I will note that I haven't heard the phrase "acoustic switch" until this weekend, so I don't really know. And obviously the fact that the US isn't alone in not requiring this switch indicates that there are legitimate questions about cost v. efficacy. So maybe it's just one of those things.
But then again, maybe it's not. Regulatory decisions have consequences all the time, and the people who made them should be asked to justify their decisions in a democracy. It'll be very interesting to watch this week and see if other news outlets pursue this.
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6) Greek Workers Protest Austerity Plan
By DAN BILEFSKY and DAVID JOLLY
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/europe/05greece.html?ref=world
ATHENS - Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Greece on Tuesday, unfurling banners over the Acropolis, to rail against tough new austerity measures aimed at helping the debt-ridden country stave off economic disaster.
Yet investors took fright again across Europe and on Wall Street, sending the euro down to a fresh one-year low. A leading indicator of European blue chip stocks was off more than 3 percent by the end of the day, while the Dow Jones industrial average was down 2 percent in early trading amid persistent worries about Europe's debt crisis spreading.
At a news conference in Brussels, the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero rejected the idea that Spain - which is headed into a second year of recession with a soaring budget deficit and an unemployment rate of 20 percent - might also require a Greek-style bailout.
"That's something I would not give any credit to," said Mr. Zapatero. "It is complete madness."
As he spoke, however, the IBEX 35 index in Madrid was down more than 5 percent. The Athens composite index was down more than 4 percent in afternoon trading.
"There is a still a feeling of nervousness around the Greece rescue package and problems in the peripheral economies," Giles Watts, head of trading at City Index, told Reuters.
Earlier, dozens of protesters from the Communist Party broke the locks at the entrance to the country's most famous tourist attraction and hung banners saying: "Peoples of Europe - Rise Up."
The Socialist government of Prime Minister George Papandreou on Sunday unveiled belt-tightening measures amounting to 30 billion euros over the next three years as part of an effort to clear the way for a 110 billion euro rescue package aimed at preventing the country from defaulting on its debt.
The measures, including freezes in public sector salaries, cuts in pensions and higher sales taxes, amount to a cultural revolution in the social contract between state and citizen.
Public sector workers, including teachers and hospital workers, began striking on Tuesday ahead of a nationwide general strike on Wednesday that aims to bring services to a halt across the country, including flights and public transport.
Some analysts said the strikes may mark the beginning of a long hot summer of social unrest that threatens to unhinge desperately needed economic reforms and could undermine the country's recovery and stifle growth.
But thus far demonstrations have been largely peaceful and muted by Greek standards, suggesting that a majority of Greeks are resigned to the fact that there is little choice other than to wait and endure.
The Greek crisis has sent tremors around Europe, prompting deep worries about the stability of the euro currency shared by 16 countries including Greece.
The Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, was down more than 3 percent in late afternoon trading, while the FTSE 100 in London fell more than 2 percent. The euro fell to a fresh one-year low of $1.3095 from $1.3195 late Monday. Greek government debt fell, with the yield on the 10-year benchmark bond rising 36 basis points to 8.8 percent. In a sign of spreading nervousness, Portuguese bond yields also rose Tuesday.
The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said Monday that the parliamentary approval for the Greek rescue could be passed in Germany, and all the other euro zone countries, by the end of the week. Mr. Schäuble met Tuesday with the heads of some of Germany's largest financial institutions to discuss support for the embattled Greek economy.
Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank's chief executive, said after the meeting that he could not put a figure on how much his bank would be contributing, The Associated Press reported, but he said German banks are sending a signal that "we are convinced by the correctness of this program and stand fully behind it."
In Paris, the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, quickly backed the Greek aid proposal on Tuesday, from which it heads Thursday to the Senate.
Mr. Zapatero, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said euro-zone leaders will sign off on the emergency loans to Greece at a summit meeting Friday.
He also criticized "rumors" that are "completely ridiculous," but can nonetheless move markets and "can certainly damage our interests as a country, and that's intolerable."
"We've got to stick to facts and information," he said. "The fact is as far as debt is concerned we have strong solvency."
David Jolly reported from Paris. James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.
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7) A Moment Kent State Won't Forget
By REGINA GARCIA CANO
May 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/us/04kent.html?ref=us
KENT, Ohio - Black pillars mark four sites on the east side of Kent State University - each memorializing one of the four college students killed by the Ohio National Guard during antiwar protests on May 4, 1970.
Torey Wootton, now a freshman, wants to lie in one of those sites, to understand what her uncle Paul Ciminero felt on that warm and sunny day 40 years ago as he stood watching Jeffrey Miller, a fellow student, die in that spot. Mr. Miller was shot in the mouth by a National Guardsman.
"It's just to take a moment and reflect and appreciate, more than try to connect to it," said Ms. Wootton, 19, a musical theater major from nearby Akron.
"I want to look at the space around because that might have been the last thing that they got to see," she said of the fallen students.
To commemorate the anniversary, on Tuesday the university will host about a dozen speakers, including John Filo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer of the famous image of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Jeffrey Miller's body just after the shooting; Russ Miller, Jeffrey's brother; and Florence Schroeder, the mother of another student who was killed, William Schroeder.
In downtown Kent, an event where witnesses to the shootings will narrate their stories will be streamed live by the filmmaker Michael Moore, on his Web site, www.michaelmoore.com.
While Ms. Wootton said she understood the killings as a turning point in American history, she seemed to be an exception.
Fourteen of 15 freshmen interviewed on the campus said they did not feel any connection with the lives of the students who were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia at the time.
The university requires first-year students to watch a historical video of what happened that day and the events leading to it: the violent confrontation between protesters and local police and the burning of the R.O.T.C. building near the Commons.
Freshmen attribute their lack of interest to the time span.
"Our generation doesn't necessarily really care because it happened so long ago none of us were alive," said Ethan Moore, a freshman majoring in nursing. "Though it definitely shouldn't be forgotten because they were people, too."
Eboni Pringle, director of the university's Student Success Programs, said that with years students developed a deeper understanding of May 4.
A sophomore photojournalism major, Nora Rodriquez, is the co-chairwoman of the May 4 Task Force, a student organization that tries to raise awareness among peers on the historic relevance of the shootings.
"I like politics, and I'm pretty sure that it could have been me in the protest," said Ms. Rodriquez, who joined the group after attending in her freshman year a candlelight vigil for the students who were killed.
"The task force tries to understand all of the misunderstood truths surrounding May 4," Ms. Rodriquez said. "There are things we still don't know about that day."
In addition to Mr. Miller, 20, and Mr. Schroeder, 19, the other students killed were Allison Krause, 19, and Sandra Scheuer, 20. Nine other students were injured.
Ms. Wootton and her uncle, Mr. Ciminero, plan to attend Tuesday's commemoration ceremony.
And until she graduates, Ms. Wootton will follow the advice her parents, both Kent State alumni, gave her when she left for college. "We don't want to see you in the news," they said, "and we don't want to see you get shot."
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8) Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds
By WILLIAM NEUMAN and ANDREW POLLACK
May 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?ref=business
DYERSBURG, Tenn. - For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.
