*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Stop Shell Oil's Offshore Drilling Plans in the Arctic
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/308597489?z00m=19844689
Target: United States Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar
Sponsored by: The Wilderness Society
The beautiful Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, just off the coast of Alaska, are prime habitat for countless species: gray and bowhead whales, endangered fin and humpback whales, and more than 3,000 belugas.
Shell Oil plans to send ships within weeks to start exploratory drilling there. The Gulf drilling disaster has shown us that there is no fail-safe way to drill for oil offshore. And on top of that, there is currently no technology available to clean up an oil spill in icy Arctic waters.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will submit his safety review on May 28. We only have until then to tell him to block Shell Oil's drilling plans before it's too late!
My Comments:
9:06 am PDT, May 19, Bonnie Weinstein, California
It is nothing less than criminal to continue to drill for oil off-shore when it is indelibly clear that it is wreaking havoc on the world's oceans and shores. The oceans have no border fences to stop illegal oil! The entire oil industry is illegal and a terrorist threat to all human life and our planet. The executives, CEOs and major shareholder's wealth should be confiscated and used to pay for a "Manhattan Project on Offshore Oil"--gather the world's scientists together to devise a way to stop the gush of oil--and to pay for a massive clean-up effort employing the unemployed, at union wages and representation--to get the job done. All expenses paid for workers who volunteer for the job. Free food, housing, healthcare plus pay and benefits until the clean-up is completed! A crime of terror has been carried out by the oil companies across the globe. They should be made to pay! Sincerely, Bonnie Weinstein
The letter:
Dear Mr. Secretary,
In light of the Gulf oil spill, it is imperative that you cancel any plans to explore or drill for oil and gas in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the coast of Alaska. These waters are prime habitat for polar bears, whales, walruses, seals and water birds like loons and eider ducks. A spill in these frigid waters would be catastrophic, potentially affecting not just marine animals in the immediate area of a spill, but all wildlife, shorebirds, and waterfowl that inhabit the coastal areas of America's Arctic, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
There is simply no safe way to drill in these waters. Studies have shown that even seismic testing of potential drilling sites is known to have an impact on marine animals' habits and lifecycles. And, according to the Minerals Management Service -- your own agency -- there's a 40% chance of a large spill if development were to take place in this remote location. Making matters worse, the technology to clean up a spill in icy Arctic waters doesn't even exist.
Please put a halt to the Royal Dutch Shell planned drilling this summer by prohibiting federal agencies from permitting any oil development or exploration in Alaska waters until further, comprehensive research can take place.
view less
Sincerely,
[Your name here]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0rAwk4lFE&feature=player_embedded#
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Operation Small Axe - Trailer
http://www.blockreportradio.com/news-mainmenu-26/820-us-school-district-to-begin-microchipping-students.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*--------
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.).
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
10) Elvis Costello Cancels Two Performances Scheculed in Israel June 20 and July 1, 2010
http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-cosiderable-contemplation/44
11) Gulf Oil Is in the Loop Current, Experts Say
Satellite pictures show oil snared by an eddy.
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published May 18, 2010
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100518-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-loop-current-science-environment/
12) Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20946.htm
Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
By V.I. Lenin
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm
13) Gulf Oil Again Imperils Sea Turtle
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/science/earth/19turtle.html?hp
14) Fishing Ban Is Expanded as Spill's Impact Becomes More Evident
By MATTHEW L. WALD and TOM ZELLER Jr.
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19spill.html?ref=us
15) Reliance on Oil Sands Grows Despite Environmental Risks
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/business/energy-environment/19sands.html?ref=us
16) Going Back to School: Fired Staff Is Rehired
By KATIE ZEZIMA
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/education/18school.html?ref=education
17) On Sean Bell's Birthday, a Street Gets His Name
By JANO TANTONGCO
May 19, 2010, 11:22 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/on-sean-bells-birthday-a-street-gets-his-name/
18) Sean Bell's Family Gets Good News on His Birthday
By A. G. SULZBERGER
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/nyregion/19bell.html?ref=nyregion
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Elvis Costello Cancels Two Performances Scheculed in Israel June 20 and July 1, 2010
http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-cosiderable-contemplation/44
It Is After Considerable Contemplation. ...
It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.
One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament.
Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent.
I must believe that the audience for the coming concerts would have contained many people who question the policies of their government on settlement and deplore conditions that visit intimidation, humiliation or much worse on Palestinian civilians in the name of national security.
I am also keenly aware of the sensitivity of these themes in the wake of so many despicable acts of violence perpetrated in the name of liberation.
Some will regard all of this an unknowable without personal experience but if these subjects are actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way.
I offer my sincere apologies for any disappointment to the advance ticket holders as well as to the organizers.
My thanks also go to the members of the Israeli media with whom I had most rewarding and illuminating conversations. They may regard these exchanges as a waste of their time but they were of great value and help to me in gaining an appreciation of the cultural scene.
I hope it is possible to understand that I am not taking this decision lightly or so I may stand beneath any banner, nor is it one in which I imagine myself to possess any unique or eternal truth.
It is a matter of instinct and conscience.
It has been necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqués from cranks in order to eventually sift through my own conflicted thoughts.
I have come to the following conclusions.
One must at least consider any rational argument that comes before the appeal of more desperate means.
Sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.
I cannot imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, which is a matter of regret but I can imagine a better time when I would not be writing this.
With the hope for peace and understanding. Elvis Costello
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Gulf Oil Is in the Loop Current, Experts Say
Satellite pictures show oil snared by an eddy.
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published May 18, 2010
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100518-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-loop-current-science-environment/
Some oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill is "increasingly likely" to be dragged into a strong current that hugs Florida's coasts, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials said today.
But other experts say that the oil is already there-satellite images show oil caught up in one of the eddies, or powerful whorls, attached to the Loop Current, a high-speed stream that pulses north into the Gulf of Mexico and travels in a clockwise pattern toward Florida.
Images from the past few days show a "big, wide tongue" of oil reaching south from the main area of the spill, off the coast of Louisiana, said Nan Walker, director of Louisiana State University's Earth Scan Laboratory, in the School of the Coast and Environment.
Meanwhile, a particular eddy has intensified and expanded north in recent days. The images reveal that the eddy has snagged oil and pulled it southeastward 100 miles (about 160 kilometers), which means the crude is now circulating inside the turbulent waters.
The oil has also reached the point where the eddy connects to the Loop Current, Walker said. That means the oil is traveling eastward alongside the main stream of the Loop Current, and it's likely that it will continue flowing with the current to Florida, Walker said.
Mitchell Roffer, president of Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service in West Melbourne, Florida, has also been tracking the oil spill by satellite.
"Several scientists from different organizations have seen the oil in the Loop Current" via "clear and dramatic" satellite pictures, Roffer said.
"Nowhere to Go But On the Beach"
According to Roffer, the northeast portion of the Loop Current has been moving eastward, closer to Tampa, on Florida's western coast (map). That means if an eddy sweeps the oil into the main current, it has "nowhere to go but on the beach," Roffer said.
Once in the Loop Current, oil can travel south and enter the Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean conveyor belt that carries warm water up the eastern seaboard.
Oil brought to Florida's east coast could then get pulled into inlets and harbors, where it would settle into the mangrove forests that are nurseries for many species of sea life, Roffer pointed out in early May. (See pictures of ten oil-threatened animals.)
On Monday the Coast Guard reported the discovery of 20 tar balls at Key West's Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. The sticky balls of congealed oil are currently being analyzed to determine if they came from the Gulf spill. (See pictures of tar balls and dead dolphins that washed up on Alabama beaches.)
But Roffer said it's unlikely that oil-contaminated Loop Current waters could have reached Key West in that short amount of time.
The current travels about 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 kilometers) a day, so it would take roughly 13 days or more for oil to get from the site of the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig to Key West, LSU's Walker said.
Oil Lies Beneath?
Researchers from the University of South Florida will venture into the Loop Current via boats later this week to collect water samples and verify the oil's presence, according to the Associated Press.
Such testing is "absolutely" necessary, Roffer said, as is figuring out how much oil lies beneath the water's surface-something satellites can't show.
What the satellite pictures definitely reveal, he said, is that the time for modeling whether oil might get into the Loop Current is over.
