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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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Crucial Vote At City Hall -- KEEP THE ARBORETUM FREE!
Supervisors Hearing on the Arboretum Entrance Fee
Wednesday May 19th
10:00 AM (arrive 9:30)
Supervisor Chamber, Room 250 City Hall
(Polk and Grove Streets)
It is Possible to Defeat The Fee Proposal At This Special Hearing With Your Help. The effort to keep the Strybing Arboretum free is entering the critical phase in City Hall. This coming Wednesday, three members of the Supervisors' Budget Committee (Sups Avalos, Mirkarimi and Eslbernd) will hear the Mayor's ordinance to institute fees. During the meeting, the public can express their views to the Supervisors, please come to urge them to reject the fee ordinance.
The ground has been prepared for success - over 6,000 people have signed a petition, an analysis has clearly discredited the financial assumptions behind the non-resident plan, surveys on the ground have shown how dramatically a fee would reduce attendance and many of you have spoken publicly and sent letters to your Supervisors. Members of the campaign to keep the Arboretum free have met with Supervisors to express the public's overwhelming desire for a free and also that sustainable alternatives are being ignored by the Recreation and Park Department (RPD) in order to push for the fee.
But the S.F. Botanical Society and the RPD have also mounted a sustained and hard campaign for the fee. RPD has tried to tie the fee to other services to force the Supervisors' hand while the Society has been paying professional lobbyists $10,000/month to call on Supervisors to press their position. The challenge is there and our work is clear - we need to keep momentum going and your participation is key.
Our success depends on making a strong push at this special meeting about the Arboretum. If at all possible, please take time out of your schedule to come to this hearing.
If you haven't done so already, please click below to send letters to the Supervisors as frequently as you can to express your opposition to the fee plan. Calling their offices directly seems to have the strongest impact.
http://www.keeparboretumfree.org/email-board-supervisors-budget-committee
ONCE GATED-OFF, THE 70-YEAR HERITAGE OF A FREE GARDEN WILL BE LOST FOREVER, PLEASE ACT TO SAVE THIS VITAL PUBLIC REFUGE - THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR HELP.
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President Obama is coming to San Francisco
Tuesday, May 25, 4pm
Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St.
(between Sacramento and California Sts.) San Francisco
Join a Protest to tell him:
• Stop the Occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine!
• We Want Unconditional Amnesty for All Immigrants!
• Stop Offshore Oil Drilling! Seize BP's Assets to provide full compensation for the affected communities
• Funds for Jobs and Social Services, Not War and Bank Bailouts!
• End the Blockade of Cuba! Free the Cuban Five!
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition. Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
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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Send President Obama a Message
California Wants Medicare for All
Hands Off Social Security
May 25, Tues. 3:30 to 5:30
Fairmont Hotel, 960 Mason
San Francisco
Dear Healthcare Activist,
Help us yes send the message that California Wants Medicare for All and No Cuts to Social Security.
President Obama is coming to a fundraiser for Senator Boxer next Tuesday.
The California Legislature has twice passed SB 810, the California Universal Healthcare Act.
The platform of the California Democratic Party supports Medicare for All ( Single Payer Healthcare ).
The California Federation of Labor supports Single Payer Healthcare.
The City of San Francisco supports both state and national legislation for Single Payer Healthcare.
It is important that President Obama brings back the message to DC that California wants Medicare for All.
We encourage you to forward this message.
We are making banners now. Please let us know if you can hold a banner next Tuesday.
__ I can hold a banner for Medicare for All
__ I can hold a banner for Protecting our Social Security
__ I can help call our phone tree for May 25
__ I can hand out leaflets at the event.
__ I can collect single payer postcards at the event.
__ I have forwarded this alert.
__ If you would like to make a financial contribution to insure the success of our May 25 picket, please click here.
For more information call 415-695-7891
Thank you.
Don Bechler
Chair Â- Single Payer Now
415-695-7891
www.singlepayernow.net
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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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This is just inspiring! You have to watch it! ...bw
Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79pX1IOqPU
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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*: http://www.seizebp.org/
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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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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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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) Justices Bar Life Terms for Youths Who Haven't Killed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/17/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Juvenile-Sentences.html?_r=1&hp
2) Europe's Debt Crisis Is Casting a Shadow Over China
By KEITH BRADSHER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/business/global/18yuan.html?hp
3) Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank
"Mr. Chomsky, who is Jewish and spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s, is an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy. But he has supported a two-state solution here and has not condemned Israel's existence in the terms of the country's sharpest critics around the world."
By ETHAN BRONNER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/middleeast/18chomsky.html?ref=world
4) Gap in Rules on Oil Spills From Wells
By KATE GALBRAITH
May 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/business/energy-environment/17green.html?ref=us
5) Attorney to File Suits in Death of Detroit Girl, 7
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/18/arts/AP-US-Police-Search-Girl-Killed.html
6) Scientists Warn Oil Spill Could Threaten Florida
By JOHN M. BRODER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/18spill.html?hp
7) Student Strike at University of Puerto Rico Enters 28th Day
Amy Goodman interviews Giovanni Roberto, student at the University of Puerto Rico and a spokesperson for the striking students and Christopher Powers, professor of comparative literature at University of Puerto Rico
May 17, 2010
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/17/student_strike_at_university_of_puerto
8) Shell Offers Reassurances on Drilling
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19alaska.html?ref=us
9) Motherhood: Norway Tops List of the Best Places to Be a Mother; Afghanistan Rates Worst
"Among middle-income countries, Cuba ranked highest, outdoing many wealthier countries. Despite its poverty, Cuba trains many doctors."