But not this year.
On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field - plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers' near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
"We're back to where we were 20 years ago," said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. "We're trying to find out what works."
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.
"It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen," said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.
The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn.
The superweeds could temper American agriculture's enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn't kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.
Roundup - originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate - has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.
Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.
But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. "What we're talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward," Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.
Now, Roundup-resistant weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned.
Mr. Anderson, the farmer, is wrestling with a particularly tenacious species of glyphosate-resistant pest called Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, whose resistant form began seriously infesting farms in western Tennessee only last year.
Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more, choking out crops; it is so sturdy that it can damage harvesting equipment. In an attempt to kill the pest before it becomes that big, Mr. Anderson and his neighbors are plowing their fields and mixing herbicides into the soil.
That threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by the Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and Roundup Ready crops, farmers did not have to plow under the weeds to control them. That reduced erosion, the runoff of chemicals into waterways and the use of fuel for tractors.
If frequent plowing becomes necessary again, "that is certainly a major concern for our environment," Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas, said. In addition, some critics of genetically engineered crops say that the use of extra herbicides, including some old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than Roundup, belies the claims made by the biotechnology industry that its crops would be better for the environment.
"The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they've always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction," said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington.
So far, weed scientists estimate that the total amount of United States farmland afflicted by Roundup-resistant weeds is relatively small - seven million to 10 million acres, according to Ian Heap, director of the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds, which is financed by the agricultural chemical industry. There are roughly 170 million acres planted with corn, soybeans and cotton, the crops most affected.
Roundup-resistant weeds are also found in several other countries, including Australia, China and Brazil, according to the survey.
Monsanto, which once argued that resistance would not become a major problem, now cautions against exaggerating its impact. "It's a serious issue, but it's manageable," said Rick Cole, who manages weed resistance issues in the United States for the company.
Of course, Monsanto stands to lose a lot of business if farmers use less Roundup and Roundup Ready seeds.
"You're having to add another product with the Roundup to kill your weeds," said Steve Doster, a corn and soybean farmer in Barnum, Iowa. "So then why are we buying the Roundup Ready product?"
Monsanto argues that Roundup still controls hundreds of weeds. But the company is concerned enough about the problem that it is taking the extraordinary step of subsidizing cotton farmers' purchases of competing herbicides to supplement Roundup.
Monsanto and other agricultural biotech companies are also developing genetically engineered crops resistant to other herbicides.
Bayer is already selling cotton and soybeans resistant to glufosinate, another weedkiller. Monsanto's newest corn is tolerant of both glyphosate and glufosinate, and the company is developing crops resistant to dicamba, an older pesticide. Syngenta is developing soybeans tolerant of its Callisto product. And Dow Chemical is developing corn and soybeans resistant to 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War.
Still, scientists and farmers say that glyphosate is a once-in-a-century discovery, and steps need to be taken to preserve its effectiveness.
Glyphosate "is as important for reliable global food production as penicillin is for battling disease," Stephen B. Powles, an Australian weed expert, wrote in a commentary in January in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Research Council, which advises the federal government on scientific matters, sounded its own warning last month, saying that the emergence of resistant weeds jeopardized the substantial benefits that genetically engineered crops were providing to farmers and the environment.
Weed scientists are urging farmers to alternate glyphosate with other herbicides. But the price of glyphosate has been falling as competition increases from generic versions, encouraging farmers to keep relying on it.
Something needs to be done, said Louie Perry Jr., a cotton grower whose great-great-grandfather started his farm in Moultrie, Ga., in 1830.
Georgia has been one of the states hit hardest by Roundup-resistant pigweed, and Mr. Perry said the pest could pose as big a threat to cotton farming in the South as the beetle that devastated the industry in the early 20th century.
"If we don't whip this thing, it's going to be like the boll weevil did to cotton," said Mr. Perry, who is also chairman of the Georgia Cotton Commission. "It will take it away."
William Neuman reported from Dyersburg, Tenn., and Andrew Pollack from Los Angeles.
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9) Army to be sued for war crimes over its role in Fallujah attacks
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Parents of children with birth defects say Britain knew of US chemical weapons use
May 4, 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/army-to-be-sued-for-war-crimes-over-its-role-in-fallujah-attacks-1961475.html
Allegations that Britain was complicit in the use of chemical weapons linked to an upsurge in child deformity cases in Iraq, are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence.
The case raises serious questions about the UK's role in the American-led offensive against the city of Fallujah in the autumn of 2004 where hundreds of Iraqis died. After the battle, in which it is alleged that a range of illegal weaponry was used, evidence has emerged of large numbers of children being born with severe birth defects.
Iraqi families who believe their children's deformities are caused by the deployment of the weapons have now begun legal proceedings against the UK Government. They accuse the UK Government of breaching international law, war crimes and failing to intervene to prevent a war crime.
Lawyers for the Iraqis have sent a letter before action to the MoD asking the Government to disclose what it knows about the Army's role in the offensive, the presence of prohibited weapons and the legal advice given to Tony Blair, Prime Minister at the time.
Legal actions against America are blocked by US federal immunity laws and the US government's boycott of the International Criminal Court.
The offensive against Fallujah, codenamed Phantom Fury, in 2004 was described as the most bitter fighting experienced by American soldiers since the war in Vietnam. But US forces were assisted by British units.
On 21 October, British soldiers were ordered by the Cabinet to help US forces throw a "ring of steel" around Fallujah. Six days later, a British battle group of 850 troops made up of the armoured infantry from the 1st Battalion, The Black Watch, an armoured reconnaissance squadron from the Queen's Dragoon Guards, elements of 40 Commando Royal Marines and supporting specialists including Royal Engineers and Royal Military Police were redeployed from Basra.
The battle group established a base at Camp Dogwood on the eastern approach to Fallujah where they provided essential aid and assistance to the subsequent attacks on the city.
Before the attack the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith is alleged to have warned Mr Blair about the legal dangers of committing British forces to the attack.
Public Interest Lawyers, the law firm representing the Iraqi families, wants the Government to release this advice in full and say whether any British soldiers were involved in the fighting or supplied or helped fire prohibited weapons. During the attack coalition forces are alleged to have used weapons including white phosphorus, a modern form of napalm, and depleted uranium.
The World Health Organisation, after reports first broadcast by Sky News two years ago, has begun investigating evidence of a worrying rise in the incidence of birth defects in the city, which Iraqi doctors attribute to the use of chemical weapons during the battle.
Malak Hamdan, a British Iraqi researcher working with doctors in Fallujah, told The Independent: "Doctors in Fallujah are witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, miscarriages and cancer cases. Now, according to gynaecologists, paediatricians and neurologists in Fallujah, the numbers of these cases have been increasing rapidly since 2005."
She explained that the most common birth defects involve the heart and the nervous system but there have also been reported cases of babies being born with two heads, upper and lower limb defects and eye abnormalities.