"It's not a matter of predicting if it's going to be there or not," Roffer said. "It's there."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20946.htm
Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
By V.I. Lenin
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm
Lenin enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of imperialism:
The epoch of imperialism opens when the expansion of colonialism has covered the globe and no new colonies can be acquired by the great powers except by taking them from each other, and the concentration of capital has grown to a point where finance capital becomes dominant over industrial capital. Lenin enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of imperialism:
1. the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
2. the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this "finance capital", of a financial oligarchy;
3. the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
4. the formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
5. the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. [Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW Volume 22, p. 266-7.]
"[Imperialism] is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration [of production] has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits)... [throughout] the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations [now called multi-national conglomerates]. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the associations "divide" them up amongst themselves by agreement. Skilled labor is monopolized, the best engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured - railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.
"Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable." (p. 205)
"The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit... the speculators." (p. 206-207)
Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given rise to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. ... It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of bourgeoisie and certain countries betray... now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before."Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin, Selected Works in one volume, p 260(ch.7)
Parasitism and the Decay of Capitalism...parasitism is characteristic of imperialism... the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and which exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay....Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.... imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by "clipping coupons", who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies....
Imperialism....CH. 10... the bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds of capital exports and by "clipping coupons". It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital....
...the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing features of imperialism were already observed in Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century-vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world market. Marx and Engels traced this connection between opportunism in the working-class movement and the imperialist features of British capitalism systematically, during the course of several decades. For example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: "The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable."[15] Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of the "worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the middle class". In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: "You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers' party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies." [13] (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, which appeared in 1892.)...
The distinctive feature of the present situation is the prevalence of such economic and political conditions that are bound to increase the irreconcilability between opportunism and the general and vital interests of the working-class movement: imperialism has grown from an embryo into the predominant system; capitalist monopolies occupy first place in economics and politics; the division of the world has been completed; on the other hand, instead of the undivided monopoly of Great Britain, we see a few imperialist powers contending for the right to share in this monopoly, and this struggle is characteristic of the whole period of the early twentieth century. Opportunism cannot now be completely triumphant in the working-class movement of one country for decades as it was in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century; but in a number of countries it has grown ripe, overripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with bourgeois policy in the form of "social-chauvinism".
[14]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Gulf Oil Again Imperils Sea Turtle
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/science/earth/19turtle.html?hp
PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE, Tex. - It is nesting season here, and just offshore, Kemp's ridley sea turtle No. 15 circles in the water before dragging herself onto the sand to lay another clutch of eggs.
The sea turtle, affectionately nicknamed Thelma by a National Park Service employee, has already beaten some terrible odds. Still in the egg, she was airlifted here from Mexico in the years after the 1979 blowout of the Ixtoc 1 rig, which spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and covered the turtles' primary nesting place.
Now Thelma and others of her species are being monitored closely by worried scientists as another major oil disaster threatens their habitat. Federal officials said Tuesday that since April 30, 10 days after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, they have recorded 156 sea turtle deaths; most of the turtles were Kemp's ridleys. And though they cannot say for sure that the oil was responsible, the number is far higher than usual for this time of year, the officials said.
The Deepwater Horizon spill menaces a wide variety of marine life, from dolphins to blue crabs. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded a fishing ban in the gulf because of the spreading oil. But of the endangered marine species that frequent gulf waters, only the Kemp's ridley relies on the region as its sole breeding ground.
Since the Ixtoc 1 spill, the turtles, whose numbers fell to several hundred in the 1980s, have made a fragile comeback, and there are now at least 8,000 adults, scientists say. But the oil gushing from the well could change that.
The turtles may be more vulnerable than any other large marine animals to the oil spreading through the gulf. An ancient creature driven by instinct, it forages for food along the coast from Louisiana to Florida, in the path of the slick.
"It lives its entire life cycle in the gulf, which is why we are so critically concerned," said Dr. Pat Burchfield, a scientist at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Tex., who has studied the turtle for 38 years.
The nesting season for the sea turtles runs until mid-July, and for most of that time the mothers will remain off Padre Island and the beaches of Mexico, where there is currently no oil. But then things become more chancy, as new sea turtle babies go off to sea, floating on currents in the gulf or on seaweed patches that could be covered by crude. Hungry after egg-laying, adult females are known to go to the mouth of the Mississippi, a particularly rich feeding ground, to replenish themselves.