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18glob.html?ref=health
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1) Justices Bar Life Terms for Youths Who Haven't Killed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/17/us/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Juvenile-Sentences.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone.
By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.
The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.
"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the Eighth Amendment does not permit."
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court's four liberal justices about Graham. But Roberts said he does not believe the ruling should extend to all young offenders who are locked up for crimes other than murder; he was a "no" vote on the ruling.
Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing, although roughly three dozen states allow for the possibility of such prison terms. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences.
Those inmates are in Florida and seven other states -- California, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina -- according to a Florida State University study. More than 2,000 other juveniles are serving life without parole for killing someone. Their sentences are not affected by Monday's decision.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from Monday's ruling.
Thomas criticized the majority for imposing "its own sense of morality and retributive justice" on state lawmakers and voters who chose to give state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences.
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2) Europe's Debt Crisis Is Casting a Shadow Over China
By KEITH BRADSHER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/business/global/18yuan.html?hp
HONG KONG - The pain of the European debt crisis is spreading, with the plummeting euro making Chinese companies less competitive in Europe, their largest market, and complicating any move to break the Chinese currency's peg to the dollar.
Chinese policy makers reached a consensus last month about dropping the dollar peg. But allowing the renminbi, the Chinese currency that is also known as the yuan, to rise against the dollar now would mean a further increase in the renminbi's level against the euro, creating even more problems for Chinese exporters to Europe.
The euro has plunged against the renminbi in recent weeks, at one point Monday reaching its lowest level since late 2002 before turning higher.
The steep rise of the renminbi prompted a Commerce Ministry official in Beijing to warn on Monday that China's exports could be threatened. The official's comments, the most explicit yet on the implications for China of Europe's recent financial difficulties, suggest that even China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, and increasingly the engine of global growth, is not immune to the crisis that started in Greece and threatens to spread across much of Europe.
"The yuan has risen about 14.5 percent against the euro during the past four months, which will increase cost pressure for Chinese exporters and also have a negative impact on China's exports to European countries," the ministry official, Yao Jian, said at a news conference in Beijing, according to news service reports.
Some economists warn that there may be much worse to come. The biggest reason Chinese exports plunged early last year was not weakening demand in industrialized countries but a sudden, temporary disappearance of trade finance. The availability of trade finance could easily become a serious problem again soon, said Dong Tao, the chief Asia economist at Credit Suisse.
Chinese exporters rely very heavily on bank letters of credit to finance their shipments. The availability of the letters of credit is closely linked to overnight lending rates between banks. When banks have trouble borrowing money themselves, they tend to cut sharply the issuance of letters of credit for trade finance as a quick, easy way to conserve cash without violating the terms of other financial obligations, like established lines of credit for big corporations.
Interbank lending rates surged late last week and on Monday and must now come back down very quickly to persuade banks to keep issuing letters of credit, Mr. Tao said. "Without trade finance, trade won't happen," he said.
The Shanghai stock market plunged Monday, with the composite index falling 5.1 percent on worries about global demand as well as concerns about possible further moves in China to limit a steep rise in real estate prices this spring.
Some Chinese companies are already running into difficulty because of the euro's fall against the renminbi.
"We have been receiving calls from some European clients who signed contracts with us earlier this month, and they all want to cancel their orders, since the depreciation of the euro has eroded all their margins and then some," said Elvin Xu, the sales manager of Guangdong Ouyi Electrical Appliance in Zhongshan, China, which makes gas stoves, heaters and water heaters. "They say they cannot increase the prices at their end to their customers, given intense competition in their marketplace."
The renminbi is rising along with the dollar against the euro. The Chinese government has continued to intervene heavily in currency markets in recent weeks to prevent the renminbi from rising against the dollar, maintaining an informal peg of 6.827 renminbi to the dollar, the level since July 2008.
Because American companies compete in the Chinese market with European companies in many industries, the euro's weakness against the renminbi is putting American companies at a disadvantage just as Gary Locke, the U.S. commerce secretary, is leading the first cabinet-level trade mission of the administration of President Barack Obama to China this week.
Mr. Locke said Monday in Hong Kong that Mr. Obama's goal was to double American exports by 2015. Short-term currency fluctuations do not detract from that goal, he said, adding, "Who knows what the euro will be next month, six months from now or a year from now?"
Chinese leaders reached a consensus in April to break the renminbi's peg to the dollar, ending a dispute that spilled into public view in March when Commerce Ministry officials warned in speeches and interviews in Beijing and Washington about the dangers of any change in the renminbi's value. The ministry halted those warnings immediately after the consensus was reached, and Chen Deming, the commerce minister, even reversed himself publicly by saying that China's trade deficit in March was nothing to worry about.
