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URGENT!
Next Organizing Meeting for Oct. 23 Oscar Grant Rally
TONIGHT, OCTOBER 14, 7:00 P.M.
ILWU LOCAL 10
400 NORTH POINT, S.F.
(NEAR FISHERMAN'S WHARF)
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THIS JUST IN: MUMIA ABU-JAMAL UPDATE:
From: Pan-African News Wire
International Struggle to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal: EU Asked to Address
Political Prisoner's Plight
Hearing set for November 9 while supporters remain on world-wide alert
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
News Analysis
On November 9, 2010 a critical hearing is scheduled in the nearly
three decade-old case of journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who
still sits on death row in the state of Pennsylvania. Mumia was
severely wounded and arrested on December 9, 1981 in Philadelphia and
was later charged, tried and convicted of the murder of police officer
Daniel Faulkner.
A grossly unjust prosecution was carried out against Mumia in 1982 and
he was convicted of murder and given the death penalty. His case has
been appealed over the years, where although the death sentence was
overturned, repeated efforts by the prosecution have attempted to
re-institute the penalty and carry out an execution.
Resulting from a January 19, 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court,
the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Third Circuit was ordered to
reconsider the 2001 and 2008 decisions that rescinded the death
penalty in Abu-Jamal's case. There is an ongoing campaign by
law-enforcement agencies across the country to pressure the court
system into carrying out the execution of Mumia.
An international defense campaign for both the freedom of Abu-Jamal
and for the elimination of the death penalty in the United States has
grown since the early 1980s. The International Concerned Family and
Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, MOVE and other organizations have been
consistent over the years in not only saving the life of this
award-winning writer and hero to millions around the globe, but in
raising the profile of other political prisoners incarcerated in the
U.S.
There were two death warrants signed against Mumia: one in 1995 and
another in 1999. Both warrants were stayed by the courts after both
national and international campaigns were waged to save the life of
this former Black Panther Party leader and supporter of the MOVE
organization.
During the struggle to stop the execution of Mumia in 1995 and 1999
people were mobilized in his defense from all over the U.S. and the
world. A key element in building massive support for overturning the
death sentence and demanding his release was the role played by
activists, journalists, trade unionists, intellectuals and political
officials in Western Europe, Africa, Japan and other parts of the
globe.
Leading figures such as former South African President Nelson Mandela
and his ruling African National Congress, along with former Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, came out in support of Mumia and demanded that the
scheduled execution be stopped. These developments took place in the
immediate aftermath of the defeat of the racist apartheid systems in
South Africa and Namibia in which people in the U.S. and all over the
world had participated.
Mumia's articles, interviews and books were published in numerous
countries and served to win further support for his release as well as
the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, which has for
over a century been implemented in a racist and class-oriented manner.
In specific reference to Mumia's case, the fact that he had been a
leading member of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia was used in
the penalty phase of his trial in order to place him on death row in
Pennsylvania.
Mumia had also been a staunch critic of the police in Philadelphia
where numerous complaints of brutality and misconduct were leveled
over the years. On August 8, 1978, when the MOVE organization was
attacked at their residence, he sought through his journalism to
vindicate the 9 members who had been arrested, charged and convicted
in the murder of a police officer killed in the law-enforcement
operation.
European Union Discusses Mumia's Case
The death penalty in the United States has gained attention in recent
weeks due to the execution of two mentally-disabled inmates Teresa
Lewis of Virginia and Holly Wood of Alabama. At present 35 states in
the U.S. still have the death penalty, although 4 have not carried out
any executions since 1976 when the practice was re-instituted after it
was overturned in 1972.
In 2009 there was an increase in executions in the U.S. to 52 persons
killed by the state through capital punishment. The Obama
administration is not opposed to the death penalty and has not spoken
out in regard to the most recent executions in Alabama and Virginia.
The European Union foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton was urged
recently to raise the death penalty in the United States along with
the current plight of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In a European Parliamentary
debate on October 6, Danish MEP Soren Sondergaard stated that he
"deplored " the execution of defenseless inmates including Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
Sondergaard also noted that "The death penalty itself is a crime. But
it is often more than that; waiting on death row in miserable
conditions for years is torture. Capital punishment is also a form of
terror, used to frighten people from resisting oppression and
dictatorship."
The European Parliament member went on to say that "African-American
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal--the voice of the voiceless-is a key symbol
of struggle against the death penalty. For nearly 30 years he has sat
on death row, convicted in a trial notable for its errors and racism.
"High representative Ashton should raise the case with U.S.
authorities-in the fight against the death penalty there is no room
for double standards. In the fight against the death penalty there
applies only one standard: unconditional rejection." (Article by
Martin Banks, October 7)
In a resolution that had already passed on October 2, the European
Parliament went on record opposing the executions of both Mumia
Abu-Jamal and Troy Davis of Georgia. Davis' case has also won
international support. Nonetheless, Davis too remains on death row for
a crime he did not commit.
German Left Party delegate Sabine Loesing, who was active in passing
the October 2 resolution opposing the death penalty and specifically
mentioning Mumia Abu-Jamal and Troy Davis, was pleased that the
document was adopted with broad support. Losesing also said that she
would make sure that adequate pressure be placed on the EU foreign
affairs office of Catherine Ashton to raise this issue during meetings
with the Obama administration.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Distributed By: THE PAN-AFRICAN RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION PROJECT--
E MAIL: panafnewswire@gmail.com
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Local 2 UNITE HERE!
HILTON UNION SQUARE WORKERS ON STRIKE!
Join our Rally!
October 14, Thursday, 4:30pm
333 O'Farrell Street
Hilton workers strike over "recession contracts" after Hilton
extracts $180m from taxpayers
(San Francisco, CA) - More than a year after union hotel contracts expired, 850 hotel workers at the Hilton Union Square, the nation's second largest Hilton hotel, walked off the job at 4:00 a.m. today. Workers announced a six-day strike protesting Hilton's efforts to lock workers into permanent recessionary contracts, even after Hilton extracted $180 million in corporate breaks from taxpayers.
Hilton Worldwide, owned by one of Wall Street's largest private equity firms - the Blackstone Group [NYSE: BX] - is taking unfair advantage of its workers and the American taxpayers. Blackstone owed about $320 million in debt to the Federal Reserve, but persuaded the agency to accept just $142 million in payment. Taxpayers lose the remaining $180 million. Chris Nassetta, CEO of Hilton Hotels recently described the effect of the debt deal on his company: "We were in good shape before and we're in exceptionally good shape now." (Hotel News Now, 9/28/2010). Meanwhile, Hilton workers face proposals that would increase family health care costs by hundreds of dollars a month, freeze pensions, reduce staffing and increase workloads.
Most recently, Blackstone proposed their Refresh Program, which would require housekeepers to clean 20 rooms a day, instead of 14, a 40% increase. "We call it the Dirty Room Program," said Guadalupe Chavez, a 30-year housekeeper at Hilton Union Square. "They've already taken $180 million of our taxes and now they want us to subsidize them by lowering our standards at work and customers' standards for a clean hotel."
"Why should my tax dollars subsidize a growing and successful corporation like Blackstone, while thousands of working families, like mine, are struggling to pay mortgages, pay their children's college tuition, pay for health care and save for retirement?" asks Ringo Mak, a 20-year server at the Hilton Union Square. "Our taxes should be used to protect good jobs, but instead Blackstone is using our tax dollars to lock us into a permanent recession."
Blackstone Group manages $100 billion in assets for large pension funds, including CalSTRS and CalPERS, and other investments around the country. Nationwide, the hotel industry is already rebounding faster and stronger than expected. PKF Hospitality projects that hotel revenues will rise an average of 8% annually from 2010 through 2014.
In a September 2010 analyst call, Jonathan Gray, Blackstone's Senior Managing Director & Co-Head of Real Estate stated, "In terms of the hotel business, this is the one area where we've seen a dramatic pick up, I think, faster than we and many people expected... where it was initially just occupancy, we're now beginning to see room rates also creep up, which is very powerful for hotel companies and hotel assets' bottom lines." Despite these trends, "Blackstone is still an obstacle to our recovery," said Chavez. "Blackstone is lining their pockets while ripping off taxpayers and preventing a strong recovery for working families."
"We, as hotel workers and as taxpayers, are striking to protect our jobs, to prevent Blackstone from adding to our nation's unemployment rate. We are striking to protect our future," said Ingrid Carp, a 30-year cook at the Hilton Union Square.
WAYS YOU CAN BE OF SUPPORT:
Please Sign a Pledge of Solidarity to Workers on Strike (click here)
Join our Rally in front of the hotel tomorrow, Oct. 14, 4:30pm
Walk the picketlines with workers
(We encourage community allies to come around 11am - 1pm or 6-10pm)
To know more about our union, please go to our website:
www.unitehere2.org
Check out our Hotel Boycott Blog:
www.onedaylongersf.org
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Next Organizing Meeting for Oct. 23 Oscar Grant Rally
TONIGHT, OCTOBER 14, 7:00 P.M.
ILWU LOCAL 10
400 NORTH POINT, S.F.
(NEAR FISHERMAN'S WHARF)
Sisters and Brothers,
The latest endorser is the Alameda Labor Council which voted unanimously to endorse and to mobilize the rally by sending out the flyer to all union affiliates. The salient point here is not only to get endorsements but to MOBILIZE the ranks of organizations for the rally. The next organizing meeting is 7PM Thursday Oct. 14th at ILWU Local 10 located at 400 North Point St.; San Francisco (near Fisherman's Wharf). THIS WILL BE THE LAST GENERAL ORGANIZING MEETING BEFORE THE RALLY SO MAKE SURE YOUR ORGANIZATION IS WELL REPRESENTED. WE WILL HAVE THE NEW FLYER AVAILABLE LISTING THE RALLY ENDORSERS.
In solidarity,
Jack Heyman 510-531-4717, jackheyman@comcast.net
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The next meeting of the Bay Area United National Antiwar Committee will take place Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 1:00 P.M.
UC Berkeley, Wheeler Hall, Room 122
[Wheeler is the first building on the right after you pass under Sather Gate as you enter the campus from the South on Telegraph and Bankcroft.]
Future meetings may move from SF to the East Bay and back.
Proposed agenda:
1) Brief update on UNAC activities since last meeting:
a) FBI protest at SF Federal Building
b) UNAC speaker and participation in October 6 Iraq War protest
c) October 7 UC Berkeley cutback protest at Sproul Plaza/UNAC participation
d) UNAC tabling at Progressive Educators Conference at Mission High School.
2) Progress report on UC Berkeley teach-in, now set for November 30 at Pauley Ballroom.
UNAC reps proposed to Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Alliance and the Middle East Children's Alliance that we co-sponsor a major teach-in at UCB. All agreed. Students proposed November 30, 7 pm as the time and date. There have been two planning meetings to date with several themes proposed including:
Islamophobia and Racism
FBI Raids and fighting back
Palestine/BDS/Rt, of Return/Political prisoners/History/Gaza Siege/Flotilla
Building U.S. antiwar movement and Palestine/Funding education not war
Confirmed speakers: Ziad Abbas (former Palestinian political prisoner) , Barbara Lubin (MECA), Michel Shehadeh (LA 8), Hatem Bazian (UCB prof.), Students for Justice in Palestine, Blanca Miesé, Jeff Mackler, Masao Suzuki (FBI raid victim), Muslim Student Alliance, ASUC Senators who led BDS fight.
Invited speakers: Col. Ann Wright, Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Ethan McCord, Noam Chomsky, Nora Barrows Friedman.
Pauley Ballroom holds some 700 people. The groups agreed to seek a broad endorser list, is preparing a leaflet, electronic communications, Facebook etc. Reps from the student groups will be present at our UNAC meeting. Many student groups will be asked to endorse and help. Teach-in program/panels etc. is under discussion.
UNAC's Sunday meeting will focus on building for November 30:
a) Outreach
b) Media
c) Endorsements
e) etc.
3) BDS ballot petition
4) National UNAC update
5) Future UNAC events
6) Other
7) Next meeting
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Justice for Oscar Grant Rally
Saturday, October 23, 12:00 Noon
Frank Ogawa Plaza
(Oakland City Hall near 14th and Broadway)
Join family and friends of Oscar Grant, Labor and Community to demand:
--Maximum sentence for Johannes Mehserle!
--Stop police brutality! Jail racist killer cops!
--Expand jobs and education, not war and repression!
Stand up and make your voice heard! Johannes Mehserle was only arrested after people took to the streets to express their outrage. Without continuous labor and community action, Mehserle might have been acquitted. Together we can make sure that the killer cop gets the maximum sentence so other cops don't think they can get away with murder.
Sponsored by:
ILWU Local 10
Endorsed by other labor and community organizations.
For more information please contact:
Farless Dailey, Secretary Treasurer, 415-776-8100
local10secretarytreasurer@bayarea.net
---
Media/Publicity: Jack Heyman 510-531-4717, jackheyman@comcast.net
PLEASE ENDORSE OCTOBER 23 RESOLUTION BELOW:
[SEND ENDORSEMENTS TO: jackheyman@comcast.net]
Resolution in Support of October 23 ILWU Rally for Justice for Oscar Grant
Whereas, Oscar Grant's killer, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle received a verdict of involuntary manslaughter on July 8, 2010 and will be sentenced on November 5; and
Whereas, video tapes show clearly that Oscar Grant was lying face down on the Fruitvale BART platform, waiting to be handcuffed with another cop's boot on his neck posing no threat when he was shot in the back and killed in cold blood by Mehserle; and
Whereas, wherever employers try to break a strike, police are there to protect the scabs and attack workers, as we know from the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike, to the Charleston Five longshore struggle in 2000; and
Whereas, black and brown racial minorities, and especially immigrant workers today, struggling for equal rights have borne the brunt of police violence; and
Whereas , Oscar Grant's killing is another manifestation of the same unjust system where the message for the poor, the working class, and people of color is submission or death; and
Whereas, ILWU Local 10 has initiated the call for a mass labor and community protest rally on Saturday October 23, 2010 in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza calling for justice for Oscar Grant in the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle,
Therefore be it Resolved, that (name of organization) endorses this rally along with other labor unions, community groups, civil rights organizations, civil liberties organizations and will help to mobilize for this rally for justice for Oscar Grant;
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All.
