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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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There will be another emergency demonstration in solidarity with the Egyptian people on SATURDAY, JAN. 29, 12 NOON gathering at Market & Montgomery Streets in San Francisco
Urgent Call from Egyptian National Coalition (Please circulate)
From: nachoua
Date: 2011/1/27
via email
Please circulate as wide as possible
A Call to the People and Governments of the Free World
We call upon all of you to support the Egyptian people's demands for a good life, liberty and an end of despotism. We call upon you to urge this dictatorial regime to stop its bloodshed of the Egyptian people, exercised throughout the Egyptian cities, on top of which comes the city of Suez. We believe that the material and moral support offered to the Egyptian regime, by the American government and European governments, has helped to suppress the Egyptian people.
We hereby call upon the people of the free world to support the Egyptian people's non-violent revolution against corruption and tyranny. We also call upon civil society organisations in America, Europe and the whole world to express their solidarity with Egypt, through holding public demonstrations, particularly on People's Anger Day (28/01/2011), and by denouncing the use of violence against the people.
We hope that you will all support our demands for freedom, justice and peaceful change.
Egyptian National Coalition
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Sunday, January 30, 1:00 P.M.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street (Between 15th and 16th Streets, SF)
Next meeting of United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) to plan for the April 10th March and Rally Against the Wars, assembling at 11:00 A.M., Dolores Park, 18th and Dolores Streets, San Francisco
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Bay Area Supporters of International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum invite you to:
"Honoring Revolutionary Continuity: An Afternoon Public Forum & Fundraiser for the Leon Trotsky Museum in Mexico City"
Sunday, February 13 @ 2:30 p.m.
Alameda Public Library
1550 Oak Street (@ Lincoln Ave.)
Alameda, Calif.
Featuring:
Presentation by ESTEBAN VOLKOV, Leon Trotsky's grandson and president of the Leon Trotsky Museum Foundation, and
Preview of "A Planet Without A Visa: The Movie" -- a film by DAVID WEISS, with presentations by LINDY LAUB, director of the documentary film, and SUZI WEISSMAN, historian of the revolutionary and socialist movements
Also: Honoring founding members of the American Trotskyist movement ESTAR BAUR, ERWIN BAUR & RUTH HARER
Sliding Scale $10 to $20
For more information, call Frank Fried at 510-459-0328
[If you are not able to make the event but would like to make a tax-deductible donation to International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum, please send your check, payable to Global Exchange (our fiscal sponsor), to International Friends, PO Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140.]
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Saturday, March 19, 2011:
Day of Action to Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
Scores of organizations coming together for worldwide protests
In San Francisco, the theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions. The SF action will include a march to boycotted hotels in solidarity with the Lo. 2 workers. The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.
In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.
March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.
The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.
While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.
Actions of civil resistance are spreading.
On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.
Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.
Click this link to endorse the March 19, 2011, Call to Action:
http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=8062&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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Are you joining us on April 8 at the Pentagon in a climate chaos protest codenamed "Operation Disarmageddon?" It has been decided that affinity groups will engage in nonviolent autonomous actions. Do you have an affinity group? Do you have an idea for an action?
So far these are some of the suggested actions:
Send a letter to Sec. of War Robert Gates demanding a meeting to disclose the Pentagon's role in destroying the planet. He will ignore the letter, so a delegation would then go to the Metro Entrance to demand a meeting.
Use crime tape around some area of the Pentagon. The idea of crime/danger taping off the building could be done just outside the main Pentagon reservation entrance (intersection of Army/Navy) making the Alexandria PD the arresting authority (if needed) and where there is no ban on photography. Hazmat suits, a 'converted' truck (or other vehicle) could be part of the street theater. The area where I am thinking is also almost directly below I-95 and there is a bridge over the intersection - making a banner drop possible. Perhaps with the hazmat/street closure at ground level with a banner from above. If possible a coordinated action could be done at other Pentagon entrances and / or other war making institutions.
A procession onto the Pentagon reservation, without reservations, and set up a camp on one of the lawns surrounding The Pentagon. This contingent would reclaim the space in the name of peace and Mother Earth. This contingent would plan to stay there until The Pentagon is turned into a 100% green building using sustainable energy employing people who work for peace and the abolishment of war and life-affirming endeavors.
Bring a potted tree to be placed on the Pentagon's property to symbolize the need to radically reduce its environmental destructiveness.
Since the Pentagon is failing to return to the taxpayers the money it has misappropriated, "Foreclose on the Pentagon."
Banner hanging from a bridge.
Hand out copies of David Swanson's book WAR IS A LIE. Try to deliver a copy to Secretary of War Robert Gates.
Have short speeches in park between Pentagon and river; nice photo with Pentagon in background.
Die-in and chalk or paint outlines of victim's bodies everywhere that remain after the arrest to point to where real crimes are really being committed.
Establish command center, Peacecom? Paxcom? Put several people in white shirts and ties plus a few generals directing their armies for "Operation Disarmageddon."
Make the linkage between the tax dollars going to the Pentagon and war tax resistance. Use the WRL pie chart and carry banners "foreclose on war" and "money for green jobs not war jobs."
Hold a rally with representative speakers before going to the Pentagon Reservation. This would be an opportunity to speak out against warmongering and the Pentagon's role in destroying the environment.
As part of "Operation Disarmageddon," we will take a tree and plant it on the reservation. Our sign reads, "Plant trees not landmines."
Use crime tape on Army/Navy Drive to declare the Pentagon a crime scene. Do street theater there as well. Other affinity groups could go to selected entrances.
Establish a Peace Command Center at the Pentagon. Hold solidarity actions at federal buildings and corporate offices.
What groups have you contacted to suggest joining us at the Pentagon? See below for those who plan to be at the Pentagon on April 8 and for what groups have been contacted.
Kagiso,
Max
April 8, 2011 participants
Beth Adams
Ellen Barfield
Tim Chadwick
Joy First
Jeffrey Halperin
Malachy Kilbride
Max Obuszewski
David Swanson
April 8 Outreach
Beth Adams -- Earth First, Puppet Underground, Emma's Revolution, Joe Gerson-AFSC Cambridge, Code Pink(national via Lisa Savage in Maine), Vets for Peace, FOR, UCC Justice & Witness Ministries, Traprock, Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, (National-INt'l) Vets for Peace and WILPF, Pace e Bene, Christian Peace Witness & UCC Justice & Witness (Cleveland).
Tim Chadwick -- Brandywine, Lepoco, Witness against Torture, Vets for Peace (Thomas Paine Chapter Lehigh Valley PA), and Witness for Peace DC.
Jeffrey Halperin -- peace groups in Saratoga Spring, NY
Jack Lombardo - UNAC will add April 8 2011 to the Future Actions page on our blog, and make note in upcoming E-bulletins, but would appreciate a bit of descriptive text from the organizers and contact point to include when we do - so please advise ASAP! Also, we'll want to have such an announcement for our next print newsletter, which will be coming out in mid-December.
Max Obuszewski - Jonah House & Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore
Bonnie Urfer notified 351 individuals and groups on the Nukewatch list
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Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
Sunday, April 10th* in San Francisco, assemble at Dolores Park (18th and Dolores Streets) at 11:00 A.M.
*This date was changed because of the Annual Cesar Chavez Parade scheduled in San Francisco April 9. This is a huge community event that we can't conflict with.
Saturday, April 9th New York City (Union Sq. at noon)
--Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
--Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
--End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
--Immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
To add your group's name to the endorser list, local, state or national, please contact:
United National Antiwar Committee
P.O. Box 123 Delmar, New York 12054
518-227-6947 UNACpeace.org unacpeace@gmail.com
email you endorsement to:
jmackler@lmi.net and cc: unacpeace@gmail.com
Initial List of Endorsers (List in formation)
* = For Identification only
Endorsers:
United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Center for Constitutional Rights
Muslim Peace Coalition, USA
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Veterans for Peace
International Action Center
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Black Agenda Report
Code Pink
National Assembly to End U.S. Wars and Occupations
World Can't Wait
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
Project Salam
Canadian Peace Alliance
BAYAN USA
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Office of the Americas
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Middle East Children's Alliance
Tariq Ali
Dr. Margaret Flowers PNHP *
Ramsey Clark
Ambassador Syed Ahsani, Former Ambassador from Pakistan
Ahmed Shawki, editor, International Socialist Review
Ali Abunimah, Palestinian American Journalist
Alice Sturn Sutter, Washington Heights Women in Black *
Al-Awda NY: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
American Iranian Friendship Committee
American Muslim Task Force, Dallas/Ft. Worth
Ana Edwards, Chair, Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project - Richmond, Va.
Anthony Arnove, Author, "Iraq: The logic of Withdrawal"
Andy Griggs, Co-chair, California Teachers Association, Peace and Justice Caucus/UTLA-retired*
B. Ross Ashley, NDP Socialist Caucus, Canada *
Bail Out the People Movement
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Barrio Unido, San Francisco
Bashir Abu-Manneh
Baltimore Job Is a Right Campaign
Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, US Peace Council Chapter
Battered Mother's Custody Conference
Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace
Blanca Misse, Student Worker Action Team/UC Berkeley, Academic Workers for Democratic Union - UAW 2865 *
Blauvelt Dominican sisters Social Justice Ministry
Bob Hernandez, Chapter President, SEIU Local 1021*
Bonnie Weinstein - Bay Area United Against Wars Newsletter
Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights
Boston UNAC
Boston University Anti-War Coalition
Café Intifada - Los Angeles
Camilo E. Mejia, Iraq war veteran and resister
Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor
Carole Seligman - Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal *
Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War
Chesapeake Citizens
Howard Terry Adcock, Colombia Support Network, Austin (TX) , Center for Peace and Justice *
Coalition for Justice - Blacksburg, Va.
Colombian Front for Socialism (FECOPES)
Columbus Campaign for Arms Control
Committee for Justice to Defend the Los Angeles 8
Dave Welsh, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council
David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
David Keil - Metro West Peace Action (MWPA) *
Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality - Virginia
Derrick O'Keefe, Co-chair StopWar.ca (Vancouver)
Detroit Committee to Stop FBI/Grand Jury Repression.
Doug Bullock, Albany County Legislator
Dr. Andy Coates PNHP *
DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) - New York
Elaine Brower - national steering committee of World Can't Wait and anti-war military mom
Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST)
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Socialist Party
Gilbert Achcar - Lebanese academic and writer
Guilderland Neighbors for Peace
Haiti Action Committee
Haiti Liberte
Hands off Venezuela
Howie Hawkins, Co-Chair, Green Party of New York State *
IIan Pappe, Director Exeter University, European Centre for Palestine Studies
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
International Socialist Organization
International support Haiti Network (ISHN)
Iraq Peace Action Coalition - Minneapolis
Italo-American Progressive Fraternal Society
Janata Dal (United), India
Jersey City Peace Movement
Jimmy Massey, Founding member of IVAW
John Pilger, Journalist and Documentary film maker
Journal Square Homeless Coalition
Justice for Fallujah Project
Kclabor.org
Karen Schieve, United Educators of San Francisco *
Kim Nguyen, Metrowest Peace Action (MWPA)*
Kwame Binta, The November Coalition
Larry Pinkvey, Black Activist Writers Guild
Lillie "Ms. K" Branch-Kennedy - Director, Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (R.I.H.D.), Virginia
Lisa Savage, CODEPINK Maine, Bring Our War $$ Home Coalition *
Los Angeles - Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee
Maggie Zhou - ClimateSOS *
Maine Veterans for Peace
Malu Aina, Hawaii
Maria Cristina Gutierrez, Exec. Director, Companeros del Barrio
Mark Roman, Waterville Area Bridges for Peace & Justice
Marlena Santoyo, Germantown Friends Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
Mary Flanagan, United Teachers of Richmond *
Masjid As-Salam Mosque, Albany, NY
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Michigan Emergency Committee Against Wars and Injustice
Mike Alewitz, Central Ct. State University *
Middle East Crisis Committee
Mobilization Against War and Occupation - Vancouver, Canada
Mobilization to Free Mumia
Moratorium NOW Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs
Muslim Solidarity Committee
Nancy Murray, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights*
Nancy Parten, Witness For Peace *
Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council *
New Abolitionist Movement
New England United
New Jersey Labor Against War
New Socialist Project
New York City Labor Against the War
New York Collective of Radical Educators
No More Victims
Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
Northeast Peace and Justice Action Coalition
Northern California Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Northwest Greens
NotMyPriorities.org
Nuestro Norte Es El Sur ((NUNO-SUR) Our North is the South
Omar Barghouti, Human rights activist (Palestine)
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum
Pakistani Trade Union Defense Campaign
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action Montgomery
Peacemakers of Schoharie County, New York
Peace and Freedom Party
People of Faith, Connecticut
Peninsula Peace & Justice, Blue Hill, Maine
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center - Palo Alto, Ca.
Peoples Video Network
Phil Wilayto, Editor, The Virginia Defender
Philadelphia Against War
Progressive Peace Coalition, Columbus Ohio
Protestobama.org
Queen Zakia Shabazz - Director, United Parents Against Lead National, Inc.
Radio Free Maine
Ralph Poynter, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Revolutionary Workers Group
Rhode Island Mobilization Committee
Roland Sheppard, Retired Business Agent Painters Local #4, San Francisco *
Rochester Against War
Ron Jacobs, writer
Saladin Muhammad - Founding Member, Black Workers for Justice
Sarah Roche-Mahdi, Code Pink Boston*
Saratoga Peace Alliance
Senior Action Network
Seth Farber, PhD., Institute of Mind and Behavior *
Sherry Wolf - International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Author Sexuality and Socialism
Siege Busters Working Group
Socialist Action
Socialist Organizer
Socialist Viewpoint
Solidarity
Solidarity Committee of the Capital District
Staten Island Council for Peace & Justice
Steve Scher, Breen Party of NYC 26 AD *
Stewart Robinson, Stop Targeting Ohio Poor *
Stop the Wars Coalition, Boston
Tarak Kauff, Veterans for Peace
The Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran
The Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
Twin Cities Peace Campaign
Upper Hudson Peace Action
Virginia Defender
West Hartford Citizens for Peace and Justice
WESPAC Foundation
Women against Military Madness
Women in Black, Westchester
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Pittsburgh
Workers International League
Workers World Party
Youth for International Socialism
To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to:
UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Michelle Alexander | January 7, 2011
The New Jim Crow/ The Drug War/ Mass Incarceration of Blacks
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NewJi
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Georgia Man Fined $5000 for Growing Too Many Vegetables
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRlXieQohhA
kiss my taxed ass! Georgia Man Fined $5000 for Growing Vegetables
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfY1YXk9ihI&NR=1
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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New antiwar song that's bound to be a classic:
box
by tommi avicolli mecca
(c) 2009
Credits are:
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, guitar/vocals
John Radogno, lead guitar
Diana Hartman, vocals, kazoo
Chris Weir, upright bass
Produced and recorded by Khalil Sullivan
I'm the recruiter and if truth be told/ I can lure the young and old
what I do you won't see/ til your kid's in JROTC
CHO ooh, put them in a box drape it with a flag and send them off to mom and dad
send them with a card from good ol' uncle sam, gee it's really just so sad
I'm the general and what I do/ is to teach them to be true
to god and country flag and oil/ by shedding their blood on foreign soil
CHO
I'm the corporate boss and well I know/ war is lots of dough dough dough
you won't find me over there/ they just ship the money right back here
CHO
last of all it's me the holy priest/ my part is not the least
I assure them it's god's will/ to go on out and kill kill kill
CHO
it's really just so sad
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You might enjoy a bit of history:
William Buckley Show with Socialist Workers Party Presidential Candidates
http://vimeo.com/18611069
William Buckley Show with Socialist Workers Party Presidential Candidates from asi somburu on Vimeo.
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'CIA-created Frankenstein': US turns blind eye on terrorist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gW6Dyr1qBU
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Cathie Black Meets With Downtown Parents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHHhLCF0t88&feature=player_embedded
Solution to Crowded Schools? How About Birth Control?
By FERNANDA SANTOS
January 14, 2011, 4:55 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/solution-to-crowded-schools-how-about-birth-control/?ref=nyregion
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Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTcSOygSBBM
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Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
Song for Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eood7DUwI
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Supermax Prison Cell Extraction - Maine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=player_embedded
Warning, this is an extremely brutal video. What do you think? Is this torture?
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Rachel Maddow- New GOP scapegoat- public workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ5byLyKPRI
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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw
police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summ
Protestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related
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The Wars in "Vietnamistan!" (The name Daniel Ellsberg gave to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted from the video...bw)
Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOde31QYbI0&feature=player_embedded
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John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
December 15, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzaclKj2B8M
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WikiLeaks founder concern for Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPrShC8qx4k&feature=player_embedded
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Newsnight: Bailed Julian Assange live interview (16Dec10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NouXB5JACCw&feature=player_embedded
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Julian Assange: 'ongoing attempts to extradite me'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30UhZDOO9A&feature=player_embedded
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Published on Thursday, December 16, 2010 by Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Quantico, the New Gitmo
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/16-0
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
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POLICE KETTLING (STUDENT DEMONSTRATION against the EDUCATION CUTS), LONDON, 30-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRV9h2dyBVU&NR=1
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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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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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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MECA Middle East Children's Alliance
Howard & Roslyn Zinn Presente! Honor Their Legacy By Providing Clean Water for Children in Gaza
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
Howard Zinn supported the work of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) from the beginning. Over the years, he lent his name and his time countless times to support our work. Howard and Roz were both personal friends of mine and Howard helped MECA raise funds for our projects for children in Palestine by coming to the Bay Area and doing events for us.