But events since then have delayed implementation of the consensus, including public attention paid to a visit to Beijing by the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, followed by the earthquake in Qinghai Province and then the euro's slide.
The United States is far from alone in calling for China to let the renminbi rise. Government officials in Singapore, India and Brazil have called publicly in recent weeks for the Chinese government to break the peg to the dollar. Continued Chinese inaction would antagonize many commercial rivals of China, and could fuel pressures in Washington for the U.S. Congress to draft trade legislation threatening restrictions on Chinese exports.
The euro's difficulties have also inflicted tens of billions of dollars in losses on the value of China's $2.4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, according to Western economists. China had been trying to limit its dependence on U.S. Treasury securities for those reserves in recent years, fearing that the United States might someday suffer from budget problems or inflation, and did so by expanding its holdings of European government bonds.
But the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which administers the reserves, does not have to mark them to market value daily, so it is not clear what effect, if any, the losses will have on Chinese policy.
Hilda Wang contributed reporting.
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3) Israel Roiled After Chomsky Barred From West Bank
"Mr. Chomsky, who is Jewish and spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s, is an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy. But he has supported a two-state solution here and has not condemned Israel's existence in the terms of the country's sharpest critics around the world."
By ETHAN BRONNER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/middleeast/18chomsky.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - A fierce debate broke out in Israel on Monday amid finger pointing and hand wringing over the country's refusal a day earlier to permit Noam Chomsky, the linguist and icon of the American left, to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan.
Front-page coverage and heated morning radio discussions asked how Mr. Chomsky, an 81-year-old professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could pose a risk to Israel and how a country that frequently asserts its status as a democracy could keep out people whose views it found offensive.
Mr. Chomsky, who is Jewish and spent time living on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s, is an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy. But he has supported a two-state solution here and has not condemned Israel's existence in the terms of the country's sharpest critics around the world.
The decision to bar him from entering the West Bank to speak at Bir Zeit, a Palestinian university, "is an act of folly, part of a large series of follies in the recent period, which together could mark the end of Israel as a freedom-loving state of law, or at least pose a big question over it," remarked Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper, in his Monday column.
Government spokesmen were mortified at the development and issued statements saying that the decision was made by an interior ministry official at the Jordan-West Bank border and did not represent policy.
"There is no change in our policy," asserted Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The idea that Israel is preventing people from entering whose opinions are critical of the state is ludicrous; it is not happening. This was a mishap. A guy at border overstepped his authority."
But Mr. Chomsky said in a television interview from Jordan with Al Jazeera in English that the interior ministry official who interviewed him was on the phone with other ministry officials during the several hours of questioning on Sunday at the West Bank border and that he was taking instructions from his superiors.
"There were two basic points," Mr. Chomsky told the interviewer. "One was that the government of Israel does not like the kinds of things I say - which puts them into the category of I suppose every other government in the world. The second was that they seemed upset about the fact that I was just taking an invitation from Bir Zeit and I had no plans to go on to speak in Israeli universities, as I have done many times in the past but not this time."
Some conservative members of Parliament said they had no objection to the decision.
"This is a decision of principle between the democratic ideal - and we all want freedom of speech and movement - and the need to protect our existence," asserted Otniel Schneller, of the centrist Kadima party, on Israel Radio. "Let's say he came to lecture at Bir Zeit. What would he say that? That Israel kills Arabs, that Israel is an apartheid state?"
In another three months, Mr. Schneller went on, some Israeli would be standing over her son's grave, the victim of incitement "in the name of free speech." People like Mr. Chomsky, he added, do not have to be granted permission to enter.
Mr. Chomsky said he had last visited in 1997. This time he came to the border with his daughter and two friends. The friends were permitted entry but he and his daughter were not. In the end, all four chose to return to Amman, the Jordanian capital.
Moustafa Barghouti, who was to be Mr. Chomsky's host in the West Bank, angrily condemned Israel's refusal to let him in, saying, "The decision of Israel to prevent Professor Chomsky from entering the Palestinian Territories is a result of the numerous campaigns against Chomsky organized by the Jewish lobby in the United States."
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4) Gap in Rules on Oil Spills From Wells
By KATE GALBRAITH
May 16, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/business/energy-environment/17green.html?ref=us
The catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill began off the coast of Louisiana - hundreds of miles from Mexico and far from any other country.
But many oil spills, almost by definition, become international events. Oil slicks can easily be carried to distant shores by the sea currents. A huge Australian oil spill last year in the Timor Sea caused angst in Indonesia and East Timor.
There has even been concern that the crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico could make its way to the Atlantic Ocean, tugged along by powerful currents.
In the event of a spill that affects multiple countries, a number of global conventions devised through the International Maritime Organization govern prevention and clean-up efforts. There are also regional agreements - the United States, for example, maintains agreements with Canada, Mexico, Panama, Russia and the British Virgin Islands, according to the State Department.
But experts say there are large gaps in what the international agreements cover.