"What is more disturbing is that pregnant women are completely unaware that they are carrying an abnormal child until the day they give birth - traumatising the mother and the rest of the family," said Ms Malak.
Mazin Younis, a UK-based Iraqi human rights activist who visited the city before the attack, said: "When I visited Fallujah a few weeks before the attack, I was shocked to see the majority of people had not left the city. Many of them had no one to go to.... We attacked this city ruthlessly without any concern for the fate of tens of thousands of civilians who were still living there. The unlawful use of white phosphorus in built-up areas was... never objected to by the British Government who assisted in the attack on Fallujah."
Phil Shiner, the UK lawyer leading the legal challenge, said: "The rate and severity of both foetal abnormalities and inexplicable illnesses such as leukaemia or those suffered by our clients in infants born to mothers in Fallujah has been the subject of numerous reports and letters to governments.... The full extent of the emerging public health crisis is unknown.... Doctors report a "massive, unprecedented number" of congenital health problems. The media investigation found that the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah has reached a rate 13 times higher than in Europe."
An MoD spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that we are in receipt of this letter from Public Interest Lawyers and will respond in due course. The MoD treats issues such as this very seriously but allegations must not be taken as fact."
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10) It is vital America discloses what weapons were deployed
By Alastair Hay
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/alastair-hay-it-is-vital-america-discloses-what-weapons-were-deployed-1961474.html
There clearly is a problem in Fallujah as far as the health of newborn children is concerned. Doctors and residents in the city are convinced that many more children than usual are being born with deformities. So great is the concern that some doctors are apparently advising mothers living in the city not to have children. If this is indeed the case the problem could hardly be more serious.
Something has to be done to resolve the issue. It is far from clear if there is a real increase in birth deformities or whether it is a case of more cases being recorded. An answer to this could come by comparing records for births before and after the attacks on Fallujah. For this to be an effective approach full recording of all births would be needed over an extended period.
Another approach is that announced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 1 April which is to analyse the trend in birth defects in Fallujah and to compare it with other parts of Iraq. Again good records are required. The comparison may indicate there are problems elsewhere, but it may also find no disturbing trend.
What the WHO will be assessing will be the effects of war on a civilian population, and more particularly what effect a war has on birth outcomes. The investigation is unique and very welcome.
The details of how the investigation is to be conducted are not yet known. If the approach is just to compare trends in birth defects in different locations in Iraq it may not identify causes of these. A more detailed approach would be the logical next step. But if there is no evidence of deformities being greater than the norm why do a more searching inquiry?
But this is jumping the gun. Fallujah has been in the headlines because of the savagery of the fighting there in 2004. US forces used white phosphorus there in November of that year. Allegations have also been made that the US used depleted uranium munitions. It is essential the US says what was used by its forces.
I am not aware of any evidence to suggest white phosphorus or depleted uranium has been linked with birth deformities. However, a toxicologist's reassurance will not be enough for residents in Fallujah and they deserve more. This WHO investigation will help to explain what effects war has on birth outcomes and that has to be a small comfort for clinicians and their patients in Fallujah.
Alastair Hay is professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds
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11) A New Era: Here Come The Suns!
By Dave Zirin
May 4, 2010
edgeofsports@gmail.com
A battle has been joined for the very soul of Arizona. On one side, there are the Minutemen, the craven state Republican lawmakers, Governor Jan Brewer, and the utterly unprincipled John McCain, all supporting SB 1070, a law that codifies racial profiling of immigrants in the state. On the other are the Sun Belt residents who protested on May 1st, the students who have engaged in walkouts, and the politicians and civic leaders calling for an economic boycott of their own state.
This battle has also been joined in the world of sports. On one side is Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks. Owned by state Republican moneyman Ken Kendrick, the team has drawn protestors to parks around the country. On the other side, we now have the Phoenix Suns. On Tuesday the news came forth that tomorrow on Cinco de Mayo, the team would be wearing jerseys that say simply Los Suns. Team owner Robert Sarver said, after talking to the team, that this will be an act of sartorial solidarity against the bill. Their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs have made clear that they support the gesture.
In a statement released by the team, Sarver said, "The frustration with the federal government's failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them."
He followed up the statement by saying to reporters, "I looked around our plane and looked at our players and the diversity in our organization. I thought we need to go on record that we honor our diversity in our team, in the NBA and we need to show support for that. As for the political part of that, that's my statement. There are times you need to stand up and be heard. I respect people's views on the other side but I just felt it was appropriate for me to stand up and make a statement."
After Sarver spoke out, the team chimed in against the passage and signing of SB 1070. Two-time MVP point guard Steve Nash, who in 2003 became the first athlete to go on record against the Iraq war said, "I think the law is very misguided. I think it is unfortunately to the detriment to our society and our civil liberties and I think it is very important for us to stand up for things we believe in. I think the law obviously can target opportunities for racial profiling. Things we don't want to see and don't need to see in 2010."
All-Star power forward Amare Stoudamire, who has no political reputation, also chimed in saying, "It's going to be great to wear Los Suns to let the Latin community know we're behind them 100%."
After the story broke, I spoke on the phone with NBA Players Association Presdient Billy Hunter about the Suns audacious move.
"It's phenomenal," he said. "This makes it clear to me that it's a new era. It's a new time. Athletes can tend to be apolitical and isolated from the issues that impact the general public. But now here come the Suns. I would have expected nothing less from Steve Nash who has been out front on a number of issues over the years. I also want to recognize Amare. I know how strident Amare can be and I'm really impressed to see him channel his intensity. It shows a tremendous growth and maturity on his part. And I have to applaud Bob Sarver because he is really taking a risk by putting himself out there. I commend them. I just think it's super."
He said that the union would have their own statement out by the end of the week.
This kind of political intervention by a sports team is without precedent and now every athlete and every team has an opening to stand up and be heard. Because when it's all said and done, this isn't just a battle for the soul of Arizona. It's a battle for the soul of the United States. Here come the Suns indeed.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
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12) After Gulf Coast oil spill, scientists envision devastation for region
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2010; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050402980.html?nav=emailpage
The urgent question along the polluted Gulf of Mexico: How bad will this get?
No one knows, but with each day that the leaking oil well a mile below the surface remains uncapped, scientists and energy industry observers are imagining outcomes that range from bad to worse to worst, with some forecasting a calamity of historic proportions. Executives from oil giant BP and other energy companies, meanwhile, shared their own worst-case scenario in a Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers, saying that if they fail to close the well, the spill could increase from an estimated 5,000 barrels a day to 40,000 barrels or possibly even 60,000 barrels.
Three scientists in separate interviews Tuesday said the gulf's "loop current," a powerful conveyor belt that extends about 3,000 feet deep, will almost surely take the oil down through the eastern gulf to the Straits of Florida, a week-long trip, roughly. The oil would then hang a sharp left, riding the Florida Current past the Keys and north again, directly into the Gulf Stream, which could carry it within spitting distance of Palm Beach and up the East Coast to Cape Hatteras, N.C.