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October 30-31st Mobilizing Conference | Education 4 the People!
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/april-10th-mobilizing-conference/
October 30-31st Mobilizing Conference
October 30-31st (Saturday-Sunday)
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
We, the people, have the democratic power to beat back these attacks
and ensure that our public institutions effectively serve the public.
But to do so, members of all regions and sectors - adult-ed,
students, workers, teachers, activists, unions, and community
organizations - must unite and take action on October 7th, and
contribute our voices and thoughts to the October 30-31st conference at
San Francisco State University to defend public education.
The purpose of the October 30-31st conference is to democratically
propose demands, devise an action plan, and create a structure capable
of defending public education and public services for the benefit of
all.
We invite all supporters of education across the nation to attend and
participate in the October 7th day of action and the October 30-31st
conference.
Conference organizing email list (Google group):http://groups.google.com/group/fallconferencesfsu
Conference locations:
Saturday: Cesar Chavez Student Union
Sunday: McKenna Theater
(See SE Quadrant of Campus map)
Public Transportation to SFSU: Directions to San Francisco State U
Parking: Where and When Can I Park?
Note that on-campus parking is usually available on the weekends, but street parking time-limited.
Preliminary Agenda
Registration
Welcoming
Future Actions - break-out groups (discussing, drafting proposals)
Future Actions - plenary (adoption of proposals)
Demands - break-out groups
Demands - plenary
Structure for the future - break-out groups
Structure for the future - plenary
Closing
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STOP U.S. IMPERIALIST WARS!
VICTORY TO THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES IN THE U.S. AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2010
MARCH ON WASHINGTON
BLACK IS BACK
blackisbackcoalition.org
Black Is Back: Let's March on White House Again, Nov. 13
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
October 6, 2010
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/black-back-lets-march-white-house-again-nov-13
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NOVEMBER 2010 - CONVERGE ON FORT BENNING, GEORGIA
November 18-21, 2010: Close the SOA and take a stand for justice in the Americas.
www.soaw.org/take-action/november-vigil
The November Vigil to Close the School of the Americas at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia will be held from November 18-21, 2010. The annual vigil is always held close to the anniversary of the 1989 murders of Celina Ramos, her mother Elba and six Jesuit priests at a the University of Central America in El Salvador.
ORGANIZE YOUR COMMUNITY FOR THE 2010 VIGIL!
November 2010 will mark the 20th anniversary of the vigil that brings together religious communities, students, teachers, veterans, community organizers, musicians, puppetistas and many others. New layers of activists are joining the movement to close the SOA in large numbers, including numerous youth and students from multinational, working-class communities. The movement is strong thanks to the committed work of thousands of organizers and volunteers around the country. They raise funds, spread the word through posters and flyers, organize buses and other transportation to Georgia, and carry out all the work that is needed to make the November vigil a success. Together, we are strong!
VIGIL AND RALLY AT THE GATES, NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION, TEACH-IN, CONCERTS, WORKSHOPS AND A ANTI-MILITARIZATION ORGANIZERS CONFERENCE
There will be exciting additions to this year's vigil program. Besides the rally at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia with inspiring speakers and amazing musicians from across the Americas, the four day convergence will also include an educational teach-in at the Columbus Convention Center, several evening concerts, workshops and for the first time, the Latin America Solidarity Coalition will stage a one-day Anti-Militarization Organizers Conference on Thursday, November 18, 2010.
SHUT DOWN THE SOA AND RESIST U.S. MILITARIZATION IN THE AMERICAS
Our work has unfortunately not gotten any easier and U.S. militarization in Latin America is accelerating. The SOA graduate led military coup in Honduras, the continuing repression against the Honduran pro-democracy resistance and the expansion of U.S. military bases in Colombia and Panama are grim examples of the ongoing threats of a U.S. foreign policy that is relying on the military to exert control over the people and the resources in the Americas. Join the people who are struggling for justice in Honduras, Colombia and throughout the Americas as we organize to push back.
Spread the word - Tell a friend about the November Vigil:
http://www.SOAW.org/tellafriend
For more information, visit:
www.SOAW.org.
See you at the gates of Fort Benning in November 2010
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
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BP Contract Worker "Trenches Dug To Bury Oil On Beaches"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qop9xbGv4&feature=player_embedded
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Dr. Harbut [Dr. Michael Harbut, Professor of Medicine, Wayne State University] spoke with the Navy. Navy asked about training exercises over Gulf with risk of somebody going down into water... should we consider suspending training? Navy then suspended exercises over Gulf.
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/navy-suspended-exercises-over-gulf
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RETHINK Afghanistan: The 10th Year: Afghanistan Veterans Speak Out
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/
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Disclaimer
Dear readers,
There is something very ominous about the Fox News reporting of Israeli business in the U.S. I have seen such a Kiosk at the Stonestown Mall in San Francisco selling skin-treatment salts from the Dead Sea. The salesmen and women are well-dressed and groomed and young--in their twenties. But the presence of these Kiosks does not "prove" the presence of an "enemy Israeli spy ring." I figured it to be Israeli business interests in San Francisco and, of course, I would never purchase an Israeli product. I also must say, they are pushy sales representatives--they follow you for a few steps saying, "Excuse me, may I talk to you" and they repeated it several times until you answer "No" then they leave you alone.
But Israel doesn't control the U.S. It's the other way around:
"In an article in the March 1995 issue of The Middle East Forum Promoting American Interests entitled, "Jesse Helms: Setting the Record Straight," Helms, who was the senior senator from North Carolina and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time stated, "I have long believed that if the United States is going to give money to Israel, it should be paid out of the Department of Defense budget. My question is this: If Israel did not exist, what would U.S. defense costs in the Middle East be? Israel is at least the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Without Israel promoting its and America's common interests, we would be badly off indeed."
http://www.meforum.org/article/244
Israel's the equivalent to much more than that today to protect U.S. interests in the area. In fact, according to Wikipedia Israel is second only to Iraq as the largest recipient of U.S. aid to the tune of at least $3 billion dollars a year (a very modest estimate):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_%E2%80%93_United_States_relations
Of course, it doesn't include the amount of profits Israeli businesses are earning in U.S. malls and other financial investment interests. Don't buy Israeli products or services. Demand divestment in Israel. End All U.S. Aid to Israel NOW! End the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Colombia and everywhere under the U.S. or U.S. financed gun or drone!
But please, Israel is not policing or controlling the world, that is being carried out by the U.S. government backed up by its military, the biggest purveyor of violence in the world!
The Kiolsks in the mall? A little extra earnings for well-to-do Israeli youth. Another U.S. perk for apartheid Israel.
Twenty Plus Israeli Military Agents at San Francisco Mall Kiosk Front Companies 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmhL3QdbLHs&feature=player_embedded#
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Firefighters Watch As Home Burns:
Gene Cranick's House Destroyed In Tennessee Over $75 Fee
By Adam J. Rose
The Huffington Post -- videos
10- 5-10 12:12 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/firefighters-watch-as-hom_n_750272.html
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NOAA investigating husband & wife that were sprayed with dispersant while sleeping on boat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InnmBRL84Dw&feature=player_embedded
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Dangers Lurk Beneath the Surface of Gulf of Mexico
September 29th, 2010
In spite of what you might have read in the news, the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has not just disappeared. It's lurking on the bottom, destroying marine life and entire ecosystems. On top of that, we are now starting to see adverse health effects from BP's use of the toxic oil dispersant known as Corexit, which is being dumped into the Gulf as we speak. Mike Papantonio talks about some of the effects that we're now seeing as a result of BP's dispersant chemicals with Dr. Riki Ott, one of the leading experts on the impact of oil spills on human health.
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2010/09/29/dangers-lurk-beneath-the-surface-of-gulf-of-mexico/
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Soldier Describes Murder of Afghan for Sport in Leaked Tape
By ROBERT MACKEY
September 27, 2010, 6:43 pm
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/soldier-describes-murder-of-afghan-for-sport-in-leaked-tape/?ref=world
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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Stephen Colbert's statement before Congress
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39343087#39343087
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PcolaGregg Answers VisitPensacola.com With Truth And Reality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtopYgl9h8Q&feature=player_embedded#!
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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!*PA HRC ACTION ALERT! Prisoners protesting abusive conditions at Huntingdon attacked by guards
From: PA HRC
http://hrcoalition.org/node/94
Action Alert- Prisoners protesting abusive conditions at Huntingdon attacked by guards
Emergency Response Network Action Alert- October 7, 2010
Prisoners at SCI Huntingdon attacked after protesting abusive conditions
Please Call SCI Huntingdon Superintendent Raymond Lawler and DOC Secretary Shirley Moore Smeal and demand an end to food deprivation and racist discrimination against Huntingdon Prisoners in the solitary confinement units. (Vincent Hallman, Jeremiah Weems, Rhonshawn Jackson, Jamiel Johnson, Gary Wallace, Kyle Klein, Anthony Martin, Anthony Allen, Eric Mackie)
On September 29, 8 prisoners from SCI Huntingdon planned a peaceful protest to speak out against ongoing intimidation, harassment, assault, food deprivation, and racism, racism, racism. Jamiel Johnson wrote HRC the day after, saying he and the other prisoners need immediate help and they are fighting for their lives.
The protest consisted of 8 prisoners refusing to return to their cells after being let outside for yard. They were issued misconduct reports and then "extracted" from their yard cages by being sprayed with chemical OC spray which affects their eyes, nose and breathing. (YouTube OC Spray) Vincent Hallman wrote that the correctional officers carted out three canisters of spray and then just "went at them" until they folded. While they were out in the yard, another prisoner in solitary confinement, Jeremiah Weems, was being sprayed with OC spray, extracted from his cell and taken to a restraint chair in a secluded part of the prison. The outside prisoners were brought in to medical but were not able to rinse their eyes of the blinding chemical or shower the chemicals off their person. Jamiel Johnson reported that once the prisoners were back in their cells, the abuse continued. The men inside their cells were sprayed and extracted, stripped, denied clothes, moved to other cells, moved back to OC cells, denied food, had the water turned off in all their cells and the air conditioning cranked up. The crisis is ongoing.
Please Call (talking points below):
SCI Huntingdon- (814) 643-2400 Ask to speak to Superintendent Lawler and say you are reporting abuse.
Regional Secretary Randall Britton- (717) 975-4930 Ask to speak to Randall Britton and say you are reporting abuse at SCI Huntingdon
Secretary Shirley Moore Smeal (717) 975-4819 Ask to speak to Secretary Smeal and say you are reporting abuse at SCI Huntingdon.
Please call SCI Huntingdon and other DOC officials and demand an end to the abuse and retaliation that has been ongoing at this institution. Please call elected officials and media people if you have time too. You can also write these officials if you can not make a phone call (addresses below). You can also reply to this email with comments if you cannot respond in any other way.
Talking Points for speaking to the Department of Corrections:
1) Tell them that you heard that a bunch of prisoners at SCI Huntingdon had a protest on September 29th as a REACTION against abusive conditions in the solitary confinement units
2) Ask them if they know of any abuse happening to prisoners in the solitary confinement units
3) After they say no, tell them you heard that a bunch of prisoners were losing weight and starving because they are regularly being denied food, especially last month during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
4) Ask them what chemical weapon's are being sprayed on the prisoners and if there are any side effects to these chemical weapons
5) Ask them what measures are taken against guards who use racist language towards prisoners in the solitary confinement units. Ask them if calling prisoners "monkeys" and "niggers" is acceptable professional behavior.
6) Ask them if there is someone else you can speak to, who will address the problem in a proactive way.
7) Tell them you think the prisoner's should be transferred because at this point, you do not see how they could be treated fairly
Thank you for taking time to respond to this alert and raise the voices of the people inside whose human rights are being violated.
Courage and Solidarity,
HRC-Fed Up!
Address for SCI Huntingdon
Superintendent Raymond Lawler
1100 Pike St
Huntingdon PA 16654
Address for Randall Britton and Shirley Moore Smeal
2520 Lisburn Rd
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill PA 17001
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Dear all,
As you know, I publish the Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW) newsletter that goes out to over 380 groups and individuals in the Bay Area (mostly individuals). While BAUAW used to be an activist group and is no longer a group, the newsletter remains active and, in fact has grown. I was able to give a similar, but much shorter message to the demonstration September 28 as the publisher of the BAUAW Newsletter and blog at bauaw.org
Clearly, and unfortunately, this will be an ongoing campaign.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
REPORT ON DEMONSTRATION AGAINST OBAMA'S FBI RAIDS IN SF LAST EVENING, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28:
About one- to two-hundred people showed up at the Federal Building in San Francisco at 7th and Mission Streets, on barely 24 hour's notice, to protest Obama's FBI raids against peace and social justice activists. It was broadly attended by the major antiwar, social justice groups and the labor movement. Speaker after speaker spoke against the raids as a threat to all who protest injustice carried out by the U.S. government here and abroad.
But the raids have not stopped! The only way to stop them is to stand united behind all those who have and will be persecuted by Obama's administration. We have a right to protest injustice wherever we perceive it--especially if the crimes are being funded by the U.S. government (our tax dollars) as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia and Palestine and numerous other places around the globe. An injury to one is an injury to all! We are only as strong as our weakest link. That is why we must stand together. Together, the weakest link becomes unbreakable.
The antiwar movement is obviously central to the defense of civil liberties and civil rights. That's why it's more important than ever for us to unite and call national and international actions against the wars, occupations and illegal military and police actions by our government here and everywhere--including these raids!
It's important first, to let the Obama administration know that this will not stop us from protesting, and second, to let this government know that we, the majority of people against the wars, being in the majority, have the right to dictate to them how our tax dollars should be spent.