Juvenile turtles, who stay off the shore, have made up most of the turtle deaths in the gulf so far.
André M. Landry Jr. of the Sea Turtle and Fisheries Ecology Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University, Galveston, said satellite radios had been attached to several sea turtles, including Thelma, for research. He hopes these will offer clues about what is happening offshore.
"If she is beached, it is going to be constantly sending out a signal as opposed to the random signals they send out when they randomly come up to breathe," Dr. Landry said.
Barbara Schroeder, national turtle coordinator for NOAA fisheries, the government agency charged with assessing damage to offshore life, said that the agency was investigating the sea turtle deaths intensively, but did not have many answers yet.
She said that so far full necropsies had been performed on 50 turtles and partial necropsies on another 17. Internal inspections of the animals, she said, did not reveal oil. But she added that scientists still had to test tissue samples taken from some of the turtles for evidence of oil.
She cautioned that it might be hard to determine conclusively how the turtles died or even how the spill was affecting the species more generally.
"People think this is like television, where the mystery is solved in one hour," she said. "It is very complex. Most of the impacts occurring to turtles are out of sight. Most turtles never wash ashore."
The Kemp's ridley is millions of years old; its ancestors once swam with dinosaurs. Sandy olive in color, Kemp's ridleys are the smallest of the sea turtles, only about two feet across. Although the turtles have been spotted along the Atlantic Seaboard, they return to the warm waters of the gulf to breed.
As recently as the 1940s, they were abundant in the Mexican gulf waters. Tens of thousands at a time would come ashore on the same day at Rancho Nuevo, a remote Mexican beach in Tamaulipas State, to lay their eggs in the synchronized pattern unique to their breed. But pollution, the collection of eggs for food and aphrodisiacs and the nets of shrimp trawlers depleted their numbers.
Then came the blowout on the Ixtoc 1. The deepwater well dumped three million barrels of crude into the gulf, covering the beach at Rancho Nuevo. Nine thousand hatchlings had to be airlifted to nearby beaches. Although the role of the oil in killing the turtles was never confirmed, by 1985, there were fewer than 1,000 Kemp's ridleys left.
To prevent a single environmental catastrophe from sending the turtles into extinction, eggs from remaining turtles, including an egg that became sea turtle No. 15, were brought here to Padre Island to begin a new colony. She came in 1986.
At birth, the babies were set free in the surf down the road from the ranger station to allow them to imprint the beach on their memories, then captured again and protected until they were nine months old and less susceptible to becoming prey.
"We called it head start, after the school program," said Donna J. Shaver, chief of sea turtle science and recovery for the National Park Service at Padre Island, who has worked with the sea turtles there since 1980.
No. 15 has returned to the island six times to lay clutches of eggs, burying her most recent round of 92 eggs in the sand by an enormous rusted, beached buoy only one and a half miles from where she was first put into the surf 24 years ago.
"Their precision is really amazing," Dr. Shaver said. Scientists will be watching the radio blips from the tagged turtles closely, but the tracking devices are not infallible.
The transmitters might stop functioning because of dead batteries. And even if a turtle is known to have beached, the carcass might never be found or might be found only after serious decomposition, and the cause of death might never be known.
Still, Dr. Shaver prefers to think positively until more results come in. "When I got here, there were many who thought the species might not survive at all," she said. "We've come so far."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Fishing Ban Is Expanded as Spill's Impact Becomes More Evident
By MATTHEW L. WALD and TOM ZELLER Jr.
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19spill.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greatly expanded the fishing ban in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday in response to spreading oil from the BP well blowout. The prohibited area now covers 19 percent of the gulf, nearly double what it was, according to the agency.
Officials are already seeing some impact on fish and wildlife in the region. Rowan W. Gould, the acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said 156 sea turtle fatalities had been recorded in the gulf since April 30, about 100 more than usual at this time of year.
Mr. Gould also said that a small number of oily birds, 35, had been recovered, including 23 dead birds directly linked to the spill.
"It's important to note that the visibly oiled birds are a small part" of the effects of the oil spill, Dr. Gould said in a teleconference on Tuesday.
"What concerns us most is what we can't see," he said, adding, "We are preparing for the likelihood that it will exist in the gulf ecosystem in years to come."