For the moment, the oil flowing from the blown-out well in what the industry calls Mississippi Canyon Block 252 is still many miles north of the loop current. A three-day forecast by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration does not show the oil and the current crossing paths. But Robert Weisberg, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida who has been monitoring the situation, said a new filament of the current is reaching toward the oil slick.
"The loop current is actually going to the oil, versus the oil going to the loop current," Weisberg said.
The crisis in the gulf is shot through with guesses, rough estimates and murky figures. Whether the oil blows onshore depends on fickle winds. This oil slick has been elusive and enigmatic, lurking off the coast of Louisiana for many days as if choosing its moment of attack. It has changed sizes: In rough, churning seas, the visible slick at the surface has shrunk in recent days.
The oil by its nature is hard to peg. It's not a single, coherent blob but rather an irregular, amoeba-shaped expanse that in some places forms a thin sheen on the water and in other locations is braided and stretched into tendrils of thick, orange-brown gunk. There may be a large plume of oil in the water column, unseen.
A BP executive said the company has had success in treating the oil at the point of the leak with dispersant chemicals sprayed by a robotic submarine. A federal fleet has fought high waves in attempts to skim or burn the oil. Rough weather has actually been a blessing, said Ian MacDonald, an oceanography professor at Florida State University. In heavy surf, the oil has been breaking up, and toxic, volatile substances have been evaporating.
"It chews up the oil; some of it sinks," MacDonald said.
The good news ends there.
"What remains forms what's called mousse, which is like chocolate mousse. It's an emulsion, which is an emulsion of oil, air and water, in a thick, gelatinous layer, and that's nasty stuff," MacDonald said.
No one is sure how much oil is spilling. An early estimate by the Coast Guard of a 1,000-barrel-a-day flow was upped to 5,000 barrels with the discovery of an additional leak, but officials now caution against giving any estimate too much credence.
The oil so far has barely touched coastal islands and hasn't come ashore, but environmentalists are poised for a catastrophic impact that could last decades.
"It's going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire food chain, from the plankton to the fish that consume them, to the predators, like the pelicans and the dolphins," said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. "It's like a slow-moving train wreck about which you can do nothing, or very little."
At a news conference Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said he had asked federal officials to look for ways to increase the Mississippi River's flow to keep the slick at bay.
"Let's make no mistake about what's at stake here," he said. "This is our very way of life."
The crisis began April 20 with an explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon, a huge rig owned by Transocean and leased by BP. The South Korean-built rig, insured for $560 million, sank two days later; the riser, the pipe leading to the rig, collapsed. Three leaks have developed, the largest at the end of the drill pipe that extends from the end of the riser.
Robotic submarines have tried to activate a structure called a blowout preventer that sits atop the wellhead and has multiple tools for clamping the flow of oil in an emergency. So far those efforts have failed.
"It's really, really devastating," said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas. "On the political front, are we going to be allowed to drill in the deep water again? That's going to be more devastating to society than to the industry. We're going to have much higher oil prices because of that."
Few people have a more apocalyptic view than Matt Simmons, retired chairman of the energy investment banking firm Simmons & Company International and a 41-year veteran of the industry. Simmons, who will speak at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week, has been famous in recent years for warning that the industry is running out of oil. Now he sees a disaster on an epic scale as the pressurized subterranean reservoir known as the Macondo field, tapped for the first time by Deepwater Horizon, continues to vent into the gulf.
"It really is a catastrophe," Simmons said. "I don't think they're going to be able to put the leak out until the reservoir depletes. It's just too technically challenging."
He said BP's cleanup costs could ruin the company.
"They're going to have to clean up the Gulf of Mexico," he said.
Jindal's news conference Tuesday opened with an invocation from Randy Craighead, the pastor of a New Orleans area church. He asked for divine intervention.
"Father, we pray for a prevailing north wind," he said, "to drive that oil slick southward."
Staff writer David Fahrenthold in New Orleans contributed to this report.
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13) Concerns Up and Down the Food Chain
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/science/earth/05ecology.html?ref=us
BRETON ISLAND, La. - As the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon spreads across the Gulf of Mexico, environmentalists and government officials have been working frantically to protect shoreline habitat like this island in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, eight miles off the coast of Louisiana.
Breton Island, with its hundreds of nesting birds, has been protected by orange booms, as have many other areas of delicate estuaries and wetlands.
But biologists are increasingly alarmed for wildlife offshore, where the damage from a spill can be invisible but still deadly. And they caution that because of the fluidity between onshore and offshore marine communities, the harm taking place deep at sea will come back to haunt the shallows, whether or not they are directly hit by the slick.
The gulf's deeper water harbors 10 species of threatened sharks, 6 species of endangered turtles, manatees, whales and innumerable fish.
It is also a temporary home for the eggs of dozens of species of fish and shellfish, whose offspring spend their earliest days floating along currents at the surface of the water - the very layer where most of the oil settles.
There, the effects can be devastating, studies from previous spills show, like whales so drugged and disoriented by noxious petroleum fumes that they can drown, and tiny translucent organisms whose bodies are literally burned from the inside out as the sun heats the fuel they have ingested.
"Unfortunately, we've had a lot of experience in how oil affects marine life, ecosystems, coastal communities, and fisheries," said Christopher Mann, with the marine program of the nonprofit Pew Environment Group. "The iconic images of oiled seabirds are just the tip of the iceberg, because oil spills affect life up and down the food chain."
Take the blue crab, which, along with shrimp, is among the largest fishing crops out of Louisiana. When molting, the crabs are known as soft shells and are immensely popular in restaurants up and down the East Coast. They also serve as food for other sea creatures like redfish and certain species of turtles.
Although thought of as a coastal animal, the crabs breed at sea. As the water warms, females leave the protection of the coast for perhaps the only time in their lives and go out to shoals in the gulf to disperse fertilized eggs. The eggs hatch and billions of tiny crabs invisible to the naked eye drift for 40 days along the currents in the deep sea before ending up back in the marshes.
Many of the shoals favored by the crabs are already covered in oil, said Caz Taylor, a professor of ecology and evolution at Tulane University, who is studying their migration patterns. "It can't be good," she said.
Spring is mating and spawning season for almost everything in the gulf: Fill a jar with plankton from the local waters in the spring and it will typically contain the larvae of 80 species. All the eggs and hatchlings are surface dwellers, with almost no ability to swim away from the slick.
"Eggs and larvae that dwell near the sea surface are especially vulnerable," said Jeffrey Short, Pacific research director for Oceana, a nonprofit organization that works for marine preservation.
The components of crude oil, he added, can produce developmental deformities at low concentrations, and "any such deformities are ultimately lethal to organisms in the wild."
So far, there have been few documented animal casualties of the Deepwater Horizon spill, though rumors of dead manatees and whales abound. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that its planes had spotted numerous species of dolphins and turtles in areas now covered by the slick.
Since Sunday, 30 turtles have washed up dead on beaches in Gulfport, Miss., an unusually high number even for this time of year when they are migrating. But Moby Solangi, executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, said that in a preliminary examination, the oil did not appear to be the cause of death. Full necropsies on the animals are being completed.