We have the right to demand money for jobs, housing, healthcare, education and to life, liberty and peace of mind and body, not never-ending wars, occupations and prisons to preserve the wealth of the power elite. All human beings everywhere have these inalienable rights! We are citizens of the world and we all have these same common interests, human needs and wants.
If we don't stand together and demand them, we will not have them. More importantly, they are within our grasp if we stand united.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Publisher of Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, bauaw.org
--- On Tue, 9/28/10, Women Against Military Madness
From: Women Against Military Madness
Subject: [WAMM] WAMM Board Co-Chair Subpoenaed to Appear Before Grand Jury
The witch-hunt continues! I know you have heard that Freedom Road and the Anti-War Committee are being investigated by the FBI.
Yesterday, WAMM board co-chair and long time peace activist, Sarah Martin was also served with a subpoena. She is to appear before a grand Jury, in Chicago, on October 12, as part of the FBI investigation that is trying to tie local peace groups to terrorism.
Sarah is innocent of terrorism or connection to organizations that condone terrorism.
This is part of a nationally coordinated action, surely approved by the director of the FBI and probably at higher levels than that. There has been considerable national media attention. It appears that our Twin Cities peace community has been thrust into the middle of something much larger. The affected activists will need a lot of our support as they resist increasing repression and "terrorism" hype from the Obama Administration.
The people targeted have several things in common which give an insight to the nature of this investigation. Locally, all have been connected to the Anti-War Committee and/or WAMM. I believe all are connected to Freedom Road Socialist Organization. All were deeply involved in organizing the mass marches at the RNC in 2008. I believe all have been involved in the efforts to stop the DNC from coming to Minneapolis in 2012. All or nearly all have traveled to Colombia and/or Palestine for international solidarity work.
Please join us at the first meeting of a new solidarity and defense committee, Thursday, September 30, 7:00 p.m. at Walker Methodist Church, 3104 16th Avenue South, Minneapolis. Feel free to invite friends, neighbors, lawyers, church members and leaders so that we can organize to keep this malignant FBI investigation from spreading further through out our community.
Democracy is indeed under a terrifying assault! Sadly enough, it is coming from the hands of our own government, directed at some of the best, brightest, and most conscientious of our own citizens. For those of us who hold the constitution and the Bill of Rights near and dear to our hearts, we must stand up to this new assault on American freedom.
Kim Doss-Smith, Executive Director, Woman Against Military Madness (WAMM), 612-827-5364.
Women Against Military Madness (WAMM)
310 East 38th Street, Suite 222
Minneapolis, MN 55409
612-827-5364 (phone)
612-827-6433 (fax)
wamm@mtn.org (email)
www.worldwidewamm.org (web site)
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Protest the Raids
By Gregg Shotwell, Soldiers of Solidarity, UAW
greggshotwell@aol.com
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/27/fbi_raids_homes_of_anti_war
Read or listen to the article linked above about raids on the homes of anti war activists.
Of course, most of us may say, "First they came for the anti war activists, but since I am not an anti war activist........" But you know where the story ends:
with you and me.
I know three of the people whose homes were raided.
I know them through my activism in the UAW.
All three are soldiers of solidarity, by that I mean, people who show up on the picket lines and who support solidarity wherever and whenever it is called for.
I attest to these allegiances without qualification.
All three are workers, parents, and people committed to peace, equality, solidarity, and justice.
They are friends not terrorists.
They are men and women of conscience and commitment.
If the feds can terrorize them, they can terrorize you and me as well.
Note in the interview the connection to Columbia, the most dangerous
country in the world FOR TRADE UNIONISTS. They don't fire union supporters in Columbia, they murder them.
Now the FBI is raiding the homes of people who work for the union movement
in the USA and who advocate for peace rather than war.
Pick up the phone or email Obama, go straight to the top and demand the feds stop terrorizing workers who are campaigning for peace, solidarity, and justice. Don't wait. Don't think for a minute that you can hide from the thought police. The intimidation won't stop at your door. What's to stop them? Your silence?
The only thing that can stop harassment is solidarity.
sos, Gregg Shotwell
To contact Obama:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
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San Francisco Labor Council Resolution
[Note: The following resolution -- submitted by David Welsh, NALC 214, and Alan Benjamin, OPEIU 3 -- was adopted unanimously by the SFLC Delegates' Meeting on Sept. 27, 2010.]
Condemn FBI Raids on Trade Union, Anti-War and Solidarity Activists
Whereas, early morning Sept. 24 in coordinated raids, FBI agents entered eight homes and offices of trade union and anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago, confiscating crates full of computers, books, documents, notebooks, cell phones, passports, children's drawings, photos of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, videos and personal belongings. The FBI also raided offices of the Twin Cities Anti-war Committee, seizing computers; handed out subpoenas to testify before a federal Grand Jury to 11 activists in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan; and paid harassment visits to others in Wisconsin, California and North Carolina; and
Whereas, one target of the raid was the home of Joe Iosbaker, chief steward and executive board member of SEIU Local 73 in Chicago, where he has led struggles at the University of Illinois for employee rights and pay equity. Brother Iosbaker told the Democracy Now radio/TV program that FBI agents "systematically [went] through every room, our basement, our attic, our children's rooms, and pored through not just all of our papers, but our music collection, our children's artwork, my son's poetry journal from high school -- everything." He and his wife, a Palestine solidarity activist, were both issued subpoenas. The earliest subpoena dates are October 5 and 7; and
Whereas, the majority of those targeted by the FBI raids had participated in anti-war protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul MN, which resulted in hundreds of beatings and arrests [with almost all charges subsequently dropped]. Many of those targeted in the 9/24 raids were involved in humanitarian solidarity work with labor and popular movements in Colombia -- "the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist"-- whose US-funded government has been condemned by the AFL-CIO and internationally for the systematic assassination of hundreds of trade unionists; and
Whereas, the nationally coordinated dawn raids and fishing expedition marks a new and dangerous chapter in the protracted assault on the First Amendment rights of every union fighter, solidarity activist or anti-war campaigner, which began with 9/11 and the USA Patriot Act. The raids came only 4 days after a scathing report by the Department of Justice Inspector General that soundly criticized the FBI for targeting domestic groups such as Greenpeace and the Thomas Merton Center from 2002-06. In 2008, according to a 300-page report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI trailed a group of students in Iowa City to parks, libraries, bars and restaurants, and went through their trash. This time the FBI is using the pretext of investigating "terrorism" in an attempt to intimidate activists.
Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council denounce the Sept. 24th FBI raids on the homes and offices of trade union, solidarity and anti-war activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and elsewhere; the confiscation of computers and personal belongings; and the issuance of Grand Jury subpoenas. This has all the earmarks of a fishing expedition. The FBI raids are reminiscent of the Palmer Raids, McCarthy hearings, J. Edgar Hoover, and COINTELPRO, and mark a new and dangerous chapter in the protracted assault on the First Amendment rights of every union fighter, international solidarity activist or anti-war campaigner, which began with 9/11 and the USA Patriot Act;
And be it further resolved, that this Council make the following demands:
1. Stop the repression against trade union, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
2. Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, personal belongings, etc.
3. End the Grand Jury proceedings and FBI raids against trade union, anti-war and international solidarity activists;
And be it further resolved, that this Council participate in the ongoing movement to defend our civil rights and civil liberties from FBI infringement; forward this resolution to Bay Area labor councils, California Labor Federation, Change to Win and AFL-CIO; and call on these organizations at all levels to similarly condemn the witch hunt;
And be it finally resolved, that this Council urge the AFL-CIO to ensure that denunciation of the FBI raids is featured from the speakers' platform at the October 2, 2010 One Nation march in Washington, DC, possibly by inviting one of those targeted by the raids, for example the SEIU chief steward whose home was raided, to speak at the rally.
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More Thoughts on the Division within the Antiwar Movement in the Bay Area
By Bonnie Weinstein and Carole Seligman
We agree with the demands adopted by the UNAC conference but disagree with organizing separately as is now the case [And now, especially, because of the horrendous assault on our civil liberties by the ongoing Obama/FBI raids.]
A way we can still work together would be to agree to accept all the demands and allow organizing under all of them. It is also clear to us that UNAC (United National Antiwar Committee) does not have the base on the West Coast as it seems to have East of the Mississippi. We don't think we could have organized such a conference out here. Not now. Not yet. It is also clear--as it has been for many years--that ANSWER is firmly established as the leadership of the antiwar movement here in San Francisco, at least, and probably in LA and DC. So, we can't build a separate and competing coalition nor do we want to if we want the movement to keep strong and united and to grow.
Unfortunately, it is clear that local labor organizations here in the Bay Area are focusing on getting out the vote for the Democratic Party this November and have rejected any other type of action here on the West Coast on October 2. This rejection of taking action has nothing what-so-ever to do with the demands voted upon by the 800 people at the UNAC conference and has everything to do with keeping the labor movement tied to the Democratic Party.
We have to be realistic when trying to work with organized labors' "leaders." They are failing miserably to protect jobs and working conditions in San Francisco, in the Bay Area and throughout California and, for that matter, across the country. They are selling their own workers down the river lock, stock and barrel! But we do need to organize working people who, we believe, are far to the left of organized labors' "misleaders." That's why a united antiwar movement with strong demands of its own that ties the war spending and banker bailouts to the miseries working people are facing today--here and in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine--is imperative now!
Our belief is that no matter what demands were voted on at the UNAC conference, it makes no difference to these "labor misleaders." They are fully entrenched in the Democratic Party and are doing what they always do in spite of the continual wars and the drastic assault on the living conditions of workers across the country. They have proven themselves incapable of doing anything else in recent history except for giving workers false hope that voting Democratic will make a difference--i.e., "bringing the change we want"--by voting for Democrats.
They failed to push for the Employee Free Choice Act or single-payer healthcare; they make no mention of the fantastic costs of the wars and how they are impacting the living standards of working people; and again, offered only a vote for Democrats as the answer.
It is just not realistic to think that the demands adopted by UNAC are what's keeping organized labor from the antiwar movement. It's the labor misleaders themselves that are keeping organized labor from the antiwar movement no matter what the demands.
It is very strange to us that one minute the San Francisco Labor Council will pass an antiwar resolution and the next minute hold an honorary banquet for the mass murderer and war monger, Nancy Pelosi. Or to continue their ongoing support to Obama who has escalated the wars and the attacks on the living standards of working people, undocumented workers, students, youth--especially Black youth--etc. Has massively bailed out the wealthy with trillions of our tax dollars. That in the middle of a horrific oil spill sent thousands of National Guard troops--not to clean up the spill--but to patrol the borders between Mexico and the U.S. while deploying other National Guard troops to help hide the effects of the BP spill in the Gulf by chasing away scientists who are trying to gather data about the spill and the dispersants being poured into the oceans we all depend upon.
We haven't the slightest hope that electing Democrats will will improve any of these conditions. Only mass action in the streets demanding the things we want--an end to the wars NOW; an end to the bailout of the wealthy NOW; and an end to the billions spent on defending Israeli Apartheid and the massacre of the Palestinian people--all to protect U.S. interests in Middle East oil and other natural resources throughout the world. This is what the Democratic and Republican parties are all about and what their military is all about.
Working people are doomed if they continue to support the lesser of two evils--the Democratic party. It only leads to more evil as is evident if one's eyes are open.
We can't convince working people to see the truth if we don't tell the truth. And supporting the Democratic Party as a way to resolve the problems of working people, or to end these murderous wars, is NOT the truth!
We can't raise the consciousness of working people if we water down our demands to agree with the labor fakers and the Democratic Party.
In all sincerity,
Bonnie Weinstein
Carole Seligman
Report on September 19th Antiwar Meetings and an Open Letter to the Antiwar Movement
Dear peace activist:
We went to both antiwar meetings Sunday, September 19th -- ANSWER and Bay Area UNAC (United National Antiwar Committee). Both were approximately equal in size, and not very large. Both were attended by several groups who are active in the antiwar movement. Together we would have had a good size meeting of about 80. Actually, together we would have had a much more substantial meeting, because several people stayed away when they learned that there were two meetings at the same time, 1/2 a block away from each other.
People want the antiwar forces to work together to struggle to end these wars. People are disgusted at the great unity shown by the war parties, the Republicans and Democrats--in carrying out these wars. We must demand that the antiwar organizers--ourselves--work together in greater unity than the war parties do. Where we disagree with demands or slogans, let's find a way to include all.
The UNAC meeting scheduled a follow up meeting for Sunday, October 17th. Let's make this meeting one that is co-sponsored with ANSWER and invite all to participate in planning the next series of educational events and actions. Let's create the broadest possible structure for involving the whole movement and inviting people who have not participated before. Let's find a way to organize together! The situation demands it.
Carole Seligman
Bonnie Weinstein
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Deafening Silence, Chuck Africa (MOVE 9)
Check out other art and poetry by prisoners at:
Shujaas!: Prisoners Resisting Through Art
...we banging hard, yes, very hard, on this system...
http://shujaas.wordpress.com/
Peace People,
This poem is from Chuck Africa, one of the MOVE 9, who is currently serving 30-100 years on trump up charges of killing a police officer. After 32 years in prison, the MOVE 9 are repeatly denied parole, after serving their minimum sentence. Chuck wanted me to share this with the people, so that we can see how our silence in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom is inherently an invitation to their death behind prison walls.
Deafening Silence
Don't ya'll hear cries of anguish?
In the climate of pain come joining voices?
But voices become unheard and strained by inactions
Of dead brains
How long will thou Philly soul remain in the pit of agonizing apathy?
Indifference seems to greet you like the morning mirror
Look closely in the mirror and realize it's a period of mourning....
My Sistas, mothers, daughters, wives and warriors
Languish in prisons obscurity like a distant star in the galaxies as does their brothers
We need to be free....
How loud can you stay silence?
Have the courage to stand up and have a say,
Choose resistance and let go of your fears.