On the first anniversary of Howard's passing, I hope you will join MECA in celebrating these two extraordinary individuals.
- Barbara Lubin, Executive Director
YES! I want to help MECA build a water purification and desalination unit at the Khan Younis Co-ed Elementary School for 1,400 students in Gaza in honor of Howard & Roslyn Zinn.
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
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Lucasville Hunger Strike Ended, Some Demands Met
From: Freedom Archives
Denis O'Hearn 4:33pm Jan 15
www.Freedomarchives.org Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org
Folks, I have a short report on today's rally at OSP in support of the three men on hunger strike. But, first, I can now report to you the wonderful news that all three have resumed eating because they achieved a victory. The prison authorities have provided, in writing, a set of conditions that virtually meets the demands set out by Bomani Shakur in his letter to Warden Bobby, provided elsewhere on this site.
The hunger strikers send you all thanks for your support and state that they couldn‚t have won their demands without support from people from around the world. But they add to their statement the following: this time they were fighting about their conditions of confinement but now they begin the fight for their lives. They were wrongfully convicted of complicity in 1993 murders in Lucasville prison and have faced retribution because they refused to provide snitch testimony against others who actually committed those murders. Now, because of Ohio's (and other states') application of the death penalty, they still face execution at a future date. Ohio is today exceeded only by Texas in its enthusiasm for applying the death penalty. We need to take some of this energy that was created around the hunger strike to help these men fight for their lives.
So, we may celebrate a great victory for now. Common sense has prevailed in a dark place where there appeared to be no light. But watch this space for further news on their ongoing campaign.
I hope to share a copy of the Ohio prison authorities' written statement that ended this hunger strike in a short time.
As Bomani has told me many times,
It ain't over...
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
2. Visiting is very liberal but first I have to get people on my visiting list Wait til I or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
3. One hour time difference
4. Commissary Money is always welcome It is how I pay for the phone and for email. Also need it for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing , ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons , 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated ? Of course, it's the BOP !)
5. Food is vastly improved. Just had Sunday Brunch real scrambled eggs, PORK sausage, Baked or home fried potatoes, Butter(sweet whipped M'God !!) Grapefruit juice Toast , orange. I will probably regain the weight I lost at MCC! Weighing against that is the fact that to eat we need to walk to another building (about at far as from my house to the F Train) Also included is 3 flights of stairs up and down. May try to get an elevator pass and try NOT to use it.
6. In a room with 4 bunks(small) about two tiers of rooms with same with "atrium" in middle with tv sets and tables and chairs. Estimate about 500 on Unit 2N and there are 4 units. Population Black, Mexicano and other spanish speaking (all of whom iron their underwear, Marta), White, Native Americans (few), no orientals or foreign speaking caucasians--lots are doing long bits, victims of drugs (meth etc) and boyfriends. We wear army style (khaki) pants with pockets tee shirts and dress shirts long sleeved and short sleeved. When one of the women heard that I hadn't ironed in 40 years, they offered to do the shirts for me. (This is typical of the help I get--escorted to meals and every other protection, explanations, supplies, etc. Mostly from white women.) One drawback is not having a bathroom in the room---have to go about 75 yards at all hours of the day and night --clean though.
7. Final Note--the sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous, the place is very open and outdoors there are pecan trees and birds galore (I need books for trees and birds (west) The full moon last night gladdened my heart as I realized it was shining on all of you I hold dear.
Love Struggle
Lynne
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network. December 22, 2010
The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.
We need your help in pressing the following demands:
End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.
Quantico Base Commander
Colonel Daniel Choike
3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-2707 (phone)
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)
Background
In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.
Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."
Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."
In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."
In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.
What can you do?
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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KOREA: Emergency Response Actions Needed
The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.
As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:
NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White House
In Many Cities - Federal Buildings
Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.
China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.
The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.
On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.
UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:
15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!
UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.
The United National Antiwar Committee, www.UNACpeace.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alive
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap
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GEORGIA PRISON STRIKE PETITION:
http://ca.defendpubliceducation.org/?p=716
A handful of East Bay organizations have put together an open letter to the strikers. If your organization would like to become a signatory, you can email me to put you on it you and can do so here.
A Letter to the Prisoners on Strike in Georgia,
We, as members of activist and community organizations in the Bay Area of California, send our support for your strike against the terrible conditions you face in Georgia's prisons. We salute you for making history as your strike has become the largest prison strike in the history of this nation. As steadfast defenders of human and civil rights, we recognize the potential that your action has to improve the lives of millions subject to inhumane treatment in correctional facilities across this country.
Every single day, prisoners face the same deplorable and unnecessarily punitive conditions that you have courageously decided to stand up against. For too long, this nation has chosen silence in the face of the gross injustices that our brothers and sisters in prison are subjected to. Your fight against these injustices is a necessary and righteous struggle that must be carried out to victory.
We have heard about the brutal acts that Georgia Department of Corrections officers have been resorting to as a means of breaking your protest and we denounce them. In order to put a stop to the violence to which you have been subjected, we are in the process of contacting personnel at the different prison facilities and circulating petitions addressed to the governor and the Georgia DOC. We will continue to expose the DOC's shameless physical attacks on you and use our influence to call for an immediate end to the violence.
Here, in the Bay Area, we are all too familiar with the violence that this system is known to unleash upon our people. Recently, our community erupted in protest over the killing of an unarmed innocent black man named Oscar Grant by transit police in Oakland. We forced the authorities to arrest and convict the police officer responsible for Grant's murder by building up a mass movement. We intend to win justice with you and stop the violent repression of your peaceful protest in the same way-by appealing to the power and influence of the masses.
We fully support all of your demands. We strongly identify with your demand for expanded educational opportunities. In recent years, our state government has been initiating a series of massive cuts to our system of public education that continue to endanger our right to a quality, affordable education; in response, students all across our state have stood up and fought back just as you are doing now. In fact, students and workers across the globe have begun to organize and fight back against austerity measures and the corresponding violence of the state. Just in the past few weeks in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico - tens and hundreds of thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets. We, as a movement, are gaining momentum and we do so even more as our struggles are unified and seen as interdependent. At times we are discouraged; it may seem insurmountable, but in the words of Malcolm X, "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."
You have inspired us. News of your strike, from day one, has served to inspire and invigorate hundreds of students and community organizers here in Berkeley and Oakland alone. We are especially inspired by your ability to organize across color lines and are interested in hearing an account from the inside of how this process developed and was accomplished. You have also encouraged us to take more direct actions toward radical prison reform in our own communities, namely Santa Rita County Jail and San Quentin Prison. We are now beginning the process of developing a similar set of demands regarding expediting processing (can take 20-30 hours to get a bed, they call it "bullpen therapy"), nutrition, visiting and phone calls, educational services, legal support, compensation for labor and humane treatment in general. We will also seek to unify the education and prison justice movements by collaborating with existing organizations that have been engaging in this work.
We echo your call: No more Slavery! Injustice to one is injustice to all!
In us, students, activists, the community members and people of the Bay Area, you have an ally. We will continue to spread the news about your cause all over the Bay Area and California, the country and world. We pledge to do everything in our power to make sure your demands are met.
In solidarity,
UC-Berkeley Student Worker Action Team (SWAT) _ Community Action Project (CAP) _ La Voz de los Trabajadores _ Laney College Student Unity & Power (SUP) _ Laney College Black Student Union (BSU)
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In Solidarity
By Kevin Cooper
On Thursday, December 9, 2010, the inmates in the state of Georgia sat down in unity and peace in order to stand up for their human rights.
African American, White, and Latino inmates put aside their differences, if they had any, and came together as a 'People' fighting for their humanity in a system that dehumanizes all of them.
For this they have my utmost respect and appreciation and support. I am in true solidarity with them all!
For further information about Kevin Cooper:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony - that he only saw one attacker - was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has many other troubling aspects which call into question the reliability of the state's case and its conduct in obtaining this conviction (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/013/2004/en).
Kevin Cooper was less than eight hours from execution in 2004 when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a stay and sent the case back to the District Court for testing on blood and hair evidence, including to establish if the police had planted evidence. The District Court ruled in 2005 that the testing had not proved Kevin Cooper's innocence - his lawyers (and five Ninth Circuit judges) maintain that it did not do the testing as ordered. Nevertheless, in 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling. One of the judges described the result as "wholly discomforting" because of evidence tampering and destruction, but noted that she was constrained by US law, which places substantial obstacles in the way of successful appeals.
In 2009, the Ninth Circuit refused to have the whole court rehear the case. Eleven of its judges dissented. One of the dissenting opinions, running to more than 80 pages and signed by five judges, warned that "the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man". On the question of the evidence testing, they said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and...imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing" ordered by the Ninth Circuit. They pointed to a test result that, if valid, indicated that evidence had been planted, and they asserted that the district court had blocked further scrutiny of this issue.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had already denied clemency in 2004 when the Ninth Circuit issued its stay. At the time, he had said that the "courts have reviewed this case for more than eighteen years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming". Clearly, a notable number of federal judges disagree. The five judges in the Ninth Circuit's lengthy dissent in 2009 stated that the evidence of Kevin Cooper's guilt at his trial was "quite weak" and concluded that he "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him".
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
On 2 June 1983, two days before the Chino Hills murders, Kevin Cooper had escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a four-year term for burglary, and had hidden in an empty house near the Ryen home for two nights. After his arrest, he became the focus of public hatred. Outside the venue of his preliminary hearing, for example, people hung an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the Nigger!!" At the time of the trial, jurors were confronted by graffiti declaring "Die Kevin Cooper" and "Kevin Cooper Must Be Hanged". Kevin Cooper pleaded not guilty - the jury deliberated for seven days before convicting him - and he has maintained his innocence since then. Since Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency in 2004, more evidence supporting Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence has emerged, including for example, testimony from three witnesses who say they saw three white men near the crime scene on the night of the murders with blood on them.
In 2007, Judge Margaret McKeown was the member of the Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel who indicated that she was upholding the District Court's 2005 ruling despite her serious concerns. She wrote: "Significant evidence bearing on Cooper's guilt has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued, including, for example, blood-covered coveralls belonging to a potential suspect who was a convicted murderer, and a bloody t-shirt, discovered alongside the road near the crime scene. The managing criminologist in charge of the evidence used to establish Cooper's guilt at trial was, as it turns out, a heroin addict, and was fired for stealing drugs seized by the police. Countless other alleged problems with the handling and disclosure of evidence and the integrity of the forensic testing and investigation undermine confidence in the evidence". She continued that "despite the presence of serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation and evidence supporting the conviction, we are constrained by the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)". Judge McKeown wrote that "the habeas process does not account for lingering doubt or new evidence that cannot leap the clear and convincing hurdle of AEDPA. Instead, we are left with a situation in which confidence in the blood sample is murky at best, and lost, destroyed or tampered evidence cannot be factored into the final analysis of doubt. The result is wholly discomforting, but one that the law demands".
Even if it is correct that the AEDPA demands this result, the power of executive clemency is not so confined. Last September, for example, the governor of Ohio commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence because of doubts about his guilt even though his death sentence had been upheld on appeal (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/079/2010/en). Governor Ted Strickland said that despite circumstantial evidence linking the condemned man to the crime, "many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it. In particular, Mr Keith's conviction relied upon the linking of certain eyewitness testimony with certain forensic evidence about which important questions have been raised. I also find the absence of a full investigation of other credible suspects troubling." The same could be said in the case of Kevin Cooper, whose lawyer is asking Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence before he leaves office on 2 January 2011. While Kevin Cooper does not yet have an execution date, it is likely that one will be set, perhaps early in 2011.
More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence in the USA since 1976. At the original trial in each case, the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear beyond any dispute that the USA's criminal justice system is capable of making mistakes. International safeguards require that the death penalty not be imposed if guilt is not "based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts". Amnesty International opposes all executions regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the guilt or innocence of the condemned.
California has the largest death row in the USA, with more than 700 prisoners under sentence of death out of a national total of some 3,200. California accounts for 13 of the 1,234 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. There have been 46 executions in the USA this year. The last execution in California was in January 2006.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death;
- Urging Governor Schwarzenegger to take account of the continuing doubts about Kevin Cooper's guilt, including as expressed by more than 10 federal judges since 2004, when executive clemency was last requested;
- Urging the Governor to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence.
APPEALS TO:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA
Fax: 1 916-558-3160
Email: governor@governor.ca.gov or via http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact
Salutation : Dear Governor
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 2 January 2011.
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
** POSTAGE RATES **
Within the United States:
$0.28 - Postcards
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To Canada:
$0.75 - Postcards
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.509.8193
Fax: 202.675.8566
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE
Your Year-End Gift for the Children
Double your impact with this matching gift opportunity!
Dear Friend of the Children,
You may have recently received a letter from me via regular mail with a review of the important things you helped MECA accomplish for the children in 2010, along with a special Maia Project decal.
My letter to you also included an announcement of MECA's first ever matching gift offer. One of our most generous supporters will match all gifts received by December 31. 2010 to a total of $35,000.
So, whether you are a long time supporter, or giving for the first-time... Whether you can give $10 or $1,000... This is a unique opportunity to double the impact of your year-end gift!
Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar, making it go twice as far so that MECA can:
* Install twenty more permanent drinking water units in Gaza schools though our Maia Project
* Continue our work with Playgrounds for Palestine to complete a community park in the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where violent Israeli settlers attack children and adults, Israeli police arrest the victims, and the city conducts "administrative demolitions" of Palestinian homes.
* Send a large medical aid shipment to Gaza.
* Renew support for "Let the Children Play and Heal," a program in Gaza to help children cope with trauma and grief through arts programs, referrals to therapists, educational materials for families and training for mothers.
Your support for the Middle East Children's Alliance's delivers real, often life-saving, help. And it does more than that. It sends a message of hope and solidarity to Palestine-showing the people that we are standing beside them as they struggle to bring about a better life for their children.
With warm regards,
Barbara Lubin
Founder and Director
P.S. Please give as much as you possible can, and please make your contribution now, so it will be doubled. Thank you so much.
P.S.S. If you didn't receive a MAIA Project decal in the mail or if you would like another one, please send an email message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "MAIA Project decal" in the subject line when you make your contribution.
To make a gift by mail send to:
MECA, 1101 8th Street, Berkley, CA 94710
To make a gift by phone, please call MECA's off at: 510-548-0542
To "GO PAPERLESS" and receive all your MECA communications by email, send a message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "Paperless" in the subject line.
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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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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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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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Pesticide linked to bee deaths should be suspended, MPs told
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor and Josephine Forster
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/pesticide-linked-to-bee-deaths-should-be-suspended-mps-told-2194480.html
2) Protesters in Egypt Defy Ban as Government Cracks Down
By KAREEM FAHIM and MONA EL-NAGGAR
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/middleeast/27egypt.html?hp
3) Tunisia Issues Warrant for Arrest of Ousted Leader
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/africa/27tunisia.html?hp
4) Retirements Swallowed by Debt
By SHERISSE PHAM
January 26, 2011, 12:27 pm
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/retirements-swallowed-by-debt/?hp
5) Murderer Is Executed in Georgia After Losing Stay
By KIM SEVERSON and ROBBIE BROWN
January 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/26lethal.html?ref=world
6) Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
"But while I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is chilling to contemplate the possible government prosecution of WikiLeaks for making secrets public, let alone the passage of new laws to punish the dissemination of classified information, as some have advocated. Taking legal recourse against a government official who violates his trust by divulging secrets he is sworn to protect is one thing. But criminalizing the publication of such secrets by someone who has no official obligation seems to me to run up against the First Amendment and the best traditions of this country. As one of my colleagues asks: If Assange were an understated professorial type rather than a character from a missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffused with such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the reaction to the leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more Americans be speaking up against the threat of reprisals?"