A graphic depiction of the seriousness of the leak and its threat to the environment was seen in new video clips that Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, posted on his Web site. He and Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, had pressed BP to make the clips, taken by robot submersibles, available. The footage shows black, billowing clouds of oil leaking furiously from the ruptured well pipe, 5,000 feet below the surface.
The images show the pipe end where a recently inserted siphon tube is pulling out an estimated 2,000 barrels of oil a day, according to BP officials. But the volume of oil gushing from the pipe appears virtually indistinguishable from that shown in footage taken a week ago. And the new video appears to show another breach in the drill pipe, closer to the wellhead.
The company is planning to try to "kill" the well and stop the flow by pumping heavy mud into the well shaft as early as this weekend, officials said.
In Washington, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appeared before Congress for the first time since the well exploded a month ago. Mr. Salazar acknowledged that the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for policing offshore drilling, had been weakened by corruption and lax enforcement of safety and environmental rules.
"We need to clean up that house," Mr. Salazar said in an appearance before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He said that a majority of the agency's 1,700 employees were honest and capable, but that "a few bad apples" remained.
The Obama administration has already announced that it will separate the minerals services' conflicting functions of promoting offshore oil operations and regulating their safety and environmental compliance. Mr. Salazar said that further steps would be needed to give oil regulators more resources, more independence and greater authority to police oil drilling operations.
At another hearing, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the well was operating under an environmental assessment filed in 2007 for a large lease sale. BP was granted an exemption - known as a categorical exclusion - from having to file a separate impact statement for the well. Ms. Sutley said the administration was planning to tighten the process for granting such exclusions.
Also on Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked for a second time a Democratic plan to raise the liability limit for oil spills to $10 billion from $75 million.
President Obama has endorsed an increase in the amount of money that companies responsible for oil spills should pay, but he has not specified a dollar amount. He called on Republicans to allow a vote on the proposal.
"I am disappointed that an effort to ensure that oil companies pay fully for disasters they cause has stalled in the United States Senate on a partisan basis," Mr. Obama said. "This maneuver threatens to leave taxpayers, rather than the oil companies, on the hook for future disasters like the BP oil spill."
John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington, and Liz Robbins from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Reliance on Oil Sands Grows Despite Environmental Risks
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/business/energy-environment/19sands.html?ref=us
CONKLIN, Alberta - Beneath the subarctic forests of western Canada, deep under the peat bogs and herds of wild caribou, lies the tarry rock that is one of America's top sources of imported oil.
There is no chance of a rig blowout here, or a deepwater oil spill like the one from the BP well that is now fouling the Gulf of Mexico. But the oil extracted from Canada's oil sands poses other environmental challenges, like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests.
In addition, critics warn that American regulators have waived a longstanding safety standard for the pipelines that deliver the synthetic crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States and have not required any specific emergency plans to deal with a spill, which even regulators acknowledge is a possibility.
Oil sands are now getting more scrutiny as the Obama administration reviews a Canadian company's request to build a new 2,000-mile underground pipeline that would run from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast and would significantly increase America's access to the oil. In making the decision, due this fall, federal officials are weighing the environmental concerns against the need to secure a reliable supply of oil to help satisfy the nation's insatiable thirst.
The gulf accident adds yet another layer of complexity. Regulators and Congress are weighing new limits on drilling off the coastline after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, increasing the pressure to rely more heavily on Canada's oil sands. At the same time, political consciousness of the risks has grown.
Canadian oil sands are expected to become America's top source of imported oil this year, surpassing conventional Canadian oil imports and roughly equaling the combined imports from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm.
In a new report, it projects that oil sands production could make up as much as 36 percent of United States oil imports by 2030. "The uncertainty and the slowdown in drilling permits in the gulf really underscores the growing importance of Canadian oil sands, which over the last decade have gone from being a fringe energy source to being one of strategic importance," said Daniel Yergin, an oil historian and chairman of IHS CERA. "Looking ahead, its importance is only going to get bigger."
Last week, a phalanx of Canadian diplomats took advantage of a previously planned trip to Washington to promote oil sands as a safer alternative to deepwater drilling because leaks would be easier to detect and control.