The history of injustice to MOVE; we all know so well
But your deafening silence could be my DEATH KNELL.
Chuck Africa
Please share, inform people and get involve in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom! www.MOVE9parole.blogspot.com
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Say No to Islamophobia!
Defend Mosques and Community Centers!
The Fight for Peace and Social Justice Requires Defense of All Under Attack!
http://www.petitiononline.com/nophobia/petition.html
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Kevin Keith Update: Good News! Death sentence commuted!
Ohio may execute an innocent man unless you take action.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-kevin-keith
Ohio's Governor Spares Life of a Death Row Inmate Kevin Keith
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/us/03ohio.html?ref=us
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Please sign the petition to release Bradley Manning
http://www.petitiononline.com/manning1/petition.html (Click to sign here)
To: US Department of Defense; US Department of Justice
We, the Undersigned, call for justice for US Army PFC Bradley Manning, incarcerated without charge (as of 18 June 2010) at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.
Media accounts state that Mr. Manning was arrested in late May for leaking the video of US Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent people and seriously wounding two children in Baghdad, including those who arrived to help the wounded, as well as potentially other material. The video was released by WikiLeaks under the name "Collateral Murder".
If these allegations are untrue, we call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
If these allegations ARE true, we ALSO call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
Simultaneously, we express our support for Mr. Manning in any case, and our admiration for his courage if he is, in fact, the person who disclosed the video. Like in the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, W. Mark Felt, Frank Serpico and countless other whistleblowers before, government demands for secrecy must yield to public knowledge and justice when government crime and corruption are being kept hidden.
Justice for Bradley Manning!
Sincerely,
The Undersigned:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?manning1
--
Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com
"Yesterday I lost a country. / I was in a hurry, / and didn't notice when it fell from me / like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. / Please, if anyone passes by / and stumbles across it, / perhaps in a suitcase / open to the sky, / or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound, / ... / If anyone stumbles across it, / return it to me please. / Please return it, sir. / Please return it, madam. / It is my country . . . / I was in a hurry / when I lost it yesterday." -Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi poet
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Please forward widely...
HELP LYNNE STEWART -- SUPPORT THESE BILLS
These two bills are now in Congress and need your support. Either or both bills would drastically decrease Lynne's and other federal sentences substantially.
H.R. 1475 "Federal Prison Work Incentive Act Amended 2009," Congressman Danny Davis, Democrat, Illinois
This bill will restore and amend the former federal B.O.P. good time allowances. It will let all federal prisoners, except lifers, earn significant reductions to their sentences. Second, earn monthly good time days by working prison jobs. Third, allowances for performing outstanding services or duties in connection with institutional operations. In addition, part of this bill is to bring back parole to federal long term prisoners.
Go to: www.FedCURE.org and www.FAMM.org
At this time, federal prisoners only earn 47 days per year good time. If H.R. 1475 passes, Lynne Stewart would earn 120-180 days per year good time!
H.R. 61 "45 And Older," Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (18th Congressional District, Texas)
This bill provides early release from federal prison after serving half of a violent crime or violent conduct in prison.
Please write, call, email your Representatives and Senators. Demand their votes!
This information is brought to you by Diane E. Schindelwig, a federal prisoner #36582-177 and friend and supporter of Lynne Stewart.
Write to Lynne at:
Lynne Stewart 53504-054
MCC-NY 2-S
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
For further information call Lynne's husband, Ralph Poynter, leader of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Send contributions payable to:
Lynne Stewart Organization
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York, 11216
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Listen to Lynne Stewart event, that took place July 8, 2010 at Judson Memorial Church
Excerpts include: Mumia Abu Jamal, Ralph Poynter, Ramsey Clark, Juanita
Young, Fred Hampton Jr., Raging Grannies, Ralph Schoenman
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
And check out this article (link) too!
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2010/062210Lendman.shtml
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL GRAVELY CONCERNED THAT RULING PUTS TROY DAVIS ON TRACK FOR EXECUTION; CITES PERSISTING DOUBTS ABOUT HIS GUILT
"Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence."
Amnesty International Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Contact: Wende Gozan Brown at 212-633-4247, wgozan@aiusa.org.
(Washington, D.C.) - Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today expressed deep concern that a federal district court decision puts Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis back on track for execution, despite doubts about his guilt that were raised during a June evidentiary hearing. Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence.
"Nobody walking out of that hearing could view this as an open-and-shut case," said Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA. "The testimony that came to light demonstrates that doubt still exists, but the legal bar for proving innocence was set so high it was virtually insurmountable. It would be utterly unconscionable to proceed with this execution, plain and simple."
Amnesty International representatives, including Cox, attended the hearing in Savannah, Ga. The organization noted that evidence continues to cast doubt over the case:
· Four witnesses admitted in court that they lied at trial when they implicated Troy Davis and that they did not know who shot Officer Mark MacPhail.
· Four witnesses implicated another man as the one who killed the officer - including a man who says he saw the shooting and could clearly identify the alternative suspect, who is a family member.
· Three original state witnesses described police coercion during questioning, including one man who was 16 years old at the time of the murder and was questioned by several police officers without his parents or other adults present.
"The Troy Davis case is emblematic of everything that is wrong with capital punishment," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "In a system rife with error, mistakes can be made. There are no do-overs when it comes to death. Lawmakers across the country should scrutinize this case carefully, not only because of its unprecedented nature, but because it clearly indicates the need to abolish the death penalty in the United States."
Since the launch of its February 2007 report, Where Is the Justice for Me? The Case of Troy Davis, Facing Execution in Georgia, Amnesty International has campaigned intensively for a new evidentiary hearing or trial and clemency for Davis, collecting hundreds of thousands of clemency petition signatures and letters from across the United States and around the world. To date, internationally known figures such as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have all joined the call for clemency, as well as lawmakers from within and outside of Georgia.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters, activists and volunteers who campaign for universal human rights from more than 150 countries. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
# # #
For more information visit www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis.
Wende Gozan Brown
Media Relations Director
Amnesty International USA
212/633-4247 (o)
347/526-5520 (c)
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) 'So Utterly Inhumane'
By BOB HERBERT
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp
2) French Strikes Disrupt Travel
By NICOLA CLARK
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/world/europe/13france.html?hp
3) In California, Pot Is Now an Art Patron
By RANDY KENNEDY
October 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/arts/design/12farm.html?ref=us
4) French Transport Workers Extend Strike
By NICOLA CLARK and MATTHEW SALTMARSH
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/europe/14france.html?_r=1&ref=world
5) Chile Rejoices as Miners Taste Freedom
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and SIMON ROMERO
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14chile.html?ref=world
6) Across the U.S., Long Recovery Looks Like Recession
By MICHAEL POWELL and MOTOKO RICH
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/economy/13econ.html?ref=us
7) For Now, Antiwar Activists Will Not be Forced to Testify
Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago have reportedly been canceled. What's next is anyone's guess.
By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune
Last update: October 12, 2010 - 9:50 PM
http://www.startribune.com/local/104830809.html?page=1&c=y
8) California budget cuts billions from social programs
By Dan Conway
13 October 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/cali-o13.shtml
9) Defying Predictions, Miners Kept Healthy
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14medical.html?ref=world
10) French Strikers Block Refineries
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
October 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/europe/15france.html?ref=world
11) Riot Police Clash With Protesters at Acropolis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/14/world/europe/AP-EU-Greece-Acropolis-Blockade.html?ref=world
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1) 'So Utterly Inhumane'
By BOB HERBERT
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp
You have to believe that somebody really had it in for the Scott sisters, Jamie and Gladys. They have always insisted that they had nothing to do with a robbery that occurred near the small town of Forest, Miss., on Christmas Eve in 1993. It was not the kind of crime to cause a stir. No one was hurt and perhaps $11 was taken.
Jamie was 21 at the time and Gladys just 19. But what has happened to them takes your breath away.
They were convicted by a jury and handed the most draconian sentences imaginable - short of the death penalty. Each was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in state prison, and they have been imprisoned ever since. Jamie is now 38 and seriously ill. Both of her kidneys have failed. Gladys is 36.
This is Mississippi we're talking about, a place that in many ways has not advanced much beyond the Middle Ages.
The authorities did not even argue that the Scott sisters had committed the robbery. They were accused of luring two men into a trap, in which the men had their wallets taken by acquaintances of the sisters, one of whom had a shotgun.
It was a serious crime. But the case against the sisters was extremely shaky. In any event, even if they were guilty, the punishment is so wildly out of proportion to the offense that it should not be allowed to stand.
Three teenagers pleaded guilty to robbing the men. They ranged in age from 14 to 18. And in their initial statements to investigators, they did not implicate the Scott sisters.
But a plea deal was arranged in which the teens were required to swear that the women were involved, and two of the teens were obliged, as part of the deal, to testify against the sisters in court.
Howard Patrick, who was 14 at the time of the robbery, said that the pressure from the authorities to implicate the sisters began almost immediately. He testified, "They said if I didn't participate with them, they would send me to Parchman and make me out a female."
He was referring to Mississippi State Prison, which was once the notoriously violent Parchman prison farm. The lawyer questioning the boy said, "In other words, they would send you to Parchman and you would get raped, right?"
"Yes, sir," the boy said.
The teens were sentenced to eight years in prison each, and they were released after serving just two years.
This is a case that should be repugnant to anyone with the slightest interest in justice. The right thing to do at this point is to get the sisters out of prison as quickly as possible and ensure that Jamie gets proper medical treatment.
A number of people have taken up the sisters' cause, including Ben Jealous, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who is trying to help secure a pardon from Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. "It makes you sick to think that this sort of thing can happen," he said. "That these women should be kept in prison until they die - well, that's just so utterly inhumane."
I have no idea why the authorities were so dead set on implicating the Scott sisters in the crime and sending them away for life, while letting the teens who unquestionably committed the robbery get off with much lighter sentences.
Life sentences for robbery can only be imposed by juries in Mississippi, but it is extremely rare for that sentencing option to even be included in the instructions given to jurors. It's fair to think, in other words, that there would have to be some extraordinary reason for prosecutors and the court to offer such a draconian possibility to a jury.
Chokwe Lumumba, a lawyer representing the sisters, captured the prevailing legal sentiment when he said: "I don't think Mississippi law anticipates that you're going to be giving this instruction in a case where nobody gets hurt and $11 is allegedly stolen. In the majority of robbery cases, even the ones that are somewhat nasty, they don't read that instruction."
The reason for giving the jury the option of imposing life sentences in this case escapes me. Even the original prosecutor, Ken Turner, who is now retired and who believes the sisters were guilty, has said that he thinks it would be "appropriate" to offer them relief from their extreme sentences. He told The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., "It was not a particularly egregious case."
The appeals process for the women has long since been exhausted. It is up to Governor Barbour, who is considering petitions on the sisters' behalf, to do the humane thing.
A pardon or commutation of sentence - some form of relief that would release Jamie and Gladys Scott from the hideous shackles of a lifetime in prison - is not just desirable, it's absolutely essential.
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2) French Strikes Disrupt Travel
By NICOLA CLARK
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/world/europe/13france.html?hp
PARIS - In the latest expression of discontent over government austerity moves across Europe, French transport and energy workers, teachers and civil servants took to the streets on Tuesday to protest plans to reform the country's pension system - the third such strike here in just over a month.
The strikes in France follow waves of social unrest across the region in recent months, with protesters in Spain, Belgium, Greece and Ireland voicing their anger as governments seek to rein in exploding deficits that threaten to undermine their sovereign credit ratings, exacerbating national budget woes.
Union officials claimed a nationwide turnout of more than 3.5 million people, an increase of 20 percent from the previous strike on Sept. 23, while the French interior ministry put the figure closer to 1.23 million, up from just under a million in the last strike. In Paris, the police counted 89,000 protesters, up from 75,000 previously.
"The protest is not weakening, but we can't be sure it will grow," Éric Woerth, the labor minister who has spearheaded the new measures, told France 3 television. "The government's determination is total."
Several labor groups - including those representing the national rail and Paris public transport workers - voted Tuesday to extend their walkouts through Wednesday, and unions have also called for another day of demonstrations on Saturday, so the ultimate effects of the strikes remain unclear.
But analysts remained skeptical that rolling strikes would secure anything more than superficial changes to the proposed changes, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has made a cornerstone of his fiscal policy.
"Everyone admits that things can't continue like this," said François Vergne, a labor lawyer in the Paris office of the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. "Other countries have adapted their laws and there is a resigned consensus that retirement at 60 is no longer sustainable."
Late Monday, the upper house of the legislature voted to raise the age of retirement with a full pension to 67 from 65, having already agreed to increase the minimum legal retirement age to 62 from 60. Senators from the opposition Socialist Party still hope to slow full adoption of the package through amendments.
Last month the lower house voted to raise the minimum pension age to 62.
Tourists visiting Paris on Tuesday found many of the city's monuments and museums shuttered for at least part of the day, including the Eiffel Tower, the Cathedral of Nôtre-Dame and the Musée d'Orsay. Several sites were not expected to re-open until Wednesday.
According to the national train operator S.N.C.F., intercity trains to Paris were running at only one-third of normal frequency, while rural services were more seriously disrupted. Just over 40 percent of rail workers took part, up marginally from the 37 percent who walked off the job during the last strike, on Sept. 23, the S.N.C.F. said.
The service was normal on the Eurostar trains to London, and trains to Belgium and Germany were running at two-thirds of normal schedules.
The R.E.R. commuter trains into Paris were running at under 50 percent, while there were also disruptions on the Paris subway and bus system.
Airports also reported significant disruption to flights as air traffic controllers and Air France staff joined the walkout. At Roissy Charles de Gaulle and Beauvais airports, 30 percent of flights were canceled, and about 50 percent at Orly. A vast majority of intercontinental flights were maintained as scheduled, however.
Unions at ports, refineries, the chemical industry and those representing civil servants, postal and communication workers and education also took part.