By BILL KELLER
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?hp
7) Jailed Akron Mom, Kelley Williams-Bolar Released By Judge Patricia Cosgrove
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
http://www.rippdemup.com/2011/01/jailed-akron-mom-kelley-williams-bolar.html?m=1
8) Thousands in Yemen Protest Against the Government
By NADA BAKRI and J. DAVID GOODMAN
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html?hp
9) Egyptian Youths Drive the Revolt Against Mubarak
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/middleeast/27opposition.html?hp
10) In Panel's Report, Stern Warning on Repeating Financial Crisis
By SEWELL CHAN
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/business/economy/28inquiry.html?hp
11) Egyptian Markets Fall as Protests Gather Support
By KAREEM FAHIM and LIAM STACK
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28egypt.html?ref=world
12) Dutch Lawmakers Question Shell on Oil Pollution in Nigeria
By DAVID JOLLY
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/science/earth/27nigeria.html?ref=world
13) Colombia: Coal Mine Explosion Kills as Many as 20
By SIMON ROMERO
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/americas/27webbriefs-Columbia.html?ref=world
14) Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
By TAMAR LEWIN
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html?ref=education
15) In Plan to Improve County Jail, a Model for Immigrant Detention Centers
[The real purpose is to expand the detention centers. Another Obama "reform."...bw]
"The expanded detention center would hold as many as 2,750 immigrants - 1,750 more than it does now - increasing the number of detainee beds in and around the region by as much as 60 percent, federal officials said. ...Federal officials have also signaled their intent to expand or build centers in or near Miami, Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco."
By KIRK SEMPLE
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/nyregion/28detain.html?ref=nyregion
18) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA:
Kevin Zeese
Bradley Manning Support Network
press@bradleymanning.org
+1-202-640-4388
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1) Pesticide linked to bee deaths should be suspended, MPs told
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor and Josephine Forster
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/pesticide-linked-to-bee-deaths-should-be-suspended-mps-told-2194480.html
A new generation of pesticides is implicated in the widespread deaths of bees and other pollinators and should be suspended in Britain while the Government reviews new scientific evidence about their effects, MPs were told yesterday.
Neonicotinoid pesticides are linked by "a growing weight of science" to insect losses, and the assessment regimes for them are inadequate, the Labour MP Martin Caton told the House of Commons.
Mr Caton, MP for Gower, said in an adjournment debate that "alarm bells should be ringing" about neonicotinoids, which are "systemic" insecticides - that is, they are present in every part of treated plants, including the pollen and nectar which bees and other pollinators regularly gather. At the moment, the Government's position is that the compounds are safe when used properly, and there are no restrictions on their UK use - even though they have been banned, in varying degrees, in other countries.
Related articles
Last week The Independent highlighted new research from the US suggesting that neonicotinoids make honey bees far more vulnerable to diseases, even at doses so tiny that they cannot subsequently be detected.
Mr Caton told MPs that several pieces of fresh research had emerged "which tie the use of neonicotionods into environmental damage to honeybees and wild pollinators". Before that, he said, the invertebrate conservation charity Buglife had produced a review of 100 scientific studies and papers on the subject highlighting the concern.
On the basis of their findings Buglife had called on the Government to reconsider the position of neonicotinoids, and Lord Henley, a minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), had replied that both the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) and the Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD) had reviewed the Buglife study, although he "did not answer the main thrust of the report".
In fact, Mr Caton told MPs, the ACP had not reviewed the study, and the CRD review of it was not finished. "But we know that Defra, without a completed review of the report, decided not to accept [Buglife's] interpretation of the science, and continued to maintain that we have a robust system of assessing risks from pesticides in the UK," he said. He called on the Food and Farming minister, Jim Paice, who was responding for the Government, to suspend use of neonicotinoids "until the best scientific evidence gives them the all-clear".
The Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, said Defra "seems extraordinarily complacent about the health of bees". She told MPs: "As long ago as 2005, I asked the European Commission to comment on a Defra cut that saw a halving of seasonal bee inspectors. Given that beekeeping contributes over £165m a year to the UK's economy in direct terms, and has an unquantifiable value in terms of the health of our ecological systems, this complacency seems very misplaced."
Mr Paice rejected the charge of complacency, saying the Government took the issue of bee health very seriously, and that he himself had raised it in the House as long ago as 1997. He said the Buglife report had been fully reviewed and advice taken from government agencies, with the conclusion that, as an amalgamation of available evidence, the report did not "raise new issues".
When Mr Caton intervened to say that a review had not, in fact, been fully completed, Mr Paice said: "This is news to me."
He promised to respond in writing to Mr Caton's concerns.
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2) Protesters in Egypt Defy Ban as Government Cracks Down
By KAREEM FAHIM and MONA EL-NAGGAR
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/middleeast/27egypt.html?hp
CAIRO - Defying a new ban on public gatherings, small groups of protesters appeared in Cairo and other cities on Wednesday, a day after tens of thousands of people around the country marched in opposition to the nearly 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
In front of Cairo's press and lawyer's syndicate buildings, more than 100 people shouted slogans, outnumbered by a force of security officers. "You're protecting thieves," they chanted. Police officers began striking the protesters with bamboo sticks.
Later in the afternoon, young protesters fought with police officers in downtown neighborhoods in clashes that spilled onto the streets of the working class neighborhood of Boulaq. Residents there joined forces with the protesters, prompting security officers to fire concussion grenades and tear gas. After hundreds of young men ran two armored troop carriers out of the neighborhood - in reverse, at top speed - the protest wended its way past the Ramses Hilton, an upscale tourist hotel, as guards shut the gates.
As the protesters stopped traffic on the riverside Corniche, for at least the third time in two days, dozens of the Interior Ministry's feared plainclothes officers ran at the crowd, laying about them with sticks.
The Associated Press, quoting witnesses, said that riot police armed with batons attacked about 100 protesters in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, arresting nearly half.
The government's effort to ban protests showed the extent to which it had been rattled by the scale of Tuesday's demonstrations, among the largest in decades here, and focused on the central Tahrir Square. "No provocative movements or protest gatherings or organizing marches or demonstrations will be allowed," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The United States ambassador in Cairo called on the Egyptian government "to allow peaceful public demonstrations," and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated that call in blunt remarks to reporters.
"We urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications including on social media sites," she said, Reuters reported. Mrs. Clinton's remarks came a day after she called the government in Egypt "stable."
During protests on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, many reported trouble accessing Facebook and Twitter, the social networking sites that helped organize and spread news of the protests. Twitter confirmed that its site had been blocked in Egypt on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Adding to the government's challenges, the country's benchmark stock index fell more than 6 percent when markets reopened early Wednesday, Reuters reported. They had been closed Tuesday for the national holiday honoring the police, a day the protesters co-opted. .
Nadeem Mansour, a human rights advocate at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center in Cairo, said that the center had received reports that hundreds of protesters had been arrested in Tuesday's demonstrations. He said people were being detained throughout Tuesday, but the bulk of the arrests took place at overnight.
The Associated Press, citing unnamed Egyptian security officials, reported that 860 protesters have been arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday, roughly two-thirds of them in Cairo.
That first day of protests, fueled in part by the toppling of the authoritarian government in Tunisia, began small but grew, with protesters occupying Tahrir - Liberation - Square. Security forces, normally quick to crack down on public dissent, were slow to suppress the demonstrations, allowing them to swell.
That shifted early Wednesday. Police officers firing rubber bullets and tear-gas grenades succeeded in driving groups of demonstrators from the square as a sit-in grew into a confrontation involving thousands of people.
Plainclothes officers beat several demonstrators and protesters set fire to a police car.
Cairo braced for broader protests Wednesday, but as of midday, Tahrir Square was clogged with normal traffic. Dozens of security officers in armored personnel carriers stood by.
Elsewhere in the city, troop carriers were also stationed in front of government buildings and in working-class neighborhoods.
The Tuesday protests were scattered across the country, occurring in Alexandria, Suez and other cities besides Cairo. There were reports of at least four deaths, including three protesters, and many injuries.
On Tuesday, photographers in Alexandria caught people tearing up a large portrait of Mr. Mubarak. An Internet video of demonstrations in Mahalla el-Kubra showed the same, while a crowd snapped cellphone photos and cheered. The acts - rare, and bold here - underscored the anger coursing through the protests and the challenge they might pose to the aging and ailing Egyptian leader.
Several observers said the protests represented the largest display of popular dissatisfaction in recent memory, perhaps since 1977, when people across Egypt violently protested the elimination of subsidies for food and other basic goods.
The government quickly placed blame for the protests on Egypt's largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is tolerated but officially banned. In a statement, the Interior Ministry said the protests were the work of "instigators" led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement had announced in advance it would not participate, and responded to the government's accusations by declaring that it had little to do with Tuesday's turnout.
The reality that emerged from interviews with protesters - many of whom said they were independents - was more complicated and reflected one of the government's deepest fears: that opposition to Mr. Mubarak's rule spreads across ideological lines and includes average people angered by corruption and economic hardship as well as secular and Islamist opponents. That broad support could make it harder for the government to co-opt or crush those demanding change.
"The big, grand ideological narratives were not seen today," said Amr Hamzawy, research director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. "This was not about 'Islam is the solution' or anything else."
Instead, the protests seemed to reflect a spreading unease with Mr. Mubarak on issues from extension of an emergency law that allows arrests without charge, to his presiding over a stagnant bureaucracy that citizens say is incapable of handling even basic responsibilities.
Their size seemed to represent a breakthrough for opposition groups harassed by the government as they struggle to break Mr. Mubarak's monopoly on political life.
One protester, Ramy Rafat, 25, said he lived in El-Marg, an impoverished neighborhood in north Cairo. Mr. Rafat, who has a master's degree in petroleum geology and is unemployed, said he learned about the protest on a Facebook page for Khaled Said, 28. Mr. Said's family says police officers fatally beat him last year.
"There are a lot of things wrong with this country," Mr. Rafat said. "The president has been here for 30 years. Why?"
Aya Sayed Khalil, 23, brought her sister, her mother and her father to the protest. "I told them the revolution was coming," she said. Asked about their political affiliation, Ms. Khalil's mother, Mona, said, "We're just Egyptians."
The marchers came from all social classes and included young men recording tense moments on cellphone cameras, and middle-age women carrying flags of the Wafd party, one of Egypt's opposition groups. A doctor, Wesam Abdulaziz, 29, said she had traveled two hours to join the protest. She had been to one demonstration before, concerning the treatment of Mr. Said.
"I came to change the government," she said. "I came to change the entire regime."
Liam Stack and Dawlat Magdy contributed reporting in Cairo and J. David Goodman in New York.
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3) Tunisia Issues Warrant for Arrest of Ousted Leader
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/africa/27tunisia.html?hp
TUNIS - The interim government here has issued an international arrest warrant for the overthrown president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and members of his family for financial offenses, the justice minister said Wednesday, as protesters continued their call to rid the government of cabinet members connected to Mr. Ben Ali.
The warrant has been sent to Interpol. Meanwhile, Switzerland announced that it has blocked tens of millions of dollars in funds connected to the Ben Ali family, but did not provide further details.
In a country where it is novel for public officials to face a free press, the justice minister, Lazhar Karoui Chebbi, announced the warrant in a long monologue at the head of a conference table surrounded by throngs of journalists whose subsequent questions quickly descended into a shouting match. Mr. Chebbi was once allied with Mr. Ben Ali.
As the minister spoke, the chants of protesters calling for the release of political prisoners came in through the windows, while the families of prisoners thronged the steps to the ministry and the hall outside the room.
A small group of pro-government demonstrators called for calm, but army and police forces resorted to tear gas and shots in the air to hold back an antigovernment crowd of more than 1,000 people massed outside the prime minister's offices. Some scaled the walls of government buildings, toppled a lamppost and nearly pulled a police officer out of his armored car.
But there were signs that the government's crackdown was being carefully calibrated to avoid further energizing the opposition. The police cleared only a side street and left the protest in the square to continue, surrounded by army soldiers watching from the sidelines.
Many in the crowd were near exhaustion. Some had driven hundreds of miles to get to the protests by Tuesday morning; many had had little sleep. But excitement spread as a scheduled news conference by Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi neared, in the hope that he would announce an end to the dominance of the interim government by members of the old ruling party - including himself.
Government officials have insisted that only members of the old ruling party have the experience necessary to guide the country to free elections in six months, and they appear to be attempting to wait out the protests. Officials have suggested they are looking for a protest leader to emerge in order to negotiate an end to the impasse.
The protesters, meanwhile, say history gives them no reason to trust the same people who helped Mr. Ben Ali rule Tunisia for 23 years. "They must all go and let us build this country with our brains and our hands," said Amina Azouz, a Tunisian graduate student at the Sorbonne and online activist protesting outside the prime ministers office. "Please, leave us alone!"
In efforts to placate the demonstrators, the Tunisian government has put forward a plan to spend over $350 million to compensate those injured in the unrest, the families of people who were killed, and craftsmen and traders whose businesses have suffered during the revolt.
A week ago, government officials offered a toll of civilian casualties from the month of protests saying that 78 had died and 94 injured. There were also deaths among security forces, they said.
The confrontation seemed again to raise the question of what would satisfy protesters here whose example in recent days seemed to provide inspiration to antigovernment marchers in Egypt calling for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.
Demonstrators in Beirut, meanwhile, rallied Tuesday against Parliament's election of a new prime minister backed by Hezbollah, and have helped fuel the impression of a region in turmoil.
On Tuesday in Tunis, after days of antigovernment protests, dozens marched in the capital to show their support for the interim government that replaced Mr. Ben Ali, pleading with their fellow citizens to give the temporary leadership time to hold elections.
But they remained vastly outnumbered by more than a thousand protesters demanding the dissolution of the government, angry at its continued domination by former members of Mr. Ben Ali's ruling party.
The two groups scuffled briefly.
The state news agency also reported that another Tunisian had attempted to set himself on fire in the impoverished interior city of Gefsa. It was the first instance of an attempt at self-immolation since a peddler burned himself to death, setting off the country's revolt. More than a dozen people in North Africa and the Middle East have set themselves on fire since the Tunisian revolution started.
There was also sporadic evidence that not all of the police were abiding by the interim government's pledges to respect press freedoms. Moises Saman, a freelance photojournalist with the Magnum agency, working in Tunis for The New York Times, was mildly injured when he was assaulted by about a half-dozen police officers Tuesday evening at dusk. He was attempting to photograph a group of police officers beating a man in an alley.
Alan Cowell and Marlise Simons contributed reporting from Paris.
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4) Retirements Swallowed by Debt
By SHERISSE PHAM
January 26, 2011, 12:27 pm
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/retirements-swallowed-by-debt/?hp
Bill Freedman, 86, felt financially secure. He had a comfortable income from Social Security, an I.R.A., investments and an inheritance. But when he took a fall last October, his daughter, Nancy Freedman, went to his Manhattan apartment and found several credit cards piled up in a desk drawer. After making a few phone calls, she discovered he was $15,000 in debt.
"I read him the riot act," said Ms. Freedman. Her father maintains that his finances were manageable. Still, he thought it was a good idea to hand over the reins to his daughter, who now has his power-of-attorney. His bills and statements are mailed to her apartment.
"I urge everyone to have that conversation with their parents" about money, said Ms. Freedman. "I also think it is the parents' responsibility to tell their children."
Is it? Study after study shows that more of them are living with heavy credit card debt, regularly swiping cards to pay for things like gas and groceries. And as the balances pile up, the elderly cope in a number of ways. Some, like Mr. Freedman, permit their adult children to step in, while others seek outside counsel in an effort to preserve their independence. Some elderly debtors are trapped in limbo, too proud to ask for help but too strapped to pay off the debt.
No wonder growing numbers of the elderly have or want jobs. A report from Boston College's Sloan Center on Aging and Work found 30 percent of workers over age 55 have more credit card debt than retirement savings; 41 percent have as much. The majority of older Americans face the very real possibility of starting retirement in the red.
"They don't have anything to fall back on," said Carl Vanhorn, a public policy professor at Rutgers University and co-author of the study. "They can't sell their house, their retirement savings are non-existent, they owe all this money in credit card debt - and that's a bleak future."
The growing reliance on plastic has driven the average credit card debt for people over 65 to $10,235, according to a July 2009 study by Demos, a public policy research organization in New York.
José Garcia, associate director of research and policy at Demos, said the increase in the number of older Americans getting new credit cards outpaces that of any other age group.
It is all too easy to get new credit cards, said 76-year-old Agnes Brady. On paper, Mrs. Brady was an ideal applicant. She had inherited her husband's pension when he died, and later sold their house and paid off all her outstanding debts. She had a good credit rating and $42,000 in annual income.
But her one-bedroom condo in Monroe, N.Y., cost $1,200 a month. Out-of-pocket medical expenses and insurance payments regularly topped $200 each month. She picked up credit cards from Macy's, TJ Maxx, Pier 1 Imports and other stores.
Between bills, doctor's visits and gifts for the grandchildren she dotes on, Mrs. Brady soon found herself mired in debt. After looking at her statements, she recalled, "I said, 'Mother of God, look at the interest. How are you going to get caught up?'"
Mrs. Brady pays interest rates from 21.9 percent to 23 percent on five store credit cards, carrying balances between $2,400 and $5,015. She cut up her Visa card from Bank of America, but still owes $7,488.39 on it. Altogether, her debt tops $22,000. Every month, she struggles to meet minimum payments.
"I sat down and realized how much I had every month, which is nothing," said Mrs. Brady.
An increasing number of seniors seeking credit counseling last year from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (N.F.C.C.). One of them was Mary Ward, 82, of Philadelphia. With no savings to tap into, Mrs. Ward was getting cash through her six credit cards to lend to her daughter and to pay for everyday needs.
"Some were 19 [percent], some 10, some 14," she said. "Whatever it was, I would get it just to have credit cards."
Soon, she was scrambling to make minimum payments on $6,000 in debt, borrowing from one card to make payments on another. She eventually went to a local branch of the N.F.C.C., where a counselor helped persuade her creditors to lower their interest rates. Mrs. Ward was soon paying a manageable $240 per month and will be debt-free in September.
Bankruptcy might make sense in some cases, said Gail Cunningham, a spokesperson for the N.F.C.C., but the elderly are "a segment of the population that would be reluctant to frivolously file bankruptcy. They feel a financial and a moral obligation to repay their debts." The proportion of seniors filing for bankruptcy accounts for less than 9 percent of all petitioners, she noted.
But this generation is also proud and hesitant to ask for help. "Doing financial counseling with this group, you spend a lot of time working with them, giving them permission to access social services, explaining to them that they contributed to the system," said Leslie Linfield, executive director of the Institute for Financial Literacy.
Mrs. Linfield encourages adult children and family members to get involved, ascertain what is going on financially and help parents access services like veteran pension benefits if necessary.
The group has also developed a new course, "Senior Financial Safety," that covers money management, consumer fraud, post-retirement planning and caring for senior peers. All told, 12,000 seniors around the country will take the course this year through local community organizations.
As for Agnes Brady, the grandmother staring down $22,000 of debt, she hopes other seniors will learn from her mistakes. Her advice: "Make sure you have an egg for yourself, my honey. And don't get into credit cards."
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5) Murderer Is Executed in Georgia After Losing Stay
By KIM SEVERSON and ROBBIE BROWN
January 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/us/26lethal.html?ref=world
ATLANTA - A convicted murderer in Georgia whose lawyers argued that the painkilling drugs used to help execute him might be ineffective lost an 11th-hour appeal to the Supreme Court on Tuesday night and was put to death shortly before midnight.
Justice Clarence Thomas had briefly stayed the execution of the inmate, Emmanuel Hammond, 45. But the court then allowed it to go forward.
Earlier in the day, a county court and the State Supreme Court both ruled that evidence supposedly showing that a Georgia prisoner who was executed in September had suffered pain because of an ineffective dose of the drug, sodium thiopental, was too speculative to warrant a stay.
Georgia prison officials first injected Mr. Hammond with sodium thiopental ordered from an unlicensed British company that operates from the back of a London driving school.
Mr. Hammond's public defenders, as well as death penalty opponents, argued that the British company might have shipped batches of the drug that were past the expiration date and possibly ineffective at blocking the pain of paralysis and death that come with execution.
Sodium thiopental, one of three drugs commonly used in combination in executions, is designed to make sure the prisoner will not feel pain when medications that paralyze the body and then stop the heart are introduced.
In the two last-minute appeals Tuesday, lawyers argued that in September the same drug failed to render the other inmate unconscious before the injections that followed.
The case raises new questions about how well certain batches of the drug work and the lengths states have taken to obtain it.
The drug has been in short supply throughout the 34 states that use it to execute prisoners after the American company that manufactured it stopped producing it last year, saying that obtaining the active ingredient in the drug had become difficult. Scarcity of the drug has led to delays in executions in at least two states, California and Oklahoma.
Corrections officials in several other states have been scrambling to use existing supplies before they expire and have been studying whether other drugs could be substituted. On Tuesday, Ohio announced that it would begin substituting the surgical sedative pentobarbital in March, following Oklahoma, which last year became the first state to switch to pentobarbital.
Buying the drug from Europe has become increasingly problematic for corrections officials. The American company that once supplied the drug, Hospira Inc., had hoped to begin producing the drug this winter at its plant in Italy, but Italian authorities said it would not allow the drug to be exported if it was to be used for capital punishment.
As the shortage became acute last fall, California and Arizona obtained shipments of sodium thiopental from an unlicensed British wholesaler called Dream Pharma, but the British government has since refused to allow exports of drugs for use in capital punishment, a policy that is under consideration by the European Union.
Georgia, too, received supplies of sodium thiopental from the same source and was likely manufactured by a company that has not existed for five years, according to Mr. Hammond's lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union and Reprieve, a British human rights group. Their evidence is based on public records that contain receipts and e-mails tracing the transactions.
At least two other states might also have received shipments, but only Georgia and Arizona have believed to have used the imported drug.
"Questions about this drug mean some executions are going to be delayed in a lot of states," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
The imported drug was at the heart of arguments in three hearings on Tuesday. Mr. Hammond's lawyers wanted the execution delayed until the provenance and quality of the drugs could be verified.
The Food and Drug Administration initially did not allow the drug into the country because it was suspected to be adulterated or mislabeled. The drug, which usually expires in about a year, carried a 2006 date. For reasons that are unclear, the F.D.A. eventually did allow it into the country.
"The origin and irregularities of these drugs raise serious questions as to whether they are adulterated, expired or counterfeit," Mr. Hammond's lawyers wrote in their appeal to the State Supreme Court. "Without the requested relief, Mr. Hammond will suffer irreparable harm in that he will be executed in an unconstitutional manner."
The state argued that there was no evidence the drugs would not work.
"Such speculation is inadequate to support a stay of execution," wrote Samuel S. Olens, the Georgia attorney general. "In addition, the timing of the filing of this matter, one week after an execution date was set, indicates it is filed for the purpose of delay."
The murder victim's sister-in-law, Bari Love, said Tuesday that the family would not comment on the scheduled execution.
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6) Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
"But while I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is chilling to contemplate the possible government prosecution of WikiLeaks for making secrets public, let alone the passage of new laws to punish the dissemination of classified information, as some have advocated. Taking legal recourse against a government official who violates his trust by divulging secrets he is sworn to protect is one thing. But criminalizing the publication of such secrets by someone who has no official obligation seems to me to run up against the First Amendment and the best traditions of this country. As one of my colleagues asks: If Assange were an understated professorial type rather than a character from a missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffused with such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the reaction to the leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more Americans be speaking up against the threat of reprisals?"
By BILL KELLER
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?hp
This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication. Not really, I confessed. The Times doesn't have encrypted phone lines, or a Cone of Silence. Well then, he said, he would try to speak circumspectly. In a roundabout way, he laid out an unusual proposition: an organization called WikiLeaks, a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks's leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence, offered The Guardian half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables. The Guardian suggested - to increase the impact as well as to share the labor of handling such a trove - that The New York Times be invited to share this exclusive bounty. The source agreed. Was I interested?
I was interested.
The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn't decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us. By the end of the year, the story of this wholesale security breach had outgrown the story of the actual contents of the secret documents and generated much breathless speculation that something - journalism, diplomacy, life as we know it - had profoundly changed forever.
Soon after Rusbridger's call, we sent Eric Schmitt, from our Washington bureau, to London. Schmitt has covered military affairs expertly for years, has read his share of classified military dispatches and has excellent judgment and an unflappable demeanor. His main assignment was to get a sense of the material. Was it genuine? Was it of public interest? He would also report back on the proposed mechanics of our collaboration with The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel, which Assange invited as a third guest to his secret smorgasbord. Schmitt would also meet the WikiLeaks leader, who was known to a few Guardian journalists but not to us.
Schmitt's first call back to The Times was encouraging. There was no question in his mind that the Afghanistan dispatches were genuine. They were fascinating - a diary of a troubled war from the ground up. And there were intimations of more to come, especially classified cables from the entire constellation of American diplomatic outposts. WikiLeaks was holding those back for now, presumably to see how this venture with the establishment media worked out. Over the next few days, Schmitt huddled in a discreet office at The Guardian, sampling the trove of war dispatches and discussing the complexities of this project: how to organize and study such a voluminous cache of information; how to securely transport, store and share it; how journalists from three very different publications would work together without compromising their independence; and how we would all assure an appropriate distance from Julian Assange. We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda.
By the time of the meetings in London, WikiLeaks had already acquired a measure of international fame or, depending on your point of view, notoriety. Shortly before I got the call from The Guardian, The New Yorker published a rich and colorful profile of Assange, by Raffi Khatchadourian, who had embedded with the group. WikiLeaks's biggest coup to that point was the release, last April, of video footage taken from one of two U.S. helicopters involved in firing down on a crowd and a building in Baghdad in 2007, killing at least 18 people. While some of the people in the video were armed, others gave no indication of menace; two were in fact journalists for the news agency Reuters. The video, with its soundtrack of callous banter, was horrifying to watch and was an embarrassment to the U.S. military. But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn't call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric "Collateral Murder." (See the edited and non-edited videos here.)
Throughout our dealings, Assange was coy about where he obtained his secret cache. But the suspected source of the video, as well as the military dispatches and the diplomatic cables to come, was a disillusioned U.S. Army private first class named Bradley Manning, who had been arrested and was being kept in solitary confinement.
On the fourth day of the London meeting, Assange slouched into The Guardian office, a day late. Schmitt took his first measure of the man who would be a large presence in our lives. "He's tall - probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3 - and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention," Schmitt wrote to me later. "He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days."
Assange shrugged a huge backpack off his shoulders and pulled out a stockpile of laptops, cords, cellphones, thumb drives and memory sticks that held the WikiLeaks secrets.
The reporters had begun preliminary work on the Afghanistan field reports, using a large Excel spreadsheet to organize the material, then plugging in search terms and combing the documents for newsworthy content. They had run into a puzzling incongruity: Assange said the data included dispatches from the beginning of 2004 through the end of 2009, but the material on the spreadsheet ended abruptly in April 2009. A considerable amount of material was missing. Assange, slipping naturally into the role of office geek, explained that they had hit the limits of Excel. Open a second spreadsheet, he instructed. They did, and the rest of the data materialized - a total of 92,000 reports from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The reporters came to think of Assange as smart and well educated, extremely adept technologically but arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous. At lunch one day in The Guardian's cafeteria, Assange recounted with an air of great conviction a story about the archive in Germany that contains the files of the former Communist secret police, the Stasi. This office, Assange asserted, was thoroughly infiltrated by former Stasi agents who were quietly destroying the documents they were entrusted with protecting. The Der Spiegel reporter in the group, John Goetz, who has reported extensively on the Stasi, listened in amazement. That's utter nonsense, he said. Some former Stasi personnel were hired as security guards in the office, but the records were well protected.
Assange was openly contemptuous of the American government and certain that he was a hunted man. He told the reporters that he had prepared a kind of doomsday option. He had, he said, distributed highly encrypted copies of his entire secret archive to a multitude of supporters, and if WikiLeaks was shut down, or if he was arrested, he would disseminate the key to make the information public.
Schmitt told me that for all Assange's bombast and dark conspiracy theories, he had a bit of Peter Pan in him. One night, when they were all walking down the street after dinner, Assange suddenly started skipping ahead of the group. Schmitt and Goetz stared, speechless. Then, just as suddenly, Assange stopped, got back in step with them and returned to the conversation he had interrupted.
For the rest of the week Schmitt worked with David Leigh, The Guardian's investigations editor; Nick Davies, an investigative reporter for the paper; and Goetz, of Der Spiegel, to organize and sort the material. With help from two of The Times's best computer minds - Andrew Lehren and Aron Pilhofer - they figured out how to assemble the material into a conveniently searchable and secure database.
Journalists are characteristically competitive, but the group worked well together. They brainstormed topics to explore and exchanged search results. Der Spiegel offered to check the logs against incident reports submitted by the German Army to its Parliament - partly as story research, partly as an additional check on authenticity.
Assange provided us the data on the condition that we not write about it before specific dates that WikiLeaks planned on posting the documents on a publicly accessible Web site. The Afghanistan documents would go first, after we had a few weeks to search the material and write our articles. The larger cache of Iraq-related documents would go later. Such embargoes - agreements not to publish information before a set date - are commonplace in journalism. Everything from studies in medical journals to the annual United States budget is released with embargoes. They are a constraint with benefits, the principal one being the chance to actually read and reflect on the material before publishing it into public view. As Assange surely knew, embargoes also tend to build suspense and amplify a story, especially when multiple news outlets broadcast it at once. The embargo was the only condition WikiLeaks would try to impose on us; what we wrote about the material was entirely up to us. Much later, some American news outlets reported that they were offered last-minute access to WikiLeaks documents if they signed contracts with financial penalties for early disclosure. The Times was never asked to sign anything or to pay anything. For WikiLeaks, at least in this first big venture, exposure was its own reward.
Back in New York we assembled a team of reporters, data experts and editors and quartered them in an out-of-the-way office. Andrew Lehren, of our computer-assisted-reporting unit, did the first cut, searching terms on his own or those suggested by other reporters, compiling batches of relevant documents and summarizing the contents. We assigned reporters to specific areas in which they had expertise and gave them password access to rummage in the data. This became the routine we would follow with subsequent archives.
An air of intrigue verging on paranoia permeated the project, perhaps understandably, given that we were dealing with a mass of classified material and a source who acted like a fugitive, changing crash pads, e-mail addresses and cellphones frequently. We used encrypted Web sites. Reporters exchanged notes via Skype, believing it to be somewhat less vulnerable to eavesdropping. On conference calls, we spoke in amateurish code. Assange was always "the source." The latest data drop was "the package." When I left New York for two weeks to visit bureaus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where we assume that communications may be monitored, I was not to be copied on message traffic about the project. I never imagined that any of this would defeat a curious snoop from the National Security Agency or Pakistani intelligence. And I was never entirely sure whether that prospect made me more nervous than the cyberwiles of WikiLeaks itself. At a point when relations between the news organizations and WikiLeaks were rocky, at least three people associated with this project had inexplicable activity in their e-mail that suggested someone was hacking into their accounts.
From consultations with our lawyers, we were confident that reporting on the secret documents could be done within the law, but we speculated about what the government - or some other government - might do to impede our work or exact recriminations. And, the law aside, we felt an enormous moral and ethical obligation to use the material responsibly. While we assumed we had little or no ability to influence what WikiLeaks did, let alone what would happen once this material was loosed in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, that did not free us from the need to exercise care in our own journalism. From the beginning, we agreed that in our articles and in any documents we published from the secret archive, we would excise material that could put lives at risk.
Guided by reporters with extensive experience in the field, we redacted the names of ordinary citizens, local officials, activists, academics and others who had spoken to American soldiers or diplomats. We edited out any details that might reveal ongoing intelligence-gathering operations, military tactics or locations of material that could be used to fashion terrorist weapons. Three reporters with considerable experience of handling military secrets - Eric Schmitt, Michael Gordon and C. J. Chivers - went over the documents we considered posting. Chivers, an ex-Marine who has reported for us from several battlefields, brought a practiced eye and cautious judgment to the business of redaction. If a dispatch noted that Aircraft A left Location B at a certain time and arrived at Location C at a certain time, Chivers edited it out on the off chance that this could teach enemy forces something useful about the capabilities of that aircraft.
The first articles in the project, which we called the War Logs, were scheduled to go up on the Web sites of The Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel on Sunday, July 25. We approached the White House days before that to get its reaction to the huge breach of secrecy as well as to specific articles we planned to write - including a major one about Pakistan's ambiguous role as an American ally. On July 24, the day before the War Logs went live, I attended a farewell party for Roger Cohen, a columnist for The Times and The International Herald Tribune, that was given by Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. A voracious consumer of inside information, Holbrooke had a decent idea of what was coming, and he pulled me away from the crowd to show me the fusillade of cabinet-level e-mail ricocheting through his BlackBerry, thus demonstrating both the frantic anxiety in the administration and, not incidentally, the fact that he was very much in the loop. The Pakistan article, in particular, would complicate his life. But one of Holbrooke's many gifts was his ability to make pretty good lemonade out of the bitterest lemons; he was already spinning the reports of Pakistani duplicity as leverage he could use to pull the Pakistanis back into closer alignment with American interests. Five months later, when Holbrooke - just 69, and seemingly indestructible - died of a torn aorta, I remembered that evening. And what I remembered best was that he was as excited to be on the cusp of a big story as I was.
We posted the articles on NYTimes.com the next day at 5 p.m. - a time picked to reconcile the different publishing schedules of the three publications. I was proud of what a crew of great journalists had done to fashion coherent and instructive reporting from a jumble of raw field reports, mostly composed in a clunky patois of military jargon and acronyms. The reporters supplied context, nuance and skepticism. There was much in that first round of articles worth reading, but my favorite single piece was one of the simplest. Chivers gathered all of the dispatches related to a single, remote, beleaguered American military outpost and stitched them together into a heartbreaking narrative. The dispatches from this outpost represent in miniature the audacious ambitions, gradual disillusionment and ultimate disappointment that Afghanistan has dealt to occupiers over the centuries.
If anyone doubted that the three publications operated independently, the articles we posted that day made it clear that we followed our separate muses. The Guardian, which is an openly left-leaning newspaper, used the first War Logs to emphasize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, claiming the documents disclosed that coalition forces killed "hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents," underscoring the cost of what the paper called a "failing war." Our reporters studied the same material but determined that all the major episodes of civilian deaths we found in the War Logs had been reported in The Times, many of them on the front page. (In fact, two of our journalists, Stephen Farrell and Sultan Munadi, were kidnapped by the Taliban while investigating one major episode near Kunduz. Munadi was killed during an ensuing rescue by British paratroopers.) The civilian deaths that had not been previously reported came in ones and twos and did not add up to anywhere near "hundreds." Moreover, since several were either duplicated or missing from the reports, we concluded that an overall tally would be little better than a guess.
Another example: The Times gave prominence to the dispatches reflecting American suspicions that Pakistani intelligence was playing a double game in Afghanistan - nodding to American interests while abetting the Taliban. We buttressed the interesting anecdotal material of Pakistani double-dealing with additional reporting. The Guardian was unimpressed by those dispatches and treated them more dismissively.
Three months later, with the French daily Le Monde added to the group, we published Round 2, the Iraq War Logs, including articles on how the United States turned a blind eye to the torture of prisoners by Iraqi forces working with the U.S., how Iraq spawned an extraordinary American military reliance on private contractors and how extensively Iran had meddled in the conflict.
By this time, The Times's relationship with our source had gone from wary to hostile. I talked to Assange by phone a few times and heard out his complaints. He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared - rightly, as it turned out - that its trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. "Where's the respect?" he demanded. "Where's the respect?" Another time he called to tell me how much he disliked our profile of Bradley Manning, the Army private suspected of being the source of WikiLeaks's most startling revelations. The article traced Manning's childhood as an outsider and his distress as a gay man in the military. Assange complained that we "psychologicalized" Manning and gave short shrift to his "political awakening."
The final straw was a front-page profile of Assange by John Burns and Ravi Somaiya, published Oct. 24, that revealed fractures within WikiLeaks, attributed by Assange's critics to his imperious management style. Assange denounced the article to me, and in various public forums, as "a smear."
Assange was transformed by his outlaw celebrity. The derelict with the backpack and the sagging socks now wore his hair dyed and styled, and he favored fashionably skinny suits and ties. He became a kind of cult figure for the European young and leftish and was evidently a magnet for women. Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden's strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape, and a prosecutor issued a warrant to question Assange, who initially described it as a plot concocted to silence or discredit WikiLeaks.
I came to think of Julian Assange as a character from a Stieg Larsson thriller - a man who could figure either as hero or villain in one of the megaselling Swedish novels that mix hacker counterculture, high-level conspiracy and sex as both recreation and violation.
In October, WikiLeaks gave The Guardian its third archive, a quarter of a million communications between the U.S. State Department and its outposts around the globe. This time, Assange imposed a new condition: The Guardian was not to share the material with The New York Times. Indeed, he told Guardian journalists that he opened discussions with two other American news organizations - The Washington Post and the McClatchy chain - and intended to invite them in as replacements for The Times. He also enlarged his recipient list to include El País, the leading Spanish-language newspaper.
The Guardian was uncomfortable with Assange's condition. By now the journalists from The Times and The Guardian had a good working relationship. The Times provided a large American audience for the revelations, as well as access to the U.S. government for comment and context. And given the potential legal issues and public reaction, it was good to have company in the trenches. Besides, we had come to believe that Assange was losing control of his stockpile of secrets. An independent journalist, Heather Brooke, had obtained material from a WikiLeaks dissident and joined in a loose alliance with The Guardian. Over the coming weeks, batches of cables would pop up in newspapers in Lebanon, Australia and Norway. David Leigh, The Guardian's investigations editor, concluded that these rogue leaks released The Guardian from any pledge, and he gave us the cables.
On Nov. 1, Assange and two of his lawyers burst into Alan Rusbridger's office, furious that The Guardian was asserting greater independence and suspicious that The Times might be in possession of the embassy cables. Over the course of an eight-hour meeting, Assange intermittently raged against The Times - especially over our front-page profile - while The Guardian journalists tried to calm him. In midstorm, Rusbridger called me to report on Assange's grievances and relay his demand for a front-page apology in The Times. Rusbridger knew that this was a nonstarter, but he was buying time for the tantrum to subside. In the end, both he and Georg Mascolo, editor in chief of Der Spiegel, made clear that they intended to continue their collaboration with The Times; Assange could take it or leave it. Given that we already had all of the documents, Assange had little choice. Over the next two days, the news organizations agreed on a timetable for publication.
The following week, we sent Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor who was a principal coordinator on our processing of the embassy cables, to London to work out final details. The meeting went smoothly, even after Assange arrived. "Freakishly good behavior," Fisher e-mailed me afterward. "No yelling or crazy mood swings." But after dinner, as Fisher was leaving, Assange smirked and offered a parting threat: "Tell me, are you in contact with your legal counsel?" Fisher replied that he was. "You had better be," Assange said.
Fisher left London with an understanding that we would continue to have access to the material. But just in case, we took out a competitive insurance policy. We had Scott Shane, a Washington correspondent, pull together a long, just-in-case article summing up highlights of the cables, which we could quickly post on our Web site. If WikiLeaks sprang another leak, we would be ready.
Because of the range of the material and the very nature of diplomacy, the embassy cables were bound to be more explosive than the War Logs. Dean Baquet, our Washington bureau chief, gave the White House an early warning on Nov. 19. The following Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, Baquet and two colleagues were invited to a windowless room at the State Department, where they encountered an unsmiling crowd. Representatives from the White House, the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon gathered around a conference table. Others, who never identified themselves, lined the walls. A solitary note-taker tapped away on a computer.
The meeting was off the record, but it is fair to say the mood was tense. Scott Shane, one reporter who participated in meeting, described "an undertone of suppressed outrage and frustration."
Subsequent meetings, which soon gave way to daily conference calls, were more businesslike. Before each discussion, our Washington bureau sent over a batch of specific cables that we intended to use in the coming days. They were circulated to regional specialists, who funneled their reactions to a small group at State, who came to our daily conversations with a list of priorities and arguments to back them up. We relayed the government's concerns, and our own decisions regarding them, to the other news outlets.
The administration's concerns generally fell into three categories. First was the importance of protecting individuals who had spoken candidly to American diplomats in oppressive countries. We almost always agreed on those and were grateful to the government for pointing out some we overlooked.
"We were all aware of dire stakes for some of the people named in the cables if we failed to obscure their identities," Shane wrote to me later, recalling the nature of the meetings. Like many of us, Shane has worked in countries where dissent can mean prison or worse. "That sometimes meant not just removing the name but also references to institutions that might give a clue to an identity and sometimes even the dates of conversations, which might be compared with surveillance tapes of an American Embassy to reveal who was visiting the diplomats that day."
The second category included sensitive American programs, usually related to intelligence. We agreed to withhold some of this information, like a cable describing an intelligence-sharing program that took years to arrange and might be lost if exposed. In other cases, we went away convinced that publication would cause some embarrassment but no real harm.
The third category consisted of cables that disclosed candid comments by and about foreign officials, including heads of state. The State Department feared publication would strain relations with those countries. We were mostly unconvinced.
The embassy cables were a different kind of treasure from the War Logs. For one thing, they covered the entire globe - virtually every embassy, consulate and interest section that the United States maintains. They contained the makings of many dozens of stories: candid American appraisals of foreign leaders, narratives of complicated negotiations, allegations of corruption and duplicity, countless behind-the-scenes insights. Some of the material was of narrow local interest; some of it had global implications. Some provided authoritative versions of events not previously fully understood. Some consisted of rumor and flimsy speculation.
Unlike most of the military dispatches, the embassy cables were written in clear English, sometimes with wit, color and an ear for dialogue. ("Who knew," one of our English colleagues marveled, "that American diplomats could write?")
Even more than the military logs, the diplomatic cables called for context and analysis. It was important to know, for example, that cables sent from an embassy are routinely dispatched over the signature of the ambassador and those from the State Department are signed by the secretary of state, regardless of whether the ambassador or secretary had actually seen the material. It was important to know that much of the communication between Washington and its outposts is given even more restrictive classification - top secret or higher - and was thus missing from this trove. We searched in vain, for example, for military or diplomatic reports on the fate of Pat Tillman, the former football star and Army Ranger who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. We found no reports on how Osama bin Laden eluded American forces in the mountains of Tora Bora. (In fact, we found nothing but second- and thirdhand rumors about bin Laden.) If such cables exist, they were presumably classified top secret or higher.
And it was important to remember that diplomatic cables are versions of events. They can be speculative. They can be ambiguous. They can be wrong.
One of our first articles drawn from the diplomatic cables, for example, reported on a secret intelligence assessment that Iran had obtained a supply of advanced missiles from North Korea, missiles that could reach European capitals. Outside experts long suspected that Iran obtained missile parts but not the entire weapons, so this glimpse of the official view was revealing. The Washington Post fired back with a different take, casting doubt on whether the missile in question had been transferred to Iran or whether it was even a workable weapon. We went back to the cables - and the experts - and concluded in a subsequent article that the evidence presented "a murkier picture."
The tension between a newspaper's obligation to inform and the government's responsibility to protect is hardly new. At least until this year, nothing The Times did on my watch caused nearly so much agitation as two articles we published about tactics employed by the Bush administration after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first, which was published in 2005 and won a Pulitzer Prize, revealed that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping on domestic phone conversations and e-mail without the legal courtesy of a warrant. The other, published in 2006, described a vast Treasury Department program to screen international banking records.
I have vivid memories of sitting in the Oval Office as President George W. Bush tried to persuade me and the paper's publisher to withhold the eavesdropping story, saying that if we published it, we should share the blame for the next terrorist attack. We were unconvinced by his argument and published the story, and the reaction from the government - and conservative commentators in particular - was vociferous.
This time around, the Obama administration's reaction was different. It was, for the most part, sober and professional. The Obama White House, while strongly condemning WikiLeaks for making the documents public, did not seek an injunction to halt publication. There was no Oval Office lecture. On the contrary, in our discussions before publication of our articles, White House officials, while challenging some of the conclusions we drew from the material, thanked us for handling the documents with care. The secretaries of state and defense and the attorney general resisted the opportunity for a crowd-pleasing orgy of press bashing. There has been no serious official talk - unless you count an ambiguous hint by Senator Joseph Lieberman - of pursuing news organizations in the courts. Though the release of these documents was certainly embarrassing, the relevant government agencies actually engaged with us in an attempt to prevent the release of material genuinely damaging to innocent individuals or to the national interest.
The broader public reaction was mixed - more critical in the first days; more sympathetic as readers absorbed the articles and the sky did not fall; and more hostile to WikiLeaks in the U.S. than in Europe, where there is often a certain pleasure in seeing the last superpower taken down a peg.
In the days after we began our respective series based on the embassy cables, Alan Rusbridger and I went online to answer questions from readers. The Guardian, whose readership is more sympathetic to the guerrilla sensibilities of WikiLeaks, was attacked for being too fastidious about redacting the documents: How dare you censor this material? What are you hiding? Post everything now! The mail sent to The Times, at least in the first day or two, came from the opposite field. Many readers were indignant and alarmed: Who needs this? How dare you? What gives you the right?
Much of the concern reflected a genuine conviction that in perilous times the president needs extraordinary powers, unfettered by Congressional oversight, court meddling or the strictures of international law and certainly safe from nosy reporters. That is compounded by a popular sense that the elite media have become too big for their britches and by the fact that our national conversation has become more polarized and strident.
Although it is our aim to be impartial in our presentation of the news, our attitude toward these issues is far from indifferent. The journalists at The Times have a large and personal stake in the country's security. We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target, and in the wake of 9/11 our journalists plunged into the ruins to tell the story of what happened here. Moreover, The Times has nine staff correspondents assigned to the two wars still being waged in the wake of that attack, plus a rotating cast of photographers, visiting writers and scores of local stringers and support staff. They work in this high-risk environment because, while there are many places you can go for opinions about the war, there are few places - and fewer by the day - where you can go to find honest, on-the-scene reporting about what is happening. We take extraordinary precautions to keep them safe, but we have had two of our Iraqi journalists murdered for doing their jobs. We have had four journalists held hostage by the Taliban - two of them for seven months. We had one Afghan journalist killed in a rescue attempt. Last October, while I was in Kabul, we got word that a photographer embedded for us with troops near Kandahar stepped on an improvised mine and lost both his legs.
We are invested in the struggle against murderous extremism in another sense. The virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by their literature, is directed not just against our people and our buildings but also at our values and at our faith in the self-government of an informed electorate. If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.
So we have no doubts about where our sympathies lie in this clash of values. And yet we cannot let those sympathies transform us into propagandists, even for a system we respect.
I'm the first to admit that news organizations, including this one, sometimes get things wrong. We can be overly credulous (as in some of the prewar reporting about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction) or overly cynical about official claims and motives. We may err on the side of keeping secrets (President Kennedy reportedly wished, after the fact, that The Times had published what it knew about the planned Bay of Pigs invasion, which possibly would have helped avert a bloody debacle) or on the side of exposing them. We make the best judgments we can. When we get things wrong, we try to correct the record. A free press in a democracy can be messy. But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has worked in countries where the news diet is controlled by the government can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson's oft-quoted remark that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers.
The intentions of our founders have rarely been as well articulated as they were by Justice Hugo Black 40 years ago, concurring with the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people."
There is no neat formula for maintaining this balance. In practice, the tension between our obligation to inform and the government's obligation to protect plays out in a set of rituals. As one of my predecessors, Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief, wrote in a wise affidavit filed during the Pentagon Papers case: "For the vast majority of 'secrets,' there has developed between the government and the press (and Congress) a rather simple rule of thumb: The government hides what it can, pleading necessity as long as it can, and the press pries out what it can, pleading a need and a right to know. Each side in this 'game' regularly 'wins' and 'loses' a round or two. Each fights with the weapons at its command. When the government loses a secret or two, it simply adjusts to a new reality."
In fact, leaks of classified material - sometimes authorized - are part of the way business is conducted in Washington, as one wing of the bureaucracy tries to one-up another or officials try to shift blame or claim credit or advance or confound a particular policy. For further evidence that our government is highly selective in its approach to secrets, look no further than Bob Woodward's all-but-authorized accounts of the innermost deliberations of our government.
The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of "cleared" officials, including low-level army clerks, "are not secret." Governments, he wrote, "must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make."
Beyond the basic question of whether the press should publish secrets, criticism of the WikiLeaks documents generally fell into three themes: 1. That the documents were of dubious value, because they told us nothing we didn't already know. 2. That the disclosures put lives at risk - either directly, by identifying confidential informants, or indirectly, by complicating our ability to build alliances against terror. 3. That by doing business with an organization like WikiLeaks, The Times and other news organizations compromised their impartiality and independence.
I'm a little puzzled by the complaint that most of the embassy traffic we disclosed did not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. Ninety-nine percent of what we read or hear on the news does not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. News mostly advances by inches and feet, not in great leaps. The value of these documents - and I believe they have immense value - is not that they expose some deep, unsuspected perfidy in high places or that they upend your whole view of the world. For those who pay close attention to foreign policy, these documents provide texture, nuance and drama. They deepen and correct your understanding of how things unfold; they raise or lower your estimation of world leaders. For those who do not follow these subjects as closely, the stories are an opportunity to learn more. If a project like this makes readers pay attention, think harder, understand more clearly what is being done in their name, then we have performed a public service. And that does not count the impact of these revelations on the people most touched by them. WikiLeaks cables in which American diplomats recount the extravagant corruption of Tunisia's rulers helped fuel a popular uprising that has overthrown the government.
As for the risks posed by these releases, they are real. WikiLeaks's first data dump, the publication of the Afghanistan War Logs, included the names of scores of Afghans that The Times and other news organizations had carefully purged from our own coverage. Several news organizations, including ours, reported this dangerous lapse, and months later a Taliban spokesman claimed that Afghan insurgents had been perusing the WikiLeaks site and making a list. I anticipate, with dread, the day we learn that someone identified in those documents has been killed.
WikiLeaks was roundly criticized for its seeming indifference to the safety of those informants, and in its subsequent postings it has largely followed the example of the news organizations and redacted material that could get people jailed or killed. Assange described it as a "harm minimization" policy. In the case of the Iraq war documents, WikiLeaks applied a kind of robo-redaction software that stripped away names (and rendered the documents almost illegible). With the embassy cables, WikiLeaks posted mostly documents that had already been redacted by The Times and its fellow news organizations. And there were instances in which WikiLeaks volunteers suggested measures to enhance the protection of innocents. For example, someone at WikiLeaks noticed that if the redaction of a phrase revealed the exact length of the words, an alert foreign security service might match the number of letters to a name and affiliation and thus identify the source. WikiLeaks advised everyone to substitute a dozen uppercase X's for each redacted passage, no matter how long or short.
Whether WikiLeaks's "harm minimization" is adequate, and whether it will continue, is beyond my power to predict or influence. WikiLeaks does not take guidance from The New York Times. In the end, I can answer only for what my own paper has done, and I believe we have behaved responsibly.
The idea that the mere publication of such a wholesale collection of secrets will make other countries less willing to do business with our diplomats seems to me questionable. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates called this concern "overwrought." Foreign governments cooperate with us, he pointed out, not because they necessarily love us, not because they trust us to keep their secrets, but because they need us. It may be that for a time diplomats will choose their words more carefully or circulate their views more narrowly, but WikiLeaks has not repealed the laws of self-interest. A few weeks after we began publishing articles about the embassy cables, David Sanger, our chief Washington correspondent, told me: "At least so far, the evidence that foreign leaders are no longer talking to American diplomats is scarce. I've heard about nervous jokes at the beginning of meetings, along the lines of 'When will I be reading about this conversation?' But the conversations are happening. . . . American diplomacy has hardly screeched to a halt."
As for our relationship with WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has been heard to boast that he served as a kind of puppet master, recruiting several news organizations, forcing them to work in concert and choreographing their work. This is characteristic braggadocio - or, as my Guardian colleagues would say, bollocks. Throughout this experience we have treated Assange as a source. I will not say "a source, pure and simple," because as any reporter or editor can attest, sources are rarely pure or simple, and Assange was no exception. But the relationship with sources is straightforward: you don't necessarily endorse their agenda, echo their rhetoric, take anything they say at face value, applaud their methods or, most important, allow them to shape or censor your journalism. Your obligation, as an independent news organization, is to verify the material, to supply context, to exercise responsible judgment about what to publish and what not to publish and to make sense of it. That is what we did.
But while I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is chilling to contemplate the possible government prosecution of WikiLeaks for making secrets public, let alone the passage of new laws to punish the dissemination of classified information, as some have advocated. Taking legal recourse against a government official who violates his trust by divulging secrets he is sworn to protect is one thing. But criminalizing the publication of such secrets by someone who has no official obligation seems to me to run up against the First Amendment and the best traditions of this country. As one of my colleagues asks: If Assange were an understated professorial type rather than a character from a missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffused with such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the reaction to the leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more Americans be speaking up against the threat of reprisals?
Whether the arrival of WikiLeaks has fundamentally changed the way journalism is made, I will leave to others and to history. Frankly, I think the impact of WikiLeaks on the culture has probably been overblown. Long before WikiLeaks was born, the Internet transformed the landscape of journalism, creating a wide-open and global market with easier access to audiences and sources, a quicker metabolism, a new infrastructure for sharing and vetting information and a diminished respect for notions of privacy and secrecy. Assange has claimed credit on several occasions for creating something he calls "scientific journalism," meaning that readers are given the raw material to judge for themselves whether the journalistic write-ups are trustworthy. But newspapers have been publishing texts of documents almost as long as newspapers have existed - and ever since the Internet eliminated space restrictions, we have done so copiously.
Nor is it clear to me that WikiLeaks represents some kind of cosmic triumph of transparency. If the official allegations are to be believed, most of WikiLeaks's great revelations came from a single anguished Army private - anguished enough to risk many years in prison. It's possible that the creation of online information brokers like WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks, a breakaway site announced in December by a former Assange colleague named Daniel Domscheit-Berg, will be a lure for whistle-blowers and malcontents who fear being caught consorting directly with a news organization like mine. But I suspect we have not reached a state of information anarchy. At least not yet.
As 2010 wound down, The Times and its news partners held a conference call to discuss where we go from here. The initial surge of articles drawn from the secret cables was over. More would trickle out but without a fixed schedule. We agreed to continue the redaction process, and we agreed we would all urge WikiLeaks to do the same. But this period of intense collaboration, and of regular contact with our source, was coming to a close.
Just before Christmas, Ian Katz, The Guardian's deputy editor, went to see Assange, who had been arrested in London on the Swedish warrant, briefly jailed and bailed out by wealthy admirers and was living under house arrest in a country manor in East Anglia while he fought Sweden's attempt to extradite him. The flow of donations to WikiLeaks, which he claimed hit 100,000 euros a day at its peak, was curtailed when Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to be conduits for contributors - prompting a concerted assault on the Web sites of those companies by Assange's hacker sympathizers. He would soon sign a lucrative book deal to finance his legal struggles.
The Guardian seemed to have joined The Times on Assange's enemies list, first for sharing the diplomatic cables with us, then for obtaining and reporting on the unredacted record of the Swedish police complaints against Assange. (Live by the leak. . . .) In his fury at this perceived betrayal, Assange granted an interview to The Times of London, in which he vented his displeasure with our little media consortium. If he thought this would ingratiate him with The Guardian rival, he was naïve. The paper happily splashed its exclusive interview, then followed it with an editorial calling Assange a fool and a hypocrite.
At the mansion in East Anglia, Assange seated Katz before a roaring fire in the drawing room and ruminated for four hours about the Swedish case, his financial troubles and his plan for a next phase of releases. He talked vaguely about secrets still in his quiver, including what he regards as a damning cache of e-mail from inside an American bank.
He spun out an elaborate version of a U.S. Justice Department effort to exact punishment for his assault on American secrecy. If he was somehow extradited to the United States, he said, "I would still have a high chance of being killed in the U.S. prison system, Jack Ruby style, given the continual calls for my murder by senior and influential U.S. politicians."
While Assange mused darkly in his exile, one of his lawyers sent out a mock Christmas card that suggested at least someone on the WikiLeaks team was not lacking a sense of the absurd.
The message:
"Dear kids,
Santa is Mum & Dad.
Love,
WikiLeaks."
Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to "Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Updated Coverage from The New York Times," which will be published in e-book form on Jan. 31. For sale at nytimes.com/opensecrets.
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7) Jailed Akron Mom, Kelley Williams-Bolar Released By Judge Patricia Cosgrove
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
http://www.rippdemup.com/2011/01/jailed-akron-mom-kelley-williams-bolar.html?m=1
Great news, folks!
Kelley Williams-Bolar was released from the Summit County Jail
Wednesday morning after serving all but one day of a 10-day jail
sentence for improperly enrolling her children in Copley-Fairlawn
schools.
A jail official confirmed Williams-Bolar was released at about 10 a.m.
Common Pleas Judge Patricia Cosgrove gave Williams-Bolar credit
for one day of time served when she was arrested and jailed on
multiple felony charges in November 2009, court records show.
On Jan. 18, Williams-Bolar was sentenced to 10 days in jail after
a jury convicted her of two felony counts of tampering with records.
The offenses involved several instances of signed or sworn school
registration forms, applications for reduced or free school lunches
and other official documents authorized by Williams-Bolar when she
enrolled her two girls in Copley-Fairlawn schools in August 2006.
In other developments in the case, Akron City Council President
Marco Sommerville said he planned to meet with Summit County
Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh at 2 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the issue
of why the case could not have been resolved without the filing of
felony charges.
Williams-Bolar, a single mother who was going to college and
working as a teaching assistant at Buchtel High School, had no
previous record.
Within hours of the sentencing hearing, Cosgrove spoke out after
becoming the target of public outcry over the case, which threatens
the mother's job and her hopes to become a school teacher.
Cosgrove said the prosecutor's office refused to consider reducing
the charges to misdemeanors during numerous closed-door talks to
resolve the case outside of court. (source)
Now we need to hear from the over-zealous prosecutors office as to why
this matter wasn't dealt with appropriately and at least counted as a
misdemeanor and not a felony. Big congrats to all the people who took
to the internet by signing the petition at change.org. And a hearty
thank you to Judge Patricia Cosgrove for doing what was right and
just. See folks, with a little bit of work, we can make things happen.
Hopefully she'll be able to fulfill her dream of being a school
teacher; she shouldn't have had it come to this.
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8) Thousands in Yemen Protest Against the Government
By NADA BAKRI and J. DAVID GOODMAN
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html?hp
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Yemen, one of the Middle East's most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to witness mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government.
The scenes broadcast across the Arab world were reminiscent of demonstrations in Egypt this week and the month of protests that brought down the government in Tunisia. But as they climaxed by midday, the marches appeared to be carefully organized and mostly peaceful, though there were reports of arrests by security forces. Predictably, the protests were most aggressive in the restive south.
In Sana, at least 10,000 protesters led by opposition members and youth activists gathered at Sana University and around 6,000 more elsewhere, participants, lawmakers and activists reached by telephone said. Many carried pink banners and wore pink headbands.
While the marches were peaceful, the potential for strife in the country is difficult to overstate. It is beset by a rebellion in the north and a struggle for secession in the south. In recent years, the regional Al Qaeda affiliate has turned parts of the country, a rugged, often lawless swath of southwestern Arabian Peninsula, into a refuge beyond the state's reach. Added to the mix is a remarkably high proportion of armed citizens.
"I fear Yemen is going to be ripped apart," said Mohammed Naji Allaw, coordinator of the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedom, which was one of the organizers of the protests. "The situation in Yemen is a lot more dangerous than in any other Arab country."
He said a phrase often heard these days is that Yemen faces "tatasawmal" - the Somalization of a country that witnessed a civil war in the mid-1990s.
Part of Mr. Allaw's worries sprung from the inability of the opposition to forge a unified message. Some are calling for secession, he said, while others are looking to oust the president through popular protests. Yet others, he said, simply wanted Mr. Saleh to undertake a series of reforms before elections in April.
Khaled Alanesi, a colleague of Mr. Allaw's at the human rights group in Sana, said: "The opposition is afraid of what would happen if the regime falls. Afraid of the militant groups, Al Qaeda, the tribes and all the arms here."
The government responded to the protests by sending a large number of security forces into the streets, said Nasser Arabyee, a Yemeni journalist in Sana reached by phone. "Very strict measures, antiriot forces," he called them. But the government suggested it had not deployed large numbers of security forces.
"The Government of the Republic of Yemen strongly respects the democratic right for a peaceful assembly," said Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, in a statement. "We are pleased to announce that no major clashes or arrests occurred, and police presence was minimal."
A pro-government rally, in another district of Sana, organized by Mr. Saleh's party, attracted far fewer demonstrators, Mr. Arabyee said.
The demonstrations on Thursday followed several days of smaller protests by students and opposition groups calling for the removal of President Ali Abdallah Saleh, a strongman who has ruled this fractured country for more than 30 years and is a key ally of the United States in the fight against the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda.
In a televised speech on Sunday night, Mr. Saleh tried to defuse calls for his ouster, denying opposition claims that his son would inherit his power - as has happened in Syria and, some fear, may occur in Egypt. He said he would raise army salaries, a move that appeared designed to ensure soldiers' loyalty. Mr. Saleh has also cut income taxes in half and ordered price controls.
The protests were the latest in a wave of unrest touched off by monthlong demonstrations in Tunisia that led to the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the authoritarian leader who ruled for 23 years and fled two weeks ago. The new Tunisian government issued an international warrant for his arrest on corruption charges Wednesday.
The antigovernment gatherings in Yemen also followed three days of violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Egypt, with the country bracing for another round of demonstrations on Friday in defiance of a government ban. Egyptian protesters have called for an end to the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who, like Mr. Saleh, has been an ally of the United States.
Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, relatively stable countries with substantial middle classes and broad access to the Internet, Yemen is among the poorest countries in the Middle East.
"People do have fair grievances everywhere in Yemen, but unfortunately they are being used by politicians from both sides," the deputy finance minister, Jalal Yaqoub, told Reuters on Thursday, adding that the government "should listen to the people and enact substantial reforms."
Yemen's fragile stability has been of increasing concern to the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a visit to Sana earlier this month, urged Mr. Saleh to open a dialogue with the opposition, saying it would help to stabilize the country. His current term expires in two years, but proposed constitutional changes could allow him to hold onto power for longer.
During her visit, Ms. Clinton was asked by a Yemeni lawmaker how the United States could lend support to Mr. Saleh's authoritarian rule even as his country increasingly becomes a haven for militants.
"We support an inclusive government," Mrs. Clinton said in response. "We see that Yemen is going through a transition."
Nada Bakri reported from Beirut, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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9) Egyptian Youths Drive the Revolt Against Mubarak
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/middleeast/27opposition.html?hp
For decades, Egypt's authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents.
He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state.
But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak's 30-year rule.
Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up.
"It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go," Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna, shortly before rushing home to Cairo to join the revolt.
Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel prize winner, has been the public face of an effort to reinvigorate and unite Egypt's fractious and ineffective opposition since he plunged into his home country's politics nearly a year ago, and he said the youth movement had accomplished that on its own. "Young people are impatient," he said. "Frankly, I didn't think the people were ready."
But their readiness - tens of thousands have braved tear gas, rubber bullets and security police officers notorious for torture - has threatened to upstage or displace the traditional opposition groups.
Many of the tiny, legally recognized political parties - more than 20 in total, with scarcely a parlor full of grass-roots supporters among them - are leaping to embrace the new movement for change but lack credibility with the young people in the street.
Even the Muslim Brotherhood may have grown too protective of its own institutions and position to capitalize on the new youth movement, say some analysts and former members. The Brotherhood remains the organization in Egypt with the largest base of support outside the government, but it can no longer claim to be the only entity that can turn masses of people out into the streets.
"The Brotherhood is no longer the most effective player in the political arena," said Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar now at the University of Notre Dame. "If you look at the Tunisian uprising, it's a youth uprising. It is the youth that knows how to use the media, Internet, Facebook, so there are other players now."
Dr. ElBaradei, for his part, has struggled for nearly a year to unite the opposition under his umbrella group, the National Association for Change. But some have mocked him as a globe-trotting dilettante who spends much of his time abroad instead of on the barricades.
He has said in interviews that he never presented himself as a political savior, and that Egyptians would have to make their own revolution. Now, he said, the youth movement "will give them the self-confidence they needed, to know that the change will happen through you and not through one person - you are the driving force."
And Dr. ElBaradei argued that by upsetting the old relationship between Mr. Mubarak and the Brotherhood, the youth movement posed a new challenge to United States policy makers as well.
"For years," he said, "the West has bought Mr. Mubarak's demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood lock, stock and barrel, the idea that the only alternative here are these demons called the Muslim Brotherhood who are the equivalent of Al Qaeda."
He added: "I am pretty sure that any freely and fairly elected government in Egypt will be a moderate one, but America is really pushing Egypt and pushing the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression."
The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt's streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.
Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it - like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution - were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.
"It would be criminal for any political party to claim credit for the mini-Intifada we had yesterday," said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and activist.
Mr. Mubarak's government, though, is so far sticking to a familiar script. Against all evidence, his interior minister immediately laid blame for Wednesday's unrest at the foot of the government's age-old foe, the Muslim Brotherhood.
This time, though, the Brotherhood disclaimed responsibility, saying it was only one part of Dr. ElBaradei's umbrella group. "People took part in the protests in a spontaneous way, and there is no way to tell who belonged to what," said Gamal Nassar, a media adviser for the Brotherhood, noting the near-total absence of any group's signs or slogans, including the Brotherhood's.
"Everyone is suffering from social problems, unemployment, inflation, corruption and oppression," he said. "So what everyone is calling for is real change."
The Brotherhood operates a large network of schools and charities that make up for the many failings of government social services. Some analysts charge that the institutional inertia may make the Brotherhood slow to rock the Egyptian ship of state.
"The Brotherhood has been very silent," said Amr Hamzawy, research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "It is not a movement that can benefit from what has been happening and get people out in the street."
Nor, Dr. ElBaradei argued, does the Muslim Brotherhood merit the fear its name evokes in the West. Its membership embraces large numbers of professors, lawyers and other professionals as well as followers who benefit from its charities. It has not committed or condoned acts of violence since the uprising against the British-backed Egyptian monarchy six decades ago, and it has endorsed his call for a pluralistic civil democracy.
"They are a religiously conservative group, no question about it, but they also represent about 20 percent of the Egyptian people," he said. "And how can you exclude 20 percent of the Egyptian people?"
Dr. ElBaradei, with his international prestige, is a difficult critic for Mr. Mubarak's government to jail, harass or besmirch, as it has many of his predecessors. And Dr. ElBaradei eases concerns about Islamists by putting a secular, liberal and familiar face on the opposition.
But he has been increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the West. He was stunned, he said, by the reaction of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Egyptian protests. In a statement after Tuesday's clashes, she urged restraint but described the Egyptian government as "stable" and "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people."
" 'Stability' is a very pernicious word," he said. "Stability at the expense of 30 years of martial law, rigged elections?" He added, "If they come later and say, as they did in Tunis, 'We respect the will of the Tunisian people,' it will be a little late in the day."
Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.
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10) In Panel's Report, Stern Warning on Repeating Financial Crisis
By SEWELL CHAN
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/business/economy/28inquiry.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The blow-by-blow chronicle of regulatory negligence and Wall Street recklessness released Thursday by a Congressional commission amounts to a scathing warning to the government about ways to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis.
Drawing on millions of e-mails, testimony and other documents, the final report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission delves deeply into the actions - and negligence - of officials at regulatory agencies, investment banks, credit rating companies and mortgage lenders.
"Some on Wall Street and Washington with a stake in the status quo may be tempted to wipe from memory this crisis or to suggest again that no one could have seen or prevented it," the commission's chairman, Phil Angelides, said Thursday at a news conference to present the 633-page report, which is being published simultaneously with a 576-page, commercially distributed version.
"Our mission and the central question we addressed was this: How did it come to pass in 2008 that our nation was forced to choose between two stark and painful alternatives, either risk the total collapse of our financial system and economy or inject trillions of taxpayer dollars into private companies even as millions of Americans still lost their jobs, their savings and their homes?" Mr. Angelides said. He called the crisis a preventable disaster.
The commission also released 1,200 supporting documents on its Web site, and it plans to post another 700 documents and about 300 transcripts of audio interviews before it formally terminates its work on Feb. 13.
"We believe there is still much to learn, much to investigate, and much to fix," Mr. Angelides said.
The partisan nature of the findings, however, could undermine its impact. Of the 10 commission members, only the six appointed by Democrats, including Mr. Angelides, attended the news conference - and one, Bob Graham, a former senator from Florida, left early to catch a flight. The four Republican commissioners have prepared two separate dissents; three of them planned to hold a conference call Thursday afternoon.
Mr. Angelides tried to play down the partisan divide. He noted that three Republican commissioners found "areas of agreement" with the Democratic majority, but he added: "There are fundamental differences: we believe that the crisis was avoidable. We believe that it was the result of human action and inaction."
While faulting a range of regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the report was particularly harsh on the Federal Reserve. The findings emphasized the Fed's failure to act on a 2004 law that directed the agency to enact mortgage lending standards - which if put in place would have curbed the flow of toxic mortgages into the financial system.
"The Federal Reserve was clearly the steward of lending standards in this country," said one commissioner, John W. Thompson. "They chose not to act. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York clearly could have reined in some of the large money-centered banks in New York. On and on, regulators either chose not to act or turned a blind eye to what was going on. It's less about a particular individual than a systemic sense of deregulation and inaction by those in power."
The findings represent a particularly harsh rebuke to Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman who retired in 2006, but his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, and Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed during the crisis and is now President Obama's Treasury secretary, were also criticized.
Representatives of all three officials have so far declined to comment on the findings, though the Fed has noted that it has overhauled financial supervision and the New York Fed has pointed out that it was not the primary regulator of companies like Citigroup and Lehman Brothers.
The commissioners were muted in their comments on the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul that President Obama signed last July. One, Byron S. Georgiou, a Nevada lawyer, remarked that the financial system is "not really very different" today from what it looked like before the crisis.
"In fact, the concentration of financial assets in the largest commercial and investment banks is really significantly higher today than it was in the run-up to the crisis, as a result of the evisceration of some of the institutions, and the consolidation and merger of others into larger institutions," Mr. Georgiou said.
The report argues that while the bursting of the housing bubble in 2006-7 precipitated the crisis, the result was hardly an inevitable outcome. Wall Street continued to pump risky assets into the financial system and credit rating agencies continued to inaccurately rate them as safe, even after the housing mania peaked.
For example, Mr. Angelides said, from the third quarter of 2006 on - even with housing prices in decline - the financial industry created $1.7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.
In December of that year, the report said, Goldman became so concerned about its exposure to the subprime market that it decided to get "closer to home", meaning that it planned to quickly sell the inventory it had.
But while reducing its own risk, Goldman continued to create and sell mortgage products to clients, bringing in big fees, the report said. From December 2006 through August 2007, Goldman created and sold about $25.4 billion of the collateralized debt obligations.
"Goldman has been criticized - and sued - for selling its subprime mortgage securities to clients while simultaneously betting against those securities," the report said.
Sylvain Raynes, a structured finance expert at R&R Consulting in New York, is quoted in the report as calling Goldman's practice "the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen," and comparing it to "buying fire insurance on someone else's house and then committing arson."
Goldman has previously said it did not bet against its clients during the credit crisis.
While politicians prepared their responses to the findings, some scholars who shared their expertise with the commission during its work weighed in with reactions.
"We all argued that the crisis was multi-causal," said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
"We emphasized in particular the absence of effective regulation, the increase in leverage, the emergence of shadow banking, the mismanagement of risk by many financial institutions, and the strong external demand for U.S. Treasuries and similar assets as important factors," he said. "We also concluded that monetary policy per se - narrowly interpreted as the low interest rate policy of the Fed after 2001 - was not likely a major factor."
He said the report "is hitting many of the right notes."
But Anil K. Kashyap, a business school economist at the University of Chicago, said he was troubled at the failure to reach a bipartisan consensus.
"Experts already agree on the main factors that contributed to the crisis," Mr. Kashyap said. "The commissioners' failure to agree on most of the causes and narrow their differences to a handful of issues does the country a great disservice by perpetuating the idea that reasonable people cannot understand what happened."
Susanne Craig contributed reporting from New York.
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11) Egyptian Markets Fall as Protests Gather Support
By KAREEM FAHIM and LIAM STACK
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28egypt.html?ref=world
CAIRO - Despite government efforts to crush sometimes violent protest, several days of demonstrations against the almost 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak seemed to be taking a toll on the country's economy on Thursday and galvanizing support beyond the streets.
The secretary general of Mr. Mubarak's ruling party said it was willing to open talks with the youths who have powered the protests, but offered no concessions, The Associated Press reported.
Safwat el-Sherif, the secretary general of the National Democratic Party, also called for restraint from both security forces and protesters on Friday, when more demonstrations have been called for, The A.P. said.
On Wednesday, the authorities outlawed public gatherings, detaining hundreds of people and sending police officers to scatter protesters who defied the ban and demanded an end to Mr. Mubarak's rule.
But protesters communicating on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have called for a major demonstration on Friday, the Muslim holy day and the start of the Egyptian weekend.
On its Web site, the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest organized opposition group, said it would join "with all the national Egyptian forces, the Egyptian people, so that this coming Friday will be the general day of rage for the Egyptian nation."
Since they erupted Tuesday, the protests have largely seemed spontaneous and leaderless, propelled by young demonstrators with no affiliation to Egypt's small and largely toothless opposition groups.
Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up. "It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go," Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Dr. ElBaradei insisted that he would attend the Friday demonstrations and urged Mr. Mubarak to step down. "He has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire," he told Reuters. "Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a major demonstration all over Egypt and I will be there with them."
He arrived in Cairo Thursday evening, The Associated Press reported.
At the stock exchange, meanwhile, the benchmark Egyptian index fell on Thursday to its lowest level in over two years, shedding more than 10 percentage points and forcing a brief suspension of trading, news reports said.
"It's clear today that the inability to control the situation in the streets yesterday is panicking investors," The Associated Press quoted Ahmed Hanafi, a broker with Guthour Trading, as saying. "The drop we saw yesterday is being repeated. At this rate, it's going to continue to fall hard."
The streets of downtown Cairo were largely quiet on Thursday except for a small knot of protesters outside the Egyptian lawyer's syndicate. Uniformed police stood guard nonetheless in Tahrir Square, an epicenter of the demonstrations.
On Wednesday, the skirmishes started early in the afternoon, and soon, small fires illuminated large clashes under an overpass. Riot police officers using batons, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets cleared busy avenues; other officers set upon fleeing protesters, beating them with bamboo staves.
Egypt has an extensive and widely feared security apparatus, and it deployed its might in an effort to crush the protests. But it was not clear whether the security forces were succeeding in intimidating protesters or rather inciting them to further defiance.
In contrast to the thousands who marched through Cairo and other cities on Tuesday, the groups of protesters were relatively small. Armored troop carriers rumbled throughout Cairo's downtown on Wednesday to the thud of tear-gas guns. There were signs that the crackdown was being carefully calibrated, with security forces using their cudgels and sometimes throwing rocks, rather than opening fire.
But again and again, despite the efforts of the police, the protesters in Cairo regrouped and at one point even forced security officers, sitting in the safety of two troop carriers, to retreat.
"This is do or die," said Mustafa Youssef, 22, a student who marched from skirmish to skirmish with friends, including one nursing a rubber-bullet wound. "The most important thing to do is to keep confronting them."
Late on Wednesday, Reuters reported, protesters in Suez set a government building on fire, according to security officials and witnesses; the fire spread through parts of the provincial administration office but was put out before the flames engulfed the entire building.
Dozens of protesters also threw gasoline bombs at the office of the ruling party in Suez, Reuters reported, but they did not set it on fire. Police officers fired tear gas to push back the demonstrators.
Elsewhere, the authorities had better success smothering the unrest. A significant police presence in Alexandria, where protesters on Tuesday tore down a portrait of Mr. Mubarak, managed to contain demonstrations quickly when they began Wednesday. Several dozen young men tried to gather on the Corniche, a boulevard along the Mediterranean, but the gathering was quickly broken up by more than 100 police officers in riot gear assisted by plainclothes security officers. The baton-wielding officers arrested several protesters as the rest scattered.
The government said about 800 people had been arrested throughout the country since Tuesday morning, but human rights groups said there had been more than 2,000 arrests.
Abroad, there were growing expressions of concern from Egypt's allies. The United States ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, called on the government "to allow peaceful public demonstrations," and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated that call in blunt remarks to reporters. The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, speaking to reporters, said, "We are very worried about how the situation in Egypt is developing."
But Egyptian officials, at least publicly, were mostly dismissive.
In a statement, Mr. Mubarak's National Democratic Party reiterated the government's assertion that the protests were engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdel Moneim Said, a member of the N.D.P. and the chairman of Al Ahram, which publishes the state-owned newspaper of the same name, explained the government's lack of concern.
"The state is strong," he said. "There is a history of there being a moment of exhaustion, and there is a kind of resilience on the part of the government. It happened with the terrorist groups."
Mona El-Naggar and Dawlat Magdy contributed from Cairo, and Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet from Alexandria, Egypt.
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12) Dutch Lawmakers Question Shell on Oil Pollution in Nigeria
By DAVID JOLLY
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/science/earth/27nigeria.html?ref=world
Royal Dutch Shell officials faced tough questions from Dutch lawmakers on Wednesday over pollution from its oil operations in Nigeria at a conference convened in the Netherlands to shed light on the oil giant's dealings in the West African country.
Environmental organizations and business officials at the round-table meeting in The Hague differed sharply on how much responsibility Shell should take for the environmental damage. The devastation is particularly severe in the poor and fragile Niger Delta region, which has suffered more from oil production than perhaps any other place on earth after years of spills caused by rickety infrastructure, theft and sabotage.
The conference, called by the Economic Affairs Committee of the lower house of Parliament, came a day after the advocacy groups Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International lodged a complaint with Dutch officials of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, accusing the company of "nontransparent, inconsistent and misleading figures" on the causes of the oil leaks.
The organizations argue that Shell understated its responsibility for spills to reduce its legal liability and that it ignored human rights abuses for the sake of profit.
Ian Craig, Shell's executive vice president for sub-Saharan Africa, countered that 70 percent of oil spills were caused by sabotage or by "bunkering" - the organized theft of oil.
Mr. Craig conceded that the number of spills remained "unacceptably high" but attributed them partly to kidnappings or threats against employees, which have sharply reduced maintenance activities for several years. He said that the backlog was now being reduced.
He also defended Shell's record on cleanups, saying the company was "committed to clean up and remediate all spill sites related to its operations regardless of the cause of the leaks." But he said that Shell could not pay for spills caused by sabotage because it would create a "perverse incentive" for criminals.
Peter de Wit, chief executive of Shell Netherlands, said the company had created thousands of jobs in Nigeria and was doing "a good job under difficult circumstances."
He also sought to deflect responsibility for defending human rights onto the government and courts, saying, "You can't lay it on our doorstep."
Shell's prominent place in the life of the Netherlands, a small and environmentally conscious democracy, makes the company an object of close scrutiny, while also baring rich nations' uneasy relationship with the developing countries that supply much of their energy. Nigeria accounted for roughly 9 percent of Shell's oil production in 2009.
When a vast oil spill from BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico transfixed millions of people last year, many environmentalists argued that the disaster paled in comparison to the damage Nigeria had suffered through decades of intensive oil exploitation. The country's problems are compounded by endemic corruption and ethnic violence.
Geert Ritsema of the Friends of the Earth said at the round table that Shell tolerated levels of environmental damage in Nigeria that it would never accept at home. "When will you stop applying double standards?" he said.
Mr. Craig said that his experience with a Shell venture in Gabon showed that the issue was different local circumstances, not the application of different standards by his company.
"The physical environments are similar, the operating practices and standards are virtually the same and both operations are about 50 years old," he said of the Nigerian and Gabonese ventures. "Shell Gabon is considered to be a good steward of the environment and is well regarded by Gabonese society. The company's record on flaring and oil spills has created no material issues either in the country or internationally."
"The fundamental issue onshore in the Niger Delta," he said, "is one of high population density, the ensuing competition for resources, poverty, political marginalization and, of course, corruption, leading to frustration, violence and criminality."
The company has also been criticized for its failure to stop burning off the excess gas it generates as a byproduct of its oil production. Mr. Ritsema said the gas burned off annually by about 100 wells was worth many millions of dollars and created emissions equivalent to those of four million Dutch automobiles.
Mr. Craig said that the company's efforts to reduce flaring had not been as effective as the company hoped because progress had been slowed or reversed "by militant attacks on our staff and facilities and by a lack of funding" from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, which holds 55 percent of the main onshore venture. Shell holds 30 percent, the French oil company Total has 10 percent and Eni of Italy has 5 percent.
Over all, the tone of discussion was calm and civil.
Sharon Gesthuizen, a Socialist Party legislator who helped to organize the hearing, said Shell officials should more openly address corruption and organized oil theft in its dealings with the Nigerian government and accused Shell of keeping silent "for economic reasons."
Mr. Craig disagreed, saying that while the company did have a responsibility to address those issues, "some things should be discussed in private."
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13) Colombia: Coal Mine Explosion Kills as Many as 20
By SIMON ROMERO
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/americas/27webbriefs-Columbia.html?ref=world
An explosion at a coal mine in northeastern Colombia killed as many as 20 miners and left six injured, according to a statement from the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining. The disaster was caused by the release of methane gas that led to a blast and a cave-in. Dozens of people were killed in similar accidents last year in Colombia, South America's largest coal producer. More than 30 miners died at the same mine, called La Preciosa, in 2007.
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14) Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
By TAMAR LEWIN
January 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html?ref=education
The emotional health of college freshmen - who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school - has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago.
In the survey, "The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010," involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as "below average" in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985.
Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.
Campus counselors say the survey results are the latest evidence of what they see every day in their offices - students who are depressed, under stress and using psychiatric medication, prescribed even before they came to college.
The economy has only added to the stress, not just because of financial pressures on their parents but also because the students are worried about their own college debt and job prospects when they graduate.
"This fits with what we're all seeing," said Brian Van Brunt, director of counseling at Western Kentucky University and president of the American College Counseling Association. "More students are arriving on campus with problems, needing support, and today's economic factors are putting a lot of extra stress on college students, as they look at their loans and wonder if there will be a career waiting for them on the other side."
The annual survey of freshmen is considered the most comprehensive because of its size and longevity. At the same time, the question asking students to rate their own emotional health compared with that of others is hard to assess, since it requires them to come up with their own definition of emotional health, and to make judgments of how they compare with their peers.
"Most people probably think emotional health means, 'Am I happy most of the time, and do I feel good about myself?' so it probably correlates with mental health," said Dr. Mark Reed, the psychiatrist who directs Dartmouth College's counseling office.
"I don't think students have an accurate sense of other people's mental health," he added. "There's a lot of pressure to put on a perfect face, and people often think they're the only ones having trouble."
To some extent, students' decline in emotional health may result from pressures they put on themselves.
While first-year students' assessments of their emotional health were declining, their ratings of their own drive to achieve, and academic ability, have been going up, and reached a record high in 2010, with about three-quarters saying they were above average.
"Students know their generation is likely to be less successful than their parents', so they feel more pressure to succeed than in the past," said Jason Ebbeling, director of residential education at Southern Oregon University. "These days, students worry that even with a college degree they won't find a job that pays more than minimum wage, so even at 15 or 16 they're thinking they'll need to get into an M.B.A. program or Ph.D. program."
Other findings in the survey underscore the degree to which the economy is weighing on college students.
"Paternal unemployment is at the highest level since we started measuring," said John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at U.C.L.A.'s Higher Education Research Institute, which does the annual freshman survey. "More students are taking out loans. And we're seeing the impact of not being able to get a summer job, and the importance of financial aid in choosing which college they're going to attend."
"We don't know exactly why students' emotional health is declining," he said. "But it seems the economy could be a lot of it."
For many young people, serious stress starts before college. The share of students who said on the survey that they had been frequently overwhelmed by all they had to do during their senior year of high school rose to 29 percent from 27 percent last year.
The gender gap on that question was even larger than on emotional health, with 18 percent of the men saying they had been frequently overwhelmed, compared with 39 percent of the women.
There is also a gender gap, studies have shown, in the students who seek out college mental health services, with women making up 60 percent or more of the clients.
"Boys are socialized not to talk about their feelings or express stress, while girls are more likely to say they're having a tough time," said Perry C. Francis, coordinator for counseling services at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. "Guys might go out and do something destructive, or stupid, that might include property damage. Girls act out differently."
Linda Sax, a professor of education at U.C.L.A. and former director of the freshman study who uses the data in research about college gender gaps, said the gap between men and women on emotional well-being was one of the largest in the survey.
"One aspect of it is how women and men spent their leisure time," she said. "Men tend to find more time for leisure and activities that relieve stress, like exercise and sports, while women tend to take on more responsibilities, like volunteer work and helping out with their family, that don't relieve stress."
In addition, Professor Sax has explored the role of the faculty in college students' emotional health, and found that interactions with faculty members were particularly salient for women. Negative interactions had a greater impact on their mental health.
"Women's sense of emotional well-being was more closely tied to how they felt the faculty treated them," she said. "It wasn't so much the level of contact as whether they felt they were being taken seriously by the professor. If not, it was more detrimental to women than to men."
She added: "And while men who challenged their professor's ideas in class had a decline in stress, for women it was associated with a decline in well-being."
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15) In Plan to Improve County Jail, a Model for Immigrant Detention Centers
[The real purpose is to expand the detention centers. Another Obama "reform."...bw]
"The expanded detention center would hold as many as 2,750 immigrants - 1,750 more than it does now - increasing the number of detainee beds in and around the region by as much as 60 percent, federal officials said. ...Federal officials have also signaled their intent to expand or build centers in or near Miami, Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco."
By KIRK SEMPLE
January 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/nyregion/28detain.html?ref=nyregion
For officials of Essex County, N.J., it promises to be a potential moneymaker in struggling Newark: a proposed upgrading and extension of the county jail so it would hold hundreds more immigrants than it does now.
For the Obama administration, the plan offers the possibility of something far more sweeping: one of the first publicly visible results of its strategy to overhaul the way the government detains immigrants accused of violating the law.
Federal officials say the county's proposal, which they have tentatively approved, would provide a less penal setting for noncriminal detainees, with improved medical care, amenities and federal oversight - the template for a new kind of detention center they intend to create around the country by renovating existing centers, building new ones and closing others.
As the government has locked up a growing number of immigrants in recent years, it has patched together a loose network of county jails and private detention centers, some of which have come under fire for abuse, substandard living conditions and even detainee deaths.
The Newark project, officials say, would also help alleviate a shortage of beds at detention centers in the New York region that has forced the transfer of many detainees to other parts of the country, far from their families and their lawyers, and driven up expenses. The expanded detention center would hold as many as 2,750 immigrants - 1,750 more than it does now - increasing the number of detainee beds in and around the region by as much as 60 percent, federal officials said.
Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the division of the Department of Homeland Security that runs the detention system, say they have chosen Essex County's proposal over three other submissions from the region. The deal is still subject to final approval by federal authorities; negotiations between the authorities and county officials are expected to take at least three more months.
The project is the only one under consideration in the immigrant detention network in the Northeast. Just one other program in the country is as far advanced: The immigration agency signed a contract last month with Karnes County, Tex., for a 600-bed minimum-security center to house male detainees. Federal officials have also signaled their intent to expand or build centers in or near Miami, Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco.
Immigration officials are saying little about the Newark proposal, citing the sensitivity of negotiations. But in a statement this month, the agency called the Karnes County agreement "a significant milestone" in its effort to improve the detention system.
Federal and Essex County officials would not disclose the Newark project's projected cost; the immigration agency said the responsibility to finance it would rest with the county. In turn, the federal government would pay for each inmate housed. It currently pays the county $105 per day for each immigrant in its jail, the Essex County Correctional Facility, in an industrial section of northeast Newark.
Such arrangements have not always worked out well for local governments. In Central Falls, R.I., a for-profit detention center built by a municipal corporation has struggled financially; federal officials removed all of its immigrant detainees in 2008 after the death of a New York man who they said had been abused and denied medical care.
Moved in part by events like that, the Obama administration announced in August 2009 that it would overhaul the immigration detention system. Among other things, the plan seeks to establish more centralized authority over the system and improve living conditions by renovating centers designed for penal detention to make them more appropriate for noncriminal detainees facing deportation.
To that end, federal officials said in a statement this month, the Essex County project would feature amenities including new medical facilities, ample indoor and outdoor communal areas, enhanced social programs, "easy access" to legal services and "abundant natural light." An immigration official on the premises would provide oversight, officials said. The jail would also provide higher security for detainees considered violent or at high risk of escape.
The administration's detention overhaul also seeks to improve the system's efficiency by increasing the number of beds near big cities where the nation's immigrant populations are concentrated.
Federal immigration officials have said they expect demand for bed space in jails around the country to increase in coming months and years, in part because of Secure Communities, a new enforcement program that has already contributed to a surge in deportations. The program, which allows federal officers to check the immigration status of everyone booked into a local or county jail, is being rolled out state by state and is expected to be in place across the country by 2013.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement now has space for about 33,000 detainees at a time, spread out across about 260 detention centers nationwide, down from as many as 370 before the proposed changes were announced. Immigration officials said they had closed centers that were rarely used or failed to meet the agency's standards.
In the region overseen by the agency's field offices in New York City, Newark and Philadelphia - an area that includes southern New York State, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware - current demand is more than 3,400 beds per day, well over the capacity of 2,850 beds spread across 20 detention centers, federal officials said. Because of this shortfall, about 4,800 detainees are transferred out of the region every year, some sent as far away as Texas, slowing the deportation process by about two weeks in each case, officials said.
Essex County can hold up to 1,000 immigrants in its jail and in a neighboring residential building used to prepare convicts for re-entry into society, though the county usually holds fewer than half that number. The new project, county and federal officials said, would add at least 1,250 beds, and as many as 1,750, by improving those buildings and constructing another nearby.
Federal officials said that they had no immediate plans to close any detention centers in the region, but that the system would be continually evaluated as the Secure Communities program got under way throughout the country.
Some immigrant advocates and civil libertarians who have criticized the detention system said the improvements proposed for the Essex County jail were long overdue.
In April, the county's handling of detainees was assailed in a report by three advocacy groups that examined federal detention centers in New Jersey and declared them "a complete failure." Among other grievances, detainees in Newark complained of delays of up to two weeks to receive medical care and medicine, insufficient food served in "unsanitary conditions," and a scarcity of soap and toilet paper. They also told of verbally abusive guards and long wait times for visitors to see detainees, said the report, by the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the New York University School of Law.
Amy Gottlieb is the director of the Immigrant Rights Program at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that collaborated on the report and provides legal representation to the jail's detainees. She said she had not heard any complaints from the Newark jail for several months.
"But that doesn't mean they're not happening," she added. "There's always this trepidation because of the history of the facility."
Nancy Morawetz, an N.Y.U. law professor who leads the rights clinic, said the revamping of the detention system and the improvements proposed for Essex County were "laudable goals." But she said she remained concerned about the government's criteria for detaining people and was convinced that far fewer immigrants needed to be locked up.
"The unnecessary detention of people causes an enormous amount of hardship," Ms. Morawetz said.
As part of the system's improvements, the Obama administration has promised a greater use of alternatives to detention, like community supervision. Federal officials said the immigration agency was still evaluating how best to expand that program.
Still, they said that detention centers would remain the foundation of an elastic system that would change and shift as the government clamped down on illegal immigration.
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16) Subpoenas by Lynne Stewart
Published on Mon, 2011-01-24
http://www.stopfbi.net/2011/1/24/subpoenas-lynne-stewart
The following statement is from Lynne Stewart, the People's Lawyer currently imprisoned at Carswell Federal Prison.
I began my career as a political movement lawyer. The government was rounding up the last of the die hard militants, many of whom had been underground, and prosecuting them as a part of the panther movement.
They also subpoenaed anyone with any tangential relationship to those who had been arrested. I am talking about their daters, their lovers, their teachers, their religious leaders, their estranged relatives, those who had attended meetings, rallies, etc.
All of this activities centered upon an expropriation in suburban NY of a Brinks armored truck and the people who were arrested then and later. Their purpose? To intimidate that branch of the movement that could be counted on to support militancy and troll for even the most insignificant crumbs of information that might be fitted together to enmesh suspects.
What happened? Most people who had been taped by the government, lawyered up with movement lawyers, guided in part by the legal work of Bob Boyle and Guild lawyers who had written legal representation before Grand juries which remains the standard on what to do and when to do it. A person subpoenaed is in the unenviable position of having only the vaguest idea of what the government may want, and is faced ultimately with the choice of testifying against comrades or spending long months in jail.
They may even face a possibility of being indicted for contempt and facing a sentence that is completely up to a judge. In the face of this challenge in that day, I can only say that most people chose not to testify and to wait out the government. They gave up an existence as they were living it-- jobs, relationships, and all that constitutes daily life, and they went to jail. And they stayed in jail for many months and they didn't give in.
Now we are in another era -- one that was not born from the euphoria and idealism of the 60's, and the government is once again arresting, subpoenaing, and tormenting movement people, hoping they will become informants. And the reaction of the movement? We resist.
We stand strong with the resisters who elect not to become part of the same prosecution team that has terrorized the world. Now the so-called Department of Justice [ha!] has decided to focus on support groups of the world's peoples and also on eco-terrorism. Why? Because they can! It sends a message to the people that it's dangerous, don't join, don't resist. That message must once again be shouted down, first by the resisters who will go to jail, and second by us, the movement who must support them by always filling those cold marble courtrooms to show our solidarity, and by speaking out so that their sacrifice is constantly remembered.
Our principle of non-collaboration has so far proved robust. There has been no wavering. Our support must continue to convince everyone involved that these are issues of principle. There can be no compromise. Resisters must be defended to the utmost of our strength and abilities.
Venceremos
Love/Struggle
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
________________________________________
-- It is not illegal to expose illegal u.s. military occupations of small countries. Support Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks !!
-- An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. - George Bernard Shaw
-- It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class - except congress.
- Mark Twain
-- 30 million christianist fundamentalists (probably the largest voting bloc in the world) voted for bush, war and occupation in 2004, about as far away from a Christian approach to other people as it is possible to get. As Chris Hedges says, "The gospels are the one book the [christianist] fundamentalists know nothing about."
- The Palestinian intifada is a war of national liberation. We Israelis enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities ... we established an apartheid regime.
- Michael Ben-Yair, Israeli attorney general in the1990s, quoted in The Guardian (U.K.), April 11, 2002
___________________________________
Daniel Stone
justice_freedom@earthlink.net
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17) Protests at Federal Building in Chicago
Activists "Will Not Participate in" Grand Jury
By Staff |
January 26, 2011
http://www.fightbacknews.org/node/2275?utm_source=Fight+Back%2521+News+Service&utm_campaign=2df0c9890e-UA-743468-8&utm_medium=email
Chicago, IL - Speaking at a rally of 350 supporters Jan. 25, Sarah Smith explained that being subpoenaed hasn't had the effect that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wanted. The crowd cheered when she said, "I'm not backing down. In fact, I've been made stronger by the support from all of you to be become more politically active."
Sarah Smith wanted to see for herself how the Palestinians lived. She traveled last summer with friends on a delegation organized by the Palestine Solidarity Group. For this she was subpoenaed to a grand jury by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
The protest at the Dirksen Federal Building featured Smith and Maureen Murphy, two of the nine persons in Chicago who were to have appeared before the grand jury today. Murphy read the statement from the group, all of whom had been visited by the FBI in December. The crowd roared loudest when she proclaimed, "We will not participate in this fishing expedition."
Federal marshals kick press conference out of public press area
Picketing began while a press conference was convened inside the Dirksen Building. However, before the press conference could begin, federal marshals ordered the spokespersons from the Committee Against Political Repression out of the press area. Claiming that only 'government officials' can hold press conferences in the federal building, four marshals and Chicago police officers took cameras out of the hands of supporters who were filming or photographing the press conference that was about to get under way. One officer was overheard threatening to issue a citation to an activist for the offense of filming the marshal who took a camera from a trade unionist. As people exited the building to hold the press conference outside, one of the network camera men said, "This has never happened before," referring to being ejected from the press area.
Movements come together to support resisters
The crowd was lively, with trade unionists marching next to youth from the Puerto Rican Cultural Center school, members of Students for Justice in Palestine and anti-war veterans from the 1960s. Buses full of Palestinian and Puerto Rican youth joined the rally.
Bill Chambers of Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago pointed out that more than 50 organizations had endorsed the protest. Basil Ali of American Muslims for Palestine denounced the repression, but explained that the U.S. attorney and the FBI had failed, because "They have not hurt us; they have made us stronger. They have brought all of our movements together to stand in solidarity with the anti-war activists."
Speakers also include the president Christine Boardman of SEIU Local 73; Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union; Ricardo Jimenez, a Puerto Rican activist for the release of political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera. Jimenez was also a political prisoner for 20 years.
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18) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA:
Kevin Zeese
Bradley Manning Support Network
press@bradleymanning.org
+1-202-640-4388
Military steps up retaliation against accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower with arbitrary "suicide watch", followed by detainment of approved visitor
QUANTICO, VA, 23 January 2011 -- Military officials at Marine Corps Base Quantico today increased the isolation of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning by detaining Manning's friend and regular visitor David House at the base entrance until visiting hours were over. House was accompanied by Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com, a website that has collected 42,000 signatures on a petition calling for improvements to the conditions of Manning's detention, which constitute extreme and illegal pre-trial punishment.
"The Bradley Manning Support Network is dismayed that Brad was denied contact with his only regular visitor besides his attorney," founder Mike Gogulski stated. "Immediately following a rally by more than 150 supporters at Quantico last week, Brad was put on suicide watch for two days for reasons his counsel could only conclude were punitive. He was stripped of all of his clothing except his boxer shorts and his glasses were taken away. It seems to me that the Marine command is now reacting in the worst possible way to rising pressure on them."
David House has been making regular trips from his home in the Boston area to visit Manning at the Marine Corps brig since he was transferred there from Kuwait last summer. While detained at the base gate, House posted to Twitter that "one of the many MPs around the car says his orders to stop us come from on high." House and Hamsher were held on entry to the base for nearly the entire period of visiting hours, repeatedly demanded to provide information and documents the MPs already had, and threatened with arrest. Hamsher's car was towed away under the pretext that she lacked proof of insurance, despite having presented a digital copy.
At Firedoglake.com, founder Jane Hamsher wrote: "There is no doubt in my mind that the primary objective of everything that happened today was to keep Bradley Manning from having the company of his only remaining visitor."
"This is a bizarre action by the Marines. I think they see the growing support for Bradley Manning, they see more and more people realizing that he is being treated unfairly, and that as the facts of the case come out more and more people see that he is a patriot and not a traitor," said Kevin Zeese, Director of Voters for Peace and member of the Bradley Manning Support Network's steering committee.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week, Amnesty International stated that "the restrictions imposed in PFC Manning's case appear to be unnecessarily harsh and punitive." The letter also suggests that Manning's confinement is in contravention of international law, and calls upon the military to conduct a review.
House intends to return to Quantico next weekend to once again attempt to visit Manning and to deliver the petition.
In addition to petitions and public protests across the nation, the Bradley Manning Support Network has asked supporters to speak out against Manning's inhumane treatment by contacting officials at Quantico. The Support Network encourages concerned individuals to phone Quantico public affairs at +1-703-432-0289, to write to base commander Colonel Choike at 3250 Catlin Avenue, Quantico, VA 22134, and to write to brig commander CWO4 Averhart at 3247 Elrod Avenue, Quantico, VA 22134. We are asking that Bradley Manning's human rights be respected while he remains in custody; specifically, that he be allowed social interaction with other inmates, that he be allowed meaningful physical exercise, that approved visitors be allowed to see him without interrogation and harassment, and that the "Prevention of Injury" order (the military's basis for the extreme pre-trial punishment regime) be lifted.
# # #
References:
Firedoglake.com, "Sign Our Letter: Stop the Inhumane Treatment of Bradley Manning", http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/bradleymanning?source=fdl
Mike Gogulski, Bradley Manning Support Network, "Manning removed from two-day suicide watch; attorney files complaint, calls action punitive", http://www.bradleymanning.org/16023/manning-removed-from-two-day-suicide-watch-attorney-files-complaint-calls-action-punitive/
David House, Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidmhouse
Jane Hamsher, Twitter: http://twitter.com/janehamsher
Jane Hamsher, "Goal of Quantico Incident Was To Abuse Bradley Manning and Intimidating David House", http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/01/23/goal-of-quantico-incident-was-to-abuse-bradley-manning-and-intimidating-david-house/
Nadim Kobeissi, interviewing Kevin Zeese, CHOMP.FM, "EMERGENCY BROADCAST: Denying Bradley Manning Basic Civility", http://chomp.fm/003/
Amnesty International, "USA: Open letter to Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense", http://amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/006/2011/en
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