Still, Michele Kelley, turtle and marine mammal stranding coordinator for Louisiana, said she is worried.
"Sea turtles are more prone to ingest the stuff," Ms. Kelley said, especially as the slick clumps.
Whales and dolphins that must come up through the oil to get air are likely to suffer skin and eye irritation. In some cases, they may breathe in the toxic fumes of evaporation. In areas where oil is viscous, the marine mammals can risk having their skin and eyes irritated. More rarely, they risk breathing toxic fumes from the evaporating oil, and becoming drugged and sleepy.
The fumes are particularly dangerous when the crude is fresh, because some strong toxins evaporate early. With a onetime spill, the slick gets less dangerous over time, but in the gulf, where the well has not been capped, there is a constant supply of new vapors.
Dr. Solangi said he was worried for dolphins. "They have to be awake to breathe," he said. "If they become anesthetized, they will die. If they become intoxicated by fumes, they won't survive."
Even normal feeding might expose sea creatures to harm from the spill: sea grass and other vegetation covered in oil are ingested by fish that are then eaten by bigger fish and finally by manatees or other marine species. It is this food-chain effect that worries Larry Schweiger of the National Wildlife Federation.
"It is not a question of whether all these species will be affected now. It is when," he said.
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14) Washington, D.C., Approves Medical Use of Marijuana
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05marijuana.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The District of Columbia Council approved a measure on Tuesday that would allow people with certain chronic illnesses to obtain medical marijuana from a handful of dispensaries regulated by the city.
The 13-member Council voted unanimously to allow doctors to recommend marijuana for people who are infected with H.I.V., as well as people with glaucoma, cancer or a "chronic and lasting disease."
The legislation permits Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to establish up to eight dispensaries where patients could receive two ounces of marijuana a month. The measure gives the mayor the option of raising the amount to four ounces without further council action.
Some doctors say marijuana helps relieve nausea, vomiting, certain AIDS symptoms and some side effects of chemotherapy. For glaucoma patients, the drug is believed to help lower eye pressure.
The measure, which Mr. Fenty is expected to sign into law, thrusts the debate over medical marijuana into the hands of Congress and the White House, which must decide within 30 days whether to allow the city to proceed with the plan. To block the law from taking effect, the House and the Senate must pass a joint resolution and President Obama must approve it.
If federal lawmakers do not intervene, Washington will join California and 13 other states that allow residents to use marijuana for medical purposes.
David A. Catania, a sponsor of the measure, said he was confident it was "a thoughtful approach toward implementing a medical marijuana program that will be a model for other states that will be defensible before Congress."
The measure requires patients, their caregivers, dispensaries and cultivators to register with the city, restricts dispensaries to a maximum of 95 plants, and prohibits district agencies from arresting medical marijuana users or denying them other services.
The Council rejected amendments that would have spelled out patient protections, limited dispensaries to nonprofits and permitted patients to use recommendations from doctors in Maryland and Virginia.
Nikolas Schiller, the secretary of the D.C. Patients' Cooperative, a nonprofit group that advocates legal medical marijuana, said the amendments would have clarified ambiguities in the bill. He pointed to an example of a Wal-Mart worker in Michigan, where medical marijuana is legal, who was fired in March after he tested positive for the drug, which he used to cope with sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor.
"We asked the Council to introduce the protection for that and they refused to," Mr. Schiller said. "And it was very infuriating to sit and watch the best practices from other states, other jurisdictions be ignored."
Dorothy Brizill, the executive director of D.C. Watch, a local government watchdog, expects a fight over where to locate the dispensaries and raised concerns about medical marijuana ending up being illegally sold on the streets.
"I don't have confidence in the district's ability to carry out the regulation," Ms. Brizill said. "I hope to be proven wrong."
Sixty-nine percent of district voters approved a 1998 ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana. Congress blocked the money needed to create a medical marijuana program until it lifted that ban in December.
In October, the Justice Department urged federal district attorneys to back off of prosecutions of people in possession of medical marijuana who are acting in accordance with state law.
Public support for medical marijuana has remained constantly high in recent years. In an Associated Press-CNBC poll conducted in April, nearly two-thirds of the respondents supported legalizing medical marijuana.
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15) Agency Told Tylenol Maker of Many Quality Concerns
By NATASHA SINGER
May 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/business/05tylenol.html?ref=health
The Johnson & Johnson unit that voluntarily recalled certain lots of children's liquid Tylenol and Motrin over the weekend had numerous and wide-ranging quality control problems at the plant that made the products, according to a federal inspection report released Tuesday.
That unit, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, failed to adequately investigate and correct various deficiencies in its manufacturing and drugs made at its plant in Fort Washington, Pa., according to the report, posted Tuesday afternoon on the Web site of the Food and Drug Administration.
"This is yet another example of the need for companies to take full accountability for the quality of their drugs, and the serious consequences that can happen when companies do not do so," Deborah M. Autor, the director for compliance at the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said Tuesday during a conference call with reporters.
The report, which the agency had sent to McNeil last Friday, before the recall, said the company had used raw materials with known bacterial contamination to make certain lots of infants' and children's liquid Tylenol.
Samples of finished products tested negative for bacteria, however, and the risk to consumers was remote, agency officials said.
A McNeil spokeswoman disagreed with the F.D.A.'s account of the bacteria issue. She wrote in an e-mail message that that the company had not used material that had tested positive for bacteria. She said that a supplier had rejected some drums of a material from a master lot after finding bacterial contamination. But the drums sent to McNeil's plant had tested negative for bacteria.
The F.D.A. report also said McNeil had not responded properly to several dozen consumer complaints about foreign particles found in certain medications.
McNeil said in a statement Tuesday that the company had temporarily stopped production at the Fort Washington plant. The company will not start manufacturing again until it has taken corrective actions and can assure the quality of products made there, the statement said.
The F.D.A. report concerns manufacturing deficiencies observed by federal health investigators during a routine inspection of the plant in April.
After receiving the report last Friday morning, McNeil late that evening recalled a wide range of certain lots of liquid infant's and children's Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec.
Some of these over-the-counter medicines may contain more of the active ingredient than is specified on the product label or tiny metal particles or inactive ingredients that do not meet testing standards, the company said. Although the possibility of health problems was remote, people should stop using the products, the company said.
A full list of the products can be found on the company's Web site mcneilproductrecall.com.
Consumers can also call the McNeil recall hot line at 888-222-6036 for more information about a refund or coupon to replace the recalled products.
McNeil is not disclosing the overall number of bottles involved in the recall, a company spokesman said. The F.D.A. said Tuesday that the recall involved about 1,500 product lots.
This is the fifth recall of McNeil products since last September.
In January, for example, McNeil undertook a large-scale recall of certain lots of Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl, Rolaids and St. Joseph Aspirin after consumer complaints about moldy smells emanating from certain products. The company said that the odor had been caused by a byproduct of a chemical used to treat wooden transport pallets that had leached into the products at a company plant in Puerto Rico.
In February, F.D.A. officials met with managers from McNeil and Johnson & Johnson to express serious concerns about McNeil's manufacturing operations, the agency said Tuesday.