The marches across the country were largely peaceful. However, in the northern city of Caen, news reports said riot police officers had fired tear gas at protesters who had gathered to lob eggs, tomatoes and firecrackers at the local headquarters of the national business lobby, Medef. Garbage cans were also set ablaze.
While some of the more radical unions have urged unlimited general strikes, leaders of the main trades councils have sought to avoid the kind of prolonged action that has backfired with the public in the past. François Chérèque, secretary general of the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens, has stressed that he has not called for general strikes, leaving it instead to workers to vote day-to-day at the union chapter level.
Faced with widespread anger, Mr. Sarkozy has offered some concessions - for example, last week he proposed softening the rules for women in their 50s who had earlier halted work to bring up at least three children, allowing them to receive full pensions at 65. The government said this would cost about $4.8 billion and would be financed by higher capital gains tax on property sales.
Unions have described the offer as insufficient and had hoped that the fresh action this week would force the government back to the bargaining table.
The French media have portrayed the current showdown over pension reform as a defining moment for Mr. Sarkozy that could decide his fate in presidential elections in 2012. Le Monde this week described it as a turning point. "Failure will sink him," the newspaper wrote.
But some observers said the same could be said of the country's labor movement.
While France's trade union leaders did manage to extract some "face-saving alterations" to the reform, the core aspect - pushing back the retirement age by two years - will probably not be affected by the protests, said Paul Vallet, a professor of history and political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris.
"In the end, even if people are marching, there is a broad resignation that this is going to happen anyway," Mr. Vallet said.
The same could be seen in similar recent elsewhere on the Continent: When Spanish union leaders called for coordinated demonstrations throughout Europe at the end of last month, the result was little more than scattered unrest and protest.
Mr. Vallet argued that the French unions and the main opposition parties had erred strategically in seeking to turning the debate over pension reform into a mandate on Mr. Sarkozy's presidency.
"Everyone's sense of priorities in this confrontation have gotten dangerously mixed up and short-sighted," Mr. Vallet said. "The risk for the unions after this is that they will be viewed as even more ineffective."
In five years' time, he said, France will still be faced with a significant budget deficit that will require further reforms to pensions and other social programs. By then, "the unions are probably going to be even less influential in shaping those new reforms, and people are going to be less convinced that the unions have any relevance on this issue."
At 7.7 percent, the rate of trade union membership in France is second-lowest in the 30-member O.E.C.D., just above Turkey at 5.8 percent and well below the United States at 11.9 percent. But among public-sector employees - including transport workers and civil servants like teachers - the unions hold greater sway, with a membership more than twice as high.
"It is a paradoxical situation," said Mr. Vergne, the labor lawyer. "It is a very small number, but this has been the case for a long time."
Yet he was hesitant to say that France's labor movement was in permanent decline.
"The power relationship is being modified," Mr. Vergne said. "We are in a period of transition."
The pension reform debate, he noted, has managed to stir France's youth - even some who are too young to vote.
On Tuesday, organizers said several thousand high-school and university students formed a procession on the Rue de Rennes in Paris, one of the largest youth turnouts so far. A national union of high school students said there were protests at roughly 400 campuses across the country, about 10 percent of the total.
"The entry of young people into the debate is interesting and significant," Mr. Vergne said, though he conceded that it was too early to say whether high school students would remain politically engaged over the longer term.
"It is hard to know," he said. "Protesting is kind of a national sport in France."
Matthew Saltmarsh contributed reporting.
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3) In California, Pot Is Now an Art Patron
By RANDY KENNEDY
October 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/arts/design/12farm.html?ref=us
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Nonprofit arts groups tend to spend much of their time scrounging for grants and praying for corporate largesse. But one art foundation taking shape on 120 acres in the high oak chaparral of Sonoma County has different kinds of worries these days: spider mites, bud rot and the occasional low-flying surveillance visit from the local Sheriff's Office.
This is because the foundation, called Life Is Art, recently began to reap a new kind of financing, in the form of tall, happy-looking marijuana plants. Late this month, with some help from the sale of its first small crop, grown under California's liberal medical marijuana laws, the group plans to present an inaugural exhibition on its land, of sculpture and installation work by more than 20 visiting artists - some of whom will have helped bring in the harvest. The foundation's hope is that income from succeeding crops will fully support such projects, in perpetuity, creating a kind of Marfa-meets-ganja art retreat north of San Francisco and a new economic engine for art philanthropy.
At a going wholesale rate of $200 or more an ounce in the Bay Area for high-quality medical marijuana, it's a lot simpler than raising money the traditional way, the project's organizers point out. And - except for the nagging fact that selling marijuana remains a crime under federal law - it even feels more honest to the people behind Life Is Art. They see it as a way of supporting the cause with physical labor and the fruits of the land instead of the wheedling of donors, an especially appealing prospect in an economy where raising money has become more difficult than ever.
"The whole game of finding support just started to seem so childish," said Kirsha Kaechele, the foundation's director, as she hauled a plastic tub of freshly harvested cannabis hybrid branches up a hill one morning recently on her rolling land just outside of Santa Rosa. "So I decided to grow up and became a marijuana farmer."
In California, where voters will consider a ballot initiative in November that would make theirs the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use - and where some growers are already donating portions of their proceeds to nonprofit causes like AIDS charities - the idea of putting pot to work for the arts seems to be spreading.
Artists Collective, a two-year-old medical marijuana service in Los Angeles formed with the idea of directing a large share of its income to the creative world, gave away its first chunk of money in August, to the winner of a national short-story contest it sponsored, judged by the novelist Neal Pollack. The initial prize was just $1,000, but Dann Halem, the collective's founder and director, said the goal of the nonprofit organization was to become as effective and well known as Newman's Own, Paul Newman's food-based charity, which he cited as an inspiration.
"Hopefully in the long run this is something that will be able to give millions and millions to the arts," he said.
Ms. Kaechele (pronounced KEH-shell-uh), 34, has spent the last decade directing public art projects in New Orleans. But after Hurricane Katrina and the recession, her operation was on the brink of collapse. That is when she started to think about the money-making possibilities of the rural land in Sonoma that she and her business partner, Jaohn Orgon, had bought six years earlier.
"Everyone who knew that I had land in California just assumed I was growing pot on it," she said, "which is kind of funny, and I'd tell them I wasn't."
But after a conversation with the Brooklyn artist Fred Tomaselli, whose psychedelic art is sometimes made with marijuana leaves, she started to think seriously about the idea. She formed a California nonprofit called American Medicinals. (Growers in the state tend to operate as nonprofit or not-for-profit organizations.) Through Craigslist she found a veteran California growing expert whose long involvement in marijuana cultivation during the years when it was completely illegal had left him perpetually wary, prompting a strange series of initial e-mails in which he referred only to his expertise in growing goji berries.
Now, six months after planting the crop from seed - a mix of two varieties, O.G. Kush and Cherry Pie, grown in two small outdoor plots and one indoor space - she and a handful of artists who will be making work for the show have been harvesting the plants and hanging them upside down on wires to dry in the barn that serves as the group's headquarters and makeshift studio space. They sold their first dried and cured buds to medical users in the first week of October.
They are loath to provide details about how much marijuana they hope to produce with the first harvest - plant limits vary from county to county, and they worry about how the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, which made an unannounced visit by helicopter in September, interprets the limits there. But their goal for next year's crop is to generate $1 million after expenses to be used for art projects on the farm and to send back to support their programs in New Orleans, which they hope will ultimately be financed entirely by the farm.
"We think it's a completely realistic number," Ms. Kaechele said.
For the moment, though, the Sonoma wing of the foundation is still in its infancy and feels like a combination of Yaddo, a hip organic farm and a very laid-back commune (but with little smoking of the funds going on, at least in a reporter's presence). Ms. Kaechele eventually wants to be able to set up artists' residencies, to commission pieces from emerging and established artists and to pay for works that would remain permanently on the land, as Donald Judd's do in Marfa, Tex., at the Chinati Foundation.
While the debate about marijuana legalization has focused on its potential dangers, its mainstream benefits are starting to get more attention: higher tax income, struggling newspapers buoyed by marijuana ads. In California the potential for recreational legalization in November worries many medical growers like Mr. Halem of Artists Collective, who fear that the change would bring in corporate interests, cause prices to fall and push out growers with charitable aims.
Ms. Kaechele and the young artists whose work will appear in the first exhibition, opening to the public on Oct. 22, seem overjoyed with the way things are working out so far, but not everyone shares the sentiment. A couple who live on a property adjacent to the farm, Steve and Catherine Matuszak, only recently learned of the growing operation nearby and said they were worried about increased traffic up the winding mountain roads and even more about the potential for thieves.
"We don't have concerns with them as individuals, really," Ms. Matuszak, a dental hygienist, said of the new art-farm neighbors. "It's just the situation that's developing that worries us."
Ms. Kaechele said she wanted to work hard to win her neighbors over, and she even has an idea for dealing with the drug-crime concerns (another completely new kind of worry for a public-art organizer): She will ask artists to come up with proposals for alarms and security devices that will double as art installations on the land.
"We see it as a set of curatorial problems for us to respond to," she said.
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4) French Transport Workers Extend Strike
By NICOLA CLARK and MATTHEW SALTMARSH
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/europe/14france.html?_r=1&ref=world
PARIS - In the latest expression of discontent over government austerity moves across Europe, French transport workers struck for the second straight day on Wednesday, while refineries in the country remained blocked as workers continued to protest plans to reform the country's pension system.
Several labor groups - including those representing the national rail and Paris public transport workers - voted Tuesday night to extend their walkouts at least through Wednesday, and unions called for another day of demonstrations on Saturday. The transport disruptions Wednesday appeared less severe than a day earlier although commuter trains into and out of Paris continued at a diminished service. In a statement, the rail operator S.N.C.F. said that 24.6 percent of its staff were on strike Wednesday against 40.4 percent Tuesday.
Eric Heraud, a spokesman for the French civil aviation authority said, that air traffic had returned to normal at the main Paris airports as controllers, Air France staff and support personnel returned to work.
But industrial action continued at refineries in France, leading to fears of possible fuel shortages. News reports in some regions suggested there had been some , with consumers eager to fill up their cars in case the industrial action continues.
The coordinator for the C.G.T. union at the oil group Total, Charles Foulard, said that strikes were continuing in 11 of 13 refineries nationwide. He said that production was running at about 10 percent of normal levels. Workers will vote daily on whether to maintain the action, he said.
He also confirmed that the strike at the port of Marseille's Fos and Lavera oil terminals, which has blocked the entry of crude oil to France through the port, was continuing. It has been running for almost three weeks.
Tens of thousands of transit and energy workers, teachers and civil servants took to the streets on Tuesday, continuing waves of social unrest across Europe in recent months, with protesters in Spain, Belgium, Greece and Ireland voicing their anger as governments seek to rein in exploding deficits that threaten to undermine their sovereign credit ratings, exacerbating national budget woes.
Union officials claimed a nationwide turnout of more than 3.5 million people, an increase of 20 percent from the previous strike on Sept. 23, while the French Interior Ministry put the figure closer to 1.23 million, up from just under a million in the last strike. In Paris, the police counted 89,000 protesters, up from 75,000 previously.
"The protest is not weakening, but we can't be sure it will grow," Éric Woerth, the labor minister who has spearheaded the new measures, told France 3 television. "The government's determination is total."
But analysts remained skeptical that the strikes would secure anything more than superficial changes to the proposed changes, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has made a cornerstone of his fiscal policy.
"Everyone admits that things can't continue like this," said François Vergne, a labor lawyer in the Paris office of the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. "Other countries have adapted their laws and there is a resigned consensus that retirement at 60 is no longer sustainable."
Late Monday, the upper house of the legislature voted to raise the age of retirement with a full pension to 67 from 65, having already agreed to increase the minimum legal retirement age to 62 from 60. Senators from the opposition Socialist Party still hope to slow full adoption of the package through amendments.
Last month the lower house voted to raise the minimum pension age to 62.
Tourists visiting Paris on Tuesday found many of the city's monuments and museums shuttered for at least part of the day, including the Eiffel Tower, which reopened Wednesday..
The marches across the country on Tuesday were largely peaceful. However, in the northern city of Caen, news reports said riot police officers had fired tear gas at protesters who had gathered to lob eggs, tomatoes and firecrackers at the local headquarters of the national business lobby, Medef. Garbage cans were also set ablaze.
While some of the more radical unions have urged unlimited general strikes, leaders of the main trades councils have sought to avoid the kind of prolonged action that has backfired with the public in the past. François Chérèque, secretary general of the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens, has stressed that he has not called for general strikes, leaving it instead to workers to vote day-to-day at the union chapter level.
The go-softly approach appears to have bolstered public sympathy for the strikers. According to a poll conducted Monday by the IFOP polling institute and published Tuesday in France Soir, 53 percent of French surveyed said they "trusted the unions," up sharply from 43 percent in a similar survey conducted in June. Forty-seven percent polled said they "did not trust trade unions," down from 57 percent in June. The survey was conducted on Oct. 8 and 9, with 955 people aged 18 and over contacted by telephone.
"People have internalized the idea that pension reforms are necessary," said Frédéric Dabi, director of opinion research at IFOP. "But there is clearly still the idea that the unions can help sway the balance."
Faced with widespread anger, Mr. Sarkozy has offered some concessions - for example, last week he proposed softening the rules for women in their 50s who had earlier halted work to bring up at least three children, allowing them to receive full pensions at 65. The government said this would cost about $4.8 billion and would be financed by higher capital gains tax on property sales.
Unions have described the offer as insufficient and had hoped that the fresh action this week would force the government back to the bargaining table.
The French media have portrayed the current showdown over pension reform as a defining moment for Mr. Sarkozy that could decide his fate in presidential elections in 2012. Le Monde this week described it as a turning point. "Failure will sink him," the newspaper wrote.
But some observers said that could be said of the country's labor movement.