In an interview afterward, Alberta's premier, Ed Stelmach, said he was not trying to capitalize on the gulf disaster, but merely promoting "what we have to offer, which is security of supply" and "a safe stable government."
From a supply standpoint, there is much to recommend oil sands, also known as tar sands. Canada has 178 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, virtually all in oil sands. Only Saudi Arabia has more proven oil reserves.
The United States produces about five million barrels of oil a day and imports 10 million more. Canada accounts for about 1.9 million barrels of the daily imports, roughly half of it from oil sands.
"If you need crude to fuel your economy, you'd really better be thinking about Canada," said Chris Seasons, president of the Canadian unit of Devon Energy, an oil company based in Oklahoma City. Devon is already producing 35,000 barrels a day from oil sands around Conklin. It expects to expand its production to 200,000 barrels a day by 2020, in part through a second project, with BP. That would be roughly equivalent to current imports from Kuwait.
To increase delivery of oil sands crude, TransCanada is building the Keystone pipeline system. Two Keystone pipelines have been approved, with the first one delivering oil to Illinois in June. A much longer pipeline to Texas, called Keystone XL, is still under federal review. If fully developed as proposed, the system would allow Canada to export an additional 1.1 million barrels of oil a day.
In a world in which so many oil-producing nations are far away, unstable or hostile to the United States, Canadian oil sands hold great political appeal.
"It is undeniable that having a large supply of crude oil available by pipeline from a friendly neighbor is extremely valuable to the energy security of the United States," said David L. Goldwyn, coordinator for international energy affairs at the State Department. The department is scheduled to decide this year whether to approve Keystone XL.
Complicating the calculation is the fact that Canada's backup market for its oil is probably China. Plans are already under way for pipelines from Alberta to Canada's western coast for shipments to Asia. Although those could take up to a decade to build because of land considerations, Mr. Stelmach, Alberta's premier, flew to China on Friday on a trade mission to Shanghai, Beijing and Harbin. He said one of his messages was, "We've got energy."
Whatever the advantages, serious environmental problems and risks come with producing oil from oil sands.
Most of the biggest production sites are huge mine pits, accompanied by ponds of waste that are so toxic that the companies try to frighten birds away with scarecrows and propane cannons.
Extracting oil from the sands produces far more greenhouse gases than drilling, environmental groups say, and the process requires three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced because the dirt must be washed out. Already, tailing pools cover 50 square miles of land abutting the Athabasca River.
The mines are also carving gashes in the world's largest intact forest, which serves as a vital absorber of carbon dioxide and a stopover point for millions of migrating birds.
Proponents of oil sands acknowledge the dirtiness of the extraction process. But they say that newer projects are using more efficient technologies.
For example, instead of surface mining, the Devon project injects high-pressure steam into the reservoir to enable the heated oil sands to be pumped out of the ground as a fluid, which is less invasive of the forest. Shell is also experimenting with ways to capture some of the carbon emissions, and other companies are trying to use solvents to heat the steam more efficiently.
Some analysts argue that imports from oil sands will replace conventional oil from places like Venezuela and Mexico, where heavy oil requires so much refining that it produces a comparable amount of greenhouse gas emissions. For the United States, "in the grand scheme of things, the actual emissions impact is very small," said Michael A. Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But environmental groups are unmoved. "Having tar sands in our energy mix is simply inconsistent with the kind of climate and environment promises we've heard the Obama administration make," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, who works on the issue at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The high-pressure pipelines that transport the oil give rise to separate safety and environmental concerns, which have been spotlighted by local ranchers and other opponents during the current comment period on the State Department's environmental impact statement for the proposed pipeline expansion.
One big question is whether TransCanada should get waivers to use thinner pipes on Keystone XL than is normally required in the United States.
The Transportation Department's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees oil pipelines, gave such waivers to TransCanada for the first two Keystone pipelines. TransCanada says the thinner pipes have been allowed in Canada for decades and pose no extra risk.
But Cesar de Leon, a former deputy administrator of the pipeline and safety administration who is now an independent pipeline safety engineer, said the thinner standard is appropriate only if pipelines are being aggressively monitored for deterioration. Although the safety administration required such monitoring in the Keystone permits, it "didn't have the people to monitor compliance," he said.