Since that meeting, McNeil has taken steps to improve its manufacturing processes, but F.D.A. officials said they had not yet determined whether the changes were sufficient or whether the agency would take further action against the company.
At the time of the January recall, industry analysts described the moldy smell problem at the Puerto Rico plant as a fluke and an isolated incident.
But some of the inspectors' observations about the Fort Washington plant resemble problems the agency cited at the Puerto Rico plant. These include failure to follow certain good manufacturing standards and failure to adequately investigate consumer complaints.
McNeil said it was working with the agency to resolve the matter.
"The quality issues that the F.D.A. has observed, many of which we had recently identified in our own quality reviews and communicated to the F.D.A., are unacceptable to us, and not indicative of how McNeil Consumer Healthcare intends to operate," the McNeil statement said.
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16) Dispersant 'may make Deepwater Horizon oil spill more toxic'
Scientists fear chemicals used in oil clean-up can cause genetic mutations and cancer, and threaten sea turtles and tuna
By Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 5 May 2010 19.52 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/dispersant-deepwater-horizon-oil-toxic
Chemicals used to break up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill before it reaches shore could do lasting damage to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, environmental scientists say.
By BP's own account, it has mobilised a third of the world's supply of dispersant, so far pouring about 140,000 gallons (637,000 litres) of the cocktail into the Gulf as of today. Some of the dispersant has been injected directly into the source of the spill on the ocean floor, a technique never deployed before, deepening concerns about further damage to the environment.
The dispersants are designed to break down crude into tiny drops, which can be eaten up by naturally occurring bacteria, to lessen the impact of a giant sea of crude washing on to oyster beds and birds' nests on shore. But environmental scientists say the dispersants, which can cause genetic mutations and cancer, add to the toxicity of the spill. That exposes sea turtles and bluefin tuna to an even greater risk than crude alone. Dolphins and whales have already been spotted in the spill.The dangers are even greater for dispersants poured into the source of the spill, where they are picked up by the current and wash through the Gulf.
The high demand for dispersant carries an additional risk. As BP runs through stocks of the chemical, called Corexit, scientists fear it will fall back on older stockpiles in the developing world that are more toxic than those approved for use in the US. "You are trying to mitigate the volume of the spill with dispersant, but the price you pay is increased toxicity," said Richard Charter, a scientific adviser to Defenders of Wildlife. "There are no good answers in a mess of this size."
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17) The ocean is a rich blue. But suddenly we see what this crisis is all about
By David Usborne
There may be few indicators to the scale of the US oil slick from land, but from the air it is a different story
May 6, 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-ocean-is-a-rich-blue-but-suddenly-we-see-what-this-crisis-is-all-about-1964502.html
The radio chatter, mostly from spotter planes, is all about "the source" - the point in the Gulf where the Deepwater Horizon rig once stood. Our pilot has to be more precise. We are headed towards 28.44 degrees north and 088.23 degrees west. Since leaving the shore, a low-hanging fog has developed, obscuring any view of the ocean.
We are 12 miles away from our destination when the cloud bank, like the cliffs of Dover, abruptly drops away once more to reveal the ocean. Two reporters and a cameraman who have been covering the BP spill for days and days without physically seeing any oil, let alone a slick, lean out of our helicopter.
So that's it. The ocean is a rich emulsion blue here - different from the muddy brown closer to the mouth of the Mississippi - but suddenly we are seeing what this crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is all about. What we see first are like blemishes on the sea surface, slivers of an oily sheen that might almost be burn scars on skin.
But there are shades of catastrophe out here, obvious from our breezy, chilly perch (the doors of the chopper have been taken off). The "scars", some with the rainbow colours of peacock feathers, slowly give way to something more shocking. Vast swathes of rust that at times turn almost Martian red.
The slick here looks like the deep cuts of the Grand Canyon, but painted on water. Striations of earth tones from vivid to dull. If the streaks of sheen pretend a certain beauty, this thicker, ruder stuff does not. It is vile; a terrible ruddy intrusion on a landscape that, but for us, should be virgin.
To witness the slick from 3,000ft up - our pilot Burt Lattimore, 46, is not about to violate the minimum altitude floor imposed by the US Coast Guard out here - is to understand at once what the scientists and politicians have been assuring us for the past week: this is very, very bad. It is not a mess that is going to go away; it has to go somewhere and, eventually, that means on to the shore.
Worse is the knowledge that the slick is still growing, being fed by those sheared-off pipes 5,000ft below the surface. The insult to the sea is not over, it is just getting worse.
The sky now clear, our Robinson R44 chopper, a teensy flying machine with barely enough room left for our camera lenses, brings us finally to the source. "Ground zero," my Austrian colleague blurts into the microphone at his lips. Indeed. Beneath us is a swirling, seaborne city of activity. As many as 60 different vessels are circling a large grey steel rig with a helicopter pad and a yellow crane.
It is not Deepwater Horizon, that lies tangled on the seabed below. Rather it is a new rig moved in by BP so that they can begin to drill a relief well that should eventually allow for the clotting of the leak from the first well. The drilling of the relief well is in its third day now.
A spotter plane zips by around half a mile to the south of us. Their job today is to see where the slick is going and to direct other aircraft to the parts where detergents can most usefully be sprayed. "Pick your poison," Burt says, noting that detergents aren't especially kind to the seas either. He says that on a previous trip out here last week, he saw four whales near the spill. One of them was on her side, clearly dying.
As Burt mentions our fast-emptying fuel tank - we make it home later by a matter of minutes - we circle the new rig several times. It is difficult to identify what each of the vessels below us are doing. Some are clearly working in pairs, connected one to the other by large booms that are scooping up the oil.
Others are preparing for the arrival here as early as today of the first of the giant steel coffers that BP will lower on to the worst of the leaks in the hope that the escaping oil can be captured and fed by pipe to tanker ships.
Up here you wonder what will happen if the boxes, more technically known as cofferdams, don't work. How much more of this stuff can the ocean absorb? While ruddy in some areas and shiny in others like polished stone, elsewhere the slick is almost invisible.
A large ship is moving at speed through an area of water, for example, that, to our untrained eye, seems uncontaminated. It is only after it has passed that the turbulence reveals that here, too, there is a layer of fouled water that gathers in streaks along the edge of the wake. The boats are like icebreakers, cutting channels though the mess.
We have seen how bad this is already. But as our pilot swings us north again, the evidence of the tragedy becomes even more obvious. The slick, in all its different hues and consistencies, just goes on and on. The scale is numbing. Probably we could fly for hours and not see the end.
We hit the cloud banks again, but then, as if someone higher than us wants to be sure we miss nothing, they part once more over the Breton Islands, a nature reserve that, according to the most recent reports, had not been directly hit by the oil. But today, now at just 300ft, we see that this is no longer the case.
The tiny isle is trembling with thousands of birds - gulls and pelicans mostly - and there is no mistaking what else we see. Oil, some in clumps the size of mop-heads, is now sliming its shores. The sand is blackening and the booms that have been laid here seem immune to the advance.
"Take us home, Burt." We have seen what we came to see and it is disgusting. For days we have been reporting on a calamity we had been unable to witness. Now we have. And it is lurid in its awfulness. My last sighting before we cross the edge of land again near New Orleans: a group of dolphins playing. How far away is the oil? Ten minutes flying, or less.
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18) Recovery Still Incomplete After Valdez Spill
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/06alaska.html?ref=us
CORDOVA, Alaska - As the oil spill spreads ominously in the Gulf of Mexico, its impact uncertain, communities here beside Prince William Sound are still confronting the consequences of March 24, 1989, the day of the wreck of the Exxon Valdez.
The tanker Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil, staining 1,500 miles of coastline, killing hundreds of thousands of seabirds, otters, seals and whales, and devastating local communities. The spill stopped after just a few days. Recovery may not have an end date.
Fishing here is far from what it was. Suicides and bankruptcies and bitterness surged. Many people left even as a few became "spillionaires," getting paid to clean up.
A new industry took hold: environmental groups, scientific organizations, experts in the psychological trauma of oil spills. A network of fishermen is now trained and paid by the oil industry to respond if another disaster strikes.
Lawyers, fishermen and environmentalists in the gulf are now calling, looking for guidance in areas like how to harness political anger over the spill and the most effective ecological triage. National news crews are chartering planes to nearby islands to see how oil still coats rocks just below the surface all these years later.
Fishermen recount once again their complicated journeys from the spill to the payments they received just last year from a punitive damages judgment of about $500 million against Exxon in 1994.
People here say they want to move on.
"You've got one jaded group of people in this town," Sylvia Lange, who worked her first fishing boat at 14 and now runs a hotel overlooking the water. "First it was the 10th anniversary, then the 20th and now this."
Cordova is a reluctant touchstone, still trying to figure out how to respond to the event that defines it for much of the outside world. This year, officials hope to break ground on an ambitious new museum that will replace the frayed scrapbooks of news clippings that now rest on a table near dugout canoes and tools used for gold mining in a room connected to the local library.
"We don't even have an exhibit about the spill, and yet it's the most-asked question we get," said Cathy Sherman, who runs the current museum and library. "Nobody even wanted to be reminded of it here."
Ms. Sherman said the new museum, which has secured about $18 million in financing from the state and other sources, will tell the story of the spill through objects, including a piece of the Valdez hull. But it will also try to show "what we learned," she added.
The lessons continue, even after books and dissertations have been written, documentaries made, songs composed and case studies completed. The mountain views are still stunning but the herring fishery is gone, the king and Dungeness crabs, too. Prawns are coming back, but just barely. The loss of the herring industry over the years since the spill has cost the region about $400 million, said R. J. Kopchak of the Prince William Sound Science Center, although some blame cyclical patterns or other factors for the change, not the spill.
Much of a generation chose paths other than fishing, though some younger people have decided to take their chances.
Makena O'Toole, 24, said his earliest memory from childhood was of the paralyzing moment his father, a fisherman, heard that the Valdez tanker had crashed into Bligh Reef. Now, even with the famed Copper River sockeye that spawn here, Mr. O'Toole said, "This is still not a place to be a fisherman."
Mr. O'Toole said he plans to move south in September, to fish out of Sitka, where he said the fishery was more abundant "because there wasn't an oil spill there."
In December, Exxon sent the last of a nearly $500,000 payment to John Platt, but Mr. Platt said he never saw it. Straight to the state and the bank it went, to clear the liens on his boats and his fishing permits, to dig out of the debt he accumulated, some through his own admitted missteps, in the two decades since the wreck of the Valdez.
The payments were initially supposed to be much higher, before Exxon successfully fought, all the way to the Supreme Court, to have them reduced.
"The money was supposed to bring closure," Mr. Platt said. "Deep down inside I was really banking on it, but it didn't happen."
Most people received far less money than Mr. Platt and other fishermen who were able to document strong catches in the years before the spill. Others opted out of the sprawling class-action suit.
Ms. Lange said her family dropped out of the suit and moved to western Alaska to work in the fishing industry there for several years after the spill.
"We made the conscious decision that we were no longer going to be victims," she said. "I could see my whole life going into the spill."
Empathy is high here for those closest to the spill in the gulf. Perhaps economic disaster still can be averted, some say. Maybe the fact that the Gulf Coast is so much more accessible than Prince William Sound will help. Maybe its economies will prove diverse enough to handle whatever hit comes. Maybe the warmer water will help disperse the oil. Maybe the fact that, unlike here, the oil spilling in the gulf is being emulsified somewhat as it rises from 5,000 feet below.
But most people here said they thought that at least some communities in the gulf would begin a painful journey with no clear conclusion.
Two years ago, Mike Webber, a fisherman here who also does native carvings, unveiled a "shame pole" he had made to protest Exxon's actions during and after the spill. The pole depicted dead eagles, herring with lesions, the head of an Exxon executive, upside down.
Now, Mr. Webber said, "People keep telling me to do a healing pole, but I can't come up with any characters for it."
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19) 'Los Suns' Join Protest, Then Stop the Spurs
By BILLY WITZ
May 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/sports/basketball/06suns.html?ref=us
PHOENIX - The Phoenix Suns' decision to wear "Los Suns" jerseys Wednesday - as a celebration of Cinco de Mayo and as a political statement in opposition to Arizona's new law dealing with illegal immigrants - drove another wedge into the contentious debate here.
Then, for several hours, the Suns found a way to bridge the divide - by winning a basketball game.
The Suns, after a slow start, pulled away down the stretch thanks to their 3-point shooting, and defeated San Antonio, 110-102, to take a 2-0 lead in their Western Conference semifinal series.
Grant Hill, who at 37 is in the second round of the playoffs for the first time in his career, played a key role at both ends of the court, scoring 18 points and doing most of the defensive work on the Spurs' Manu Ginobili, who was held to 11 points.
As the Suns left the court to cheers, fans began to file out of US Airways Center.
Outside, an N.B.A. playoff game had become a temporary stage for a divisive national debate. Inside, it was merely a playoff basketball game - players getting knocked to the floor and jump shots being taken with the weight of great consequences.
In the preceding 24 hours, it was Robert Sarver, the Suns' managing partner and a native of Tucson, who had stepped into another tough fight with his decision to have the Suns wear their alternate "Los Suns" jerseys, something they did twice this season as part of the N.B.A.'s "Noche Latina" campaign.
Sarver called the new law, which has been the subject of a fierce debate both nationally and locally, flawed and mean-spirited and said it would hurt the state's economy.
"However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question," Sarver said Tuesday in a statement, "and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them."
Sarver, through a team spokesman, declined to comment Wednesday.
Indicators of how Suns fans felt about the law were hard to come by. Most stark political differences were covered up by the color orange that filled the arena.
One fan who stood out was Andrew Bloom, who wore a sombrero, taped "Los" above the Suns logo on his Amar'e Stoudemire jersey and said he had a concealed banner he would unfurl later that read: Deport the Spurs.