While France's trade union leaders did manage to extract some "face-saving alterations" to the reform, the core aspect - pushing back the retirement age by two years - will probably not be affected by the protests, said Paul Vallet, a professor of history and political science at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris.
"In the end, even if people are marching, there is a broad resignation that this is going to happen anyway," Mr. Vallet said.
The same could be seen in recent protests elsewhere on the Continent: When Spanish union leaders called for coordinated demonstrations throughout Europe at the end of last month, the result was little more than scattered unrest and protest.
Matthew Saltmarsh contributed reporting.
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5) Chile Rejoices as Miners Taste Freedom
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and SIMON ROMERO
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14chile.html?ref=world
SAN JOSÉ MINE, Chile - With anxious anticipation increasingly yielding to exuberant celebration, more than half of the 33 men trapped under a half-mile of rock for more than two months have emerged to the arms of their families and an electrified nation.
The second miner to reach the surface, Mario Sepúlveda, left the rescue capsule in a kind of victory dance, hugging family members and officials. He embraced the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, three times and presented people with gifts: rocks from the mine. He punched fists with the crowd and led a cheer: "Chi, Chi, Chi, le, le, le," they shouted. "Miners of Chile!" The refrain echoed as subsequent miners reached the surface.
"I've been near God, but I've also been near the devil," Mr. Sepúlveda said through a translator. "God won."
The 12th miner - Edison Peña, 34, known for running miles in the mine tunnels every day - stepped from the escape capsule to rapturous cheers and the embrace of his girlfriend, and then another from Mr. Piñera.
"Thank God we're alive," Mr. Peña said. "I know now why we're alive."
As with the other men, Mr. Peña was strapped to a stretcher for the few paces to the makeshift hospital where the miners are being assessed.
But some heartbreak may still lie ahead. After the first 10 men were pulled up, Health Minister Jaime Mañalich said the next men to be raised would include those in a more "precarious" health condition.
He also said that all 33 miners might be lifted from the mine in less time than the original forecast of two days. The rescue capsule's roundtrips were taking about an hour.
Cameras inside the mine showed the miners sending off an evacuee with cheers, and another camera positioned on the top of the capsule carried images of a seemingly smooth shaft slipping by around a taut metal cable as a winch pulled the capsule up.
The race to save the miners has thrust Chile into a spotlight it has often sought but rarely experienced. While lauded for its economic management and austerity, the nation has often found the world's attention trained more on its human rights violations and natural disasters than on uplifting moments.
The San Jose mine - which produced gold and copper - collapsed on Aug. 5, leaving 33 men unaccounted for. After 17 days of frantic drilling, rescuers made contact. What they found captivated the world - all the men had survived with their spirits apparently intact.
They had to withstand nearly two more months of waiting for this day, hanging firm to discipline and collaboration held firm in the lightless, dank space. Their perseverance has transfixed the globe with a universal story of human struggle and the enormously complex operation to rescue them.
Mr. Piñera, a billionaire businessman who is one of Latin America's most conservative leaders, staked his presidency on the effort. It has involved untold millions of dollars, specialists from NASA and drilling experts from a dozen or so countries. Some here at the mine have compared the rescue effort to the Apollo 13 space mission, for the emotional tension it has caused and the expectation of a collective sigh of relief at the end.
The ordeal has also riveted Bolivia, home to one of the miners, 24-year-old Carlos Mamani, who kissed his wife, Veronica, and shouted: "Gracias, Chile!" The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, joined Mr. Piñera in welcoming Mr. Mamani, and warming chatting with the ever-growing rescued group in the makeshift hospital. It was a rare moment of rapprochement for the two leaders, whose nations have strained relations.
"I would like to thank the Chilean people, thank you very much for rescuing our brother, Carlos Mamami," Mr. Morales said. "Bolivia will never forget, this is a historical moment, and this unites us more every day. These events are fostering greater trust between Bolivia and Chile."
In the early minutes of Wednesday at the mine site (late Tuesday night Eastern time), the first miner was pulled through the narrow, twisting escape shaft in the specially designed capsule - the Phoenix.
The first miner, Florencio Ávalos, 31, made it to the surface shortly after midnight, to the music of blaring celebratory horns. With a look of sturdy calm, he embraced his weeping child and other family members, his nation's president and the workers around him before being taken away on a stretcher, lifting his thumb triumphantly.
As each subsequent miner emerged alive and smiling, the world seemed to celebrate, but also to hold its collective breath that all 33 would make it out as effortlessly as the first ones.
A global audience watched nonstop coverage on computers, television sets and even cellphones. Deep in the mine, the remaining miners waited for their turn, along with a rescue worker who descended to their underground haven in the capsule, which was painted in the red, white and blue of the Chilean flag.
Tuesday was a day of great excitement and last-minute delays. As Mr. Piñera waited anxiously near the rescue hole, the families of the miners and more than 1,300 journalists gathered around plasma televisions set up at the makeshift tent city near the mine, which vibrated with a carnival-like atmosphere as the rescue drew near. At one point, Mr. Piñera mingled with the families and even broke into song with them.
"We hope that with the help of God, this epic will end in a happy way," Mr. Piñera said before the rescue began.
Despite high expectations, officials here warned that the operation was still in a precarious phase. The rescue hole is barely wider than the capsule that rides inside it, shuttling the men about 2,000 feet to the surface, one at a time. Complicating matters, the hole is not perfectly straight, raising fears that the capsule could snag on the long trip.
The decision by Mr. Piñera, Chile's first right-wing leader in 20 years, to stake his young presidency on an unbridled push to rescue the miners was an extraordinary political calculation. But it has paid big dividends, bolstering his popularity at home and propelling him onto an international stage often dominated by other large personalities in the region.
After the Aug. 5 cave-in trapped the miners, their fate was uncertain at best. Advisers to Mr. Piñera counseled him not to raise expectations that the men could be found alive. Laurence Golborne, the mining minister, said publicly that their chances of having survived were slim, comments that bothered many Chileans.
But Mr. Piñera, who was in Ecuador when the news of the mine disaster broke, argued differently. "I had a strong conviction, very deep inside of me, that they were alive, and that was a strong support for my actions," he said in an interview in late August.
He set in motion an intense rescue effort, sparing no expense. Workers drilled a skinny borehole, and on Aug. 22 a drilling hammer came up with red paint. Wrapped around it with rubber bands were two notes: a love letter from Mario Gómez, the oldest miner of the group, to his wife, and another in red ink. "We are well in the refuge the 33," it read.
Suddenly the name of the makeshift vigil at the mine - Camp Hope - took on new meaning. Mr. Piñera flew here right after his father-in-law's wake to celebrate with the miners' families.
But the Chileans were in uncharted territory. To their knowledge, no one had tried a rescue so far underground. Keeping the miners alive and in good spirits, much less getting them out, would be an enormous challenge.
Doctors from NASA and Chilean Navy officers with experience in submarines were consulted on the strains of prolonged confinement. The miners had lost considerable weight and were living off emergency rations. Some, like Mr. Gómez, who had a lung condition, struggled with the high humidity in the mine.
Medical officials consulted frequently with the miners over a modified telephone dropped down through the skinny borehole. Slowly, they nursed the men back to health. Mr. Mañalich, the health minister, enlisted Yonny Barrios, a miner who had once taken a first aid course, to administer vaccines and medicines, and to take blood and urine samples. All the medications traveled down through the plastic tubes sent through the boreholes.
The tubes, called "palomas" here, became the miners' lifeline. Over the many weeks, officials on the surface used them to send letters from loved ones, food and liquids, even a small video projection system that the miners used to watch recorded movies and live soccer matches on a television feed that was piped down.
The miners were put on a diet to keep their weight down and worked with a trainer to keep fit with exercise. One miner, a fitness buff, ran about six miles a day through the winding shafts of the mine.
In recent weeks, Alejandro Pino, the regional manager of an insurance company for work-related accidents, has given the miners media training on how to speak and express themselves, even sending a rolled-up copy of his guidebook through the borehole.
"I tried to prepare them to handle journalists' most intimate questions," Mr. Pino said last week.
Alberto Iturra, a psychologist who worked with the miners, talked to them, sometimes several times a day, to sort through their frustrations and depression. After first sending down nicotine patches, officials later sent down cigarettes to the miners, most of whom were smokers, family members said. Still, Dr. Iturra said that doctors never ended up sending down medication for depression.
Aaron Nelsen and Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting.
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6) Across the U.S., Long Recovery Looks Like Recession
By MICHAEL POWELL and MOTOKO RICH
October 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/economy/13econ.html?ref=us
This is not what a recovery is supposed to look like.
In Atlanta, the Bank of America tower, the tallest in the Southeast, is nearly a fifth vacant, and bank officials just wrestled a rent cut from the developer. In Cherry Hill, N.J., 10 percent of the houses on the market are so-called short sales, in which sellers ask for less than they owe lenders. And in Arizona, in sun-blasted desert subdivisions, owners speak of hours cut, jobs lost and meals at soup kitchens.
Less than a month before November elections, the United States is mired in a grim New Normal that could last for years. That has policy makers, particularly the Federal Reserve, considering a range of ever more extreme measures, as noted in the minutes of its last meeting, released Tuesday. Call it recession or recovery, for tens of millions of Americans, there's little difference.
Born of a record financial collapse, this recession has been more severe than any since the Great Depression and has left an enormous oversupply of houses and office buildings and crippling debt. The decision last week by leading mortgage lenders to freeze foreclosures, and calls for a national moratorium, could cast a long shadow of uncertainty over banks and the housing market. Put simply, the national economy has fallen so far that it could take years to climb back.
The math yields somber conclusions, with implications not just for this autumn's elections but also - barring a policy surprise or economic upturn - for 2012 as well:
¶At the current rate of job creation, the nation would need nine more years to recapture the jobs lost during the recession. And that doesn't even account for five million or six million jobs needed in that time to keep pace with an expanding population. Even top Obama officials concede the unemployment rate could climb higher still.
¶Median house prices have dropped 20 percent since 2005. Given an inflation rate of about 2 percent - a common forecast - it would take 13 years for housing prices to climb back to their peak, according to Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at the consulting firm Decision Economics.
¶Commercial vacancies are soaring, and it could take a decade to absorb the excess in many of the largest cities. The vacancy rate, as of the end of June, stands at 21.4 percent in Phoenix, 19.7 percent in Las Vegas, 18.3 in Dallas/Fort Worth and 17.3 percent in Atlanta, in each case higher than last year, according to the data firm CoStar Group.
Demand is inert. Consumer confidence has tumbled as many are afraid or unable to spend. Families are still paying off - or walking away from - debt. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, estimates it will be the end of 2011 before the amount of income that households pay in interest recedes to levels seen before the run-up. Credit card delinquencies are rising.
"No wonder Americans are pessimistic and unhappy," said Mr. Sinai. "The only way we are going to get in gear is to face up to the reality that we are entering a period of austerity."
This dreary accounting should not suggest a nation without strengths. Unemployment rates have come down from their peaks in swaths of the United States, from Vermont to Minnesota to Wisconsin. Port traffic has increased, and employers have created an average of 68,111 jobs a month this year.
After plummeting in 2009, the stock market has spiraled up, buoying retirement accounts and perhaps the spirits of middle-class Americans. As a measure of economic health, though, that gain is overstated. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, notes that the most profitable companies in the domestic stock indexes generate about 40 percent of their revenue from abroad.
Few doubt the American economy remains capable of electrifying growth, but few expect that any time soon. "We still have a lot of strengths, from a culture of entrepreneurship and venture capitalism, to flexible labor markets and attracting immigrants," said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. "But we're going to be living with the overhang of our financial and debt problems for a long, long time to come."
New shocks could push the nation into another recession or deflation. "We are in a situation where our vulnerability to any new problem is great," said Carmen M. Reinhart, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland.
So troubles ripple outward, as lost jobs, unsold houses and empty offices weigh down the economy and upend lives. Struggles in Arizona, New Jersey and Georgia echo broadly.
Florence, Ariz.
In 2005, Arizona ranked, as usual, second nationally in job growth behind Nevada, its economy predicated on growth. The snowbirds came and construction boomed and land stretched endless and cheap. Then it stopped.
This year, Arizona ranks 42nd in job growth. It has lost 287,000 jobs since the recession began, and the fall has been calamitous.
Renee Wheaton, 38, sits in an old golf cart on the corner of Tangerine and Barley Roads in her subdivision in the desert, an hour south of Phoenix. Her next-door neighbor, an engineer, just lost his job. The man across the street is unemployed.
Her family is not doing so well either. Her husband's hours have been cut by 15 percent, leaving her family of five behind on water and credit card bills - more or less on everything except the house and car payment. She teaches art, but that's not much in demand.
"I say to myself 'This can't be happening to us: We saved, we worked hard and we're under tremendous stress,' " Ms. Wheaton says. "My husband is a very hard-working man but for the first time, he's having real trouble."
Arizona's poverty rate has jumped to 19.6 percent, the second-highest in the nation after Mississippi. The Association of Arizona Food Banks says demand has nearly doubled in the last 18 months.
Elliott D. Pollack, one of Arizona's foremost economic forecasters, said: "You had an implosion of every sector needed to survive. That's not going to get better fast."
To wander exurban Pinal County, which is where Florence is located, is to find that the unemployment rate tells just half the story. Everywhere, subdivisions sit in the desert, some half-built and some dreamy wisps, like the emerald green putting green sitting amid acres of scrub and cacti. Signs offer discounts, distress sales and rent with the first and second month free.
Discounts do not help if your income is cut in half. Construction workers speak of stringing together 20-hour weeks with odd jobs, and a 45-year-old woman who was a real estate agent talks of her job making minimum wage bathing elderly patients. Many live close to the poverty line, without the conveniences they once took for granted. Pinal's unemployment rate, like that of Arizona, stands at 9.7 percent, but state officials say that the real rate rises closer to 20 percent when part-timers and those who have stopped looking for work are added in.