"There is a tremendous body of international law addressing oil pollution, dealing with matters including construction and seaworthiness of ships, safety of navigation, pollution response, and liability," said Tim Stephens, a senior lecturer on the law faculty at the University of Sydney and the co-author of a forthcoming textbook on the law of the sea.
However, the international maritime conventions apply "primarily or exclusively" to accidents involving tankers - the devastating 1999 Erika spill off the coast of Brittany, France, was from a tanker, for example, he said in an e-mail message.
They do not apply to accidents involving oil platforms, like the Deepwater Horizon spill.
"It is definitely an omission," Mr. Stephens said, adding that only "tentative" steps have been taken so far to make the maritime agency's rules applicable to platform spills.
The regulatory discrepancy has a simple explanation: tankers move across international boundaries all the time, whereas platforms remain fixed in place. But as oil companies push their exploration farther offshore with the help of new technology, spills like Deepwater pose an increasing risk - and could galvanize new action.
A key area for exploration and production-related spills is liability.
"There is no global convention governing this issue," said Sergei Vinogradov, a senior lecturer at the Center for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee, in Scotland.
By contrast, liability from tanker spills is covered by two 1992 conventions, one dealing with civil liability and the other with an oil-pollution compensation fund, he said in an e-mail message.
A different area in which more international coordination on spills is needed is the Arctic. That region is widely regarded as the next frontier for petroleum production. It holds perhaps 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil, according to a 2008 assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey, but it is also among the most fragile environments on Earth.
An international oil-spill conference next year in Portland, Oregon, is supposed to focus on Arctic issues, said Robin Rorick of the American Petroleum Institute, which is one of the conference sponsors, along with several U.S. agencies.
In the aftermath of the Deepwater spill, the conference agenda is certain to change, but Mr. Rorick said that the Arctic would remain a point of emphasis. The issue is growing more pressing as companies prepare to drill there - Shell Oil plans to drill several exploratory wells off northern Alaska this summer.
Even outside of formal agreements, international advice and assistance is often a key feature of oil-spill response. In the Deepwater case, a number of countries - including Norway, Britain, France and Germany - have offered equipment and assistance to the United States in dealing with the spill.
And the administration of President Barack Obama plans important changes to the Minerals Management Service, the U.S. agency that regulates the offshore oil industry, somewhat along the lines of restructuring that previously took place in Australia, Britain and Norway.
The U.S. agency enforces safety and environmental requirements for oil rigs. It also collects money from oil and gas leases on U.S. government land as well as mineral-extraction royalties. This is a conflict of interest, and the Obama administration plans to split the agency, which is part of the Department of the Interior, into two parts in order to address the problem.
As Tom Zeller Jr. reported last week in the New York Times (of which the International Herald Tribune is the global edition), Australia created a special offshore safety agency in 2005, called the National Petroleum Safety Authority, to minimize conflicts of interest. Norway created its Petroleum Safety Authority in 2004, for similar reasons.
Britain also walled off the functions of safety and revenue-collection following a deadly 1988 explosion of the Piper Alfa rig in the North Sea. It moved safety oversight from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive.
The United States will also undoubtedly look to other countries as it tries to understand how to strengthen safety requirements to prevent another oil spill.
One technology that could have been useful in the Deepwater case is an acoustic valve to shut off the well by remote control in an emergency. Such devices are required by Brazil and Norway, but not by the United States, where the oil industry successfully resisted a proposal years ago to require its use, according to Oystein Noreng, who heads the petroleum studies unit at the Norwegian School of Management.
"In Norway, for more than 40 years, we have had a fairly harmonious coexistence between a large offshore oil industry and some of the world's largest fishing industries," Mr. Noreng said in an e-mail message. "Nobody can say that a disaster like the one in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico could not happen in Norway, but we have invested in the additional line of defense, thanks to political wisdom."
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5) Attorney to File Suits in Death of Detroit Girl, 7
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/05/18/arts/AP-US-Police-Search-Girl-Killed.html
Filed at 9:55 a.m. ET
DETROIT (AP) -- Events leading to the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl by a Detroit officer may have been videotaped by a crew for a reality TV series that accompanied police as they searched the victim's home for a murder suspect.
Any video could reveal whether Aiyana Jones was fatally shot by an officer whose gun mistakenly discharged inside the house, as police say, or if lawyer Geoffrey Fieger's claim of a cover-up proves to be correct.
Fieger, who represents the Jones' family, said he would announce two wrongful death lawsuits Tuesday. Members of the Jones family were expected to talk to reporters during the news conference at the lawyer's office in Southfield.
Police have said officers threw a flash grenade through the first-floor window of the two-family home early Sunday and that an officer's gun discharged during a struggle or after a collision with the girl's grandmother. The crew for the A&E series ''The First 48'' was with police.
Fieger, however, said the official account was full of ''utter fabrications.'' He said he has seen a video showing police throwing the grenade and then shooting into the home from the porch. He would not say if the footage came from the A&E crew.
''There is no question about what happened because it's in the videotape,'' Fieger said Monday. ''It's not an accident. It's not a mistake. There was no altercation.''
''Aiyana Jones was shot from outside on the porch,'' he said.
Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said police want that tape.
''If Mr. Fieger has access to anything that would be evidence in this case, he should, as an officer of the court, get it immediately to the Michigan State Police, which will be investigating,'' Godbee said in an e-mail.
Godbee also said the police department has asked for footage shot by ''The First 48'' crew, which has been in Detroit for several months while shadowing homicide investigators on a nearly daily basis. Neither Godbee nor A&E would say whether that request was granted.
A&E spokesman Dan Silberman said the network would not comment about the case, and he denied a request by The Associated Press for its footage.
''The First 48'' chronicles the efforts of homicide detectives during the critical first two days after someone is killed. Thanks to the access provided by police departments across the nation, the show takes viewers to crime scenes, autopsies, forensic processing and interrogations.
The crew was on-hand Friday following the shooting death of a 17-year-old Detroit high school student outside a party store not far from Aiyana's home. When the elite Special Response Team prepared to raid the ramshackle duplex early Sunday to look for the suspect in the teen's slaying, a camera also may have been rolling.
The police department declined to say whether it was being paid by the television show.
Fieger said more than one camera was recording at the scene and that the footage he saw includes sound.
''The videotape shows clearly that the assistant police chief and the officers on the scene are engaging in an intentional cover up of the events,'' Fieger said.
Police have said the target of the raid, a 34-year-old man, was arrested in the upstairs unit of the duplex. Police had warrants to search both units, and family members of the slain girl were seen going in and out of both on Monday. The suspect has not been charged, and it was not immediately clear what relationship he had to the slain girl.
The case has been handed over to the Michigan State Police to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.
Police have not identified the officer whose gun fired the shot that killed Aiyana. Godbee said he is a 14-year veteran with six to seven years on the Special Response Team and that he has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
The officer was cleared following a nonfatal shooting last summer in which police returned fire after being were fired upon by someone barricaded in a house, Godbee said.
The Detroit police department has been under two court-ordered consent decrees since 2003 aimed at, among other things, correcting how and when its officers use force on suspects.
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6) Scientists Warn Oil Spill Could Threaten Florida
By JOHN M. BRODER
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/18spill.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Scientists warned Monday that oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico was moving rapidly toward a current that could carry it into the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Ocean, threatening coral reefs and hundreds of miles of additional shoreline.
Government officials insisted that the oil had not yet entered the gulf's so-called loop current, and that they were continuing to monitor the movement of the spill closely. But two independent scientists, analyzing ocean current and satellite data, said the oil was in an eddy that was quickly being drawn into the current, portending a much wider spread of the hazardous slick.
The White House, meanwhile, said late Monday that President Obama would soon name an independent commission to investigate the cause of the spill and the response to it, largely supplanting the inquiry now being conducted by the United States Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for overseeing offshore oil operations. The role of both agencies in approving the drilling, preparing for an accident and supervising the cleanup are part of any overall inquiry and have raised questions about the independence of their work.
Several members of Congress and outside experts have demanded that an independent panel be created, modeled on those that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979 and the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986. No current members of government will serve on the panel, which will have a broad charter and wide investigative authority, a White House official said.
Technicians from BP, the company that leased the drilling rig, said Monday that they were continuing to suction oil from the drilling pipe lying on the ocean floor 5,000 feet below the surface. They are pulling oil out through a narrow tube at the rate of about 1,000 barrels a day, roughly a fifth of the official estimate of the leak.
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said the tube could accommodate at least 5,000 barrels a day, but engineers are increasing the flow rate very carefully to avoid sucking up water, which might lead to the creation of the icelike structures, called hydrates, that form in the presence of seawater at low temperatures and high pressures and could clog the pipe.
"If we could get as much as half or more of the total flow, if we could actually see this recovering, say, in excess of 2,000 barrels a day," Mr. Suttles said, "we would all be extraordinarily pleased."
Millions of gallons of oil have already escaped from the blown well, presenting an enormous challenge to contain it and keep it from killing ocean life and fouling Gulf Coast beaches and wetlands. That task will become immeasurably more difficult if the huge plume of oil moves into the powerful and unpredictable loop current, which carries warm water in a clockwise motion from the Yucatán Peninsula into the northern Gulf of Mexico, then south to the Florida Keys and out into the Atlantic.
At present, little oil appears to have reached the loop current proper. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard, one of the top officials overseeing the spill response, said at a briefing on Monday: "We know that the oil has not entered the loop current at this time. There may be some leading edge sheen that's getting closer to the loop current, but this spill has not entered the loop current proper."
But the independent scientists said that a portion of the wide oil slick is circulating in an eddy directly north of the loop current. This eddy, known as a cyclone, spins counterclockwise and is dragging the oil south.
"There is a very, very distinct trail of oil from the oil spill, all the way into this cyclone," said Nan Walker, an oceanographer with the Earth Scan Laboratory at Louisiana State University. "So far, it looks like the oil is continuing to be dragged around the cyclone, but eventually it's going to be mixed in with the loop current and make its way south to Florida."
Chuanmin Hu, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, said that the amount of oil entering the cyclone had increased sharply in the past few days.
"I see a huge oil plume being dragged in that direction," he said. "It's like a river."
Dr. Hu estimated that oil that entered the current could reach the Florida Keys in roughly two weeks.
Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Monday in an interview on PBS's "NewsHour": "By the time the oil is in the loop current, it's likely to be very, very diluted. And so it's not likely to have a very significant impact. It sounds scarier than it is."
A new round of Congressional hearings into the spill opened here on Monday afternoon, with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs taking testimony on the government and private sector response to the spill.
At the beginning of the hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the administration's actions after the explosion, saying that officials had engaged in an "all-hands-on-deck response to this event."
Ms. Napolitano acknowledged, however, that the government was largely at BP's mercy in stopping the leak and addressing much of the oil in the water.
"Frankly," she said, "the federal government has limited capability and expertise in responding to wellhead incidents on the sea floor. Nonetheless, the federal government has mobilized scientists and industry experts to collaborate with BP to identify and execute the best strategies for sealing the well, and the president has tasked the Department of Energy to participate in providing any possible expertise on that front."
Also on Monday, the longtime top federal regulator of offshore drilling in the gulf said that he was resigning at the end of the month, according to an Interior Department official.
The regulator, Chris C. Oynes, ran the New Orleans office of the Minerals Management Service for 12 years, overseeing all offshore operations and revenue collections, until he was promoted to a senior position in Washington in 2007. His tenure in the gulf coincided with a 50 percent increase in offshore oil production, but also in a number of allegations that the minerals service had failed to collect billions of dollars in revenues owed the federal government and had been lax in its oversight of the safety practices of offshore drillers.
Interior Department officials would not say whether Mr. Oynes's resignation was voluntary.
Reporting was contributed by John Collins Rudolf from New York, Shaila Dewan from New Orleans and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
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7) Student Strike at University of Puerto Rico Enters 28th Day
Amy Goodman interviews Giovanni Roberto, student at the University of Puerto Rico and a spokesperson for the striking students and Christopher Powers, professor of comparative literature at University of Puerto Rico
May 17, 2010
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/17/student_strike_at_university_of_puerto
Amy Goodman: In Puerto Rico, an ongoing strike by students at the University of Puerto Rico is coming to a head. Riot police have surrounded the main gates of the university and are trying to break the strike by denying food and water to students who have occupied the campus inside.
The strike began nearly four weeks ago in response to budget cuts at the university of more than $100 million. Students called on the administration to reconsider the cuts and sought guarantees, such as no fee increases and no privatization of campus services. Students initially called for a forty-eight-hour strike, but more than three weeks later the strike continues and has spread to ten out of eleven campuses. On Thursday, a mass assembly of more than 3,000 students voted overwhelmingly to continue the strike. The next day, riot police seized control of the main campus gates.
The striking students have received widespread support from professors at the university, as well as unions around the country. Crowds have gathered outside the university gates, where police have encircled the striking students inside. Parents, family members, other supporters have tried to throw bottles of water and food over the fence to support the strikers.
We go now to Puerto Rico inside the occupied campus at the university, where we're joined by Giovanni Roberto, a student at the University of Puerto Rico and a spokesperson for the striking students. We're also joined by a professor at the university, outside the campus, who's supporting the students. Christopher Powers is a professor of comparative literature at UPR. He joins us on the phone.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Giovanni, we'll begin with you. Describe the scene right now and what your demands are.
Giovanni Roberto: Hi, Amy, and hi, people watching.
Our first-our main demand was that we reject certification of the trustees of the university that tried to limit the tuition waivers to students. Especially they tried to make people that have a Pell Grant or other economic help not to be part of the tuition waiver, which in the University of Puerto Rico, which is a public university, most of students have economic aids in order to go to the university and study. So we identify that the administration, what they wanted to do is to attack especially poor students, trying to limit their right to have a tuition waiver.
Right now in the university, we are inside. We remain for more than twenty-seven days on strikes. We are occupying the whole campuses. As you say, ten out of eleven campuses are shut down by students. Inside the university is calm. We are-we have been receiving a lot of people outside the fences helping us to resist the possibility of the police to get in.
Since the first day, the administration demonstrated no will to negotiate with students. Our first demand was that they're beginning to negotiate. We only want to negotiate with the administration our demands. We have been working for more than one year. And after that, we have no other solution than to go on strike, as we're doing now, trying to push the administration to negotiate. And they only use the force. They're trying to get the police in and trying to make us get out. And that's one of the demands.
Amy Goodman: Let me bring Professor Powers into this, professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Can you talk about the scene there, as well, the students outside, the professors-the students inside, the professors outside?
Christopher Powers: Yes. Well, thank you for having me on the show.
I'm a professor at the Mayagüez campus of the UPR, so I'm not in San Juan right now. But I can report that the strike is being maintained at all of the eleven campuses-that's a minor correction-because the eleventh campus was closed today by the staff union, which represents about 2,000 maintenance workers in the system. The staff union has also closed the administrative buildings, the central administrative buildings located in the botanical gardens, this morning. They moved in heavy machinery, closing the gates, and have called for a weeklong strike in support of the students. So all of the campuses are closed right now. And the union is calling for the closure, as well, of auxiliary institutions, as well. So the strike has indeed spread to the entire system.
It has also sparked widespread support on the part of professors, for one, but also the broad public. Parents are involved in supporting the students in an unprecedented way compared with the strikes in the past. The use of force to close the main campus has sparked wide sympathy with the students. It should also be noted that the University of Puerto Rico is a university of 64,000 students. It's the largest university in the Caribbean. And it's also the premier institution of higher learning in the country. It's considered part of the cultural patrimony of the island. It has produced the island's best and brightest. And in the context of the colonial status of the island, in which historically so much of Puerto Rican-Puerto Rico's resources have been sold out to foreigners, the UPR is widely regarded as the last best resource that the nation has to keep. So attack on the integrity of the institution, the restriction of access for working-class students, and the fears of privatization of the university have sparked very wide public support.
Amy Goodman: Who controls the budget exactly, I mean, in relation-for people on the mainland in the United States, given the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico?
Christopher Powers: Right. Well, the budget of the university is controlled by the presidency and the board of trustees. According to a law from 1966, 9.6 percent of the income into the general funds of Puerto Rico are to be used by the university. However, the current conservative, pro-statehood New Progressive Party government issued a law called "Law No. 7," which is widely unpopular on the island, which gave them emergency powers to effect fiscal measures. And this law has been implemented in the, oh, year-and-a-half or so of the Fortuño administration to lay off public workers, and now it's been applied to deny funds that have been historically available to the university. This has caused a deficit, which could be $100 million or more, although those are based on estimates at this point.
At any rate, the austerity measures that the board of trustees and the presidency are trying to impose have been disproportionately directed at students, professors and staff and have not at all touched the bloated budgets for the central administration and the chancellors' offices. So there's a very-you know, a sense of injustice and unfairness in the application of the austerity measures, and the students are not taking it. They have maintained the strike and haven't budged from the camps that they've set up at the gates of the various universities.
It's a very multi-sectorial movement, the students. It's not just the traditional activists who are protesting. The tuition waivers that Giovanni was mentioning apply to groups like athletes and musicians, so these students are also involved in the protests. It's a very exciting movement. And the mood is quite electric. And the students, like I've said, have inspired a lot of inspiration and support on the part of the population. There's a phrase circulating now that this new generation of students is the basta ya generation, the "enough is enough" generation.
Amy Goodman: Giovanni Roberto, what are your plans now, with the SWAT teams having moved in? Where do you go from here?
Giovanni Roberto: Well, we're still demanding the administration to negotiate, actually. I think the general strike called for tomorrow is a good step forward in order to push the administration and push the government, as part of that administration, to sit down in the table of negotiation. We're only demanding that we need to negotiate our demands.
Right now, we're going to still have-we're going to continue to strike. We are not going to let us be intimidated by the police. We know that if the people remain supporting us, as they have been doing for the last three weeks, we don't think the police are going to get in or try to get in, because that will be a political-a serious political problem for the government, because we think that all that support, in water and food or in picket lines in front of the university, will transform in mass mobilization in this country. And that's what we're hoping, that all of that solidarity that have been expressed in different ways in the last three weeks transform, today and tomorrow and the rest of the weeks, in mass mobilization and mass protest, especially in the strike of tomorrow. So we are going to remain on strike, and we're going to continue asking negotiation with the administration.
Amy Goodman: Have you had support from students on the mainland United States? And what have been the effect, for example, of the student protests in California? Have you been following them, Giovanni?
Giovanni Roberto: Yeah, we received a letter of students and professors of Berkeley and CUNY in New York, from Canada, from Spain, from Venezuela, and from other countries, from República Dominicana. We have received international attention, because, like in California, we are receiving attacks, a budget cuts attack. And we think that the defense of the public university obviously is not only here in Puerto Rico; it's an international fight against privatization and against things that affect students. So, obviously, what happened in California affects us. Before the strike, we made two occupations of two faculties, in some way inspired by what's happened in Berkeley and the fight that Berkeley was having there. So I think for them to us and from our fight to them, there's a relationship between our fight and an inspiration, a mutual inspiration, right now.
Amy Goodman: I understand there was a father who was trying to bring food to his son, a student inside, who was attacked. Giovanni Roberto, what happened?
Giovanni Roberto: Yeah, he was trying to get in bread and water, which is in the morning for breakfast, and the police attacked him and pushed him to the ground and then arrested him in front of all the students. We have a video of that. That same day, in the morning, too, another student was trying to get in, and the police attacked the student, pushed him to the ground, hit him while he was on the ground, and then arrested him. That happened two days, yesterday, happened again with artists that wanted to get food inside the university-actors, singers, famous Puerto Rican singers. They didn't allow them to get food, and they had to throw it over the fences in order to get the water inside the university. There's a law that don't allow any food or water to get in, according to a judge.
So, right now the situation is tense outside. We have more food than ever. That's important to people to know. We are creating ways to get food and water inside. And the solidarity of the people is so impressed that now we have food like for two weeks. So even there you see the picture. No matter the police, what the police try, we know that we're going to continue the strike and that we're going to win this strike. We have the whole country on our side. We have the right to do this. And we are defending only public education, public university. That's not a crime. One of our slogans is that we are students, not-we're not making crimes, you know? So-
Amy Goodman: Christopher Powers, the support of unions, can you talk about that, like the AFL-CIO?
Christopher Powers: Yes. Well, there's a general strike called for tomorrow. This strike was called both by the coalition of unions, which includes the Change to Win, the Federation of Workers of Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Workers Union representing a broad variety of the union groups and leaders. It's also being called for by all of Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico. The spokesperson, Juan Vera, the Methodist bishop, called for massive support and all of the members of this coalition of community and religious groups, known for their involvement in the Free Vieques movement, to participate in the strike. And as I mentioned earlier, also the staff union of the university is going on strike for the entire week and closed down the central administration facilities, as well as auxiliary facilities. So the union support for the students is massive.
Amy Goodman: This is hardly getting attention on the mainland. Can you talk about that lack of press coverage?
Christopher Powers: Well, I suppose one could relate that to-again, to the colonial status of Puerto Rico. This is really, I think, in my opinion, a very important struggle, in that the University of Puerto Rico is more important for Puerto Rico than, say, public universities in the States are for their states. And so, what is happening now is that the students are defending the right to a quality public education, that they are staying firm in the face of the attack on the integrity of the institution, the restriction of access for working-class students, and they are really serving as a model, as Eduardo Galeano wrote in a message of support to the students. He says that they are showing the shining path towards the future, while the rest of the world gets used to what is already there.
Amy Goodman: Christopher Powers, we'll have to leave it there, professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Giovanni Roberto, student, one of the student leaders of the strike, speaking to us from inside the campus that they are occupying. Tomorrow, a major strike called across Puerto Rico, and of course we will cover it.
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8) Shell Offers Reassurances on Drilling
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19alaska.html?ref=us
Responding to a federal request to increase safety measures for its plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean, Shell Oil on Monday vowed an "unprecedented" response in the event of an oil spill, including staging a pre-made dome in Alaska for use in trying to contain any leaking well.
As the Obama Administration reviews the safety and environmental risks of offshore oil drilling after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the fate of the pending Shell project in Alaska looms more urgently. Shell has received initial permits and hopes to begin exploratory drilling this summer. Yet the project, which would be the first offshore drilling in Alaska in many years, still requires final permits and could be delayed.
Environmentalists and Native Alaskan groups that have long worked to stop the project have seized on the Gulf spill to emphasize risks in the Alaska project. The drill sites, far out in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, are in some of the most remote and frigid waters of North America, with ice forming much of the year, endangered whales and other animals living in the area and little onshore support in the event of a spill.
In a letter sent to the head of the Minerals Management Service, S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, Shell's president, Marvin E. Odum, said Shell the dome it would have ready would "take into consideration issues with hydrate formation." In the Gulf spill, a huge box built to try to contain the leaking well proved ineffective after it became clogged with gas hydrates - crystal structures that form when gas and water mix.
Shell also said it would be ready to apply dispersal agents below water "at the source of any oil flow" after "all necessary permits are acquired."
The company also said it would work to prevent a spill from happening, including refining how it drills, increasing the frequency of inspections of its blowout preventer to 7 days from 14 - the blowout preventer failed in the Gulf spill - and adding a remote underwater vehicle nearby that would be capable of working on the blowout preventer.
Marilyn Heiman, the U.S. Arctic program director for the Pew Environment Group, said in a statement, "Basic questions remain about Shell's ability to respond to any significant sized oil spill in Arctic waters" and she called for Minerals Management to "suspend offshore lease operations in the Arctic until these issues are addressed. It would be irresponsible to move forward."
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9) Motherhood: Norway Tops List of the Best Places to Be a Mother; Afghanistan Rates Worst
"Among middle-income countries, Cuba ranked highest, outdoing many wealthier countries. Despite its poverty, Cuba trains many doctors."
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18glob.html?ref=health
Norway is the best country in the world in which to be a new mother, followed by Australia, according to Save the Children's annual State of the World's Mothers report, issued this month.
Afghanistan was at the bottom of the 160 countries listed.
The United States did not fare well; it was 28th, below Greece, Portugal and virtually all of Western Europe. It ranked just above Poland and most of the former Soviet bloc.
The chief reason for the low American ranking, the authors said, was that despite advanced medical technology, more young mothers die, either in childbirth or in the years after, than in most rich countries. The United States also lost points because American working mothers get less maternity leave and lower benefits.
Among middle-income countries, Cuba ranked highest, outdoing many wealthier countries. Despite its poverty, Cuba trains many doctors.
The most important factor in how mothers and babies fared in very poor countries was whether or not a female health worker helped at the birth. Since many men refuse to let their wives be seen by male doctors and many grandmothers give dangerous traditional advice, trained midwives can save lives, the authors said. After Afghanistan, the worst countries were Niger, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Sudan; many are conservative Muslim countries where education for girls is discouraged.
After Norway and Australia, the top-rated countries were Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland and the Netherlands.
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