But overt signs of support or opposition were rare.
A clerk at the team store said sales of "Los Suns" T-shirts and jerseys were more brisk than usual but she could not provide numbers. David Rojo, who wore one of the orange T-shirts, said he appreciated that Sarver, as the leader of one of Phoenix's most prominent businesses, would take such a strong stand in opposition to the law.
"It's awesome for me because my parents are immigrants from Mexico," Rojo said. "It's important that it's not just immigrants who are opposed to the law, but an organization that has a strong place in the community."
Jerry Dilk, a season-ticket holder for 22 seasons, was not so pleased.
"I've got no problem celebrating Cinco de Mayo," said Dilk, who did not share what he called Sarver's liberal point of view. "But I'm disappointed he chose to use his position to make a political statement."
The fallout from Sarver's decision, which was made after getting unanimous support from his players, is why sports figures are so reticent about becoming involved in political issues.
So, despite Tuesday's outspoken support of the gesture from those in both organizations - Suns General Manager Steve Kerr said that allowing the police to ask people for their papers "rings up images of Nazi Germany" - the topic of Los Suns jerseys was one that both coaches sought to distance themselves from Wednesday.
This was, after all, the playoffs.
"Now it's game time," Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, who strongly supported Sarver on Tuesday, said as he stood outside his team's locker room about 90 minutes before tip-off. "I'm not running for office, just coaching."
Suns Coach Alvin Gentry was no more interested in discussing the subject.
"This is the last thing I'm going to say about it," Gentry said. "We've worn these jerseys before. We're 3-0 in these jerseys. We're wearing these jerseys just because it's a national holiday, it's Cinco de Mayo. We're wearing it because of the diversity we have in the state of Arizona, and we're wearing it because of the diversity in the N.B.A."
Gentry also sidestepped the question of whether the fans would blame the uniform controversy if the Suns lost.
Then the Suns went out and ensured that he would not have to.
Howard Beck contributed reporting.
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20) The Echoes of an Execution Reverberate Loud and Clear
By LARRY ROHTER
May 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/arts/television/06radio.html?ref=us
In a small Southern town during the Jim Crow era, a black man is accused of raping a white woman. During his stormy trial there are threats of lynching, as well as intimations that the white woman had been the sexual aggressor.
That tale summarizes the plot of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," a staple of high school English courses. But it also describes part of the more complicated and less morally uplifting real-life story told in "Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair," a half-hour documentary to be broadcast Friday on NPR stations as part of the "Radio Diaries" series (www.radiodiaries.org).
"This story was murky at the time, and it's just as murky looking back," said Joe Richman, the producer of the series. "There's no way we can find the truth. Was this a rape? Was it him? Was it consensual? Or an affair? To this day it still divides people along racial lines. Everyone has a different agenda and their own version of the facts."
The McGee case became one of those cause célèbres that galvanized opinion, and not just in the United States. Albert Einstein, William Faulkner and Josephine Baker were among those who pleaded for clemency; a young New York lawyer named Bella Abzug handled McGee's final appeals; and Tennessee Williams would later work a mention of the case into his play "Orpheus Descending."
This much is clear: Mr. McGee, a handyman in Laurel, Miss., was arrested in November 1945 and charged with the rape of a frail young mother of three. After being convicted by all-white juries in three separate trials and having his final appeal rejected by the United States Supreme Court, he was put to death two minutes after midnight on May 8, 1951.
For nearly 15 years, beginning in 1940, Mississippi used a "traveling electric chair" that moved from county to county to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes. What is perhaps most unusual about the McGee case, though, is not the portable electric chair or even the public nature of the execution, but the live radio coverage that accompanied it, which was recorded and is excerpted in Mr. Richman's documentary.
The tape, made by a resident of southeastern Mississippi named Jim Leeson, is also a starting point for a new book on the McGee case to be published next week, Alex Heard's "The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex and Secrets in the Jim Crow South" (Harper). Mr. Heard was a student of Mr. Leeson's at Vanderbilt University in 1979 when he first heard the broadcast of the execution, and said it haunted him for years.
"He played that tape for us as a lesson, to remind us how dramatically things had changed in the South since he was our age, and then later donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi," Mr. Heard said. In 2004, he added, "I started poking around just as a hobby, and found that nobody had ever gone deep with this story."
At the time of the execution Mr. Leeson was a 20-year-old college student and part-time journalist, working for The Hattiesburg American. He would later become a reporter for The Associated Press in Nashville and also covered the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s for the Race Relations Information Center before retiring to the Tennessee countryside, where he died this week.
"Even then I believe my interest in events in Mississippi and the South was that of a newsman," Mr. Leeson wrote in an e-mail message late last month. "During college, 1948-53, I had one of the first tape recorders with two seven-inch reels mounted on the top of a heavy box. I was interested in music primarily" and "don't recall having any special sense in making the McGee recording other than it was a most interesting and most unusual event to be broadcast, to say the least."
The announcers were broadcasting from outside the courthouse, on the lawn, not from the courtroom where Mr. McGee had been convicted and was to be executed. Confronted with a somber moment of great drama, they adopt a tone of voice that is neutral and dispassionate.
But the mood of the crowd on the courthouse lawn, estimated at about 1,000, is clearly celebratory. After the switch is pulled and two surges of electricity from the generator are noted, there are whoops, hollers and cheers, and an excited cry of "That's it!" can be heard in the background.
Mr. Richman's documentary is also the story of Bridgette McGee-Robinson, one of Willie McGee's granddaughters. Born and raised in Las Vegas, she recalls being a child and glimpsing newspaper clips that her mother had saved but refused to discuss. As an adult she stumbled across the case while doing research online for a family reunion, trying to determine if the baseball player Willie McGee was a relative.
Eventually, she joined forces with both Mr. Richman and Mr. Heard and traveled to Mississippi to try to find out what happened. Raymond Horne, a local reporter who witnessed the execution, dismissed the notion of Willie McGee's involvement in an interracial affair as "one of the craziest defense arguments that can be made," while blacks told her it was common knowledge and assured her that her grandfather was playing cards at the time of the alleged rape.
"There are still some answers I need to get," Ms. McGee-Robinson, 48, said in a phone interview. "I'm still not satisfied yet."
As for the tape, "I got a copy in 2000, but I had to put it aside," she explained. "I didn't want to listen because I didn't know what I would hear." It was only this year, after visiting Mississippi with Mr. Richman, seeing the electric chair in a museum "and taking the long trip down that hallway in my imagination" that she was able to bring herself to listen.
All of those involved in trying to unravel the truth of the McGee case noted the similarities to the situations of Tom Robinson and Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird," published nearly a decade after Willie McGee's death. But they are reluctant to make too much of the parallels.
"In the novel you've got distinctions between good folks and bad," Mr. Heard said. "In the McGee case what you get is a judge who was just as prejudiced and lawyers who were facing unrelenting hostility." He added, "I'm not sure I know what happened." But given the racial climate and the pressures to obtain a conviction, "I do know it wasn't fair to execute him."
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