At an elementary school near Ms. Wheaton's home, an expansion of the school's water supply was under way until thieves sneaked in at night and tore the copper pipes out of the ground to sell for scrap.
Five miles southwest, in Coolidge, a desert town within view of the distant Superstition Mountains, demand has tripled at Tom Hunt's food pantry. Some days he runs out.
Henry Alejandrez, 60, is a roofer who migrated from Texas looking for work. "It's gotten real bad," he says. "I'm a citizen, and you're lucky if you get minimum wage."
Mary Sepeda, his sister, nods. She used to drive two hours to clean newly constructed homes before they were sold. That job evaporated with the housing market. (Arizona issued 62,500 housing permits several years ago; it gave out 8,400 last year.)
"It's getting crazy," she says, holding up a white plastic bag of pantry food. "How does this end?"
You put that question to Mr. Pollack, the forecaster. "We won't recover until we absorb 80,000 empty houses and office buildings and people can borrow again," he says.
When will that be?
"I'm forecasting recovery by 2013 to 2015," he says.
Cherry Hill, N.J.
The housing market in this bedroom community just across the border from Philadelphia never leapt to the frenzied heights of Miami Beach or Las Vegas. But even if foreclosure notices are not tacked to every other door, a malaise has settled over the market. Home prices have fallen by 16 percent since 2006, and houses now take twice as long to sell as they did five years ago.
That's enough to inflict pain on homeowners who need to sell because of a job loss or drop in income. Some are being forced to get rid of their houses in short sales, asking less than they owe on a mortgage. As of last week, 10 percent of all listings in this well-tended suburb were being offered as short sales.
Chrysanthemums bloomed in boxes on the porch of one of those homes as a real estate broker unlocked the front door. In the kitchen, children's chores were listed neatly on an erasable white board. Dinner simmered in a Crock-Pot on the counter.
There were few signs of the financial distress that prompted the owners to put their four-bedroom colonial on the market for less than they paid five years ago.
The colonial's owners, James and Patricia Furrow, bought near the top of the market in 2005 for $289,900. Mr. Furrow, 48, retired in July after 26 years as a corrections officer and supplements his pension with work as a handyman. But his income is spotty, and his wife, who works in a school cafeteria, does not earn enough to cover the mortgage on the house where they live with their three children.
They have already missed a payment; they want to sell the house in hopes their lender will forgive the shortfall between their loan balance and the lower sale price. They are asking $279,900.
"When we did buy, the market was still moving pretty good," said Mr. Furrow. "Then it got to the point where people said it is not going to last. And of course it didn't last."
Some of the homes being offered at distressed prices are dragging down prices for less troubled homeowners who hope to sell. And with foreclosures now in disarray, the market could be further weakened. "Even someone who is trying to sell a normal, well-maintained house is at the mercy of these low prices," said Walter Bud Crane, an agent with Re/Max of Cherry Hill.
So the houses sit, awaiting offers that rarely materialize. According to Mr. Crane, the average number of days that homes sit on the market has nearly doubled, to 62 this year from 32 in 2005. Buyers are chary, not sure if their jobs are secure. Open houses draw sparse crowds.
In Camden County, where Cherry Hill sits, unemployment is near 10 percent. Several large employers have closed or conducted huge layoffs, and others have pruned hours. With Gov. Chris Christie reining in spending, government workers are jittery.
Real estate agents say it has rarely been a better time to buy: interest rates are at record lows, house prices have fallen and the selection is large.
Tara Stewart-Becker, a 28-year-old financial services manager, said she and her husband would love to buy a sprawling fixer-upper just three blocks from the narrow colonial they purchased four years ago in Riverton, which backs onto the Delaware River.
But a bad kitchen flood and a loan to pay for repairs has left Ms. Becker and her husband, Eric, owing more on their mortgage than the house is currently worth. Even though the couple make far more money than they did when they bought their house and could afford a larger loan and renovations, they cannot sell.
"I would gladly take a new mortgage and stimulate the economy for the rest of my life," Ms. Becker said.
"Unfortunately, there isn't anything that a government or a bank can do," she added. "You just have to settle for less and wait."
Atlanta
Long fast-growing, no-holds-barred Atlanta has burned to the ground before, figuratively and in reality, and each time it was a phoenix rising. But this recession has cut deeper than any since the Great Depression and left Atlanta's commercial and high-end condo real estate in an economic coma.
Over all, assuming a robust growth rate, industry leaders say it could take 12 years for Atlanta to absorb excess commercial space.
"That one - see it?" Alan Wexler points to a gleaming blue tower as he drives. "A Chicago bank took it over six months ago. Sold at a 40 percent discount."
"And over there" - he juts his chin at a boarded-up hotel topped by a Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant crown. "That was going to be a condo. They just shut it down and walked away."
Mr. Wexler, a wiry and peripatetic real estate data analyst, describes it all on a drive down Peachtree Road, Atlanta's posh commercial spine.
He starts in the Buckhead neighborhood, which has more than two million square feet of vacant commercial space. A billboard outside one discounted condo tower promises "New Pricing from the $290s!" There are towers half-empty and towers in receivership. Office buildings that once sold for $85 million now retail for $35 million.
Approaching downtown, Mr. Wexler hits the brakes and points to an older, white marble building. "See that one? It's the Fed Reserve. That's where they sit, look, sweat and wonder: How did we get into this mess?"
That's a question much on the minds and lips of residents.
The commercial vacancy rate in Buckhead is near 20 percent, and the Atlanta region has added jobs only at the low end.
Mike Alexander, research division chief for the Atlanta Regional Commission, posed the question: "When do we start to add premium jobs again?"
Lawrence L. Gellerstedt III, chief executive of Cousins Properties, sits in an office high atop an elegant Philip Johnson tower, with a grand view of the Atlanta commercial corridor running north. He does not see improvement on the horizon.
"We're all wondering what gets the economy producing jobs and growth again," he says. "Atlanta always was the fair-haired child of real estate growth and now, it's 'O.K., poster boy, you're getting yours.' "
Small banks are a particular disaster, 43 having gone under in Georgia since 2008. (Federal regulators closed 129 nationally this year, up from 25 last year.) Real estate was the beginning, the middle and the end of the troubles. In one deal, dozens of Atlanta banks invested in Merrill Ranch, a 4,508-acre tract of desert south of Phoenix.
The deal imploded and took a lot of banks with it.
"No one was demanding documents or reading the fine print, and mortgage banks were fat and happy," recalls John Little, a developer. "Well, that train couldn't keep running."
He has a ringside seat on this debacle, as he sits in the office of a handsome condo complex he built in west Atlanta. He faced price discounts so deep that he decided to rent it instead.
Nationwide banks have no interest in lending to local developers, and the regional banks are desperate for cash and calling in their loans.
Mr. Little got lucky; he bought out his loan and kept his property. "Most of my generation of builders has gone under," he said. "It's still spiraling out of control."
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7) For Now, Antiwar Activists Will Not be Forced to Testify
Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago have reportedly been canceled. What's next is anyone's guess.
By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune
Last update: October 12, 2010 - 9:50 PM
http://www.startribune.com/local/104830809.html?page=1&c=y
On Wednesday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article "For now, antiwar activists will not be forced to testify."
The full article is pasted below.
Jess Sundin, one of the people whose home was raided and who has been given a subpeona to testify at a Grand Jury in Chicago, has written an importent statement immediately below on what the developments described in the newspaper article may mean.
Alan Dale
Statement by Jess Sundin:
Today's Strib story may have created some confusion, and I wanted to say a few words of explanation.
My understanding of what happened (speaking as a non-lawyer): Our attorneys notified the prosecutor that we intended to invoke our 5th Amendment right to not testify. A subpeona is an order to appear on a given day. If we show up in court, and plead the 5th, it kind of calls the question. I think the subpeonas were pulled because the prosecutor has not yet decided what he wants to do about it, like whether he is willing to compel our testimony by imposing immunity (squeal or you go to jail for contempt)... or, alternatively, who he wants to move towards making an indictment against (in which case, no immunity).
I think it's true that the light that we've all managed to shine on this case makes it hard for him to do anything rash. And certainly, not having to make the trip to Chicago has a lot of upsides for us: saves the effort of a trip to Chicago, and postpones the day we'd have to confront that squeal-or-go-to-jail moment of truth....
For me, I take this move by the prosecutor as ominous. Like seriously, are all 14 of us potential targets for indictments?! I think the prosecutor is taking his time - waiting for the FBI to find something in all the stuff they took from our houses... hoping that the FBI can get one of our friends to say something incriminating... who knows. Neither the prosecutor nor the FBI are talking to us or our lawyers.
We need to keep pushing for all of our demands: Stop FBI harassment of anti-war activists, return our property, and shut down the grand jury! Thank you all for your work in our defense - in defense of all of us!
Below is the Star Tribune article:
For Now, Antiwar Activists Will Not be Forced to Testify
Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago have reportedly been canceled. What's next is anyone's guess.
By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune
Last update: October 12, 2010 - 9:50 PM
http://www.startribune.com/local/104830809.html?page=1&c=y
Thistle Parker-Hartog originally was supposed to testify before a grand jury in Chicago Tuesday. She didn't go. Mick Kelly was scheduled to make the same trip next week. Don't bet on it.
In all, 14 antiwar activists and several organizations from the Twin Cities and Chicago who are being investigated for alleged support of terror groups received subpoenas to appear before the grand jury this month. All -- including five who were to appear last week -- have told the U.S. Department of Justice that they are not going. Instead, several were among about 60 people gathered in front of the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis Tuesday to protest what they consider harassment and intimidation because they oppose U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
So far, it seems, the Justice Department has acquiesced. All the subpoenas have been canceled, according to a Chicago attorney working on the case. Instead of being encouraged by the inaction, they are left wondering when the other shoe is going to fall for a growing number of people under investigation.
"No one knows what will happen. That's sort of the problem with all this," Parker-Hartog said. "The net is definitely getting wider. We are hearing from more of our brothers and sisters around the country that they, too, are being looked at."
On Sept. 24, the FBI raided the Minneapolis homes of five antiwar activists, including three leaders of the Twin Cities peace movement, as part of what it called a probe of "activities concerning the material support of terrorism." The Minneapolis office of an antiwar organization was also raided, protest leaders said. Raids were also conducted on two homes in Chicago.
No one was arrested in any of the raids.
Computers, cell phones and documents were seized. FBI officials said the federal search warrants in Minneapolis were related to an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The people whose homes and offices were searched have denied being involved in any illegal activities. Meredith Aby of the Anti-War Committee, whose home and offices were raided, said Tuesday that the federal government has "given itself more power since 9/11. The federal government is doing this, I think, because they can do this."
According to the warrants, the FBI is seeking travel and financial information regarding the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Colombia.
It is against federal law to provide "material support" to organizations that have been defined by the U.S. government as terrorist. But attorneys argue that the law's interpretation can be dangerously broad. Activists are asking: Who defines a terror group? What constitutes material support?
Over the past two years, several local men of Somali descent have been indicted, and some convicted, for providing material support for Al-Shabab, an Islamist group fighting for control of Somalia. Some traveled to Somalia to fight, some recruited fighters, some allegedly provided money.
Those being investigated in Minneapolis and Chicago deny doing anything like that in this case. What happens next is uncertain. The U.S. attorney in Chicago could reissue subpoenas. Prosecutors could even grant some of the people being investigated immunity to prod them to testify. Everything could be dropped.
All that is known for now, said attorney Jim Fennerty, is "that nobody is going to appear before the grand jury."
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8) California budget cuts billions from social programs
By Dan Conway
13 October 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/cali-o13.shtml
The US state of California last week passed a budget for fiscal year 2010-2011 that includes more severe austerity measures against the poor and working class. The agreement came 100 days after the end of the fiscal year, the longest delay on record.
The budget was initially passed by the state assembly and senate early Friday morning and was approved by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the same day. Schwarzenegger implemented nearly $1 billion in additional spending cuts by exercising his line item veto power.
The budget includes approximately $7.8 billion in spending cuts, including:
* $3.8 billion in reduced and deferred payments to K-12 education and community colleges. This is despite claims by the governor's office that the latest budget protects public education. Over the past two years, over $17 billion has been cut from public education in California, and more than 30,000 public school teachers and support staff have lost their jobs.
* $1.6 billion in payroll and benefit reductions for state employees. State workers have already suffered from mass layoffs and an effective 15 percent cut in pay over the past 15 months from unpaid furlough days.
* An $800 million reduction in prison medical care. To compensate for this loss, the governor has promised to release low risk inmates in need of medical attention. How the inmates will receive medical care outside of prison walls was not specified by the governor's office.
* $300 million in reductions to the In-Home Support Services program, which provides funding for residents to care for sick and disabled family members. The cuts will come by imposing a 3.6 percent reduction in caregiver hours and reducing caseloads.
* $256 million from "Stage 3" of the CalWORKS welfare-to-work program, which provides subsidized child care. The reductions will go into effect on November 1.
* $200 million from the state's MediCal program, which provides medical insurance to low income residents. The reductions will be achieved through decreased enrollment.
* $133 million from mental health services for special education students.
* Nearly $60 million from AIDS treatment and prevention programs.
Additional cuts were made to community health clinics, community-based services for senior citizens, prostate cancer treatment programs and substance abuse services.
Reflecting on the cuts to child care services and CalWORKS, Nancy Berlin, director of California Partnership, a statewide coalition of advocates for the poor, said: "These people have no place else to go. We're telling them, [welfare recipients] to go out and work, and we're going to make it harder to do that by taking their child care away from them."
The budget also relies on overly rosy revenue estimates, along with an anticipated $5.8 billion in assistance from the federal government-assistance that is unlikely to ever materialize. The Obama administration has ruled out any aid to help states close their budget gaps despite offering trillions to bail out the banks.
Given these optimistic projections, it is almost certain that massive deficits will reoccur in the next fiscal year. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor-Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown-have pledged to carry out the cuts necessary to balance the budget.