In a report in March on the agency's broader permitting practices, the Transportation Department's inspector general found that, in many cases, the agency had failed to check the safety records of permit applicants and had not checked to verify that permit terms were being followed.
Officials of the safety administration did not respond to interview requests. But in written testimony to a House committee in April, the agency's new administrator, Cynthia L. Quarterman, acknowledged problems and promised to improve. "As you know," she said, "we inherited a program that suffered from almost a decade of neglect and was seriously adrift."
Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said the whole situation was alarmingly reminiscent of the permit waivers that were routinely granted to offshore oil wells, including the BP well leaking in the gulf. "I think it is incumbent on myself as a policy maker to say 'hold it,' " Mr. Tester said.
In another sign of concern among policy makers, on April 29 South Dakota's Public Utilities Commission rejected TransCanada's request for an exemption from a state requirement to notify affected landowners about spills of less than five barrels.
The gulf spill haunted local public hearings on the Keystone project last week in Murdo, S.D., and York, Neb.
Some people along the path of the proposed and existing pipelines complained that no one had required TransCanada to produce an emergency plan for a spill, even though the new pipes would traverse pristine territory, including the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to a wide swath of the nation's breadbasket and where even a small spill could have grave consequences.
Others demanded that thicker steel be used. And some asked how the pipeline would be monitored for wear and tear.
At the York hearing on May 10, Jim Condon, an engineer from Lincoln, Neb., said the amount of oil spewing from the leaking BP well was just a small fraction of what would be passing through the Keystone XL pipeline. "A rupture of the pipeline would be a huge problem," he said.
Clifford Krauss reported from Alberta, and Elisabeth Rosenthal from New York.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 19, 2010
An earlier version of this article misidentified Senator Jon Tester's party affiliation.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Going Back to School: Fired Staff Is Rehired
By KATIE ZEZIMA
May 17, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/education/18school.html?ref=education
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. -All the staff members of Central Falls High School, who were fired in February as part of a turnaround plan for the chronically underperforming school, will be able to keep their jobs under an agreement ratified Monday.
The accord, which the Central Falls Teachers Union overwhelmingly approved Monday afternoon, resolved months of tension and negotiation between the union and the schools superintendent, Frances Gallo. Among other things, it calls for a longer school day, more in-depth teacher evaluations and mandatory after-school tutoring for each student.
"The agreement provides for supports for students and tools for teachers that teachers will need to help our students succeed," said Jane Sessums, the president of the union, at a news conference with Dr. Gallo and the schools commissioner, Deborah Gist.
Some of the concessions in Monday's agreement were similar to ones rejected by the union in February, which had led Dr. Gallo to choose a federally mandated school turnaround model that called for the entire staff of 93 to be terminated by the school board.
The decision incited outrage among teachers and unions but was embraced by President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan. Dr. Gallo and Ms. Sessums met for the first time in March, and they later began working with federal mediators to come to a resolution. The two sides spent about 48 hours negotiating, Dr. Gallo said.
"It has been extraordinarily fruitful because we gained an understanding and what it takes to make that reform," Dr. Gallo said. "This is going to be real, and it's going to be hard. This isn't like, Oh boy, here's the cake and we're just going to sit down and enjoy eating it all."
In a statement Mr. Duncan praised the plan as well as administrators, union members and teachers for "working through what has been a very difficult period and coming to agreement on a plan to improve their school."
Teachers do not need to reapply for their jobs under the plan, but they must attend an interview session with the school's leadership team, which will decide how to improve each teacher's performance, Dr. Gallo said.
The union must also drop a lawsuit it filed in connection with the firings. A streamlined collective bargaining agreement will be developed in the next year, and the school day might be extended by as much as an hour.
Teachers will receive $30 an hour for a mandatory 90 minutes of after-school planning time and a $3,000 stipend for the longer school day, which will be paid with a federal grant, Dr. Gallo said.
Ms. Gist, who supported Dr. Gallo's initial plan, said in an interview that the process had never been about "poking a stick in anyone's eye or showing what kind of authority we have," but trying to change the culture of a school in dramatic need of improvement.
Central Falls High School is one of the state's lowest-performing schools, with a graduation rate of 48 percent. Only 7 percent of students are proficient in mathematics by the 11th grade.