The budget exposes the repeated assurances from Sacramento that regardless of how deep and broad the cuts, public education would be spared. The Schwarzenegger administration has claimed that the Proposition 98 funding guarantee has been left untouched. The proposition, which was passed by voters in 1998, allocates a minimum level of funding in years of weak economic growth based on previous years' funding, along with adjustments for increased school enrollment.
In terms of absolute spending, the governor's claim is true, as spending on Proposition 98 for the current year's budget is approximately $49.6 billion, which represents an increase of $115 million over the previous year. According to the state legislative analyst's office, however, the minimum funding guarantee should actually be $53.8 billion, due to increases in student enrollment. In other words, the current budget spends less on a per-child basis.
In addition, the budget also does not include a "settle up" obligation of $1.8 billion, which was the amount of funding still owed to public schools under the Proposition 98 guarantee, and which wasn't paid out during the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
The budget also includes massive cuts in state worker pensions, which the governor demanded as a precondition for passage. In a press conference in Fresno delivered after the budget passed, the governor called state worker pensions, "the silent thief of our treasury, robbing other programs" such as education and health care.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) the largest state employee union, played an indispensible role in facilitating the cuts.
The agreement reached with the union includes a one time 3 percent wage increase. In exchange for this very modest rise in salary, workers will see their pension contributions increase by 3 percent on a yearly basis, along with a five-year increase in the minimum retirement age.
In the most brazenly cynical fashion, the union claims that the agreement protects the membership from additional unpaid furlough days. However, it includes, according to the union summary, a provision for "12 personal leave days in exchange for a one-time, 12 month, 4.62 percent decrease in pay." This statement comes only a few paragraphs down from the claim that the contract includes a 3 percent pay increase.
A 4.62 percent decrease in pay is equivalent to about one day per month. In other words, this agreement amounts to a one-day per month unpaid furlough-under the guise of a "personal day"!
The contract also includes a provision to calculate pensions based on the last three years of employment, rather than an employee's highest paid year of employment. This measure was absolutely crucial from the standpoint of the ruling elite as it insures that as more wage cuts and unpaid furloughs are made to state workers, the state will therefore be able to pay the newly retired the most miserly pensions possible.
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9) Defying Predictions, Miners Kept Healthy
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
October 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14medical.html?ref=world
Defying grim predictions about how they would fare after two months trapped underground, many of the Chilean miners came bounding out of their rescue capsule on Wednesday as pictures of energy and health, able not only to walk, but, in one case, to leap around, hug everyone in sight and lead cheers.
The miners' apparent robustness was testimony to the rescue diet threaded down to them through the tiny borehole that reached them on Aug. 22, but also to the way they organized themselves to keep their environment clean, find water and get exercise. Another factor was the excellent medical care they received from Chilean doctors who ministered to them through tubes leading 2,300 feet into the earth.
Late on Wednesday, the last of the 33 miners was pulled to safety. Chile's health minister, Jaime Mañalich, said that one miner had acute pneumonia but was improving with antibiotics, and that two others needed dental surgery. At the moment, he added, the rest seemed to be in "more than satisfactory" condition.
Indeed, the 27th miner to be rescued, Franklin Lobos, is a former soccer star who juggled a soccer ball on his foot moments after emerging from the capsule.
While many details of the miners' health care and living conditions have been reported, misconceptions and misinformation persisted as the ordeal continued and as the public's fascination with their deprivation increased. In recent days, some television and newspaper commentators had speculated that the men would develop the bends on the way up, or suffer heart attacks or blood clots. Some people said that their muscles would have atrophied, that they could have serious skin funguses, vitamin deficiencies and rotted teeth and be blinded by the daylight.
None of those predictions came true - and some bordered on the absurd.
"The bends?" said Dr. J. D. Polk, chief of space medicine for the Johnson Space Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, whom the Chileans consulted. "The miners were at sea level. The mine entrance is at 2,400 feet. They were no more at risk of getting the bends than you are going up to the 15th floor in your building."
The men kept themselves fit and received excellent medical care. And they were not confined to the "rescue chamber," the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. (The first drill bit reached the chamber in August and the miners attached a note to it saying that all 33 were alive.)
"They had the run of the mine," said Jeffery H. Kravitz, acting director for technical support at the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration. With half a mile of tunnels open, he said, "they had places to exercise and to use for waste." One miner ran several miles a day.
"They even had a sort of waterfall they could take a shower under," Mr. Kravitz said. "They requested shampoo, and shaved for their families."
Also, fresh air was pumped in, so asphyxiation was never a danger. While coal mines can fill with methane gas, the San José operation was a copper and gold mine. The air was nearly 90 degrees and humid, but it contained about 20 percent oxygen, like outside air. The men dug three wells, and had potable water.
Doctors from NASA and Chilean Navy officers with experience in submarines were consulted on the strains of prolonged confinement. Alberto Iturra, a psychologist, talked to the miners, sometimes several times a day, to sort through their frustrations and depression.
Over all, Chilean health authorities "did a phenomenal job," Dr. Polk said.
Just after the miners were discovered alive on Aug. 22, they were in danger, he said. They had survived for 17 days on just two spoonfuls of tuna, a cup of milk, one cracker and a bit of a peach topping every other day. Their digestive and insulin systems had nearly shut down and they were breaking down their own fat and muscle tissue.
People on starvation diets can be killed by eating carbohydrates too quickly; as the body struggles to make insulin in response, it can upset the electrolyte balance, stopping the heart.
"We learned that the hard way in World War II, giving candy bars to prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates," Dr. Polk said.
Urine test strips were sent down the tube, allowing Yonny Barrios, a miner with paramedic training, to report that about half the miners were dehydrated and spilling ketones and myoglobin proteins into their urine, a sign that their muscles were breaking down, from starvation and, possibly, from sleeping on hot rocks.
They were told to nearly double the amount of water they drank. Liquid gels with protein and vitamins were sent down the three-inch tube in packets known as "passenger pigeons."
Slowly, day by day, their calories were increased to normal levels.
By Chilean Independence Day, Sept. 18, they were fully recovered and getting celebratory empanadas (baked as cylinders to fit down the tube), barbecued steak (cut into strips) and fresh papaya. Their request for wine was declined. They got cola.
(More recently, they had to be monitored to make sure they would fit in the rescue capsule, 26 inches in diameter.)
Eventually, all sorts of comfort goods were going down three narrow tubes: dismantled camp beds, clean clothes, letters, movies, dominoes, tiny Bibles, toothbrushes, skin creams. The smokers were first allowed only gum and nicotine patches, but doctors eventually relented and let 40 cigarettes a day go down.
The tubes also accommodated fiber optic cables and, by the end, each miner was getting a daily video consultation with a doctor. They also had jobs to do, including reinforcing walls and clearing debris from the rescue drills.
Mr. Barrios also took blood pressure readings, sent up urine and blood samples and gave shots against tetanus, pneumonia, meningitis and flu.
Mario Gómez, 63, the oldest miner, had silicosis - a respiratory disease caused by breathing rock dust - and was helped by inhalers, though he developed pneumonia. Another miner with diabetes received insulin.
Contrary to a rumor, the miners were not in the disorienting dark all the time. Small fluorescent lights were sent down early in their ordeal and a circadian rhythm was kept up, with a red light at nighttime.
The rumor about the bends, Dr. Kravitz said, could have arisen from the 2002 Quecreek mine rescue in Pennsylvania, in which pressurized air was pumped into a flooding mine to hold back water. Ten compression chambers were set up in case any miner got the bends, but none did. The bends, or decompression sickness, is a threat to scuba divers who surface too quickly; nitrogen that dissolved into their blood when they were under heavy water pressure comes out and collects as bubbles in their joints and blood vessels, causing pain and, in extreme cases, death.
Early on in the crisis, the Chilean authorities asked for advice from NASA, which has experience in keeping astronauts physically and mentally healthy.
All the miners came out of the capsules in expensive dark glasses - donated by Oakley - to protect them from the sun, but the main health effect they all shared was very pale skin from being in the dark so long.
Liz Robbins contributed reporting.
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10) French Strikers Block Refineries
By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
October 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/world/europe/15france.html?ref=world
PARIS - Strikes against pension changes in France continued Thursday, with the focus shifting from transport - where services were improving - to oil supply, as most of the country's refineries remained blocked by striking workers.
The French oil industry association has warned of possible shortages by the middle of next week, and in some areas, motorists have been lining up to fill up their tanks, fearing that supplies might soon run dry.
But the government sought Thursday to reassure the population that there was no threat of an imminent shortage of fuel.
"We have what we need for at least a month without major problems," Dominique Bussereau, secretary of state for transport, told L.C.I. television. Mr. Bussereau and other officials called on the public not to panic and to only buy gas when needed.
Mr. Bussereau declined to comment on whether the government was considering using its stocks, a move demanded by the French truckers' federation.
President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared unmoved Thursday during a speech to students and researchers near Bordeaux. "We can't close our eyes faced with our deficit," he said. "Our duty is to act in the general interest."
Charles Foulard, a spokesman for the C.G.T. union, said the strike continued Thursday at 10 of the country's 12 crude refineries.
Total, the largest refiner in France, has wound down operations at its French plants. "There's no crude going in," a spokesman said.
At the Donges refinery at the mouth of the Loire river, unions have already voted to continue the action until Monday, Mr. Foulard of the C.G.T. said. He also warned that workers might escalate the action by blocking oil storage depots away from refineries.
The Fos and Lavera oil terminals in the port of Marseille remained blocked by strikers on Thursday. The city was also hit by confirmation that the low-cost carrier Ryanair would be closing its base in the city, where it employs 200 people, following a dispute with the French authorities over how its workers are paid.
Transport disruptions on Thursday appeared to have diminished, although commuter trains into and out of Paris continued to be affected. Subway and bus service in Paris was returning to normal.
In a statement, the national rail operator S.N.C.F. said Thursday that its service was improving slowly, with high-speed trains to and from Paris running at about 50 percent of normal schedules. There was normal service on Eurostar trains between Paris and London.
S.N.C.F. said that the participation rate among its staff in Thursday's action was 20 percent, as opposed to 25 percent Wednesday and 40 percent Tuesday.
Transport workers at one of the main unions, the C.F.D.T., have voted not to renew their action, according to news reports, although at least three other unions vowed to continue.
Students' unions continued to call on members to protest. The Education Ministry said Thursday that 342 high schools were disrupted to differing degrees by the action, which represented nearly 8 percent of high schools nationwide.
The management of the Université Rennes-2 in western France decided to close its campus on Thursday as students picketed the entrances to its buildings.
The pension changes, which include increasing the minimum legal retirement age to 62 from 60 and raising the age of retirement with a full pension to 67 from 65, are expected to be definitively adopted by lawmakers by the end of the month.
Union leaders have called for further nationwide protests Saturday. Unions at Air France will join the action, Bloomberg News reported.
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11) Riot Police Clash With Protesters at Acropolis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/10/14/world/europe/AP-EU-Greece-Acropolis-Blockade.html?ref=world
Filed at 2:10 p.m. ET
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Riot police clashed with protesting Culture Ministry workers barricading the ancient Acropolis on Thursday, using tear gas to clear the entrance to Greece's most famous landmark.
But the monument remained closed for the rest of the day as guards there launched a strike in solidarity with the evicted protesters. Protest organizers said they would gather again at the Acropolis early Friday, but it was unclear whether they would attempt to block the entrance.
Up to 100 workers on short-term contracts had kept the ancient citadel closed since Wednesday morning, complaining they were owed up to 24 months' worth of back pay and faced dismissal when their contracts expire on Oct. 31.
The protesters barricaded themselves inside, padlocked the entrance gates and refused to allow visitors in until their demands were met. Police in riot gear arrived after a court order said the protesters were hindering access to the site and its 2,500-year-old marble temples.
"Riot police and violence won't break the strike," the protesters chanted, clinging to the gates.
But police broke into the site after sawing through the metal fence, then used pepper spray to clear journalists covering the standoff from the main gate. One protester was led away in handcuffs to a waiting police bus.
Dozens of bemused tourists who had arrived to visit the ancient site looked on as the standoff unfolded, occasionally snapping pictures of the riot police.
"We know the workers have a right to protest, but it is not fair that people who come from all over the world to see the Acropolis should be prevented from getting in," said Spanish tourist Ainhoa Garcia shortly before the clashes broke out.
Greece is in the midst of a tough austerity program which has cut public workers' salaries and trimmed pensions in an effort to pull the country out of a severe debt crisis. The austerity plan has led to a series of strikes and demonstrations as workers' unions protest the cutbacks.
Guards and workers at archaeological sites have long been complaining they are owed months of back pay, and they have shut down the Acropolis before in protest, though usually only for a few hours at a time.
They say they had no other option but to close the iconic site - which attracts more than a million visitors annually - because, they say, the government has ignored a string of court rulings in their favor.
"If we are breaking the law by keeping the site closed, is it not also against the law for (the government) to leave us unpaid?" union representative Ioanna Maraveli asked.
But authorities are particularly sensitive to protests at the Acropolis, which is seen as an emblem of ancient democracy, particularly as the country largely relies on tourism for revenue.
"This is not just an issue of damage to Greek tourism, particularly under the current, difficult circumstances, it is also an issue of respect for this outstanding monument," government spokesman George Petalotis said.
Culture ministry officials insisted that all salary arrears would be paid.
Visitors who had traveled from far-flung countries were unimpressed by the protest.
"We think this is a shame. We will not recommend that people come to Greece," said Veronica Traverso, a tourist from Argentina standing with a friend outside the padlocked gates. "We are not to blame for Greece's troubles."
Traverso said she was due to leave the city in a couple of hours - her hopes of visiting the Acropolis dashed.
U.S. tourist Dave Walters, from Phoenix, Arizona, said he arrived Thursday on a cruise ship which was leaving in the evening.
"I don't understand. Greece has two main industries, tourism and shipping," he said. "They seem to be cutting their own throats, this is not going to bring tourists to Greece."
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