Central Falls is Rhode Island's poorest city, where 41 percent of children live in poverty and nearly two-thirds of the students at the high school qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
Teachers have pointed to increases in standardized test scores in recent years as proof that the school is slowly improving. George McLaughlin, a longtime guidance counselor, said that the past few months had been a "roller coaster, emotionally," and that he hoped other districts would not have to go through what happened in Central Falls.
"There has to be a better way than what we did here," Mr. McLaughlin said. "Let's make sure this never happens again."
Steven Greenhouse and Sam Dillon contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) On Sean Bell's Birthday, a Street Gets His Name
By JANO TANTONGCO
May 19, 2010, 11:22 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/on-sean-bells-birthday-a-street-gets-his-name/
On a dreary and rainy evening Tuesday, Alvertis Alve-Alexander put on face paint and dressed as a clown, bringing color to a street blackened with the blood of Sean Bell.
Musicians on stage sang "Sean," and the audience yelled back, "Bell." Under tarpaulins, volunteers dressed in yellow raincoats dished out plates of food. Photographers struggled with umbrellas and cameras to take pictures.
"We just decided to add a little bit of extra entertainment, dress up as clowns and add some sunshine on this rainy day," Ms. Alve-Alexander said.
On what would have been Sean Bell's 27th birthday, a three-block stretch of Liverpool Street in Jamaica was officially renamed Sean Bell Way. Earlier in the day, a federal judge ruled that a civil lawsuit filed by the family against the city and the officers who shot Mr. Bell could proceed to trial.
There is no trace of the area's history around the corner at the former Club Kalua, where Mr. Bell had been before he was shot. It was closed in 2008 for health violations. The awning and signs are gone. All that remains of the club is a spray-painted "143-08" marking its address.
Nicole Paultre Bell, Mr. Bell's fiancée, said she took some solace in the street naming.
"When little children walk up this block and they ask their parents, 'Who is Sean Bell?' they will always be able to pass that story on," she said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Sean Bell's Family Gets Good News on His Birthday
By A. G. SULZBERGER
May 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/nyregion/19bell.html?ref=nyregion
The family of Sean Bell gathered, as they had done on three previous occasions, to mark a birthday never reached.
But on this particular birthday - it would have been his 27th on Tuesday - his parents, fiancée and two children also celebrated significant advancements in their pursuit of retribution and remembrance.
In the morning, they assembled as a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that a civil lawsuit filed by the family against New York City and the five police officers who shot at Mr. Bell could proceed to trial. That restarted a case that has been repeatedly delayed by other investigations and criminal proceedings related to the shooting.
In the evening, the family joined friends, supporters and politicians in Jamaica, Queens, where a street sign bearing the name Sean Bell Way was officially unveiled.
"Today's his birthday," said Valerie M. Bell, his mother. "It's been a happy day so far."
Mr. Bell was killed as he left his bachelor party in the early morning of Nov. 25, 2006, when undercover officers fired more than 50 bullets at the car he was driving after the vehicle struck a detective on the leg. Two friends in the car, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were also shot by the officers, who said they had believed that one of the men in the car had a gun. But none of the three men were armed.
The case set off an emotional debate over the use of deadly force by the police and prompted the city to change some of its policing procedures.
The lawsuit, which accuses the defendants of wrongful death, negligence, assault and civil rights violations, was filed in 2007 by Mr. Guzman, Mr. Benefield and the family of Mr. Bell. It had been stalled since then as the state and federal governments and city police officials investigated the shooting.
Three of the officers were acquitted of manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges in State Supreme Court in Queens in 2008. In February, the Justice Department declined to bring civil rights charges against the officers.
The city had sought to continue to delay the suit pending an internal police investigation into the officers' actions, but on Tuesday Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of United States District Court in Brooklyn ruled against maintaining the stay. "I'm unimpressed," Judge Johnson told the group of eight lawyers representing the two sides. "I am lifting the stay, and we will proceed."
A conference to discuss possible settlements was scheduled for July 20.
After the hearing, the family left the courthouse to prepare for the street renaming ceremony. "It's a bittersweet feeling," said Nicole Paultre Bell, Mr. Bell's fiancée, who legally took his last name after his death. "We need some type of justice. Everywhere we've turned it's been denied."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment