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STOP THE ATTACK ON BAY AREA PORT WORKERS!
MONDAY, APRIL 25, 11:00 A.M.
555 MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO
--Pacific Maritime Association, Drop all charges!
--Defend ILWU Local 10
Your Solidarity is Needed! An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
The Bay Area's International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 is under attack by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), after the rank and file dock workers' voluntary action on April 4, in solidarity with the national "We are One" action, for the Wisconsin public workers.
The PMA is suing the ILWU Local 10 because of the Union members' shutdown of the ports in Oakland and San Francisco. This is a serious attack on the right of workers to withhold their labor to support other workers. Local 10 members understand that what is taking place in Wisconsin and Ohio -- the state governments' attack on collective bargaining rights -- could affect workers across the United States.
The San Francisco Labor Council representing 87,000 union members, is in full support of Local 10. A resolution was passed unanimously at the S.F. Labor Council.
COMMITTEE TO DEFEND ILWU LOCAL 10
For more information, please contact the Committee at:
defendlocal10@sonic.net
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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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Do you want to work for peace and justice?
Do you want to see an end to the wars abroad?
Do you want to defend civil rights at home?
Come to the Next Meeting of UNAC, the United National Antiwar Committee, and Help Us Decide What to Do Next.
Saturday, April 23, 1pm
Centro Del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street (Between 15th St. & 16th St.)
San Francisco
Bring the Troops, Mercenaries, and War Dollars Home Now! Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan!
End all U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support for the Occupation of Palestine!
U.S./U.N./NATO Hands Off North Africa and the Middle East! Stop the bombing of Libya! Hands off the internal affairs of other countries!
Stop Spending Trillions on Wars, Tax Breaks and Bailouts for the Wealthy! Money for Jobs, Housing, Universal Healthcare and Education!
No to Islamophobia and All Racism! Stop the Attacks at Home on People of Color!
MONEY FOR JOBS, HOUSING, HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION -- NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION!
No Nukes!
Free Bradley Manning! Hands Off Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
unacpeace.org · facebook.com/endthewars · twitter.com/unacpeace
UNACNorthernCalifornia@gmail.com · (415) 49-NO-WAR
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Please help us to spread the words.
Thank you.
Honduran Youth Activist's Special Report
Non-violent Resistance to the Honduran Regime
Gerardo Torres Speaking Tour
Since the June 28, 2009, military coup in Honduras and the kidnapping of democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, Gerardo Torres has immersed himself in all levels of the FNRP, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.
Gerardo comes to us following his appearance at the Latin America Solidarity Coalition national conference in Washington DC. The objective of the conference, held from April 8-10, was to build a movement to end U.S. militarism and militarization of relations with Latin America.
As a leader of the non-violent resistance movement, Gerardo is able to present an eyewitness account of the ongoing repression that is escalating in its intensity. He will discuss how the coup was actually a catalyst for uniting various segments of society, such as students, teachers, artists, gays and lesbians, into a massive popular resistance movement, which fosters the people's dream to "refound the State" based on justice and equality.
San Francisco
Sat. April 23, 7pm
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
2868 Mission St. at 24th
Contact: 415-821-1155
Sponsor: Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition (BALASC)
Tour info: 415-924-3227 or www.mitfamericas.org
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Please post & distribute widely...
Celebrate Mumia's Birthday!
Come See This Important New Film:
Justice On Trial
- The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Features new interviews with Mumia's sister, and with Crime Magazine investigator
J Patrick O'Connor, author of The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
• NLG Director Heidi Boghosian & journalist Linn Washington, dissect the case.
• Presents recently discovered photographic evidence showing Mumia's innocence.
• Demolishes the prosecution's lies about what happened in the 1981 murder case.
Justice On Trial, the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal
is produced by Educators For Mumia in collaboration with Big Noise Films
Two Showings on Mumia's Birthday, Sunday, April 24, 2011:
1. Oakland: 2 pm
Sunday, April 24th, 2011
Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library
6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland CA
AC Transit: No. 1 bus, exit at Alcatraz. BART: exit at Ashby BART
$5 to $20 contribution
No one turned away for lack of funds
BENEFIT for the filmmakers, who went into debt to produce this vital film
Sponsored by: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
INFORMATION: 510 763-2347
2. San Francisco: 6:30 pm
Sunday, April 24th, 2011
Twin Space
2111 Mission St,@17th; 3rd Floor Room #300
* Entrance next to Fabric Outlet and Thrift Town
* Side gate on 17th San Francisco
Sponsored by: SF Bay View, blockreportradio.com, & Twin Space
INFORMATION: 415 671-0789
This message from: Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 1622, Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org • 510 763-2347
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Dockworkers sued for voluntary rank and file action.
Drop the lawsuit! Hands off ILWU Local 10!
Protest at Pacific Maritime Assn-PMA
555 Market St, SF (Betw. 1st & 2nd St, nr Montgomery BART)
Monday, April 25th - 11:00 a.m.- 1:30 p.m.
We are coming together to defend the rank and file of Local 10, who took voluntary solidarity action on April 4, to support workers in Wisconsin and 15 other states facing attacks on collective bargaining and cuts to social services.
Their action took place on the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an honorary member of Local 10.
The labor movement is under attack from Wisconsin to California and from New York and Ohio to Arizona. And we're beginning to fight back. On April 4, when working people across this country demonstrated in solidarity with the Wisconsin state workers, the rank and filers of ILWU Local 10 did what they've always done, implemented their union's slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all." No cargo moved in the ports of San Francisco and Oakland - in solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.
Now the employers' group, the Pacific Maritime Association, is trying to put an end to workers' solidarity actions by intimidating the union through a court suit. Their bullying tactics must be stopped.
ILWU Local 10 rank and filers and the San Francisco Labor Council are organizing a broad defense campaign. Last week 100 labor, community and social justice activists came together to form a Labor/Community Committee to Defend ILWU Local 10.
The defense campaign kicks off on Monday, April 25th with a mid-day MASS RALLY at PMA's San Francisco headquarters, 555 Market Street, to tell the employers: Drop the lawsuit! Hands off the ILWU!
San Francisco Labor Council Resolution - adopted April 11, 2011
Defend April 4th Solidarity Action by the Rank-and-File of ILWU Local 10
....Whereas, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 and its President Richard Mead are being sued in court by maritime employers of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) for a 24-hour shutdown of the Port of Oakland on April 4, for responding to the AFL-CIO call for a National Day of Action and in line with ILWU International President McEllrath's March 8th call for mobilizing in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin; and
Whereas, each rank and file member of Local 10 made this selfless choice to stand up for public workers in Wisconsin and for all workers in the best tradition of the longshore union, as they have done since the Big Strike of 1934 and the historic San Francisco General Strike, which built the foundation for the trade union movement in this city and on the West Coast; and
Whereas, these same maritime employers were unsuccessful in their attempt to use the slave labor Taft-Hartley Act to stop the ILWU from carrying out a Local 10-initiated coastwide shutdown of all ports on May Day 2008 to demand an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a first-ever in U.S. labor history; and
Whereas, Local 10, the heart and soul of the San Francisco labor movement, is now under attack for implementing the principled labor slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all."
Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council ... initiate a defense of ILWU Local 10 by setting up a broad-based defense committee in close collaboration with Local 10, and by mobilizing the AFL-CIO labor councils and unions of the Bay Area and California; and
Be it further resolved, that the first step in this campaign will be to call for a mass mobilization of all Bay Area Labor Councils and the California AFL-CIO to rally in front of PMA headquarters in San Francisco on Monday, April 25, to demand that the court suit be dropped and that the vindictive ... procedures against the union in the arbitration be halted immediately; and
Be it finally resolved that ILWU Local 10 be commended for its solidarity action and that we request that the state and national AFL-CIO do likewise. (Excerpts)
No cargo worked April 4 in solidarity with heroic Wisconsin
Dockworkers shut down ports of Oakland and San Francisco for 24 hours
By Dave Welsh
Oakland, April 4, 2011 - The power of workers to bring production to a halt was on dramatic display April 4, when longshore workers of ILWU Local 10 shut down the ports of Oakland and San Francisco for 24 hours, in solidarity with the heroic struggles in Wisconsin.
The big container port of Oakland was deader than a doornail Monday at 6 a.m. I saw a long snake-line of trucks bearing shipping containers idled on the roadway. The shipping cranes were all "standing at attention" - i.e., not working any containers. [These are same Port of Oakland cranes that gave George Lucas the idea for some of his "Star Wars" imagery.]
The ILWU hiring hall was practically deserted at dispatch time for the night shift, leaving several hundred jobs unfilled. The dock workers stayed away, and no cargo was worked on any shift Monday in Oakland or San Francisco.
The rank-and-file-initiated shutdown was part of nationwide actions on April 4 to challenge the draconian budget cuts and union busting in Wisconsin and other states.
An 'act of organized resistance' by rank-and-file dock workers
"This was a voluntary rank and file action which resulted in an act of organized resistance," said Clarence Thomas, a dock worker and Local 10 executive board member. "It was a courageous act of conscience on the part of these rank and filers - whose work, by the way, is critical to the functioning of the global economy."
"It is significant that the action by Local 10 was taken in solidarity with Wisconsin public sector workers who are facing the loss of collective bargaining," Thomas said. He pointed out that April 4 is also the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. - who was killed in Memphis fighting for collective bargaining for sanitation workers in that city.
"So we've come full circle," Thomas concluded. "The Memphis public workers got their union, after a two-month strike. Now 40 years later their Wisconsin counterparts are threatened with losing theirs. But it is Wisconsin's fierce resistance that is inspiring all of us today."
It is not surprising that the 24-hour port work stoppage came out of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, a racially diverse, predominantly African American local and the home local of legendary labor leader Harry Bridges. Martin Luther King was named an honorary member of Local 10 six months before he was killed.
Local 10 member interviewed on KPFA Radio April 5
Clarence Thomas, executive board member of ILWU Local 10, is interviewed April 5 on KPFA's Morning Mix after dock workers shut down the ports of Oakland and San Francisco, protesting union busting legislation in Wisconsin and other states. To hear the interview, click this link: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/04/06/18676499.php
To contact the Committee to Defend ILWU Local 10, email defendlocal10@sonic.net
We need you to rise to the defense of these dock workers when they're under attack. They are the one union that has always practiced solidarity with others.
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Ninth Annual International Al-Awda Convention
April 29 & 30, 2011
The Embassy Suite Hotel, Anaheim South
11767 Harbor Boulevard
Garden Grove, Ca 92840
A significant event at a critical time in Arab history!
CONVENTION WEBSITE: http://www.al-awda.org/convention9/index.html
Ninth Annual International Al-Awda Convention - Onward, United and Stronger Until Return!
JUST IN: Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, one of the 'big five' trade unions in Britain, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Chair UK will be addressing Al-Awda's Ninth Annual International Convention.
Strategy, tactics and planning discussions:
* The Palestine Papers and the Arab people's uprising; Impact on the Palestinian struggle and future organizing
* Boycotts & Divestment
* Refugee Support
* Return From Exile Project with Free Palestine Movement
* Cultural Resistance Through Various Forms of Art
* Palestinian Children's Rights Campaign
* Young activist program with hands on workshops
Speakers include:
* Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Founding President of the Palestine Land Society
* Abbas Al-Nouri, Syrian Arab actor of "bab el-hara" fame, political activist
* Diana Buttu, Palestinian lawyer, former legal advisor to Palestinian negotiating team
* Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Chair UK
* Ali Abunimah, Palestinian author and co-founder Electronic Intifada
* Lubna Masarwa, Palestinian activist, survivor of Mavi Marmara massacre
* Laila Al-Arian, Palestinian Author, writer and Al-Jazeera English producer
* Dr. Jamal Nassar, Specialist in Middle East politics, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at CSUSB
* Rim Banna, Palestinian singer & activist
* Najat El-Khairy, Palestinian porcelain painting artist
* Remi Kanazi, Palestinian spoken word artist, activist
* Youth from Al Bayader Center Yarmouk Refugee Camp
Plus . . .
Cultural presentations, films, books and solidarity items, network with friends and fellow activists & lunch keynote presentations & evening banquet with live music! (Baby-sitting available for entire convention)
Al-Awda Convention on Facebook
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CELEBRATE THE HISTORIC RETURN OF JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE TO HAITI!
A REPORT BACK
Saturday, APRIL 30, 4-6PM
La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley (wheelchair accessible)
$5-$20 donation requested (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth, co-founders of Haiti Action Committee, were eyewitness to the joyful return of President Aristide and his family to Haiti. Come hear their account of the President's arrival and the response of the Haitian people, as well as the background to this remarkable event.
The program will include updates on the latest developments in fraudulent elections imposed on Haiti, and what's ahead for the solidarity movement.
In the wake of sham elections and an ongoing 7-year military occupation, Haiti's grassroots movement for democracy is vital and alive and an essential part of movements around the world fighting for dignity and freedom. Let us continue to stand in solidarity!
Haiti Action Committee
www.haitisolidarity.net
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STRIKE MAY 1, 2011!
CodePINK, Cindy Sheehan, and all Vulnerable Folks are calling on you to join us May 1st, 11:30am at the IWD march & rally in San Francisco to Civic Center - where we will kick-off our STRIKE MAY 2011 march to Sacramento!
We are planning to take 8 days to march to Sacramento, doing actions - marches, rallies, press conferences, flyering, bannering - in towns along the way. We will do a combination walking, biking, skating, carpooling, train, etc. to get there.
And we are arriving in Sacramento on the 9th, the same day as the teachers occupation begins, setting up a tent city, occupying the grounds until the legislature votes OUR budget!
Our general theme is: 1) NO MORE TAXES for WARS & OCCUPATIONS; and 2) NO MORE TAX BREAKS for the RICH & their CORPORATIONS!
We are hoping everyone will join in the MARCH & TENT CITY for however long, however many day(s), hour(s) you choose.
AND we hope you will bring YOUR main focus/issue and represent! We are thinking of making each day of the walk a different issue/focus. And certainly at the TENT CITY, we are hoping everyone will do teach-ins to share their information and build a strong coalition.
If you are willing to endorse, please email info AT bayareacodepink.org or call 510-540-7007 and leave your name, number, email, and organization.
If you are willing to be active and work on this STRIKE MAY 2011 for however long, in any capacity, before, after, during, please also email or call ASAP!
TOGETHER we WILL direct our STATE BUDGET to become OUR BUDGET!
End war on women!
End war on workers, immigrants, people of color!
End wars of occupation!
End wars of corporate greed!
End wars on our Mother Earth!
End all wars!
Bring our tax$$ home!Take our tax$$ back from the rich!
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Middle East Children's Alliance
Bay Area book release event: The Goldstone Report
Thursday, May 5, 2011, 7:00 P.M.
First Congregational Church
2501 Harrison St.
Oakland, Ca. 94610
$15, $10 low income/ students
The Middle East Children's Alliance presents the bay area book release of "The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict" -- an edited version of Judge Richard Goldstone's UN report which documents war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, with a Forward by Desmond Tutu, an Introduction by Naomi Klein, and essays by leading journalists/activists/academics. Two of the book's editors, Phillip Weiss & Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss.net, will speak about first-hand testimonies and lead a discussion about why these stories matter and what we can do. Also, George Bisharat, law professor at UC Hastings, will introduce the event.
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/167898
A Benefit for MECA's Maia Project: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/project/maia-project
Event page: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/bay-area-book-release-goldstone-report-legacy-landmark-investigation-gaza-conflict
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JUSTICE FOR JEREMY MARKS
DEFEND COPWATCHERS!!!
The Jeremy Marks case is one of the worst cases of state repression and deserving of everyone's support across the state of California and the country.
In May 2010 Jeremy videotaped a school police woman brutalizing one of his fellow students at a school bus stop. The police officer assault was witnessed by many at Marks' high school that day. Unbelievably Jeremy was arrested for "Attempted Lynching" an outdated charge of inciting a riot. 18 year old Jeremy was put in jail with a $150,000 bail. He stayed in jail until December when a Google engineer put up the bail money and he got out of jail in time to spend Christmas at home.
JEREMY MARKS
Our collective reality has been drastically changed since New Year's 2009 when witnesses captured BART police on video murdering Oscar Grant and since the outbreak of rebellions in Oakland of 2009 and 2010. For the first time in our lifetimes a white policeman is doing time for murdering an unarmed black man.
An Injury to One is an Injury to All
The powers that be certainly do not want the people to photograph police when they brutalize, terrorize and murder our people. But we will continue to film the brutal actions of the police and share those videos for all to see. There is no stopping the people's demand to be free from police terror.
Since Oscar's murder, laws are pending in 13 states making it illegal to record on-duty police. Prior to Oscar's assassination, only three states had such anti-copwatching laws!
The Oscar Grant Committee stands in solidarity with Jeremy Marks and in defense of all copwatchers! We support his struggle for justice and demand that the DA drop all the charges against him now!
A Black Mother's Fight to Save Her Son
Please join Ms. Rochelle Pittman, Jeremy's mother, on Mother's Day for a very special afternoon in Solidarity with Jeremy Marks
Sunday, May 8th at 3 p.m.
Eastside Arts Alliance Center
2277 International Boulevard, Oakland
Hear Ms. Pittman speak on:
Monday, May 9th at 7:00 pm
Humanist Hall
390-27th Street, Oakland
(between Broadway & Telegraph)
Also on:
Wednesday, May 11 at 6:30 p.m.
HOMIES EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM
1612 - 45th Avenue - Eastlake YMCA
2 blocks from Fremont High School
Sign the on-line petition at: http://www.answercoalition.org/la/news/sign-the-petition-to-support.html
Sponsored by: Jeremy Marks Defense Committee, ANSWER Coalition, Berkeley CopWatch, Center for Progressive Action, Homies Empowerment Program & OSCAR GRANT COMMITTEE Against Police Brutality & State Repression
For more info: call (510) 225-9212 or email oscargrantcommittee@gmail.com
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Save the Date!
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country -- from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
In state capitals, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back. But if we're going to be successful in pushing back the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services and education, we need to build unity within our movement, including forging stronger ties with labor's allies: communities of color, students and youth, single-payer advocates, environmentalists, antiwar activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive forces.
Relying on politicians to defend us -- the so-called "friends of labor" -- has proven to be disastrous. During the past three decades, working people have suffered a dramatic decline in their standard of living while the rich have amassed an unprecedented amount of wealth at the top, regardless of which of the major parties was running the government. We have had every combination imaginable: Republicans occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, Democrats occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, or some kind of "divided government." But in each case the result for working people has been the same: conditions got worse for workers while the corporations prospered even more. Why should we continue this vicious cycle?
The working class has the power to put an end to this situation. And as the debate over the debt and the deficit intensifies, the need has never been greater for an organized campaign to demand "No Cuts, No Concessions!" whether in regard to social programs or workers' wages and benefits. We say place the burden for solving the financial crises squarely where it belongs: on the rich. They caused the crisis, let them pay for it!
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was initiated earlier this year at a historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 at Kent State University in Ohio for a national labor-community conference to spur the campaign to build a more militant fight-back movement and to launch a national campaign for an alternative agenda for working people. Together we can move forward on both fronts.
This conference is open to all who agree with its purpose, as explained in this Call. To register for the conference, please go to our website at www.laborfightback.org. If you prefer to register offline, write emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715 for a registration form.
For more information, e-mail emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715.
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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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Egyptian Soldiers Join Protest Demanding End to Military Dictatorship
Adam Hanieh: Class struggle in Egypt enters a new stage
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6626
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Our Government at Work????? Not......
Oh Wonderful, while we are all praying to keep our jobs!!!!!!!!!!
This picture is worth a trillion $$$
House Minority Leader pictured standing, far right, speaks while colleagues play solitaire Monday night as the House convened to vote on a new budget. (AP)
The guy sitting in the row in front of these two....he's on Facebook, and the guy behind Hennessy is checking out the baseball scores.
These are the folks that couldn't get the budget out by Oct. 1, and are about to control your health care, cap and trade, and the list goes on and on?.
Should we buy them larger screen computers - or - a ticket home, permanently?
This is one of their 3-DAY WORK WEEKS that we all pay for (salary is about $179,000 per year).
KEEP THIS GOING! DON'T LET IT STOP WITH YOU!
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Row over Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning treatment (12Apr11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv8xyHhDKkY&feature=related
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AP writer pwned State Department on Human Rights Abuse of Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUctxdsKk9Q
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environmet would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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ANTI-WAR RALLY & PROTEST-NYC
http://politube.org/show/3195
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More than 800 Reasons (Engl. Sub) - Struggle for Education at the Uni of Puerto Rico
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlrlpO2BgEo
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RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g
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Join the Pan-Canadian day of action to end war in Afghanistan - April 9, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wOwu34kzs
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1968 - Martin Luther King's Prophetic Last speech - Remember
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1L8y-MX3pg&feature=player_embedded
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VIDEO: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother
Take Back the Land- Rochester Eviction Defense March 28, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2axN1zsZno&feature=player_embedded
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B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Wisconsin and After
http://blip.tv/file/4959469
A overview of the recent weeks in the battle for public sector workers in Wisconsin, and touching upon the national ramifications. Key issues are raised, through interviews and documentary footage: concessions have been pushed and agreed to by the Democrats and top union leaderships, setting workers up for the current Republican attacks. "On the national level, the Democrats have bought into the idea that workers should pay for the crisis," points out AFSCME 2858 Pres. Steve Edwards. But the money is there, if we taxed the rich and ended war spending. Includes scenes of the return of the 14 Democrats, the capitol rotunda occupation, mass marches, Iraq Veterans Against the War, more. Connects state budget crises with the wars and Wall Street, and looks at the tactics of the recall election and a general strike. Interviews and speeches from: Steve Edwards, Pres. of AFSCME 2858 and member of Socialist Alternative; Andy Heidt, Pres. of AFSCME Local 1871 and member of wisconsinwave.org; Jesse Sharkey, V.P. Chicago Teachers Union (for i.d. purposes only); Jan Rodolfo, National Outreach Coordinator, National Nurses United; Scott Kimbell, Iraq Veterans Against the War; Austin Thompson, labor organizer - Madison, WI. 25:30. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Dr. Michio Kaku says three raging meltdowns under way at Fukushima (22442 views)
Uploaded 3/31/2011
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=604AB3FA803FF3647DF6E34EC5E8C8A0
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Afghans for Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ror0qPcasM&NR=1
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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END THE U.S./UN/NATO KILL TEAM NOW!
WARNING: THESE ARE HORRIFIC, DISGUSTING, VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE U.S. MILITARY MAKING THE UPCOMING APRIL 10 [APRIL 9 IN NEW YORK] MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS A FIRST PRIORITY FOR WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. WE DEMAND OUT NOW! END THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND EVERYWHERE! BRING ALL THE TROOPS, UN/NATO/US/ and CONTRACTORS HOME NOW!
The Kill Team Photos More war crime images the Pentagon doesn't want you to see
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327
'Death Zone' How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling 'music video'
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/death-zone-20110327
'Motorcycle Kill' Footage of an Army patrol gunning down two men in Afghanistan
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/motorcyle-kill-20110327
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BOB MARLEY - WAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zaNwyhXn0&playnext=1&list=PLA467527F8DD7DE1F
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Frederick Alexander Meade on The Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vqzfEYo6Lo
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Chernobyl 25 years on -- The Big Cover-Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9URUQvGE9g&feature=player_embedded
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Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Song (with lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTafZRecy2k&feature=email&tracker=False
Worker's Song Lyrics
Artist(Band):Dropkick Murphys
Yeh, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
[Chorus:]
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
[Chorus x3]
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
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BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
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Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
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Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
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Stop LAPD Stealing of Immigrant's Cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lf4kENkxo
On Februrary 19, 2011 Members of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC) organized and engaged in direct action to defend the people of Los Angeles, CA from the racist LAPD "Sobriety" Checkpoints that are a poorly disguised trap to legally steal the cars from working class people in general and undocumented people in particular. Please disseminate this link widely.
Venceremos,
SCIC
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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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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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The Most Heroic Word in All Languages is Revolution
By Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs, that greatest son of the Middle American west, wrote this in 1907 in celebration of that year's May Day events. It retains all of its vibrancy and vitality as events breathe new life into the global struggle for emancipation. "Revolution" remains the most heroic word in every language. -The Rustbelt Radical
Today the slaves of all the world are taking a fresh breath in the long and weary march; pausing a moment to clear their lungs and shout for joy; celebrating in festal fellowship their coming Freedom.
All hail the Labor Day of May!
The day of the proletarian protest;
The day of stern resolve;
The day of noble aspiration.
Raise high this day the blood-red Standard of the Revolution!
The banner of the Workingman;
The flag, the only flag, of Freedom.
Slavery, even the most abject-dumb and despairing as it may seem-has yet its inspiration. Crushed it may be, but extinguished never. Chain the slave as you will, O Masters, brutalize him as you may, yet in his soul, though dead, he yearns for freedom still.
The great discovery the modern slaves have made is that they themselves must achieve. This is the secret of their solidarity; the heart of their hope; the inspiration that nerves them all with sinews of steel.
They are still in bondage, but no longer cower;
No longer grovel in the dust,
But stand erect like men.
Conscious of their growing power the future holds up to them her outstretched hands.
As the slavery of the working class is international, so the movement for its emancipation.
The salutation of slave to slave this day is repeated in every human tongue as it goes ringing round the world.
The many millions are at last awakening. For countless ages they have suffered; drained to the dregs the bitter cup of misery and woe.
At last, at last the historic limitation has been reached, and soon a new sun will light the world.
Red is the life-tide of our common humanity and red our symbol of universal kinship.
Tyrants deny it; fear it; tremble with rage and terror when they behold it.
We reaffirm it and on this day pledge anew our fidelity-come life or death-to the blood-red Banner of the Revolution.
Socialist greetings this day to all our fellow-workers! To the god-like souls in Russia marching grimly, sublimely into the jaws of hell with the Song of the Revolution in their death-rattle; to the Orient, the Occident and all the Isles of the Sea!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.
It thrills and vibrates; cheers and inspires. Tyrants and time-servers fear it, but the oppressed hail it with joy.
The throne trembles when this throbbing word is lisped, but to the hovel it is food for the famishing and hope for the victims of despair.
Let us glorify today the revolutions of the past and hail the Greater Revolution yet to come before Emancipation shall make all the days of the year May Days of peace and plenty for the sons and daughters of toil.
It was with Revolution as his theme that Mark Twain's soul drank deep from the fount of inspiration. His immortality will rest at last upon this royal tribute to the French Revolution:
"The ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood-one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two Reigns of Terror, if we would but remember it and consider it: the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death on ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."
-The Rustbelt Radical, February 25, 2011
http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-most-heroic-word-in-all-languages-is-revolution/
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New antiwar song that's bound to be a classic:
box
http://www.youtube.com/user/avimecca
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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Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
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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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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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"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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Defend our liberties! In solidarity, buy a Civil Liberty Bond today
Committee to Stop FBI Repression Defend Our Civil Liberties!
PO Box 14183, Minneapolis MN 55414 Buy a Civil Liberty Bond Today!
www.StopFBI.net An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
Dear Friends,
Statements of support and actions taken by your organization are deeply appreciated. Thank you!
Do you want another way to actively support the defense of our Civil Liberties and the antiwar and international solidarity activists targeted by the FBI in the current sweep of repression?
Civil Liberty Bonds are perfect birthday or holiday or any-day gifts! For organizations and for individuals.
Civil Liberty Bonds are available in denominations of $10, $25, $50, $100, $250 & $500. They may be purchased online and printed directly from the website by clicking on this link: Civil Liberty Bonds.  Or from a link that appears in the upper right corner on the www.stopfbi.net home page that takes you directly to the Civil Liberty Bond page.
Show your visible support for Civil Liberties. Buy a Civil Liberty Bond for your organization! Civil Liberty Bond can a gift to a liberty-loving individual or presented to honor a courageous organization like yours. Or a bond may be framed to hang on wall in an office or home to boldly declare, as it says: Material Support for the defense of freedom of speech, thought and action in the service of solidarity and peace. The bearer is entitled "as are we all" to a future free from harassment and repression.
All 23 of the targeted activists say that they will not cooperate with this witch hunt against the movements so many of us have worked to build. The U.S. attorney is working to put these activists in prison. Whether some of them are indicted, or others are jailed for refusing to testify, the threat is very real. We will carry forward the fight for our right to speak out, organize and to stand in solidarity with those who want freedom.
We invite your organization to purchase a Civil Liberty Bond to help with legal expenses for the subpoenaed activists. National Lawyers Guild attorneys are donating countless hours of time and expertise to ensure the protection of First Amendment rights. As the legal processes continue and several more people have been subpoenaed, the costs of legal office staff, court fees, and supplies are mounting.
Please also forward this request to purchase bonds to your membership via a special mailing or your regular communications. Remember that Civil Liberty Bonds are perfect birthday or holiday or any-day gifts!
Gratitude for your solidarity can hardly be expressed in words. Thank you for your continuing support of our Civil Liberties and those who are specifically targeted by the FBI. Your support is essential for all of us.
Sincerely,
the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
www.StopFBI.net
http://www.stopfbi.net/donate/liberty-bonds
CSFR
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis MN Â 55414
612-379-3585
P.S. Don't forget to go to Stop FBI.net and sign the Pledge to Resist!
++++++++++
Please forward and otherwise distribute this message!
Committee to Stop FBI Repression StopFBI.net
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Abolish the Death Penalty Blog
http://www.ncadp.org/blog.cfm?postID=165
Abolish the Death Penalty is a blog dedicated to...well, you know. The purpose of Abolish is to tell the personal stories of crime victims and their loved ones, people on death row and their loved ones and those activists who are working toward abolition. You may, from time to time, see news articles or press releases here, but that is not the primary mission of Abolish the Death Penalty. Our mission is to put a human face on the debate over capital punishment.
You can also follow death penalty news by reading our News page and by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
1 Million Tweets for Troy! April 12, 2011
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
The state of Georgia is seeking to change the drugs they use to carry out executions so they can resume scheduling execution dates, including that of Troy Davis, a man with a strong claim of innocence. Doubts in the case persist, including the fact that no physical evidence links him to the murder, most of the witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony and newer testimony implicates a different person (including an eyewitness account).
The Davis case has already generated hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters in support of clemency, including from leaders such as the Pope, Jimmy Carter and former FBI chief Bill Sessions. We need to continue to amass petitions in support of clemency, demonstrating the widespread concern about this case and what it represents.
Please help us send a message to Georgia officials that they can do the right thing - they can intervene as the final failsafe by commuting Davis' sentence. Please help us generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis!
Share this tweet alert with your friends and family that care about justice and life as soon as you can.
More information about the case is available at www.justicefortroy.org
Here are some sample tweets:
When in doubt, don't execute!! Sign the petition for #TroyDavis! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Too much doubt! Stop the execution! #TroyDavis needs us! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No room for doubt! Stop the execution of #TroyDavis . Retweet, sign petition www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Case not "ironclad", yet Georgiacould execute #TroyDavis ! Not on our watch! Petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No murder weapon. No physical evidence. Stop the execution! #TroyDavis petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recanted. No physical evidence. Stop the execution of Troy Davis www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition #TroyDavis
Thanks!
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What in the fuck has Obama done so far?
http://whatinthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/
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WTF: WHERE'S THE FUNDING?
[PUBLIC NEED VS. CORPORATE GREED]
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CAMPAIGN VISIT:
WWW,STUDENTLABOR.ORG
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm excited to tell you that yesterday over 1,000 actions took place not only around the country but around the world in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his assassination 43 years ago. We were able to talk about his role in the Memphis sanitation workers' strike and unionization campaign and how he viewed unions as a path way to a true democracy. It was with this thought, honor, and respect that we fought to keep progressing the struggle for social and economic justice moving forward yesterday. SLAP, Jobs with Justice and United States Student Association took part in over 50 of the actions yesterday, ranging from rallies to teach-ins held on campuses.
In Philadelphia: Over 1,000 community members, faith, students, young people and workers came out to rally in solidarity with the labor movement and battles happening around the country.
In Ann Arbor: At the University of Michigan, hundreds of students covered the campus as they demanded the right to an affordable and accessible education and demanded that our communities be run by us, not corporations.
In Altanta: Hundreds of workers, students, young people, faith and community came out to a march and rally to stand against the attacks being launched on our communities that included MLK III as a speaker.
These actions did not go unheard, either. The New York Times uplifted USSA's role in an article re-capping the actions and explaining Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role in the day of action.
But the fight is just beginning - and we have more to say. Today SLAP is proud to be participating in a national teach-in lead by Francis Fox Piven and Cornel West called: "Fight Back USA!" that will discuss austerity, debt, and corporate greed and how we as young people can fight back. You can tune into the national broadcast that will be online from 2-3:30 EST and then there nearly 225 local teach-ins scheduled.
And after today more will be happening. The United States Student Association Board of Directors, composed of students from around the country, have declared April a month of action. We will be fighting every day to make higher education a priority, workers' rights mandatory and scale back the corporate greed that is trying to take over our country.
It is in this struggle that all members of our communities - elderly and young, working and unemployed - share the same interests. The fight happening right now is simply "public need verses corporate greed." It is time for us to set our priorities as neighborhoods, communities, cities, states and a country.
In Solidarity,
Chris Hicks
Student Labor Action Project Coordinator
SLAPfacebook | SLAPtwitter | SLAPonline
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE!
In a recent New York Daily News Poll the question was asked:
Should Army pfc Bradley Manning face charges for allegedly stealing classified documents and providing them for WikiLeaks?
New York Daily News Poll Results:
Yes, he's a traitor for selling out his country! ...... 28%
No, he's a hero for standing up for what's right! ..... 62%
We need to see more evidence before passing judgment.. 10%
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/05/2011-03-05_wikileaks_private_loses_his_underwear.html?r=news
Sign the Petition:
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
Stand with Bradley!
A 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Manning faces decades in prison for allegedly leaking a video of a US helicopter attack that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians to the website Wikileaks. Among the dead were two working Reuters reporters. Two children were also severely wounded in the attack.
In addition to this "Collateral Murder" video, Pfc. Manning is suspected of leaking the "Afghan War Diaries" - tens of thousands of battlefield reports that explicitly describe civilian deaths and cover-ups, corrupt officials, collusion with warlords, and a failing US/NATO war effort.
"We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," noted Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. While the President was referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Pfc. Manning's alleged actions are just as noteworthy. If the military charges against him are accurate, they show that he had a reasonable belief that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on a crisis of conscience.
After nearly a decade of war and occupation waged in our name, it is odd that it apparently fell on a young Army private to provide critical answers to the questions, "What have we purchased with well over a trillion tax dollars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?" However, history is replete with unlikely heroes.
If Bradley Manning is indeed the source of these materials, the nation owes him our gratitude. We ask Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John M. McHugh, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General George W. Casey, Jr., to release Pfc. Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him.
http://standwithbrad.org/
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REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ALERT:
San Francisco Health Center/PLANNED PARENTHOOD - San Francisco, CA
1650 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
IS BEING PICKETED DAILY BY RIGHT TO LIFE DEMONSTRATORS CARRYING GIANT SIGNS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CLINIC INTIMIDATING PATIENTS!
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The Arab Revolutions:
Guiding Principles for Peace and Justice Organizations in the US
Please email endorsement to ekishawi@yahoo.com
We, the undersigned, support the guiding principles and demands listed in this statement. We call on groups who want to express solidarity with the Arab revolutions to join our growing movement by signing this statement or keeping with the demands put forward herewith.
Background
The long-awaited Arab revolution has come. Like a geologic event with the reverberations of an earthquake, the timing and circumstances were unpredictable. In one Arab country after another, people are taking to the street demanding the fall of monarchies established during European colonial times. They are also calling to bring down dictatorships supported and manifested by neo-colonial policies. Although some of these autocratic regimes rose to power with popular support, the subsequent division and subjugation of the Arab World led to a uniform repressive political order across the region. The Arab masses in different Arab countries are therefore raising a uniform demand: "The People Want to Topple the Regimes!"
For the past two decades, the Arab people witnessed the invasion and occupation of Iraq with millions killed under blockade and occupation, Palestinians massacred with the aim to crush the anti-Zionist resistance, and Lebanon repeatedly invaded with the purposeful targeting of civilians. These actions all served to crush resistance movements longing for freedom, development, and self-determination. Meanwhile, despotic dictatorships, some going back 50 years, entrenched themselves by building police states, or fighting wars on behalf of imperialist interests.
Most Arab regimes systematically destroyed the social fabric of civil society, stifled social development, repressed all forms of political dissent and democratic expression, mortgaged their countries' wealth to foreign interests and enriched themselves and their cronies at the expense of impoverishing their populations. After pushing the Arab people to the brink, populations erupted.
The spark began in Tunisia where a police officer slapped and spat on Mohammad Bou Azizi, flipping over his produce cart for not delivering a bribe on time. . Unable to have his complaint heard, he self-immolated in protest, igniting the conscience of the Tunisian people and that of 300 million Arabs. In less than a month, the dictator, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, was forced into exile by a Tunisian revolution. On its way out, the regime sealed its legacy by shooting at unarmed protestors and burning detention centers filled with political prisoners. Ben Ali was supported by the US and Europe in the fight against Islamic forces and organized labor.
Hosni Mubarak's brutal dictatorship fell less than a month after Tunisia's. The revolution erupted at a time when one half of the Egyptian population was living on less than $2/day while Mubarak's family amassed billions of dollars. The largest population recorded in Egyptian history was living in graveyards and raising their children among the dead while transportation and residential infrastructure was crumbling. Natural gas was supplied to Israel at 15% of the market price while the Rafah border was closed with an underground steel wall to complete the suffocation of the Palestinians in Gaza. Those who were deemed a threat swiftly met the fate of Khalid Said. 350 martyrs fell and 2,000 people were injured.
After Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan exploded in protest. Some governments quickly reshuffled faces and ranks without any tangible change. Some, like Bahrain and Yemen, sent out their security forces to massacre civilians. Oman and Yemen represent strategic assets for the US as they are situated on the straits of Hormuz and Aden, respectively. Bahrain is an oil country that hosts a US military base, situated in the Persian Gulf. A new round of US funded blood-letting of Arab civilians has begun!
Libyan dictator Qaddafi did not prove to be an exception. He historically took anti-imperialist positions for a united Arab World and worked for an African Union. He later transformed his regime to a subservient state and opened Libya to British Petroleum and Italian interests, working diligently on privatization and political repression. He amassed more wealth than that of Mubarak. In the face of the Libyan revolution, Qaddafi exceeded the brutality of Ben Ali and Mubarak blind-folding and executing opponents, surrounding cities with tanks, and bombing his own country. Death toll is expected to be in the thousands.
Qaddafi's history makes Libya an easy target for imperialist interests. The Obama administration followed the Iraq cookbook by freezing Libyan assets amounting to 30% of the annual GDP. The White House, with the help of European governments, rapidly implemented sanctions and called for no-fly zones. These positions were precipitated shortly after the US vetoed a resolution condemning the illegal Israeli colonization of the West Bank. Special operations personnel from the UK were captured by the revolutionary commanders in Ben Ghazi and sent back. The Libyan revolutionary leadership, the National Council clearly stated: "We are completely against foreign intervention. The rest of Libya will be liberated by the people ... and Gaddafi's security forces will be eliminated by the people of Libya."
Demands of the Solidarity Movement with Arab Revolutions
1. We demand a stop to US support, financing and trade with Arab dictatorships. We oppose US policy that has favored Israeli expansionism, war, US oil interest and strategic shipping routes at the expense of Arab people's freedom and dignified living.
2. We support the people of Tunisia and Egypt as well as soon-to-be liberated nations to rid themselves of lingering remnants of the deposed dictatorships.
3. We support the Arab people's right to sovereignty and self-determination. We demand that the US government stop its interference in the internal affairs of all Arab countries and end subsidies to wars and occupation.
4. We support the Arab people's demands for political, civil and economic rights. The Arab people's movement is calling for:
a. Deposing the unelected regimes and all of its institutional remnants
b. Constitutional reform guaranteeing freedom of organizing, speech and press
c. Free and fair elections
d. Independent judiciary
e. National self-determination.
5. We oppose all forms of US and European military intervention with or without the legitimacy of the UN. Standing in solidarity with the revolution against Qaddafi, or any other dictator, does not equate to supporting direct or indirect colonization of an Arab country, its oil or its people. We therefore call for:
a. Absolute rejection of military blockades, no-fly zones and interventions.
b. Lifting all economic sanctions placed against Libya and allowing for the formation of an independent judiciary to prosecute Qaddafi and deposed dictators for their crimes.
c. Immediately withdrawing the US and NATO troops from the Arab region.
6. We support Iraq's right to sovereignty and self determination and call on the US to immediately withdraw all occupation personnel from Iraq.
7. We recognize that the borders separating Arab nations were imposed on the Arab people by the colonial agreements of Sykes-Picot and the Berlin Conference on Africa. As such, we support the anti-Zionist nature of this revolution in its call for:
a. Ending the siege and starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza
b. Supporting the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own representation, independent of Israeli and US dictates
c. Supporting the right of the Lebanese people to defend their country from Israeli violations and their call to end vestiges of the colonial constitution constructed on the basis of sectarian representation
d. Supporting the right of the Jordanian people to rid themselves of their repressive monarchy
e. Ending all US aid to Israel.
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in
______(state). I am calling _____ to demand he call off the Grand Jury
and stop FBI repression against the anti-war and Palestine solidarity
movements. I oppose U.S. government political repression and support
the right to free speech and the right to assembly of the 23 activists
subpoenaed. We will not be criminalized. Tell him to stop this
McCarthy-type witch hunt against international solidarity activists!"
If your call doesn't go through, try again later.
Update: 800 anti-war and international solidarity activists
participated in four regional conferences, in Chicago, IL; Oakland,
CA; Chapel Hill, NC and New York City to stop U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald's Grand Jury repression.
Still, in the last few weeks, the FBI has continued to call and harass
anti-war organizers, repressing free speech and the right to organize.
However, all of their intimidation tactics are bringing a movement
closer together to stop war and demand peace.
We demand:
-- Call Off the Grand Jury Witch-hunt Against International Solidarity
Activists!
-- Support Free Speech!
-- Support the Right to Organize!
-- Stop FBI Repression!
-- International Solidarity Is Not a Crime!
-- Stop the Criminalization of Arab and Muslim Communities!
Background: Fitzgerald ordered FBI raids on anti-war and solidarity
activists' homes and subpoenaed fourteen activists in Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Michigan on September 24, 2010. All 14 refused to
speak before the Grand Jury in October. Then, 9 more Palestine
solidarity activists, most Arab-Americans, were subpoenaed to appear
at the Grand Jury on January 25, 2011, launching renewed protests.
There are now 23 who assert their right to not participate in
Fitzgerald's witch-hunt.
The Grand Jury is a secret and closed inquisition, with no judge, and
no press. The U.S. Attorney controls the entire proceedings and hand
picks the jurors, and the solidarity activists are not allowed a
lawyer. Even the date when the Grand Jury ends is a secret.
So please make these calls to those in charge of the repression aimed
against anti-war leaders and the growing Palestine solidarity
movement.
Email us to let us know your results. Send to info@StopFBI.net
**Please sign and circulate our 2011 petition at http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
In Struggle,
Tom Burke,
for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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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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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
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!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
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
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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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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) Vittorio Arrigoni, "hero of Palestine"
The Electronic Intifada
15 April 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/content/vittorio-arrigoni-hero-palestine/9307
2) Homeless Mom Charged With Stealing $16,000 in Education Expenses By Lying About Son's Address for School
posted by: Robin Marty
April 8, 2011
http://www.care2.com/causes/education/blog/homeless-mom-charged-stealing-school/
3) France and Italy Will Also Send Advisers to Libya Rebels
By ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/africa/21libya.html?_r=1&hp
4) Wells Fargo Profit Jumps 48%
By ERIC DASH
Noah Berger/Bloomberg News
April 20, 2011, 8:58 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/wells-fargo-profit-jumps-48/?hp
5) Yemen Police and Protesters Clash as Deal Is Sought to End Political Crisis
"According to a plan backed by Western nations, Mr. Saleh would hand over presidential powers to his vice president and then leave office a month later under a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for himself and his family. Presidential elections would be held after 60 days, in accordance with the country's Constitution. The plan is seen as a compromise between what the ruling party and the opposition have been seeking. Yemen's opposition coalition, known as the Joint Meetings Parties, has indicated its support for the plan; Mr. Saleh has yet to respond."
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/world/middleeast/20yemen.html?ref=world
6) Cuba Lays Foundation for a New Leader
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/world/americas/20cuba.html?ref=world
7) WikiLeaks Defendant to Be Moved
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/us/20manning.html?ref=world
8) City Vows to Fight Suits in Central Park Jogger Case
By JOHN ELIGON
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/nyregion/new-york-wont-settle-suits-in-central-park-jogger-case.html?ref=nyregion
9) Press Release: Military moves to further isolate Bradley Manning with transfer to Kansas
"'PFC Manning's transfer from Virginia to Kansas limits his access to his civilian attorney David Coombs of Rhode Island. It also severely limits visitation opportunities by his East Coast family and friends,' explains attorney Kevin Zeese, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network."
by the Bradley Manning Support Network
April 19, 2011
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/releases/press-release-military-moves-to-further-isolate-bradley-manning
10) Why was PFC Manning moved to Fort Leavenworth?
By David Coombs, attorney for Bradley Manning
The Law Office of David E Coombs
www.armycourtmartialdefense.info
April 19, 2011
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/why-was-pfc-manning-moved-to-fort-leavenworth
11) Innocent until proven guilty
Help Save Troy Davis
Help Stop Troy Davis' Execution Now
The state of Georgia may soon execute Troy Davis. Troy is scheduled to be executed for murdering a white police officer, despite overwhelming evidence that calls into question his guilt, and repeated attempts at justice. This is Troy's last chance, and it's up to us to speak out to and save Troy Davis. By speaking out on the form to the right, you will add your voice to our name wall below, to show the Georgia Parole Board, and the world, that we stand by Troy Davis -- and we believe in justice in America.
http://www.naacp.org/campaign/davis?utm_medium=email&utm_source=NAACP&utm_campaign=20110420TroyDavis&source=20110420TroyDavis
12) VFP Statement on Military Intervention in Libya
News from Veterans For Peace
216 S. Meramec Avenue St. Louis, MO 63105 (314) 725-6005
April 21, 2011
www.veteransforpeace.org
13) Wildlife at Risk Face Long Line at U.S. Agency
By TODD WOODY
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/science/earth/21species.html?_r=1&hpw
14) Beyond the Oil Spill, the Tragedy of an Ailing Gulf
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21spill.html?adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1303408830-LNA0iCBQUodHXJRHYvh2Lg
15) Juvenile Killers in Jail for Life Seek a Reprieve
By ADAM LIPTAK and LISA FAYE PETAK
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21juvenile.html?hp
16) Youth, Mobility and Poverty Help Drive Cellphone-Only Status
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21wireless.html?ref=business
17) Lessons from Manning's transfer out of Quantico
BY GLENN GREENWALD
WEDNESDAY, APR 20, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/20/manning
18) Beware the military-psychological complex: A $125-million program to boost soldiers' "fitness" raises ethical questions
By John Horgan
Monday, April 18, 2011 | 12
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=beware-the-military-psychological-c-2011-04-18&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110421
19) Why is the World's Largest Organization of Psychologists So Aggressively Promoting a New, Massive and Untested Military Program?
The Dark Side of "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness"
By ROY EIDELSON, MARC PILISUK and STEPHEN SOLDZ
March 24, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz03242011.html
20) Security Forces Kill Protesters in Uprisings Around Syria
By ANTHONY SHADID
April 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/middleeast/23syria.html?hp
21) Patients Are Not Consumers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
22) Drone Strikes Militants in Northwest Pakistan
"Friday's attack could further fuel antidrone sentiment among the Pakistani public. A government official in North Waziristan told Pakistani reporters that five children and four women were among the 23 who were killed."
By JANE PERLEZ and ISMAIL KHAN
April 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23pakistan.html?hp
23) Libyan Rebels Advance; U.S. Will Deploy Drones
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and THOM SHANKER
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/world/africa/22libya.html?hp
24) Nation's Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows
By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/22poll.html?hp
25) Protests in Uganda Over Rising Prices Grow Violent
By JOSH KRON
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/world/africa/22uganda.html?ref=world
26) New Hampshire Senate Approves Bill Curbing Unions
"...a law is expected to be adopted that would prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees and disallow collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join a labor union."
By KATIE ZEZIMA
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/22newhampshire.html?ref=us
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1) Vittorio Arrigoni, "hero of Palestine"
The Electronic Intifada
15 April 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/content/vittorio-arrigoni-hero-palestine/9307
Palestinians and international solidarity activists around the world are collectively mourning the shocking death of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian journalist and solidarity activist. Arrigoni was also an occasional contributor to The Electronic Intifada (see "Gaza's record-breaking children," 16 August 2010 and "No words to console Gaza child after mother is killed by Israeli shelling," 26 July 2010).
Arrigoni, 36, was found dead early this morning in Gaza City, hours after a video of him blindfolded and apparently beaten had surfaced on the Internet. In the video, his captors threaten to execute Arrigoni unless the Hamas government in Gaza released the little-known group's imprisoned leader.
Arrigoni was the first foreign national known to be kidnapped in Gaza since Hamas began administering the territory four years ago. Previously, there had been a number of kidnappings of journalists, international aid workers and other visitors to Gaza, all eventually released. BBC reporter Alan Johnston was the most high-profile and longest-held captive, held for 114 days by the Dughmush clan, which some observers say have operated opportunistically and criminally under the guise of Islamic piety.
While the identities of Arrigoni's kidnappers and those responsible for his death and the reasons why they killed him are murky, Arrigoni himself was well-known and admired by those with whom he worked in solidarity with the Palestinian people. He first arrived to Palestine in 2002, his mother, Egidia Beretta, told the Italian news agency ANSA ("Hamas says it found body of Italian activist," The New York Times, 15 April 2011).
Arrigoni was involved with the International Solidarity Movement, and had last entered Gaza in 2009 during one of the efforts to break the siege on Gaza by boat. Arrigoni was among a handful of international activists present during Israel's winter 2008-09 attacks on the Gaza Strip, volunteering with the Palestine Red Crescent Society's emergency medical worker teams, despite the very dangerous conditions they faced. He was frequently interviewed by Italian media during the three weeks of bombardment, as Israel had banned journalists from entering the Gaza Strip. His daily dispatches during those three weeks, during which 1,400 Palestinians were killed, the vast majority civilians, were published in 2010 in a book titled Gaza: Stay Human, translated into English by Daniela Filippin and with an introduction by Israeli historian and dissident Ilan Pappe.
Arrigoni had been injured and arrested several times by the Israeli military. According to the International Solidarity Movement, Arrigoni was injured when the Israeli navy fired a water cannon at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Gaza. Palestinian fishermen have been repeatedly attacked - and sometimes killed - as Israel has imposed tight restrictions on how far out to sea Palestinians are allowed to fish ("ISM Rafah: Italian activist injured by Israeli navy off Gaza coast," 16 September 2008).
A month later, Arrigoni was kidnapped along with 15 Palestinian fishermen and three accompanying international activists, from Palestinian waters. According to an International Solidarity Movement activist writing on her blog, "At the time of his abduction, he was electrically shocked while peacefully avoiding abduction by diving into Gaza's cold waters" ("Vik: a friend, a brother, a humanist," 15 April 2011).
Arrigoni, known as "Vik" by many, was also a familiar face in the refugee camps in Lebanon. He was one of a trickle of international solidarity activists who volunteered in Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, which was destroyed during and after fighting between the Lebanese army and a fundamentalist group in 2007.
Arrigoni was long involved in human rights issues. The deputy mayor of Bulciago, Arrigoni's hometown north of Milan, said that the activist "had worked in Eastern Europe and Africa before embracing the Palestinian cause" ("Hamas says it found body of Italian activist," The New York Times, 15 April 2011).
The murder of Arrigoni comes just days after the assassination of Palestinian cultural figure Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was murdered by an unknown assailant outside of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, which he helped re-establish in the occupied West Bank refugee camp. Mer-Khamis' killing, like that of Arrigoni, sent waves of shock throughout the Palestinian and solidarity communities.
Palestinian factions including the Hamas government in Gaza, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian People's Party and the Popular Resistance Committees, all condemned the kidnapping and murder of Arrigoni ("Palestinian factions denounce murder of Italian activist," Ma'an News Agency, 15 April 2011).
Arrigoni's death also comes after a week of Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of nearly twenty Palestinians.
In a press release distributed by the International Solidarity Movement and the Free Gaza Movement, before it was learned that Arrigoni had been killed, Khalil Shaheen - a friend of Arrigoni with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - said "Vittorio Arrigoni is a hero of Palestine" ("Palestinians call for release of Italian activist kidnapped in Gaza," 14 April 2011).
Vigils and gatherings to mourn Arrigoni were ongoing in Gaza City, and in the occupied West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah at the time of publication. Similar actions were being organized in London and other international cities.
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2) Homeless Mom Charged With Stealing $16,000 in Education Expenses By Lying About Son's Address for School
posted by: Robin Marty
April 8, 2011
http://www.care2.com/causes/education/blog/homeless-mom-charged-stealing-school/
A homeless mother in Connecticut has been charged with theft of "education expenses" totaling nearly $16,000 after it was discovered that she registered her son for school using the babysitter's address.
The Stanford Advocate reports:
A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child's education.
Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.
McDowell's babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, was also evicted from her Roodner Court public housing apartment for providing documents to enroll the child at Brookside Elementary School.
According to the story, McDowell was primarily sleeping at a home in a different city, although she could not be there during the days, and also spent time at a local shelter. The boy went to the sitter's house daily after school.
An argument could be made that as they had no permanent home, there is no reason why the babysitter's house isn't a place of residence, as it was a place he went to daily and had more permanence than their other living situations appeared to. However, the school disagreed and decided after an investigation to press charges against the mother, claiming theft.
The Chair of the board of education admits the move is unusual -- normally a child found attending school out of district is just sent away. Others are speculating why this case became the case that the district appears to be interested in using to "set an example" in order to discourage other parents from attempting to send their children to school with false addresses, especially since the mother obviously has no ability to pay for the "theft." A lawyer involved in a similar case wonders why they wouldn't choose to go after someone where they may have a chance to get reimbursement back for the educational costs while making their point.
Could it be that the district is less concerned about sending a general example and more concerned about sending one geared to a specific audience? Like, for example, the low-income and homeless in the area?
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3) France and Italy Will Also Send Advisers to Libya Rebels
By ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/africa/21libya.html?_r=1&hp
PARIS - The French and Italian governments said Wednesday that they would join Britain in sending a small number of military liaison officers to support the ragtag rebel army in Libya, offering a diplomatic boost for the insurgent leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, as he met with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
After the meeting, The Associated Press reported, Mr. Sarkozy pledged to intensify French airstrikes that started in March.
The announcements came as the international community searched for a means to break a bloody battlefield deadlock that has killed hundreds in the contested cities of Misurata and Ajdabiya and left the rebels in tenuous control of a few major coastal cities in their campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
They also coincided with word out of Qatar that Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain last month, was seeking asylum in that Arab emirate. In an interview with Al Arabiya, another Qaddafi minister, Abdulrahman Shalgam, said that Mr. Koussa - who has been freed of the financial sanctions slapped on all Libyan officials but who faces possible prosecution over the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in Scotland - is most likely to remain in Qatar, where he went for a conference last week.
The decision to send military advisers seemed to push the three countries closer toward the limits of the United Nations Security Council resolution in mid-March authorizing NATO airstrikes but specifically "excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." But the promised deployments also seemed a tacit admission that almost five weeks of airstrikes have not been enough to disable Colonel Qaddafi's troops and prevent his loyalists from threatening rebel forces and civilians.
The French government spokesman, François Baroin, told reporters on Wednesday that the number of military liaison officers would be in single digits and that their mission would be to help "organize the protection of the civilian population." The British deployment could involve up to 20 advisers.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that the British advisers would help the makeshift rebel forces "improve their military organizational structures, communications and logistics."
Italy's defense minister, Ignazio La Russa, said at a news conference Wednesday that Italy would send advisers "according to the needs" of the rebels. He said the advisers' specific mission had not yet been determined. "They won't be on the battlefield," he said. "They'll be mentors, they won't accompany them. Training is one thing, participation another."
Mr. La Russa said he believed that the rebels had more weapons than the ones they had taken from Colonel Qaddafi's stockpiles. "They're rich in enthusiasm, they want to fight for liberty, but naturally they are poor in experience and arms," Mr. La Russa said of the rebels. "I don't think they only have arms from the Qaddafi army. Some help arrived," he added without elaborating further.
The moves to send military personnel have been likened by some critics to America's decision to send military advisers to Vietnam, raising worries in both countries that they are being drawn closer to a conflict with no clear resolution on behalf of a fractious and militarily ineffective insurgent force about which little is known.
Government ministers from all three countries stressed that they did not plan to send ground troops to support the rebels.
Facing restive electorates and with their forces already deployed in Afghanistan, European governments want to be seen in strict compliance with the resolution, arguing that military advisers do not constitute an occupation force.
But, in Britain at least, some lawmakers have noted that their government's involvement has already progressed from the supply of body armor and communications equipment to the rebels, announced a week ago, to sending advisers, prompting questions about what further embroilment might entail.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, which is now part of a governing coalition with the Conservatives, said Tuesday that the advisers "must not be seen as a first installment of further military deployment." He added, "Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers."
Members of Parliament have also called for a fresh debate. "This is clear evidence of mission creep," said John Baron, a Conservative member. "Now we are beginning to put military personnel on the ground, something that wasn't even discussed when we debated this issue."
France's foreign minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters in Paris on Tuesday that he remained "absolutely opposed to a deployment of troops on the ground, " words echoed on Wednesday by Defense Minister Gérard Longuet, who said the Security Council resolution permitting airstrikes did not authorize the use of foreign ground forces.
On Wednesday, nonetheless, the satirical and investigative French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported that, along with Britain and the United States, France had sent covert special forces to Libya three weeks ago to assess the impact of allied airstrikes.
The Libyan government criticized the British decision to send advisers, saying the move would prolong conflict. Instead, Libya's foreign minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, used a BBC interview broadcast on Wednesday to renew the Tripoli authorities' frequent call for a cease-fire and a suspension of NATO bombing to permit a settlement negotiated by Libyans themselves without foreign interference.
"We think any military presence is a step backwards," Mr. Obeidi said, "and we are sure that if this bombing stopped and there is a real cease-fire we could have a dialogue among all Libyans about what they want - democracy, political reform, constitution, election. This could not be done with what is going on now."
Mr. Obeidi said that following a cease-fire, the Libyan government was open to establishing an interim government and a six-month transition to United Nations-supervised elections, BBC radio reported, adding: "The foreign minister said the election could cover any issue raised by all Libyans, anything could go on the table, including, he implied, the future of Qaddafi as leader."
Libyan opposition leaders have dismissed as trickery any offer that does not begin with Colonel Qaddafi's resignation and the banishment of him and his family from the country.
President Sarkozy met Mr. Abdel-Jalil, formerly Colonel Qaddafi's justice minister, to try to find a means to break the deadlock and to debate "the process of democratic transition," according to a statement from the French president's office.
The prime minister, François Fillon, who also planned to meet Mr. Abdel-Jalil on Wednesday, was quoted in news reports as saying France would intensify airstrikes "to prevent Qaddafi forces from pursuing their attacks on civilian populations."
"But at the same time, we will need to find a political solution, that is, conditions for a dialogue so that the Libyan crisis can be resolved," he said in Kiev, Ukraine, according to Agence France-Presse.
Libyan state television reported on Wednesday that NATO warplanes had struck telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure. But it did not say where or when the reported attacks took place.
The Libyan rebel leader held talks on Tuesday in Rome with Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, and urged NATO to increase its airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi's forces. But, publicly at least, he appeared to have secured no firm commitment of increased military aid similar to Britain's offer.
Britain had previously been providing what Mr. Hague described as "nonlethal assistance," in the form of telecommunications equipment and body armor. He maintained that the new deployment fell within the United Nations Security Council resolution. The military team will work with British diplomats who are already in Benghazi.
The officers will be deployed "quickly," Britain's Defense Ministry said, but it declined to provide further details on the timeline or the number of soldiers.
A government official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorized to discuss operational matters, said that though some of the soldiers had special forces backgrounds, they were not directly drawn from Britain's elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service teams.
Allied bombing sorties and Tomahawk missiles have failed to tip the balance decisively in favor of a rebel group with disjointed leadership, limited weapons and many inexperienced fighters. And civilian casualties have continued to mount. On Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 20 children had been killed in the siege of Misurata.
Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and Ravi Somaiya from London. Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris and Rachel Donadio from Rome.
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4) Wells Fargo Profit Jumps 48%
By ERIC DASH
Noah Berger/Bloomberg News
April 20, 2011, 8:58 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/wells-fargo-profit-jumps-48/?hp
Wells Fargo, the nation's biggest retail bank, posted record first-quarter profit on Wednesday of $3.8 billion, a 48 percent increase from the period a year earlier, even as it contended with industrywide problems including a slowdown in mortgage lending and the costs of cleaning up the foreclosure mess.
The bank beat analysts' estimates by a penny, reporting earnings of 67 cents a share in the quarter. That compared with profit of $2.6 billion, or 45 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.
Wells Fargo reduced the amount set aside to cover future loan losses by $3 billion at the same time as its pile of bad loans decreased. The move helped offset a drop in revenue, which fell 5.2 percent, to $20.3 billion, as a mortgage refinancing boom tapered off amid rising rates. Home mortgage originations fell to $84 billion from $128 billion in the final quarter of 2010.
Although losses are easing and corporate lending has picked up, Wells Fargo's earnings were tempered by the same forces that weighed on the results of Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. Sluggish consumer lending, the rising cost of servicing troubled mortgages and new financial regulations, like limits on credit card penalties and overdraft fees, have cut into earnings.
Competitors had big Wall Street businesses to make up for some of the missing income from traditional banking activities during the first quarter. But Wells Fargo, which is more heavily oriented to retail banking, could not rely on investment banking and trading profit to bolster the bottom line.
Nevertheless, Wells Fargo's chairman and chief executive, John Stumpf, said he was pleased with the bank's performance despite the "uneven recovery."
"Our strong first-quarter results reflected positive trends in our business fundamentals as credit quality improved, capital ratios increased and cross-selling reached new highs," he said in a statement.
Wells Fargo quietly emerged from the financial crisis as one of the nation's strongest banks. After its takeover of the Wachovia Corporation in the fall of 2008, it has also become one of its largest consumer banks, with a large network of retail branches along both coasts. This spring, Wells Fargo converted computer systems and put up new signs on its branches in the New York metropolitan area.
Still, many analysts remain cautious. At a time when its rivals are betting on faster-growing overseas markets, some worry that Wells Fargo is too dependent on the United States recovery. In his statement, Mr. Stumpf acknowledged that while corporate lending activity was up, consumers remained hesitant to borrow.
Along with the slowdown in mortgage lending, Wells Fargo faces rising operating costs - especially in its loan servicing business after it reached a deal with federal regulators to increase staff levels and tighten oversight. Wells Fargo said its operating losses had increased $272 million, almost all related to additional money set aside for higher foreclosure-related matters and compensation.
Citigroup said it expected operating costs for its smaller servicing business to rise about $25 million to $30 million each quarter, and also planned to book as much as $50 million in additional charges related to the foreclosures. Bank of America said its expenses would increase, too. JPMorgan Chase said it took a one-time $1.1 billion charge related to the rising cost of foreclosures.
Like the other big banks, Wells Fargo may be required to buy back bad loans it sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other private investors. In the first quarter, the bank set aside $249 million to cover future repurchases, after setting aside $464 million in the fourth quarter.
Still, the spill of red ink has slowed. Athough the housing market and broader economy remain fragile, Wells Fargo said it had released $1 billion from its loan loss reserves in the first three months of the year and expected to continue drawing down its reserves in the coming quarters.
Wells Fargo already had one of the biggest real estate portfolios of any bank. But with the Wachovia deal it absorbed more than $219 billion worth of commercial real estate and corporate loans - and a big book of at-risk mortgages.
"We continue to be optimistic about the improvements in credit quality and remain focused on managing through this cycle," said Michael J. Loughlin, Wells Fargo's chief risk officer.
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5) Yemen Police and Protesters Clash as Deal Is Sought to End Political Crisis
"According to a plan backed by Western nations, Mr. Saleh would hand over presidential powers to his vice president and then leave office a month later under a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for himself and his family. Presidential elections would be held after 60 days, in accordance with the country's Constitution. The plan is seen as a compromise between what the ruling party and the opposition have been seeking. Yemen's opposition coalition, known as the Joint Meetings Parties, has indicated its support for the plan; Mr. Saleh has yet to respond."
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/world/middleeast/20yemen.html?ref=world
SANA, Yemen - At least one protester died in clashes with security forces and plainclothes government supporters here in the capital on Tuesday. Security forces also fired on a demonstration in the central city of Taiz, killing one protester and wounding two others, according to witnesses and a doctor at the demonstration's field hospital.
The violence came as the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation regional group, sought to broker an end to the political crisis. Yemen's Saba news agency said government officials were meeting with the council in Abu Dhabi after similar meetings with opposition representatives on Sunday.
Gunfire erupted in the capital on Tuesday as government supporters threw rocks and beat protesters with sticks while security forces used tear gas and a water cannon to push back a march in the center of the city. "First they used the water cannon on us, then tear gas, then as we were running away they shot at us," said Talal al-Azany, a protester who works with a local human rights organization.
One protester died of a gunshot wound to the head, and doctors said 10 others were wounded; it was unclear whether security forces or plainclothesmen had opened fire. A witness said a protester threw a gasoline bomb at the water cannon.
At a mosque turned medical clinic inside the demonstration area in Sana, about 100 men lay on the floor, some wounded, some beaten, some suffering from tear gas. "You see how our government works," said Dahan Ali, an older protester using crutches after being shot in the leg during a clash on Sunday
Canisters of the tear gas used against protesters in Yemen show expiration dates as many as 10 years past. Many protesters have severe reactions to the gas, including seizures and foaming at the mouth. Yemeni doctors believe that these reactions prove that the gas has some sort of nerve agent in it, though the leftover canisters bear labels saying CN gas and CS gas, used for crowd control.
On Sunday night, one man had to be held down to the floor by four others as his body spasmed. "The victims convulse in ways that is not normal for tear gas," said a doctor at the makeshift clinic, Tarek Noman. He said he treated exposure with Pralidoxime, a medicine used to counter nerve gas and phosphorus pesticides.
In Taiz, the violence broke out as demonstrators tried to march along a central street and were confronted by security forces, who began shooting after protesters began to burn barricades in the street, Reuters reported. Taiz is home to the country's longest sit-in, with protesters claiming a central area since mid-February and demanding the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
A video posted online Tuesday showed a member of the security forces firing from a moving car in Taiz, though it was unclear when the video was taken. Protesters there have said that both security forces and plainclothes government supporters have repeatedly shot at them over the last two weeks.
According to a plan backed by Western nations, Mr. Saleh would hand over presidential powers to his vice president and then leave office a month later under a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for himself and his family. Presidential elections would be held after 60 days, in accordance with the country's Constitution. The plan is seen as a compromise between what the ruling party and the opposition have been seeking.
Yemen's opposition coalition, known as the Joint Meetings Parties, has indicated its support for the plan; Mr. Saleh has yet to respond.
A high-ranking Yemeni official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said Mr. Saleh was seeking a guarantee that leading figures from the opposition, notably Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, would leave Yemen for a set period of time if Mr. Saleh agreed to step down. The official described such an arrangement as a tribal method of settling scores and meant to ensure that the president saved face.
Youth protesters are planning marches for Wednesday in cities throughout the country in memory of the first protester killed in this uprising, Mohammed al-Alwani, who died Feb. 16 in the southern port city Aden.
The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet on Tuesday over the worsening political situation in Yemen, a country riven by tribal conflict in the north and a separatist movement in the south that has become a haven for Al Qaeda. Counterterrorism officials say the unrest has allowed the terrorist group to operate more freely and plot attacks against Western targets.
Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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6) Cuba Lays Foundation for a New Leader
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/world/americas/20cuba.html?ref=world
HAVANA - Cuba on Tuesday made the most significant change to its leadership since the 1959 revolution, naming someone other than the Castro brothers for the first time to fill the second-highest position in the Communist Party and possibly setting the stage for their eventual successor.
The appointment, at the party's first congress in 14 years, coincided with a blizzard of changes opening the way for more private enterprise. Taken together, the actions were meant to pull the revolution, at 53, out of a midlife crisis that has led to a sinking economy and, even in the estimation of President Raúl Castro, stagnant thinking.
But Mr. Castro, for all his talk about the need to rejuvenate the system, in the end stuck with the old guard, many of them fellow military officers, for now.
"The rebel army is the soul of the revolution," he said, quoting Fidel Castro, his brother.
President Castro, 79, had hinted that he might select a young up-and-comer to guide a post-Castro era. Instead, he tapped a party stalwart, José Ramón Machado, 80, who fought at his side in the mountains during the rebellion.
Mr. Castro did, however, name several people younger than 70 to the central committee and three to the 15-member Politburo, including the architect of the current round of economic changes, possibly grooming them for bigger roles.
Mr. Castro acknowledged that his generation had lagged in preparing young leaders, saying Cuba lacked "a reserve of substitutes with the sufficient maturity and experience to take over the principal duties of the country."
Some analysts disputed that, saying Mr. Castro's moves merely solidified his power against any stirrings from those who are young and perhaps too progressive.
"What it means is any generational change and the implementation of reforms will be guided by the 'historicos' - or perhaps better put, constrained by the history of the Cuban revolution and the memories and goals of its founders," said Christopher Sabatini, a Cuba scholar who edits Americas Quarterly.
Fidel Castro, 84, who had been absent from the proceedings and a parade over the weekend, looked on, dressed in a dark warm-up suit over a checkered shirt and helped at times by aides when he stood to clap, which he did especially vigorously for his brother.
Given Mr. Machado's age, some people doubted that he would succeed President Castro. Instead, as a trusted lieutenant, he may play a pivotal role in helping to choose who that may ultimately be and under what structure he may govern.
Aside from being a fellow combatant during the revolution, Mr. Machado may have been an attractive choice to Mr. Castro for his role overseeing the inner workings of the party, in charge of an office approving promotions and developing ties with party leaders across the island, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a lecturer at the University of Denver and former political analyst in the Cuban Interior Ministry.
"Machado will be a key factor in choosing not only the successor, but also the structure of separation of powers destined to replace, within the party and between party and government, the current model of 'Castro in command,' " Mr. Lopez-Levy said.
"Down the road, the old leaders just gained some time," he said. "Will they use it wisely? The congress gave some hope to the party members and the population about a serious economic reform. Now the old generation still in power would have to respond to these expectations."
President Castro, as expected, took the top position of the party and read off a list of leadership changes that made official his brother's departure from the ranks of the party he founded. Fidel Castro, warmly cheered by party members, had announced last month that he was no longer first secretary of the party, but his name still appeared on lists.
President Castro, aside from offering the usual lashing words toward the United States, portrayed the changes as an upgrade of Cuban socialism rather than a reboot that could open the way to full-bore capitalism.
"I assume my post to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism, and never permit the return of capitalism," Mr. Castro said in a speech closing the congress.
United States Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, who left Cuba in the early 1960s as a girl, responded in kind, demonstrating the passions the leadership of Cuba can generate among many exiles.
"The so called 'congress' of the Communist Party is anything but a congress, as the agenda and all the decisions have been previously agreed to by the ruling and aging dictators," she said in a statement. "The Cuban people deserve much better than these old and tired despots who refuse to accept that they have failed miserably."
Although the congress approved about 300 modifications to the law, which could include the buying and selling of homes, a practice banned since the revolution, and the eventual elimination or reduction of state subsidies like ration books for basic necessities, details were not disclosed. The National Assembly will receive the results, and it is widely expected that it will ratify them.
On the streets, any reaction was muted by either a lack of understanding of how the changes would be carried out or the fear of speaking openly to a stranger in a place that by and large does not tolerate dissent.
The document that party delegates ostensibly debated for the past four days was never publicly released, and Cubans caught a glimpse of it and whatever had been decided only on the evening news when summaries of the proceedings were broadcast.
If a casual look into living rooms was any indication, it appears a good many people found other programs to watch.
"If all of this improves the conditions here, then of course we are for it," said Juana Ortiz, 44. "Who can argue with the fact something needs to be done and the young need to have a role?"
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7) WikiLeaks Defendant to Be Moved
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/us/20manning.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON-Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking classified government documents to the Web site WikiLeaks, will be moved from near-solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., to another prison under conditions that may be less restrictive.
The Pentagon made the announcement about Private Manning in a news conference on Tuesday in the midst of a furor about his treatment at Quantico that has been a growing embarrassment for the United States. He had been forced to sleep naked for several nights, then only permitted to wear a "tear-proof smock" because of what the military described as safety concerns.
Last week, a United Nations torture investigator said that he had been denied an unmonitored visit to Private Manning , while Amnesty International has said that his treatment may violate his rights.
The Associated Press first reported the news of Private Manning's transfer to a new prison unit at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. on Tuesday afternoon.
In the news conference, Pentagon officials insisted that his move had nothing to do with his treatment at Quantico. They characterized the transfer to the medium security Leavenworth facility, which opened in January, as simply a better place to hold prisoners who, like Private Manning, are awaiting trial.
"Many will be tempted to interpret today's action as a criticism of the pretrial facility at Quantico," Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel, said. "That is not the case. We remain satisfied that Private Manning's pretrial confinement at Quantico was in compliance with legal and regulatory standards in all respects." Nonetheless, Mr. Johnson said that "we have determined the new pretrial facility at Fort Leavenworth is the most appropriate one for Private Manning going forward."
Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, the garrison commander at Fort Leavenworth, was highly enthusiastic in her descriptions of what would soon be Private Manning's new location. "I encourage you to come out and see how wonderful our facility is," she told reporters at the briefing. Both she and Mr. Johnson promised tours for the media.
Colonel Hilton said that mental health professionals at Leavenworth would conduct an assessment of Private Manning once he arrives. Assuming he is not determined to be a danger to himself and others, she held out the possibility that he would eat three meals a day in a group dining hall, have three hours daily of recreation time, both indoors and out, and be permitted to interact with other prisoners.
President Obama and other administration officials have defended Private Manning's treatment at Quantico, but Philip J. Crowley resigned as the State Department spokesman last month after publicly criticizing the Pentagon as "'ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" in its treatment of him.
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8) City Vows to Fight Suits in Central Park Jogger Case
By JOHN ELIGON
April 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/nyregion/new-york-wont-settle-suits-in-central-park-jogger-case.html?ref=nyregion
New York City is refusing to settle lawsuits brought by the five men whose convictions in the Central Park jogger case were overturned after they spent years in prison.
"The charges against the plaintiffs and other youths were based on abundant probable cause, including confessions that withstood intense scrutiny, in full and fair pretrial hearings and at two lengthy public trials," Celeste Koeleveld, executive assistant corporation counsel for public safety, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Nothing unearthed since the trials, including Matias Reyes's connection to the attack on the jogger, changes that fact," Ms. Koeleveld added, referring to the man who later confessed to being the attacker.
The statement came in response to a news conference on Tuesday during which Councilman Charles Barron, as well as two of the men whose convictions were vacated, criticized the city for refusing to settle the lawsuits, the first of which was filed by three of the men in Federal District Court in Manhattan in 2003.
The five men, who are each seeking $50 million in damages, and their supporters say the city has been unwilling to even entertain settlement negotiations. Tuesday was the 22nd anniversary of the attack on the jogger.
"We believe firmly that their families have suffered tremendously emotionally," Mr. Barron said in an interview on Tuesday evening. "They have suffered economically, and the city should pay compensation and settle out of court and not put them through a trial."
Two of the men, Raymond Santana Jr. and Kharey Wise, attended the news conference, held on the steps of City Hall, Mr. Barron said.
The five confessed on videotape to the attack in 1989, and they were convicted at trial. The men later said their confessions had been coerced.
More than a decade after the attack, Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney at the time, ordered a new investigation of the case after DNA evidence showed that one man, Mr. Reyes, had committed the attack and Mr. Reyes confessed to it. A Manhattan judge vacated the convictions at Mr. Morgenthau's recommendation.
The lawsuit names 15 plaintiffs, including the 5 men and their family members. Ms. Koeleveld said the city was "proceeding with a vigorous defense of the detectives and prosecutors, and the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that each of the five plaintiffs and their family members are seeking."
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9) Press Release: Military moves to further isolate Bradley Manning with transfer to Kansas
by the Bradley Manning Support Network
April 19, 2011
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/releases/press-release-military-moves-to-further-isolate-bradley-manning
Alleged WikiLeaks source to be moved away from attorney and DC-area backers; however, Kansas residents already preparing to spearhead support
"The military and Administration has been shocked by the support Bradley Manning has garnered globally-specifically at the gates of Quantico, Virginia. Last month, 500 supporters rallied near the Marine brig where PFC Manning has been held since August 2010. It wasn't a secret that we were preparing to rally one to two thousand for an upcoming DC-area pre-trial hearing," explains Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network.
"PFC Manning's transfer from Virginia to Kansas limits his access to his civilian attorney David Coombs of Rhode Island. It also severely limits visitation opportunities by his East Coast family and friends," explains attorney Kevin Zeese, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich declared today, "Any move of PFC Manning does not change the underlying fact, which has not been disputed by the Department of Defense, that he has been held under conditions which may in fact constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment' in violation of the 8th amendment."
Ethan McCord, Kansas resident and a former Soldier who appears in the "Collateral Murder" video that PFC Manning is accused of leaking, declares, "Bradley Manning is accused of doing nothing more than heroically telling the truth. I and many others here in Kansas are already planning support actions at Leavenworth."
"I'm concerned that the military is simply moving to further isolate PFC Manning. The idea that Quantico brig commander CWO2 Denise Barnes, without direction from above, imposed and maintained the current torturous conditions of PFC Manning's detention is ridiculous. However, we will demand that Army officials at Leavenworth finally take responsibility for correcting this ongoing injustice. I know many hold out hope for them to do so," adds Paterson.
US Army intelligence analyst Private First Class Bradley E Manning, 23-years-old, has been held in maximum and solitary-like confinement conditions since his arrest in Iraq in May 2010. He still awaits his first public court hearing, now expected to begin in June. Over 300 of America's top legal scholars have decried PFC Manning's confinement conditions as in clear violation of the US Constitution. Over 3,500 individuals have contributed over $280,000 towards PFC Manning's legal fees and related public education efforts. Over 500,000 people recently signed a statement to President Obama calling for an end to PFC Manning's torturous conditions of confinement. The Bradley Manning Support Network is dedicated to winning the freedom of PFC Manning.
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10) Why was PFC Manning moved to Fort Leavenworth?
By David Coombs, attorney for Bradley Manning
The Law Office of David E Coombs
www.armycourtmartialdefense.info
April 19, 2011
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/why-was-pfc-manning-moved-to-fort-leavenworth
Like many others, the defense first learned of PFC Manning's move to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas by reading that a government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, leaked the information to the Associated Press. The defense was not officially notified of PFC Manning's pending move until twenty minutes before the Pentagon's press briefing. This is despite the fact that the Pentagon has "been thinking about this for a while." Although the news of the move came as a surprise to the defense, the timing did not.
The defense recently received reliable reports of a private meeting held on 13 January 2011, involving high-level Quantico officials where it was ordered that PFC Manning would remain in maximum custody and under prevention of injury watch indefinitely. The order to keep PFC Manning under these unduly harsh conditions was issued by a senior Quantico official who stated he would not risk anything happening "on his watch." When challenged by a Brig psychiatrist present at the meeting that there was no mental health justification for the decision, the senior Quantico official issuing the order responded, "We will do whatever we want to do." Based upon these statements and others, the defense was in the process of filing a writ of habeas corpus seeking a court ruling that the Quantico Brig violated PFC Manning's constitutional right to due process. See United States ex. rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 74 S.Ct. 499 (1954) (violation of due process where result of board proceeding was predetermined); United States v. Anderson, 49 M.J. 575 (N.M. Ct. Crim. App. 1998) (illegal punishment where Marine Corps had an unwritten policy automatically placing certain detainees in MAX custody). The facts surrounding PFC Manning's pretrial confinement at Quantico make it clear that his detention was not "in compliance with legal and regulatory standards in all respects" as maintained at the Pentagon press briefing.
While the defense hopes that the move to Fort Leavenworth will result in the improvement of PFC Manning's conditions of confinement, it nonetheless intends to pursue redress at the appropriate time for the flagrant violations of his constitutional rights by the Quantico confinement facility.
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11) Innocent until proven guilty
Help Save Troy Davis
Help Stop Troy Davis' Execution Now
The state of Georgia may soon execute Troy Davis. Troy is scheduled to be executed for murdering a white police officer, despite overwhelming evidence that calls into question his guilt, and repeated attempts at justice. This is Troy's last chance, and it's up to us to speak out to and save Troy Davis. By speaking out on the form to the right, you will add your voice to our name wall below, to show the Georgia Parole Board, and the world, that we stand by Troy Davis -- and we believe in justice in America.
http://www.naacp.org/campaign/davis?utm_medium=email&utm_source=NAACP&utm_campaign=20110420TroyDavis&source=20110420TroyDavis
Innocent until proven guilty.
These four words helped establish our criminal justice system. But in a nation that prides itself on our belief in liberty and justice for all, why is Troy Davis -- with an overwhelming body of evidence pointing to his innocence -- facing execution?
Twenty years ago, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer. Since then, seven of the nine witnesses recanted their statements, new witnesses have come forward identifying another man as the murderer, and the alleged murder weapon has still not been found.
Despite these new developments, the state of Georgia is putting Davis on track to be executed -- perhaps as early as next month.
You can help save Troy Davis' life today by standing up, adding your voice to our "name wall" and asking the Georgia Parole Board to commute his sentence:
http://action.naacp.org/Save-Troy-Davis
When the Supreme Court heard the evidence, they understood that there were many more questions to be answered. But instead of granting Troy Davis a trial where his peers could decide his fate, he was forced to face a single federal judge where the burden was on Troy to prove his innocence -- the exact opposite presumption of a jury trial.
In hopes of exonerating Troy after 10 years of imprisonment, his lawyer submitted each piece of evidence at the hearing. And each piece of evidence was rejected by the judge. Despite noting that the case against Troy was not "ironclad," he nevertheless refused to grant a new trial.
A jury trial would have made this issue moot. Reasonable doubt would have freed Troy Davis.
Now it's up to you to put a stop to Troy Davis' execution. You are his last hope, and time is running out. Tell the Georgia Parole Board not to execute a man with such an overwhelming body of evidence pointing to his innocence:
http://action.naacp.org/Save-Troy-Davis
As an American, I have faith in our justice system. But as President of the NAACP, I have seen how our justice system can fail. Sometimes even when it comes to life and death. It is up to us to right this wrong.
This is his last chance. Stand by Troy and stand up for liberty and justice for all.
Thanks,
Ben
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP
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12) VFP Statement on Military Intervention in Libya
News from Veterans For Peace
216 S. Meramec Avenue St. Louis, MO 63105 (314) 725-6005
April 21, 2011
www.veteransforpeace.org
VFP Statement on Military Intervention in Libya
April 21, 2011
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
-Senator Barack Obama, 2007
On March 19, 2011, the President, without Congressional approval, ordered the attack on multiple targets in Libya. Under the guise of enforcing a "no-fly zone" the United States launched over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles and flew over 113 sorties. At a cost of $1,066,465 per missile that amounts to $117,311,150 for just the munitions, not to mention the fuel and operating costs for the ships and planes used in the attacks. A USAF F-15E Strike Eagle was also lost in the conflict at a cost of $31.1 million. There was also the unseen cost of the aircraft used in the rescue mission and an unknown number of civilians injured.
From 1979 to 1989, the United States Central Intelligence Agency conducted Operation Cyclone, the largest and most expensive CIA operation in its history. Hailed as a great success, Operation Cyclone successfully led to the unseating of the USSR supported People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Operation Cyclone exploited fundamentalist Islam to motivate a group which became known as the Mujahedeen, funding and arming them to push the PDPA and the Soviet Union out militarily. Members of the Mujahedeen included Osama Bin Laden, and many other global figures in the group we now refer to as Al Qaeda.
Operation Cyclone, aside from being almost entirely covert, bears a striking resemblance to the current US operation wherein a sectarian and rather brutal totalitarian regime is being overthrown with US support by exploiting Islamic fundamentalists. While we know little about the rebels the US is aiding, we do know that many have fought against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has a long history of fomenting the overthrow of governments not supporting our financial interest. That history also shows repeated violent backlash against the US both by those supported, and those who have been overthrown.
Oil prices have also climbed to their highest levels since 2008, another unseen cost of war. As unemployment continues at 9.2%, many Americans will be unable to keep up with rising fuel costs. This problem may lead to increased unemployment if people can't afford to get to their jobs, leading to a further downward spiral of the economy. In Yemen and Bahrain uprisings seen as part of the "Arab Spring" have been violently suppressed without significant action from the US; it is worth noting that both governments have been extremely compliant with US corporate interests in reference to our energy interests, and both nations allow US bases to be housed on their soil.
While Gadhafi's actions against the Libyan people are reprehensible, the air strikes have not prevented his ground forces from being able to attack rebels and civilians. There are many atrocities occurring around the globe, but the United States government does not have the capability to fix them all. Additionally, bombing military targets and imposing a no-fly zone does very little to assist starving people and prevent human rights violations. Turkey has proposed diplomatic solutions to this crisis, yet the UN and NATO have continued military strikes. With no clear goal in mind, when is the end of the mission? Is the ousting of Gadhafi the only goal? Is it the role of the UN, NATO, and US to set up a new government by use of force? Is collateral damage and enormous costs from air strikes worthwhile without an endgame in site? Has the US government not learned from interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan that going to war without a plan leads to exorbitant and never-ending costs? History shows us that this type of intervention rarely goes without blowback and unintended consequences, perhaps with a $1.4 trillion deficit and a domestic budget in crisis our best outcome would be to support peaceful alternatives and not add to the violence of a Libyan civil war at all.
Todd Arkava, MD
VFP Member
Chapter 89
Will Hopkins
Director
NH Peace Action/ NH Peace Action Education fund
National Board of Directors
Veterans for Peace
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13) Wildlife at Risk Face Long Line at U.S. Agency
By TODD WOODY
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/science/earth/21species.html?_r=1&hpw
In February, the Obama administration declared the Pacific walrus to be at risk of extinction because its Arctic habitat was melting. But it declined to list the marine mammal as an endangered species, saying a backlog of other animals faced greater peril.
Now, it turns out, the walrus is on a very long waiting list.
The federal Fish and Wildlife Service is in emergency triage mode as it struggles with an avalanche of petitions and lawsuits over the endangered species list, the chief tool for protecting plants and animals facing extinction in the United States. Over the last four years, a few environmental groups have requested that more than 1,230 species be listed, compared with the previous 12 years in which annual requests averaged only 20 species.
Some environmental groups argue that vastly expanded listings are needed as evidence mounts that the world is entering an era of mass extinctions related to destruction of habitat, climate and other changes. Such threats require a focus on entire ecosystems, they say, rather than individual species.
Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the barrage has paralyzed the listing process. Last month, the agency asked Congress to intervene and impose a limit on the number of species it must consider for protection, setting the stage for a showdown.
"The many requests for species petitions has inundated the listing program's domestic species listing capabilities," the service wrote in its 2012 budget request. Already it faces a backlog of 254 species - including the yellow-billed loon, Gunnison's prairie dog and the North American wolverine. It says their protection is warranted but precluded by a lack of resources.
The Fish and Wildlife Service declined to make officials available for comment. But Gary Frazer, the agency's assistant director for endangered species, discussed the mass of filings in an interview last year.
"These megapetitions are putting us in a difficult spot, and they're basically going to shut down our ability to list any candidates for the foreseeable future," Mr. Frazer said. "If all our resources are used responding to petitions, we don't have resources to put species on the endangered species list. It's not a happy situation."
Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians, have filed 90 percent of the listings petitions since 2007 and maintain that a bioblitz, as it is often called, is the best strategy for forcing the service to be more assertive in its wildlife protection mission.
"We want to compel the Fish and Wildlife Service to look at the full extent of the extinction crisis in the United States," said Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, which is based in Santa Fe, N.M. "We would like a system where the service is actively looking for species that merit protection rather than the current system where groups like ours have to drive this process."
The wider environmental community appears divided on the mass-listing strategy.
"It is undoubtedly the case that the resources and the staffing for the Fish and Wildlife Service are inadequate," said Bob Irvin, senior vice president for conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife in Washington. "The question is, is tying the service in knots the best way to save the web of life?"
In its 2012 budget request, the service estimated that in 2011 it will be able to make final listing decisions on only 4 percent of warranted petitions within one year as required by law, down from 12 percent in 2010.
Since Congress passed the Endangered Species Act 37 years ago, some 1,370 species have been listed, the last being the southern rockhopper penguin. Last month, the agency asked Congress to impose a cap on the amount of money the agency can spend on processing listing petitions, both to control its workload and as a defense against lawsuits. "We would essentially use that as our defense for not doing more," Mr. Frazer, the agency's assistant director for endangered species, testified, "so that we can balance among the various duties that we have."
This month, Congress intervened with the list for the first time, removing protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho, but it is unclear whether it will act on the wildlife service's current request.
Patrick Parenteau, a professor and endangered species expert at Vermont Law School who was special counsel to the Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1990s, said he could empathize with both sides. "The agency does seem to be reaching a political tipping point," he said. "They feel overwhelmed, they feel politically vulnerable, they can't handle the job, and all these petitions makes it harder and harder."
"But from an endangered species conservation perspective, the environmentalists are doing exactly what the science demands," he added. "If you want to save these species, you have to list them, designate their critical habitat and spend money."
WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Interior Department over listing delays involving some 1,100 species since 2007, according to government records. Under the act, the Interior Department must determine if a petition to list a species warrants further investigation within 90 days of its receipt. Officials acknowledge that the Fish and Wildlife Service invariably misses that deadline.
If the agency issues a finding that a listing may be warranted, it has 12 months to conduct a scientific investigation and make a final determination. That deadline is often missed as well, leading to more litigation.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a particularly formidable adversary. The nonprofit group, based in Tucson, has 20 lawyers on its staff in more than a dozen offices across the country. The center raised $7.5 million in 2009, according to its annual report, including $4.8 million from membership donations and $1.2 million in what it calls "legal returns" from cases.
The Fish and Wildlife Service's 2012 budget request includes $24.6 million for the endangered-species listing program, including paying a staff of 141. That is an 11 percent increase from the previous fiscal year and a 28 percent rise since 2009.
Daniel J. Rohlf, an associate professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who specializes in endangered species law, said that was nowhere near sufficient.
"In an age of accelerating threats to biodiversity, not just from habitat loss but from invasive species and climate change, the budgets for Fish and Wildlife Service have not even been close to keeping up with the demands on the agency," Mr. Rohlf said.
Noah Greenwald, the endangered species program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the government needed to streamline the listing process. "It's more efficient to list species in batches by habitat or geography," he said. "The petitions are also designed in part to pressure them to take that approach more often."
According to a 2004 review conducted by the center, 42 species went extinct in the first 21 years of the Endangered Species Act's existence while waiting to be listed. The study found that 24 species - including the four-angled pelea, a Hawaiian flowering plant, and the honeyeater, a bird native to Guam - became extinct while on the candidate list.
Last year, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition to list 404 plants and animals, including the Alabama hickory nut and the frecklebelly madtom, citing an "extinction crisis" for species dependent on waterways in the Southeast.
WildEarth Guardians began its barrage in 2007 in reaction to a sharp decline in listing decisions under the Bush administration. In that administration, only eight species were listed a year on average, compared with 58 per year in the Clinton administration, according to the center.
In a little over two years, the Obama administration has listed 59 species, Mr. Rohlf said. Of those, 48 were species of Hawaiian birds and plants listed as a group, in the kind of broad approach to habitat advocated by the most active petitioners.
"We're pushing species to extinction every day, and it's an overwhelming job, frankly, that the Fish and Wildlife Service has," Mr. Parenteau said. "But is the answer to put your head in the sand and say, We're not going to do it?"
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14) Beyond the Oil Spill, the Tragedy of an Ailing Gulf
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21spill.html?adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1303408830-LNA0iCBQUodHXJRHYvh2Lg
NEW ORLEANS - The anniversary has passed, the cleanup goes on, and still southern Louisiana sinks steadily into the sea.
Even in the worst days of the BP spill, coastal advocates were looking past the immediate emergency to what the president's oil spill commission called "the central question from the recovery of the spill - can or should such a major pollution event steer political energy, human resources and funding into solutions for a continuing systemic tragedy?"
That tragedy is the ill and declining health of the Gulf of Mexico, including the enormous dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi and the alarmingly rapid disappearance of Louisiana's coastal wetlands, roughly 2,000 square miles smaller than they were 80 years ago. Few here would take issue with the commission's question, but the answer to it is far from resolved.
Eclipsed by the spill's uncertain environmental impact is the other fallout: the vast sums in penalties and fines BP will have to pay to the federal government. In addition to criminal fines and restitution, BP is facing civil liabilities that fall roughly into two categories: Clean Water Act penalties and claims from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, whereby state and federal agencies tally the damage caused by the spill and put a price tag on it. This could add up to billions, perhaps tens of billions, of dollars.
On Thursday morning, the Justice Department announced that an agreement had been announced between BP and the trustees who are part of the natural resources damage assessment for BP to provide a $1 billion down payment for early restoration projects, the largest of its kind every reached. This would be taken out of any final settlement, but would allow any agreed up on projects to get underway.
BP is not the only company involved with the Deepwater Horizon accident that could be on the hook for these damages. In a sign of the bitter legal fight brewing among defendants, BP on Wednesday sued the maker of the blowout preventer and the owner of the oil rig, arguing that their negligence led to the spill.
But for people along the gulf, the issue of who pays the damages is less important than will they get paid.
Officials and coastal advocates all along the coast agree that the money could be an enormous boon for the gulf, as it would be impossible to obtain money like that through the normal political channels. But that is the only agreement.
Negotiations are under way among the area's Congressional delegation on a bill that would follow the presidential commission's recommendation in allocating four-fifths of BP's Clean Water Act penalties - which could range from $5.4 billion to $21 billion - on the Gulf Coast. Without separate legislation, the money would go into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to help pay to clean up future spills; once that fund reaches $2.7 billion, the rest would go into the Treasury.
But while such bills have been proposed in the House and Senate, gulfwide support of any one bill remains elusive. Disagreement remains among gulf state legislators over basics like how the money would be split and what it could be spent on. Among the concerns are how much leeway states would have to fund projects not related to ecosystem restoration - Alabama officials, for example, have broadcast a desire to build a convention center - and whether the money would be shared equally among the states or allocated based on the spill's environmental impact, in which case Louisiana would get a much larger piece.
A deal among the gulf state delegation, of course, does not ensure the bill's passage through Congress, particularly given the pall of austerity that has descended on Washington. Donald Boesch, a marine science professor at the University of Maryland who was on the presidential oil spill commission, said the political concessions necessary to a gulfwide agreement, like the flexibility to spend the money on economic projects, could deter lawmakers from other states, who would be hesitant to allow money to go to projects that are not directly tied to spill recovery.
Some lawmakers, Professor Boesch said, have also been given pause by the relentless criticism from Louisiana's political leaders of the Obama administration's post-spill regulations. Arguing that the new rules have jeopardized the state's drilling-dependent economy, Louisiana lawmakers have recently championed bills in the House of Representatives that would speed up and possibly bypass federal reviews of offshore drilling leases.
"To many it seems what they're asking for is to get back to the way they were operating before, without recognizing that things have changed," Professor Boesch said in an interview. "You're not willing to take steps to protect the environment, so why are you to be believed that you can take steps to restore the environment?"
If the political route fails, there is Plan B: the federal authorities could direct some money toward restoration as part of an eventual settlement.
"If no new legislation is passed," David M. Uhlmann, an expert in environmental law at the University of Michigan, wrote in an e-mail message, "the Justice Department is likely to negotiate for a large natural resource damage claim, perhaps even at the expense of civil penalties, and may try to obtain additional funds for restoration efforts as part of any criminal plea agreement or civil consent decree."
This could please environmentalists, as natural resource damage claims are required by law to be spent on restoration, and it could also make BP happier, as the payment of such claims have tax advantages and simply sound better than penalties.
Thursday's announcement that BP would be paying a large sum for early restoration could be a sign of this strategy.
But, Professor Uhlmann added, "far more would go to restoration if Congress takes action."
Like all else in this spill, the natural resources damage assessment, while scientifically driven, is not untouched by politics. A plan of action requires some agreement among the various players, which has thus far been in short supply.
And if the money is worked out, said Oliver Houck, a professor at Tulane Law School who specializes in environmental law, there is still no consensus among scientists and officials on how best to fix the gulf's most pressing problems.
"Even if all the other dominoes fall right, and none of them are falling right, you're left with what to do with that big money," he said. Speaking of Louisiana's wetlands loss, he pointed out that the damage was more extensive and the solutions more limited than many acknowledge.
"We may be better off using this money to assist people to relocate people and move out," Professor Houck said, "and let natural healing take place."
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15) Juvenile Killers in Jail for Life Seek a Reprieve
By ADAM LIPTAK and LISA FAYE PETAK
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21juvenile.html?hp
CHARLESTON, Mo. - More than a decade ago, a 14-year-old boy killed his stepbrother in a scuffle that escalated from goofing around with a blowgun to an angry threat with a bow and arrow to the fatal thrust of a hunting knife.
The boy, Quantel Lotts, had spent part of the morning playing with Pokémon cards. He was in seventh grade and not yet five feet tall.
Mr. Lotts is 25 now, and he is in the maximum-security prison here, serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for murder.
The victim's mother, Tammy Lotts, said she lost two children on that November day in 1999. One was a son, Michael Barton, who was 17 when he died. The other was a stepson, Mr. Lotts.
"I don't feel he's guilty," she said of Mr. Lotts in the living room of her modest St. Louis apartment, growing emotional. "But if he was, he's already done his time. He should be released. Time served. If they think that's too easy, let somebody look over his case."
As things stand now, though, the law gives Mr. Lotts no hope of ever getting out.
Almost a year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that sentencing juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment - but only for crimes that did not involve killings. The decision affected around 130 prisoners convicted of crimes like rape, armed robbery and kidnapping.
Now the inevitable follow-up cases have started to arrive at the Supreme Court. Last month, lawyers for two other prisoners who were 14 when they were involved in murders filed the first petitions urging the justices to extend last's year's decision, Graham v. Florida, to all 13- and 14-year-old offenders.
The Supreme Court has been methodically whittling away at severe sentences. It has banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders, the mentally disabled and those convicted of crimes other than murder. The Graham decision for the first time excluded a class of offenders from a punishment other than death.
This progression suggests it should not be long until the justices decide to address the question posed in the petitions. An extension of the Graham decision to all juvenile offenders would affect about 2,500 prisoners.
Mr. Lotts, a stout man with an easy manner, said he was not reconciled to his sentence. "I understand that I deserve some punishment," he said. "But to be put here for the rest of my life with no chance, I don't think that's a fair sentence."
Much of the logic of the Graham decision and the court's 2005 decision banning the death penalty for juvenile offenders, Roper v. Simmons, would seem to apply to the new cases.
The majority opinions in both were written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who said teenagers deserved more lenient treatment than adults because they are immature, impulsive, susceptible to peer pressure and able to change for the better over time. Justice Kennedy added that there was an international consensus against sentencing juveniles to life without parole, which he said had been "rejected the world over."
One factor cuts in the opposite direction. Justice Kennedy relied on what he called a national consensus against the punishment for crimes that did not involve killings. Juvenile offenders were sentenced to life without parole for such nonhomicide crimes, he wrote, in only 12 states and even then rarely.
There does not appear to be such a consensus against life without parole sentences for juveniles who take a life. That may be why opponents of the punishment are focusing for now on killings committed by very young offenders like Mr. Lotts.
That strategy follows the one used in attacking the juvenile death penalty, which the Supreme Court eliminated in two stages, banning it for those under 16 in 1988 and those under 18 in 2005.
Kent S. Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims' rights group, said that categorical approaches were misguided in general and particularly unjustified where murders by young offenders were involved.
"Since I think Graham is wrong," he said, "extending it to homicides would be wrong squared."
"Sharp cutoffs by age, where a person's legal status changes suddenly on some birthday, are only a crude approximation of correct policy," he added. There are around 70 prisoners serving sentences of life without parole for homicides committed when they were 14 or younger, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law firm in Alabama that represents poor people and prisoners.
The effort to extend the Graham decision has so far been unsuccessful in the lower courts. According to a study to be published in The New York University Review of Law and Social Change by Scott Hechinger, a fellow at the Partnership for Children's Rights, 10 courts have decided not to apply Graham to cases involving killings committed by the defendants, and seven others have said the same thing where the defendants were accomplices to murders. Courts have reached differing results, though, where the offense was attempted murder.
All of this suggests that the question left open in Graham may only be answered by the Supreme Court. In March, lawyers with the Equal Justice Initiative asked the justices to hear the two cases raising the question.
One concerns Kuntrell Jackson, an Arkansas man who was 14 when he and two older youths tried to rob a video store in 1999. One of the other youths shot and killed a store clerk.
The second case involves Evan Miller, an Alabama prisoner who was 14 in 2003 when he and an older youth beat a 52-year-old neighbor and set fire to his home after the three had spent the evening smoking pot and playing drinking games. The neighbor died of smoke inhalation.
In Mr. Lotts's case, too, state and federal courts in Missouri have said that his sentence is constitutional. In December, in a different case, the Missouri Supreme Court divided 4-to-3 over the constitutionality of the punishment in a case involving the killing of a St. Louis police officer.
A dissenting judge, Michael A. Wolff, wrote that "juveniles should not be sentenced to die in prison any more than they should be sent to prison to be executed."
At the prison here, about 130 miles south of St. Louis, Mr. Lotts said he had grown up around drugs and violence, and he acknowledged that he used to have a combustible temper. But he said the years he spent living with his father and Ms. Lotts were good ones.
He and his brother Dorell were inseparable, he recalled, from Ms. Lotts's three boys. The group was sometimes taunted because Quantel and Dorell were black and the other boys were white.
"If you wanted to fight one of us," he said, "you had to fight all of us."
He said he recalled very little about assaulting Michael. But he said he knew some things for sure.
"That's my brother," he said. "Why would I want to kill my brother? That's not what I set out to do. That's not what I meant to do. That's not what I intended to do."
Tammy Lotts said race figured in her stepson's trial. "They said a black boy stabbed a white boy," she said. For years, state officials prohibited her from visiting Mr. Lotts, fearing she would try to harm him. "I'm the victim's mother," she said, shrugging.
At the prison last week, Mr. Lotts was wearing a handsome wedding ring, and it prompted questions. Beaming, he said he had been married just a few weeks before to a woman who had written to him after hearing him interviewed. He pointed to where the ceremony had taken place, a couple of yards away, near the vending machines.
Ms. Lotts attended the wedding, but only after satisfying herself that the bride was a suitable match.
"She's marrying my son," Ms. Lotts explained.
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16) Youth, Mobility and Poverty Help Drive Cellphone-Only Status
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
April 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us/21wireless.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON - It's not quite the stuff of bragging rights, but Arkansas and Mississippi find themselves at the top of a new state ranking: They have the highest concentrations of people in the nation who have abandoned landlines in favor of cellular phones.
At the other extreme? People in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey are still holding on to their landlines, and they have the lowest concentrations of people whose homes use only cellphones.
The study, released Wednesday, was part of an annual survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Information from interviews was blended with census data to draw a map of cellular-only use by state.
Its findings reflect patterns of consumer behavior that are driven by age, mobility and, in a strange twist, poverty. According to Stephen Blumberg, the researcher who conducted the study, nearly 40 percent of all adults living in poverty use only cellphones, compared with about 21 percent of adults with higher incomes.
There appear to be many reasons for this. Cellular phones have become more affordable. The barrier to owning one is lower with pay-as-you-go plans. Some states allow subsidies for low-income residents to be applied to wireless bills. And increasingly, those who cannot afford both types of phones choose their cellular phone.
It is, of course, a long way from the days when cellphones belonged exclusively to wealthy business people. In fact, the wealthiest areas - New England, New York, California - had some of the lowest concentrations of cellular-only households.
Rhode Island and New Jersey were the lowest at 12.8 percent of adults and children in cellular-only households. Just above was Connecticut at 13.6. New York was at 17 percent and California at 18 percent.
By contrast, Arkansas had the highest concentration of people in cell-only households, at 35.2 percent. Next was Mississippi at 35.1 percent, Texas at 32.5 percent, North Dakota at 32.3 percent, Idaho at 31.7 percent and Kentucky at 31.5 percent.
Those who were more nomadic were more likely to use only cellular phones. Forty-seven percent of renters were wireless-only, compared with 15 percent of owners, Mr. Blumberg said.
Age is another important factor. Forty-four percent of people between the ages of 18 and 30 are cellular-only users, compared with just 18 percent of those 31 and older, Mr. Blumberg said.
Some of the places with the lowest concentrations of cellular-only households were also the oldest. According to Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, Connecticut was the seventh-oldest state in the country by median age in 2009, Rhode Island was the eighth and New Jersey was the 11th.
"It would not surprise me if that phrase 'home telephone number' goes the way of rotary dial telephones and party lines," Mr. Blumberg said. "Instead of teaching a child a home phone number, the child will be taught Mom's number and Dad's number and Grandma's number."
California seemed to be an exception to the rule. It had one of the lower concentrations of cellular-phone only households, even though its median age makes it the sixth youngest state, according to 2009 census data.
James E. Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, said one reason could be the generous subsidies the state gives low-income residents for local calling on landlines.
While some states participate in a plan that allows subsidies to be applied to cellular service, California does not, something that masks what would otherwise be much higher rates of cellphone-only households, Dr. Katz said.
Another factor appeared to be the prevalence of landlines. In 2000, Mississippi was No. 2, after Puerto Rico, for the portion of residents who did not have a home phone, according to census data. Arkansas was No. 4. In both states, the number was less than 7 percent of all households.
Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting from New York.
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17) Lessons from Manning's transfer out of Quantico
BY GLENN GREENWALD
WEDNESDAY, APR 20, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/20/manning
A Pentagon official yesterday leaked word to the Associated Pressthat accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning was being transferred out of the Quantico Marine brig where he has been held under inhumane conditions for 10 months, and moved to the Army's prison facility in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The Pentagon did not even bother to notify Manning's lawyer of the transfer; he had to learn of it through the media leak. As most media reports on this transfer note, the move takes place "in the wake of international criticism about his treatment." In particular, the AP story explains:
Manning's move to a new detention center comes about a week after a U.N. torture investigator complained that he was denied a request to make an unmonitored visit to Manning. . . . Two days later, a committee of Germany's parliament protested about Manning's treatment to the White House. And Amnesty International has said Manning's treatment may violate his human rights [ed.: actually, the Amnesty condemnation was far more emphatic than that].
Additionally, the British government formally raised concerns with the U.S. over the treatment of Manning (whose mother is a British citizen). State Department reporters had begun aggressively questioning officialsabout their refusal to allow unmonitored U.N. access to Manning (after all, even the Bush administration allowed unmonitored visits by human rights organizations to accused top Al Qaeda Terrorists held at Guantanamo).
Combine all that with the compelled "resignation" of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley for his public denunciation of Manning's treatment -- and the forced defense by President Obama of this treatment when he was asked about it in a Press Conference by ABC News' Jake Tapper -- and it's obvious that this has exploded into a serious political and international scandal for the Obama administration. Add on to all that the fact that Manning's counsel was preparing to file a habeas corpus petition after brig officials just ruled that they would indefinitely continue Manning's oppressive treatment against the advice of the brig's psychiatric experts, and it's not difficult to see why this transfer was politically necessary.
How Manning will be treated in Ft. Leavenworth remains to be seen, and it's impossible to know the psychological injuries that have already been inflicted on him by 10 months of inhumane detention. NBC News ' Jim Miklaszewski claims that "he'll be placed in a new medium-security facility," and will "have some freedom of movement in an open day room, have contact and take meals with fellow prisoners, shower when he wants and have access to books and TV" and "have three hours a day of recreation time." If that happens, that will be a positive development, but what's particularly interesting about Miklaszewski's report is how extensively some military and government officials acknowledge wrongdoing (anonymously, of course, lest they meet Crowley's fate):
Manning was held in maximum security at the Marine Corps brig Quantico, Va., for more than eight months where he spent 23 hours a day and ate all his meals in an isolated cell, was permitted no contact with other prisoners, and was forced to wear chains and leg irons any time he was moved. He also was often forced to strip naked at night and stand nude in his cell for early morning inspection.
The Marines claim they took his clothes to prevent him from injuring himself. Military and Pentagon officials insist the action was punishment for what the Marines considered disrespect from Manning. Such tactics for disciplinary reasons are against military regulations. . . . U.S. military officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity, deny Manning was tortured, but one said "the Marines blew it" in terms of how they treated him.
For multiple reasons, the treatment of Manning has been a profound stain on the Obama administration. It isn't merely that the treatment is inherently inhumane, although that's true. It isn't merely that oppressive detention conditions are such a glaring betrayal of Obama's repeated signature vow to end detainee abuse, though that's also true. And it isn't merely that Manning has never been convicted of anything, rendering this obvious punishment (masquerading as protective detention) offensive on multiple Constitutional and ethical levels (not to mention a violation of the UCMJ), though that, too, is true. What makes it most odious are the purposes that likely drove it: a desire to break Manning in order to extract incriminating statements to be used against WikiLeaks and, worst of all, a thuggishly threatening message to future would-be whistleblowers about the unconstrained punishment they'd face if they, too, exposed government deceit, wrongdoing and illegality.
But there is one positive aspect of all of this worth highlighting: namely, the mechanisms used to catapult this story into such prominence. Had this been 10 or even 5 years ago, I'm convinced that Bradley Manning's oppressive detention conditions would never have received any substantial attention and he'd wither away indefinitely in Quantico. Major media outlets would evince little interest in the conditions of an accused Army leaker. Republicans have long made clear their support for detainee abuse, and given that it's being carried out by a Democratic President, very few officials in the President's party would care either. It's long been the case that the only stories capable of generating any real media interest are ones raised by the leadership of one of the two parties, and Bradley Manning's detention conditions is of interest to neither.
But that landscape has changed, one could say fundamentally. The story of Manning's inhumane detention conditions was first reported here in this space on December 15, when I wrote the following in the first paragraph:
Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.
From there, blogs that barely existed even five years ago -- such as FDL -- coordinated a highly effective activism campaign to publicize and protest these conditions. Blog readers complained en masse to the U.N. and Amnesty International, which led to a formal investigation by the former and a formal condemnation and protest campaign from the latter. A few isolated media figures and politicians -- who regularly read blogs -- picked up the cause, with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan providing ample coverage and Dennis Kucinich demanding official access to Manning and loudly complaining when it was denied (along with constant coverage from The Guardian). Rather than rely on the mediation of establishment journalists and editors, Manning's counsel largely confined his public commentary to his own newly-created blog, where he was able to control the content, avoid distorting editing practices, and be heard in full.
Substantial Internet-organized protests took place outside of the brig and elsewhere around the country -- aided by the vocal support of the classic heroic whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg, who was arrested protesting Manning's conditions -- bringing further attention to Manning's plight. Blog-reading and blog-writing law professors organized an eloquent but harsh condemnation of Manning's detention supported by 250 of the nation's preeminent scholars. And the ultimate tipping point for the story -- Crowley's condemnation -- came not when he was asked about Manning at the daily State Department briefing he gave for establishment reporters, but rather at a small group of Internet activists and social media writers when he was confronted with an aggressive question about "Manning's torture" from a Ph.D student at MIT.
But perhaps most significant is how the scandal finally seeped into full-scale establishment media focus. Even five years ago, most establishment journalists took their cues exclusively from a small handful of homogenized outlets ( such as the Drudge Report), but now many of them (the smartest and most resourceful ones) use a much more extensive and diversified roster of sources, such as blogs, Twitter, and independent political commentators. That caused one of the leading media practitioners of this new method (Jake Tapper) to ask President Obama about Crowley's denunciation of Manning at a nationally televised Press Conference, elevating the story to the presidential level, leading to Crowley's resignation (and commendable ongoing condemnation of Manning's treatment), and ultimately to the forced transfer of Manning out of Quantico.
The point here is not to take any victory lap; none is warranted given Manning's ongoing detention under still-unknown conditions as well as the injuries he's unquestionably suffered already (his counsel says that, despite the transfer, he "nonetheless intends to pursue redress at the appropriate time for the flagrant violations of [Manning's] constitutional rights by the Quantico confinement facility"). But this episode should be a potent antidote to defeatism, as it provides a template for how issues that would be otherwise ignored can be amplified by independent voices creatively using the democratizing and organizing power of the Internet, and meaningful activism achieved.
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18) Beware the military-psychological complex: A $125-million program to boost soldiers' "fitness" raises ethical questions
By John Horgan
Monday, April 18, 2011 | 12
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=beware-the-military-psychological-c-2011-04-18&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110421
Fifty years ago, in the same farewell speech in which he warned about the "unwarranted influence" of the "military-industrial complex" on American politics, President Dwight Eisenhower also deplored the growing dependence of scientists on federal funding. "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment, project allocations and the power of money is ever present-and is gravely to be regarded."
Eisenhower's speech comes to mind as I gravely regard the latest example of the militarization of science, a $125 million collaboration between psychologists and the U.S. Army called "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness," or CSF. The program calls for giving "resilience training" to more than one million Army soldiers and civilian employees to help them cope with the stress of military life. A U.S. Army Web site calls the CSF "a long term strategy that better prepares the Army community-including all soldiers, family members, and the Department of the Army civilian workforce-to not only survive, but also thrive at a cognitive and behavioral level in the face of protracted warfare and everyday challenges of Army life that are common in the 21st century."
The program is the brainchild of one of the most powerful figures in American psychology, Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Seligman is best-known for founding the enormously popular positive psychology, or "happiness," movement, which emphasizes positive rather than negative personality traits and emotions.
The APA's main journal, American Psychologist, devoted its January 2011 issue, co-edited by Seligman, to explaining and extolling the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. No articles in the issue questioned the program's scientific or ethical soundness, but the psychologists Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz did just that in "The Dark Side of 'Comprehensive Soldier Fitness,'" a hard-hitting article published in the newsletter Counterpunch. (Scientific American's Gary Stix also critiqued the methods underpinning the CSF in this incisive recent article.)
Is it ethical for psychologists to help soldiers to participate in what may be unethical behavior? This is the toughest question raised by Eidelson et al. "Helping people who have already been harmed by trauma is essential," they wrote. "But should we be involved in helping an institution prepare to place more people in harm's way without careful and ongoing questioning and review of the rationale for doing so?"
The trio also charged that the CSF is based on "resiliency techniques," developed by Seligman and others, that have been shown to be "only modestly and inconsistently effective" in studies of civilians. Indeed, according to Eidelson et al., the techniques are still so experimental that the CSF may violate the Nuremberg Code of ethics, which prohibits research on people without their consent. Eidelson et al. noted that soldiers "apparently have no informed consent protections-they are required to participate." According to TIME blogger Mark Benjamin, the Army dismisses the issue of informed consent as an "academic tiff"-or, as an Army spokesman put it, "an academic discussion and debate between the psychologist and behavioral health communities." The spokesman said the CSF "continues to move forward" despite these concerns.
The Army's own description of the CSF sounds like psychobabble: "Conceptually, while CSF is largely focused on training skill sets, it also delves into root causes of emotion, thought and action-what psychologists refer to as 'meta-cognition'. With this in mind, CSF serves as a programmatic first step towards training members of the Army community to understand how and why they think a certain way. Once people begin to understand this, they are best postured to change their thoughts and actions to strategies that are positive, adaptive and desirable for both the person and the Army."
Even in the face of declines in non-military funding, some scientific fields have resisted militarization. In 2009 the American Anthropological Association declared that a program to embed anthropologists with troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones violated the profession's code of ethics, which one article described as "a sort of Hippocratic oath in which anthropologists vow to do no harm."
But as I pointed out in a column last year, neuroscience is chasing after defense dollars. In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences published a 136-page report, "Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications," that advised brain scientists on how to get on board the military gravy train. The authors included two leading brain scientists: Floyd Bloom of the Scripps Research Institute and Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, both former members of The President's Council on Bioethics. Potential applications of neuroscience include drugs and electromagnetic devices that can boost or degrade soldiers' capacities.
The APA is capable of taking a stand. In 2007, after reports that psychologists were helping the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency refine their interrogation techniques, the APA condemned the involvement of its members in "planning, designing, assisting in or participating in any activities including interrogations which involve the use of torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." But the APA leadership should be ashamed by its uncritical promotion of the CSF program. The association should encourage a debate among its members over whether the CSF represents a genuinely beneficial, ethical program or just another sordid example of what Eisenhower called the "the power of money."
Logo for the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program from U.S. Army via Aaronwayneodonahue/Wikimedia Commons
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19) Why is the World's Largest Organization of Psychologists So Aggressively Promoting a New, Massive and Untested Military Program?
The Dark Side of "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness"
By ROY EIDELSON, MARC PILISUK and STEPHEN SOLDZ
March 24, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz03242011.html
The January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association's (APA) flagship journal, is devoted entirely to 13 articles that detail and celebrate the virtues of a new U.S. Army-APA collaboration. Built around positive psychology and with key contributions from former APA president Martin Seligman and his colleagues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for our soldiers and veterans. While these are undoubtedly worthy aspirations, the special issue is nevertheless troubling in several important respects: the authors of the articles, all of whom are involved in the CSF program, offer very little discussion of conceptual and ethical considerations; the special issue does not provide a forum for any independent critical or cautionary voices whatsoever; and through this format, the APA itself has adopted a jingoistic cheerleading stance toward a research project about which many crucial questions should be posed. We discuss these and related concerns below.
At the outset, we want to be clear that we are notquestioning the valuable role that talented and dedicated psychologists play in the military, nor certainly the importance of providing our soldiers and veterans with the best care possible. As long as our country has a military, our soldiers should be prepared to face the hazards and horrors they may experience. Military service is highly stressful, and psychological challenges and difficulties understandably arise frequently. These issues are created or exacerbated by a wide range of features characteristic of military life, such as separation from family, frequent relocations, and especially deployment to combat zones with ongoing threats of injury and death and exposure to acts of unspeakable violence. The stress of repeated tours of duty, including witnessing the loss of lives of comrades and civilians, can produce extensive emotional and behavioral consequences that persist long after soldiers return home. They include heightened risk of suicide, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, and family violence.
Conceptual and Empirical Concerns
Although its advocates prefer to describe Comprehensive Soldier Fitness as a training program, it is indisputably a research project of enormous size and scope, one in which a million soldiers are required to participate. Reivich, Seligman, and McBride write in one of the special issue articles, "We hypothesize that these skills will enhance soldiers' ability to handle adversity, prevent depression and anxiety, prevent PTSD, and enhance overall well-being and performance" (p. 26, emphasis added). This is the very core of the entire CSF program, yet it is merely a hypothesis - a tentative explanation or prediction that can only be confirmed through further research.
There seems to be reluctance and inconsistency among the CSF promoters in acknowledging that CSF is "research" and therefore should entail certain protections routinely granted to those who participate in research studies. Seligman explained to the APA's Monitor on Psychology, "This is the largest study - 1.1 million soldiers - psychology has ever been involved in" (a "study" is a common synonym for "research project"). But when asked during an NPR interview whether CSF would be "the largest-ever experiment," Brig. Gen. Cornum, who oversees the program, responded, "Well, we're not describing it as an experiment. We're describing it as training." Despite the fact that CSF is incontrovertibly a research study, standard and important questions about experimental interventions like CSF are neither asked nor answered in the special issue. This neglect is all the more troubling given that the program is so massive and expensive, and the stakes are so high.
It is highly unusual for the effectiveness of such a huge and consequential intervention program not to be convincingly demonstrated first in carefully conducted randomized controlled trials - before being rolled out under less controlled conditions. Such preliminary studies are far from a mere formality. The literature on prevention interventions is full of well-intentioned efforts that either failed to have positive effects or, even worse, had harmful consequences for those receiving them. For instance, in the 1990s the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) substance abuse prevention program was administered in thousands of elementary schools across the U.S., at a cost of many hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet evaluations of DARE rarely found the desired effects in regard to reducing young people's later substance use (e.g., see this and this summary). In response, DARE was modified in the last decade; however, subsequent evaluation found that the revised program actually increased later alcohol and cigarette use in those who received it compared to controls.
Similarly, criminal justice researcher Joan McCord has demonstrated how well-meaning programs have caused actual harm. She conducted a 30-year follow-up of a classic delinquency prevention program. Those participants randomly selected for intervention, but not matched controls, were provided with extensive enrichment, including mentoring, counseling, and summer camp. Among the matched pairs who differed in outcomes decades later, those who received the intensive assistance were more likely to have been convicted of serious street crimes; were more frequently given a diagnosis of alcoholism, schizophrenia, or manic depression; and on average died five years younger. Other studies of criminal justice interventions have also uncovered unanticipated, deleterious effects. Given this well known record, it is especially concerning when a major intervention is rolled out for thousands - or hundreds of thousands - without careful prior examination, including an investigation of potential negative effects. The special issue of the American Psychologist gives no indication that preliminary studies of CSF were conducted.
Also problematic, the CSF program is adapted primarily from the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP) where interventions were focused on dramatically different, non-military populations. Even with these groups, a 2009 meta-analysis of 17 controlled studies reveals that the PRP program has been only modestly and inconsistently effective. PRP produced small reductions in mild self-reported depressive symptoms, but it did so only in children already identified as at high risk for depression and not for those from the general population. Nor did PRP interventions reduce symptoms more than comparison prevention programs based on other principles, raising questions as to whether PRP's effects are related to the "resilience" theory undergirding the program. Further, like many experimental programs, PRP had better outcomes when administered by highly trained research staff than when given by staff recruited from the community. This raises doubts as to how effectively the CSF program will be administered by non-commissioned officers who are required to serve as "Master Resilience Trainers."
Regardless of how one evaluates prior PRP research, PRP's effects when targeting middle-school students, college students, and adult groups can hardly be considered generalizable to the challenges and experiences that routinely face our soldiers in combat, including those that regularly trigger PTSD. In an inadequate attempt to bridge this gap rhetorically, CSF proponents describe PTSD as "a nasty combination of depressive and anxiety symptoms" (Reivich, Seligman, & McBride, p. 26). In fact, PTSD involves a far more complicated cluster of severe symptoms in response to a specific traumatic event, including flashbacks, partial amnesia, difficulty sleeping, personality changes, outbursts of anger, hypervigilance, avoidance, and emotional numbing.
Ethical Concerns
We also believe that other key aspects of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness should have received explicit discussion in this special issue. It is standard practice for an independent and unbiased ethics review committee (an "institutional review board" or "IRB") to evaluate the ethical issues arising from a research project prior to its implementation. This review and approval process may in fact have occurred for CSF, but the manner in which the principals blur "research" and "training" leads us to wish for much greater clarity here. This process is even more critical given that the soldiers apparently have no informed consent protections - they are all required to participate in the CSF program. Such research violates the Nuremberg Code developed during the post-World War II trials of Nazi doctors. That code begins by stating:
The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.
Disturbingly, however, this mandatory participation in a research study does not violate Section 8.05 of the APA's own Ethics Code, which allows for the suspension of informed consent "where otherwise permitted by law or federal or institutional regulations." Despite the APA's stance, we should never forget that the velvet glove of authoritarian planning, no matter how well intended, is no substitute for the protected freedoms of individuals to make their own choices, mistakes, and dissenting judgments. Respect for informed consent is more, not less, important in total environments like the military where individual dissent is often severely discouraged and often punished.
More broadly, the 13 articles fail to explore potential ethical concerns related to the uncertain effects of the CSF training itself. In fact, the only question of this sort raised in the special issue - by Tedeschi and McNally in one article and by Lester, McBride, Bliese, and Adler in another - is whether it might be unethical to withhold the CSF training from soldiers. Certainly, there are other ethical quandaries that require serious discussion if the CSF program's effectiveness is to be appropriately evaluated. For example, might the training actually cause harm? Might soldiers who have been trained to resiliently view combat as a growth opportunity be more likely to ignore or under-estimate real dangers, thereby placing themselves, their comrades, or civilians at heightened risk of harm?
Similarly, by increasing perseverance in the face of adversity, might the CSF training lead soldiers to engage in actions that may later cause regret (e.g., the shooting of civilians at a roadblock in an ambiguous situation), thereby increasing the potential for PTSD or other post-combat psychological difficulties? Or, might the resilience training lead some to overcome, for the time, the disabling effects of traumatic episodes and thereby increase the likelihood of their redeployment to situations with further risk of serious disability? The likelihood of these eventualities, or other negative effects, is unknown. But certainly they are sufficiently plausible - as plausible as McCord's unexpected findings, noted earlier, of intensive counseling and summer camp leading to increased crime, mental illness diagnosis, and early death among participating youth - that they cannot legitimately be ruled out a priori.These possibilities increase the ethical responsibility of those promoting CSF to conduct pilot studies, carefully monitor them for possible negative effects upon soldiers or others, submit the program to careful ethical review, and seek informed consent.
It is also important to note here two controversial aspects of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program that have already received attention from investigative journalists. First, Mark Benjamin has raised provocative questions, not yet fully answered, about the circumstances surrounding the huge, $31 million no-bid contract awarded to Seligman ("whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program") by the Department of Defense for his team's CSF involvement. Benjamin notes that the government allows sole-source contracts only under very limited conditions. The Army contract documents note that "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." But as we have detailed above, public claims about the effectiveness of the Penn Resiliency Program and its superiority to alternative prevention programs are significantly overstated, casting doubt upon the rationale for awarding the sole-source contract.
Second, Jason Leopold and others have raised serious questions about the "spiritual fitness" component of the CSF program, which appears to inappropriately promote a religious worldview as an important path to greater resilience and purpose. The special issue article by Pargament and Sweeney confirms the legitimacy of this concern. It includes a range of theologically oriented terms and references, and it specifically identifies the Army's chaplain corps as a resource "to assist individuals in their quests to develop their spirits" (p. 61).
The Limits of Positive Psychology
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness draws heavily on "positive psychology" in aiming to reduce the incidence of psychological harm resulting from combat and post-combat stress. The field of positive psychology has grown dramatically over the past decade and has many exuberant supporters and evangelists. Rather than focusing on distress and pathology, they emphasize human strengths and virtues, happiness, and the potential to derive positive meaning from stressful circumstances. Few would dispute the benefits of broadening psychology's purview in this way. But writers such as Barbara Held, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eugene Taylor and James Coyne have offered compelling critiques of positive psychology, including its failure to sufficiently recognize the valuable functions played by "negative" emotions like anger, sorrow, and fear; its slick marketing and disregard for harsh and unforgiving societal realities like poverty; its failure to examine the depth and richness of human experience; and its growing tendency to promote claims without sufficient scientific support (e.g., the relationship between positive psychological states and health outcomes, or the mechanisms underlying "posttraumatic growth").
These and related concerns are directly relevant to Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. As described by Cornum, Matthews, and Seligman in the special issue, the CSF program aspires "to increase the number of soldiers who derive meaning and personal growth from their combat experience" (p. 6). But in many ways the technocratic language of military training programs and the positive psychology strategies that characterize the CSF program appear inadequate for the task. Activities such as the "three blessings exercise" in which the individual reflects on what went well that day and why seem ill-suited for encouraging and supporting the deep questioning and open exploration of existential issues that often arise for soldiers facing extreme circumstances. By all indications, the program's positive psychology orientation also fails to scrutinize those very institutions that subject recruits to potential trauma in order to create people sufficiently hardy to engage in death-defying and death-inflicting experiences.
In this regard, it is worth noting how special issue authors Peterson, Park, and Castro briefly discuss the lower trust scores of female soldiers on the CSF program's Global Assessment Tool (GAT), which measures psychological fitness in four domains (social, emotional, spiritual, and family). They interpret these results as suggesting "Female soldiers do not feel as fully at ease in the Army as do male soldiers," and they recommend further research to "understand the needs and challenges of female soldiers and to help them attain the same morale as male soldiers, which perhaps would reduce attrition among them" (p. 15-16). What goes unmentioned is that the extremely high rates of sexual assault on women soldiers, condoned or covered up by others higher in rank, is clearly a source of distrust and trauma - and it calls less for building a positive, resilient outlook among the victims than for recognition of how the commonplace victimization of women in war should be vociferously prevented.
In important ways, key lessons of humanistic psychology are also regrettably overlooked in the CSF program. For many soldiers, combat awakens questions regarding the meaning of life and of its worth, which can become more persistent after returning home. Too often, our veterans face anomie, lack of community, and the replacement of caring ties with the competitive values of marketability when their military service is over. Humanistic and related perspectives more directly and fully attend to this void, the emptiness of contemporary society that increases the difficulties in recovery from trauma, than does positive psychology. Because of the limitations of quantitative psychology to date, the data for phenomena of this type are more frequently found in stories than in self-report inventories such as the GAT. Limited data encourage a limited view of the phenomenon of PTSD and of any resilience that is based upon denial. In contrast, it is through revelations such as the Winter Soldier testimonies of U.S. veterans and active duty soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, through studies of the phenomenology of returning soldiers by Daryl Paulson and Stanley Krippner, or accounts of soldier participants in U.S. torture as relayed by journalists Joshua Phillips and Justine Sharrock, that we are able to see how much distress comes from abuses soldiers commit either as a result of commands from superiors or due to the morally disorienting effects of ambiguous combat situations.
Indeed, among the most traumatic psychological scars that soldiers sustain are those resulting from what they have done to others. Some of the particularly intense characteristics of PTSD are found among perpetrators. As Col. Dave Grossman and others have described, human beings have an inherent resistance to killing other human beings. As a result, waging war almost always relies upon propaganda and training designed to dehumanize the enemy and elevate one's own cause. Psychology and psychologists have contributed to training programs aimed at increasing soldiers' willingness to kill. Now this newest positive psychology program for resilience promises to shield soldiers from some of the debilitating consequences of their actions and, as Reivich, Seligman and McBride note, it aims to better enable soldiers to "live the Warrior Ethos - 'I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade'" (p. 27).
Missing, it would seem, is any meaningful CSF component devoted to helping soldiers grapple with the profound ethical dilemmas involved in their duties, including killing others in furtherance of state policy. Brett Litz and his colleagues have used the term "moral injury" to describe the exceedingly difficult challenges and consequences that soldiers face in response to "perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations" (p. 700). These are especially troubling omissions from the CSF program when we also consider the regrettable reality that many recruits, often drawn to the military by economic necessity and deceptive marketing strategies, are never told about the types of injuries to which they will be exposed or the level of slaughter in which some of them will take part.
The U.S. Military and American Psychology
In the closing article of the special issue, Seligman and Fowler (former CEO of the APA) attempt to counter the objections they anticipate from readers who have concerns about how closely the American Psychological Association and the profession of psychology should align themselves with the agenda of the U.S. military. Certainly, such reader concerns are not entirely unfounded, especially given the tragic repercussions of the APA's decisions post-9/11 to shape its ethics code, policies, and pronouncements to meet the perceived needs of an administration that viewed torture and other detainee abuse as legitimate components of national security practice. Unfortunately, however, Seligman and Fowler's arguments serve only to instill greater concern about the foundations of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and the role of institutional psychology in advancing it, as we explain below by responding to three statements from their article.
"It is not the military that sets the nation's policies on war and peace. The military carries out the policies that emerge from our democratic form of government. Withholding professional and scientific support for the people who provide the nation's defense is, we believe, simply wrong" (p. 85)
No one recommends withholding services from anyone in need. Indeed, health professionals deserve to be commended for providing such support to our soldiers and veterans. But when acting ethically, health professionals address the needs of their clients before the wishes of the institutions that hire them. Therefore, if those institutions constrain the options available for the well-being of the practitioners' clients, these professionals have an obligation to consider remedies beyond the narrow institutionally defined interests. For example, the CSF program does not include a component whereby participants are invited to listen to fellow soldiers and veterans who have enhanced their own safety, well-being, and sense of purpose by refusing to comply with illicit orders, or by deciding, as have so many other American citizens, that the war they are fighting is unjust and immoral.
In addition, whether the U.S. military plays a role in establishing policies is not a matter to be determined by recitation of formal rules. Scholarship involves an obligation to look at the actual evidence. Generals routinely make political statements in which they advocate for the latest war. Major military contractors work closely with military officials to sell both weapons of war and war itself. Retired military officers are then often hired as lobbyists for these same corporations, and some appear as military "experts" in the media without revealing their conflicts of interest. The exorbitant budget for "perception management" services paid to professional propaganda organizations is also used by the military to spin news and promote war to government officials and the public alike. And, as recently reported by Rolling Stone, psychological operations ("psyops") techniques were used by the military on visiting U.S. Senators to strengthen their support of the increasingly unpopular Afghan war effort.
"The balance of good done by building the physical and mental fitness of our soldiers far outweighs any harm that might be done" (p. 86).
It is disappointing that researchers who have emphasized the purported empirical underpinnings of the CSF program would here abandon all semblance of scholarly rigor. The authors offer their cost-benefit claim as transparently true (i.e., the good outweighing the harm). But they offer no evidence in support of this crucial claim. For example, in their calculation how much weight do they give to the tragic numbers of civilian casualties in Iraq (minimally estimated in the hundreds of thousands) and Afghanistan - the dead, the injured, and the displaced? Does this harm matter at all to those promoting CSF? Have we reached the point where "do no harm," the fundamental principle underlying the psychology profession's ethics, has become "do no harm to Americans, unless it serves the interests of the state"? These issues deserve careful consideration, not evasion.
We should also keep in mind that every effort to support military operations is billed as "support for our troops." Whether it is the use of drones that kill from a continent away or tapping into a soldier's capacity to kill without a serious hangover, all are justified as for the brave troops. But the decisions to use military force are not made with the well-being of military personnel in mind, nor are they made by soldiers or even influenced by their desires. Master resilience trainers in the Army will not be urging soldiers to report violations of the rules of engagement by their superiors. They will not encourage soldiers to empathize with the humanity of the adults and children whom they may have killed as collateral damage, nor to use forms of restorative justice for apology and reconciliation that have a potential for deeper healing. And they will not encourage troops to build supportive ties with those critical of the wars they are fighting or the tactics required of them.
"We are proud to aid our military in defending and protecting our nation right now, and we will be proud to help our soldiers and their families into the peace that will follow" (p. 86).
The blind embrace of overly simple notions of "patriotism" is inappropriate for professional psychologists dedicated to the promotion of universal human health and well-being. Ideological convictions based upon mythologies of American exceptionalism are no substitute for an examination of their verity. If it is not true that the U.S. is defending its democratic foundations against ruthless adversaries, then the balance shifts dramatically toward averting the alleged harm of making healthier killers. By tying the CSF program to claims of the rightness of American military goals and actions, Seligman and Fowler are, unrecognized by them, requiring that an ethical evaluation include a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the justification for those policies.
Such an evaluation likely will find that the view of U.S. military history as being primarily "defensive" in nature, rather than one of imperial control, is false. Rather, the U.S. has a long history of intervening in other countries and overthrowing their governments when they act in ways considered to be against U.S. national interests. Where does the "defending and protecting" reality lie in regard to the war in Iraq, or the invasion of Guyana, or the support for the Venezuelan coup, or the bombing of Serbia, or military aid to dictators around the world? Sadly, history (and scholars such as retired U.S. Col. Andrew Bacevich, among many others) has shown how remarkably war-prone the United States has been in the non-defensive pursuit of its foreign policy and "national interest." The U.S. is, in fact, at best only inconsistently a defender of democracy. Our empire-building behavior has caused great harm to our own safety and well-being - and to the principles our country purports to value. Meanwhile, the promise of peace following military victories has surely not materialized, while the case for the extent of U.S. engagement in wars that were unneeded is extensive and compelling. It is not professionally responsible to ignore these facts.
Conclusion
In addition to our deep concerns about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, the American Psychological Association's unrestrained enthusiasm for the program is especially worrisome for what it says about the APA, the largest organization of psychologists in the country, indeed the world. As we have demonstrated, there are many complex issues regarding the CSF program's empirical foundations, its promotion as a massive research project absent informed consent, and the basis on which its psychologist developers justify the program. We would therefore expect a special issue of the American Psychologist, a journal edited by the APA's CEO Norman Anderson, to encourage an extended discussion of these matters.
In contrast, guest editors Seligman and Matthews have assembled 13 articles that include no independent evaluation of the empirical claims underlying CSF. They contain no unbiased discussion of ethical issues raised by the program. They do nothing to enlighten psychologists about ethical challenges posed by consulting and research work with the military. And they most certainly offer no encouragement for questioning the foreign policy context in which our soldiers are sent into combat, to face physical and moral hazards for which even the best program can never adequately prepare them. Unfortunately, the APA's uncritical promotion of the CSF program reveals much about the current moral challenges facing the psychology profession itself.
Psychology should maintain an ethical and critical stance distinct from and resistant to the lure of patriotic calls, which are part of each and every military undertaking - by all nations - regardless of the legitimacy of the cause. As psychologists we should tread carefully when our efforts are solely directed toward sending soldiers back into combat rather than counseling them away from participating in misguided wars. In a similar way, assessing soldiers for their potential to withstand such horrors of war and building their resilience through teaching mental toughness skills are not necessarily healthy alternatives compared to affirming and assisting them in their expressions of doubt and dissent.
Ultimately, there is a paradox that should be foremost in the minds of professional psychologists. Helping people who have already been harmed by trauma is essential. But should we be involved in helping an institution prepare to place more people in harm's way without careful and ongoing questioning and review of the rationale for doing so? Whatever the needs for a military for national defense, or the benefits of team building, loyalty, camaraderie, and a positive outlook, militaries are, among other things, authoritarian institutions that kill, maim, deceive, and actively reduce an individual's sense of independent agency.
The enormous toll that armed conflict exacts on soldiers, veterans, families, and communities is a key reason why we should send young men and women to war only as an absolute last resort - and we should bring them home as quickly as possible, rather than sending them back again and again. If the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program is truly about enhancing well-being, then we should also question whether these soldiers might be helped more effectively by finding non-military ways to resolve the conflicts and concerns for which they carry such heavy burdens.
Roy Eidelson is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Roy can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com.
Marc Pilisuk is Professor Emeritus, the University of California, and Professor, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. He is the author (with Jennifer Achord Rountree) of Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System (Greenwood/Praeger, 2008), and the co-editor (with Michael Nagler) of Peace Movements Worldwide (Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2011). Marc can be reached at mpilisuk@saybrook.edu.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, and president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He has conducted extensive research on psychosocial prevention and treatment interventions. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog and is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations. Stephen can be reached at ssoldz@bgsp.edu
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20) Security Forces Kill Protesters in Uprisings Around Syria
By ANTHONY SHADID
April 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/middleeast/23syria.html?hp
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Security forces in Syria fired tear gas and live ammunition Friday to disperse thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets of Damascus and at least 10 other towns and cities after noon prayers, according to protesters, witnesses and accounts posted on social networking sites. At least 32 people were killed, they said, though it was not possible to immediately verify that toll.
The breadth of the protests - and people's willingness to defy security forces who deployed en masse - painted a tableau of turmoil in one of the Arab world's most repressive countries. In scenes unprecedented only weeks ago, protesters tore down pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and toppled statues of his father, Hafez, in two towns on the capital's outskirts, according to witnesses and video footage.
In the capital, a city that underlines the very prestige of the Assad family's four decades of rule, hundreds gathered after prayers at Al Hassan Mosque. Some of them chanted, "The people want the fall of the government," a slogan made famous in Egypt and Tunisia. Security forces quickly dispersed the protests with tear gas, witnesses said.
But larger protests gathered on the capital's outskirts, drawing thousands. Other demonstrations occurred across Syria, from Qamishli in the east to Baniyas on the coast.
"Freedom! Freedom!" went another chant. In Baniyas, a banner denounced Mr. Assad and his ruling Baath Party: "No Baath, No Assad, we want to free the country."
Razan Zeitouneh, an activist with the Syrian Human Rights Information Link in Damascus, basing her account on witnesses, said 10 people were killed in Azra, in southern Syria; two near Homs, Syria's third-largest city; and 12 in the suburbs of Damascus, the capital.
In Homs itself, where major protests erupted this week, activists said large numbers of security forces and police in plain clothes flooded the city, putting up checkpoints and preventing all but a few dozen from gathering. One resident said streets were deserted by afternoon, the silence punctuated every 15 minutes or so by gunfire.
Abu Kamel al-Dimashki, an activist in Homs reached by Skype, said that 16 of those who were protesting went missing. His account could not be confirmed.
"I tried to go there, but I couldn't," he said. "The secret police are all over Homs."
One of the bloodiest episodes occurred in Azra, about 20 miles from Dara'a, a poor town in southwestern Syria that helped unleash the uprising. A protester who gave his name as Abu Ahmad said about 3,000 people had marched toward the town square when they came under fire. He said he brought three of those killed to the mosque - one shot in the head, one in the chest and one in the back - the oldest of whom was 20.
"There is no more fear. No more fear," Abu Ahmad said by telephone. "We either want to die or to remove him. Death has become something ordinary."
The aim of both sides is the same: to prove they have the upper hand in the biggest challenge yet to the 40-year rule of the Assad family. While organizers were reluctant to call Friday a decisive moment, they acknowledged that it would signal their degree of support in a country that remained divided, with the government still claiming bastions of support among minorities, loyalists of the Baath Party and wealthier segments of the population.
Residents of Damascus said police officers were seen heading Thursday from a headquarters on the outskirts in Zabadani toward the capital, where military security officers had reportedly turned out in greater numbers. In the restive city of Dara'a, security forces set up checkpoints on Friday, and other deployments were reported in suburbs of the capital like Douma, Maidamiah and Dariah.
In Homs, cellphones were hard to reach, and some land lines had been cut.
On Friday, instructions were delivered to protesters from the main Facebook page, urging them to paint revolutionary graffiti, document the protests with pictures and videos, stay peaceful and chant slogans.
The government has maintained that the uprising is led by militant Islamists, and organizers acknowledge that religious forces like the banned Muslim Brotherhood have taken part. The government has also accused foreign countries of supporting the protests. And, indeed, some of the largest have occurred in cities near Syria's borders: Dara'a, near Jordan, and Homs, an industrial center near conservative northern Lebanon.
So far, the government has sought to hew to a policy of crackdown and compromise. On Thursday, Mr. Assad signed decrees that repealed harsh emergency rule, in place since 1963, abolished draconian security courts and granted citizens the right to protest peacefully, though they still need government permission to gather. The orders had already been handed down to his government on Tuesday, making his endorsement a formality; its timing seemed aimed in part at blunting Friday's protests.
He also appointed a new governor in Homs. Two weeks ago, the previous governor, Mohammed Iyad Ghazzal, was dismissed. He had been in power since 2004 and was widely despised.
"Homs wasn't happy with the old governor, but a new one isn't the urgent issue," said a government employee who gave his name as Khalid. "We want to change the mentality of how the country is run, not change a governor or his administration."
Sporadic protests had erupted again Thursday, though their numbers were not as large as in past demonstrations, and they seemed confined to Kurdish areas.
Organizers said about 300 people protested at a university in Hasakah, a city near the Turkish and Iraqi borders, and a larger demonstration occurred in Ayn al-Arab, east of Aleppo. Between 5,000 and 8,000 people marched there, though Mr. Tarif said it seemed more spontaneous than organized. He said the Kurdish leadership in the region had yet to endorse bigger turnouts, debating whether they could instead extract more concessions from a government that has already granted citizenship to as many as 300,000 stateless Kurds.
The debate is a microcosm of a larger one taking place in Syria, where many fear the prospect of chaos or score-settling in the event of the government's collapse. Many activists said the reforms so far were too little and too late; in the words of Haitham Maleh, an oft-imprisoned activist and former judge, "The mentality of the regime has to change."
But some worry about the combustibility of a society that is shadowed by sectarian resentments fostered by the government. And many identify that government almost entirely with the Alawite minority, a heterodox Muslim sect that accounts for 10 percent of Syria's population.
"Let's be realistic, let's not destroy the country," said Camille Otrakji, a Damascus-born political blogger in Montreal. "Why do you think there aren't millions in the street demonstrating against Bashar? It's not because they're afraid of the security forces. It's because they're afraid of what would replace Assad."
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Katherine Zoepf from New York, and employees of The New York Times from Beirut and Damascus, Syria.
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21) Patients Are Not Consumers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Earlier this week, The Times reported on Congressional backlash against the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key part of efforts to rein in health care costs. This backlash was predictable; it is also profoundly irresponsible, as I'll explain in a minute.
But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board, which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it, is to "make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice."
Here's my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as "consumers"? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car - and their only complaint is that it isn't commercial enough.
What has gone wrong with us?
About that advisory board: We have to do something about health care costs, which means that we have to find a way to start saying no. In particular, given continuing medical innovation, we can't maintain a system in which Medicare essentially pays for anything a doctor recommends. And that's especially true when that blank-check approach is combined with a system that gives doctors and hospitals - who aren't saints - a strong financial incentive to engage in excessive care.
Hence the advisory board, whose creation was mandated by last year's health reform. The board, composed of health-care experts, would be given a target rate of growth in Medicare spending. To keep spending at or below this target, the board would submit "fast-track" recommendations for cost control that would go into effect automatically unless overruled by Congress.
Before you start yelling about "rationing" and "death panels," bear in mind that we're not talking about limits on what health care you're allowed to buy with your own (or your insurance company's) money. We're talking only about what will be paid for with taxpayers' money. And the last time I looked at it, the Declaration of Independence didn't declare that we had the right to life, liberty, and the all-expenses-paid pursuit of happiness.
And the point is that choices must be made; one way or another, government spending on health care must be limited.
Now, what House Republicans propose is that the government simply push the problem of rising health care costs on to seniors; that is, that we replace Medicare with vouchers that can be applied to private insurance, and that we count on seniors and insurance companies to work it out somehow. This, they claim, would be superior to expert review because it would open health care to the wonders of "consumer choice."
What's wrong with this idea (aside from the grossly inadequate value of the proposed vouchers)? One answer is that it wouldn't work. "Consumer-based" medicine has been a bust everywhere it has been tried. To take the most directly relevant example, Medicare Advantage, which was originally called Medicare + Choice, was supposed to save money; it ended up costing substantially more than traditional Medicare. America has the most "consumer-driven" health care system in the advanced world. It also has by far the highest costs yet provides a quality of care no better than far cheaper systems in other countries.
But the fact that Republicans are demanding that we literally stake our health, even our lives, on an already failed approach is only part of what's wrong here. As I said earlier, there's something terribly wrong with the whole notion of patients as "consumers" and health care as simply a financial transaction.
Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions - life and death decisions - must be made. Yet making such decisions intelligently requires a vast amount of specialized knowledge. Furthermore, those decisions often must be made under conditions in which the patient is incapacitated, under severe stress, or needs action immediately, with no time for discussion, let alone comparison shopping.
That's why we have medical ethics. That's why doctors have traditionally both been viewed as something special and been expected to behave according to higher standards than the average professional. There's a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don't have TV series about heroic middle managers.
The idea that all this can be reduced to money - that doctors are just "providers" selling services to health care "consumers" - is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society's values.
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22) Drone Strikes Militants in Northwest Pakistan
"Friday's attack could further fuel antidrone sentiment among the Pakistani public. A government official in North Waziristan told Pakistani reporters that five children and four women were among the 23 who were killed."
By JANE PERLEZ and ISMAIL KHAN
April 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23pakistan.html?hp
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An American drone attack killed 23 people in North Waziristan on Friday, Pakistani military officials said, a strike against militants that appeared to signify unyielding pressure by the United States on Pakistan's military amid increasing public and private opposition to such strikes.
The American strike came a day after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, met with the chief of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and appealed to Pakistan to do more to fight the militants that use North Waziristan as a base from which to attack United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The strike was the second show of determination to continue drone attacks since the head of Pakistan's spy agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, met with the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, in Washington to request a halt to the strikes.
Friday's attack could further fuel antidrone sentiment among the Pakistani public. A government official in North Waziristan told Pakistani reporters that five children and four women were among the 23 who were killed.
The attack singled out forces of a militant commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, whose forces cross the border into Afghanistan to make targets of American and NATO soldiers, the government official said.
Mr. Bahadur keeps a peace accord with the Pakistani Army that ensures that militants under his control do not attack Pakistani soldiers but concentrate only on allied soldiers in Afghanistan.
Those killed Friday were gathered in Spinwam, an area close to Mir Ali in North Waziristan that had become a hub for militants in the past several months, the official said.
In the increasing public war of nerves between the American and Pakistani armies, the provincial government is allowing a planned anti-NATO protest to go ahead in Peshawar during the weekend. The political leader, Imran Khan, has called protesters for a sit-in Saturday to block trucks carrying NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan. The trucks move through Peshawar from the sea port of Karachi to Torkham, the gateway to Afghanistan.
The drone strike Friday came after Admiral Mullen delivered an unusually harsh message during his visit here, saying publicly that the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, directly supported and abetted the Haqqani network of militants in North Waziristan. The militants of that network are responsible for many of the casualties of American soldiers in Afghanistan, American commanders say.
The United States has long held that the Haqqani network was supported by the Pakistani spy agency, but rarely says so in public.
In an incident involving the Pakistani military and the Taliban, 16 soldiers from the Pakistani Frontier Corps were killed Thursday when their checkpoint was overrun by 150 militants near the Afghanistan border, a Pakistani security official said.
The battle continued for close to 12 hours at Kharkai in the northern district of Dir in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly North-West Frontier Province. Two officers sent to reinforce the troops were gunned down in an ambush, the official said.
The attack by the militants on Pakistani soldiers came as the army embarked on a renewed assault in Mohmand, a part of the tribal agency that has proven difficult for the Pakistani Army to control and hold.
In a report to Congress this month, the Obama administration complained that the Pakistani Army had "no clear path" toward defeating the insurgency inside Pakistan, and cited the failed efforts to eradicate the militants from Mohmand as an illustration. The army "was failing for the third time in two years" to clear militants from Mohmand, the report said.
The 150 militants who carried out the attack on Thursday appeared to have fled the army assault into Afghanistan and then re-entered Pakistan to strike at the soldiers.
General Kayani, the chief of the Pakistani military, visited Mohmand on Thursday for the second stage of the new assault focused on the Suran, a narrow valley on the border with Afghanistan.
The American and NATO forces on the other side of the border of Mohmand had helped Pakistan in attacking the militants as they escaped into Afghanistan in the last few months, the official said.
But the group of militants that attacked in Dir on Thursday appeared to have escaped before the assault on the Suran began, and had been allowed to re-enter Pakistan by elements in the Afghan Army who were assisting the Pakistani militants, the official said.
Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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23) Libyan Rebels Advance; U.S. Will Deploy Drones
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and THOM SHANKER
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/world/africa/22libya.html?hp
CAIRO - The government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi suffered setbacks on multiple fronts on Thursday as rebels in the western mountains seized a Tunisian border crossing, fighters in the besieged city of Misurata said they were gaining ground and President Obama authorized the use of armed drones for close-in fighting against the Qaddafi forces.
The rebels in the Western mountains took control of a border crossing in the town of Wazen after an early morning battle that sent a small number of Libyan soldiers fleeing across the frontier, the official Tunisian news agency reported. The news agency said 13 of the Libyan soldiers, including a colonel and two commanders, had been detained, while a rebel spokesman in the eastern city of Benghazi asserted that more than 100 had sought asylum.
As the fighting in the mountains has escalated over the last two weeks, United Nations aid workers say that more than 14,000 Libyan refugees - many of them members of the Berber minority, which is prevalent in the area - have fled across the same border, with as many as 6,000 a day crossing recently, a spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Commission said.
While it is unclear that the rebels can hold Wazen, their success is the first major crack in Colonel Qaddafi's control of the western region since he crushed the uprisings that broke out in Tripoli and many other cities and towns across Libya when the insurrection erupted two months ago. It opens the possibility of the rebels there importing aid or weapons and provides the first hint of a break in the stalemate that has settled over the Libyan civil war in recent weeks.
In a move that seemed to be aimed at ending that deadlock, the Pentagon said Thursday that President Obama had authorized the use of armed Predator drones against Colonel Qaddafi's forces, which have partly evaded the airstrikes by intermingling with civilian populations and operating out of unmarked vehicles.
The American military has used the Predator, a remotely piloted aircraft outfitted with Hellfire missiles, to hit targets in urban and rural areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen.
In announcing the deployment, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described the addition of armed Predators as "a modest contribution" to the NATO attack mission. But Mr. Obama's approval of their deployment seemed to be another sign of gaps in NATO's ability to carry out complicated, extended combat missions without continued and significant American support.
Those gaps have become more apparent since the United States transferred command of the Libya mission to NATO on April 4, when the American military stepped back to a supporting role. Despite that move, American planes have dropped significant numbers of bombs, more than any of the other countries in the alliance.
In Misurata, the rebel-held port city where rebels have pleaded for weeks for such weaponry to beat back a siege by Qaddafi forces, a rebel spokesman said Thursday that recent airstrikes and aid shipments had enabled rebel fighters to take the offensive. The spokesman, Mohamed, whose full name was withheld for the protection of his family, said the rebels killed more than 100 Qaddafi soldiers on Thursday and 51 on Wednesday, when they also captured 40 others. "People are celebrating in Misurata," he said, speaking over an Internet connection because most telephone service and electricity to the city was cut off.
Among other advances, he said the rebels had driven away snipers who had terrorized civilians along the city's central Tripoli Avenue. "There is a pattern of collapse among the Qaddafi troops in and around Misurata," he said.
In the rebels' eastern stronghold of Benghazi, Col. Ahmed Bani, a spokesman for the rebel military, said anti-Qaddafi fighters had attacked the western border crossing at Wazen repeatedly in the past before succeeding on Thursday. "This is a supply line linking us to Tunisia," he said, adding that the rebel forces in Wazen were communicating with the leadership in Benghazi.
So far, NATO airstrikes against the Qaddafi forces have enabled the rebels to retain control of Benghazi and a handful of eastern towns, the western commercial port of Misurata and, according to some reports, the western mountain towns of Nalut and Zintan. But the Qaddafi forces have maintained tight control of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and kept up a fierce siege on Misurata and the other rebel-held towns, and rebel leaders have complained bitterly about the relative paucity of NATO airstrikes in recent weeks.
While most attention has focused on the major port cities of Benghazi and Misurata, the mountainous western region stretching from Wazen to nearby Nalut and Zintan has simmered with opposition to Qaddafi. The Berbers there have long chafed under the Qaddafi government, which has sought to deny their status as a culturally distinct minority.
After rebels took control of Benghazi on Feb. 20, residents of Nalut and Zintan joined others from Tripoli, Misurata, Zawiyah, Zawarah, Sabratha and other towns in taking to the streets to burn police stations and the headquarters of Colonel Qaddafi's local "revolutionary committees." In the following weeks, however, his security forces re-established a firm grip on Tripoli and gradually recaptured most of the other towns as well, leaving Zintan and Misurata as the main western centers of resistance.
Faras Kaya, a spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Commission, said many fleeing to the camps described escalating clashes in the mountains around Zintan and Nalut over the last two weeks, as Qaddafi forces fired artillery toward the towns and the rebels lashed back. "The western mountain region has been under siege for a month or so," Mr. Kaya said. "What is clear is that they have fled because of the intensifying violence."
About a quarter of a million refugees have fled Libya into Tunisia over the last two months, he said. At the other main crossing near the Mediterranean, most of those fleeing were foreign workers, he said, but the 14,000 who have fled through Wazen have been Libyan families.
The deployment of the Predators follows weeks when rebels have complained of a lack of support from NATO after the United States handed over direction of the air campaign to NATO. In announcing the addition of the new weapon, Mr. Gates suggested that the United States was filling in a gap in the other arsenals of the other allies, who do not have similar attack drones.
"The president has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those," Mr. Gates said at a Pentagon news conference, suggesting the Predators would provide "some precision capability."
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Thom Shanker from Washington. Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Benghazi, Libya, and Mona El Naggar from Cairo.
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24) Nation's Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows
By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/22poll.html?hp
Americans are more pessimistic about the nation's economic outlook and overall direction than they have been at any time since President Obama's first two months in office, when the country was still officially ensnared in the Great Recession, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government's ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.
Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.
The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.
After the first 100 days of divided government, and a new Republican leadership controlling the House of Representatives, 75 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job.
Disapproval of Mr. Obama's handling of the economy has never been broader - at 57 percent of Americans - a warning sign as he begins to set his sights on re-election in 2012. And a similar percentage disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the federal budget deficit, though more disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are.
Still, for all the talk from Congressional Republicans and Mr. Obama of cutting the deficit as a way to improve the economy, only 29 percent of respondents said it would create more jobs. Twenty-seven percent said it would have no effect on the employment outlook, and 29 percent said it would cost jobs.
When it comes to cutting the deficit and the costs of the nation's costliest entitlement programs, the poll found conflicting and sometimes contradictory views, with hints of encouragement and peril for both parties.
Mr. Obama has considerable support for his proposal to end tax cuts for those households earning $250,000 a year and more: 72 percent of respondents approved of doing so as a way to address the deficit.
And, in what he can take as a positive sign for his argument the nation has a duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, about three-quarters of Americans polled think the federal government has a responsibility to provide health care for the elderly, and 56 percent believe it has a similar duty to the poor.
"Keep people's taxes and give them medical benefits," Richard Sterling, an independent voter of Naugatuck, Conn., said in a follow-up interview.
In what Republicans can take as a positive sign as they seek a more limited government, 55 percent of poll respondents said they would rather have fewer services from a smaller government than more services from a bigger one, as opposed to 33 percent who said the opposite, a continuation of a trend in Times/CBS polls.
And slightly more Americans approve than disapprove of a proposal by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin to change Medicare from a program that pays doctors and hospitals directly for treating older people to one in which the government helps such patients pay for private plans, though that support derived more from Republicans and independents. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that found 65 percent opposed Mr. Ryan's plan, suggesting results can vary based on how the question is asked.
Twice as many respondents said they would prefer cuts in spending on federal programs that benefit people like them as said they would favor a rise in taxes to pay for such programs.
Yet more than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they believed Medicare was worth the costs. And when asked specifically about Medicare, respondents said they would rather see higher taxes than see a reduction in its available medical services if they had to choose between the two.
Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)
The opposition by Tea Party supporters to raising the level of debt the nation can legally carry was shared by nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, including nearly half of Democrats; administration officials say blocking the government from raising that limit could force it to default on its debt payments.
For the most part, Americans split sharply along party lines when it comes to whom they trust most on the deficit, Medicare and Social Security.
But with 70 percent of poll respondents saying that the country was heading in the wrong direction, the public was not exhibiting warm feelings toward officeholders of either party.
Most Americans think neither Mr. Obama nor the Congressional Republicans share their priorities for the country. Mr. Obama's job approval remains below a majority, with 46 percent saying they approve of his performance in office, while 45 percent do not. And support for his handling of the military campaign in Libya has fallen since last month: 39 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove. In a CBS poll in March, 50 percent approved and 29 percent disapproved.
Republicans have their own challenges. More than half of poll respondents, 56 percent, said they did not have a favorable view of the party, as opposed to 37 percent who said they did. (The Democratic Party fared somewhat better: 49 percent did not have favorable views of it and 44 percent did.)
As the House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, becomes the face of his party in Congress, more disapprove of his job performance (41 percent) than approve of it (32 percent); 27 percent said they did not have an opinion of him.
The displeasure with officeholders of both parties is reminiscent of the mood that prevailed in November, when anti-incumbent sentiment swept Democrats out of power in the House and diminished their edge in the Senate.
Frustration with the pace of economic growth has grown since, with 28 percent of respondents in a New York Times/CBS poll in late October saying the economy was getting worse, and 39 percent saying so in the latest poll. "They're saying it will get better, but it's not," Frank Tufenkdjian, a Republican of Bayville, N.Y., said in a follow-up interview. "I know so many people who are unemployed and can't find a job."
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Friday through Wednesday with 1,224 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
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25) Protests in Uganda Over Rising Prices Grow Violent
By JOSH KRON
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/world/africa/22uganda.html?ref=world
KAMPALA, Uganda - Riots broke out in downtown Kampala on Thursday as another round of street demonstrations over commodity prices spread after a leading opposition politician was arrested for the third time in two weeks, significantly heightening tensions here.
President Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation on Thursday evening, defending his government's action against protesters and the spending decisions that the protesters blame for the rising cost of living.
"Nobody can take over power through an uprising," Mr. Museveni said in televised remarks that were transcribed by New Vision, a state-owned newspaper. "Whoever thinks like that, I pity such a person."
Demonstrations over rising food and fuel prices started two weeks ago, spearheaded by two politicians who lost to Mr. Museveni in elections in February.
Despite the meager size of the protests, government security forces have responded with overwhelming force, killing at least five people since the protests began, including a young child, and wounding and arresting hundreds more.
On Thursday, the former presidential candidate who is the protest leader, Kizza Besigye, was bundled into a police van and taken to court within minutes of stepping onto a Kampala street. But unlike his previous arrests during the protest movement, Mr. Besigye was not granted bail on Thursday, and was later whisked away to a prison far outside of the city.
Norbert Mao, another jailed former presidential candidate who is leading protests, was transferred to the same prison outside of Kampala, indicating a growing sensitivity on the part of the government to the politicians' provocations and influence.
Until Thursday, the protesters in Kampala seemed only as bold as the senior politicians often at the front of the march. But with the leaders jailed, the demonstrations on Thursday grew on their own and evolved into a violent parade of protesters, some holding up banners attacking government corruption, and many with rocks.
"The situation is pushing us," said Jamo Luyombya, 24, a day laborer. "They are controlling us with the power of the gun, but not with their power of love."
In Kampala, heavily armed soldiers and police officers fought running street battles with stone-wielding protesters through a popular market as thousands stood on rooftops and balconies to watch.
In the town of Masaka, far from journalists covering the protests in Kampala, a 2-year-old was killed after being shot in the chest and head when the police opened fire with live ammunition near a crowd of unarmed protesters, according to Ugandan news reports.
Many more were reported wounded in Masaka, and two police officers were hospitalized after being severely beaten by protesters there, the police said. A news report said that the two officers had died on the way to the hospital.
"The Ugandan government must immediately end the excessive use of force against protesters," Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday. "The police have a duty to protect themselves and uphold the law, but it is completely unacceptable to fire live ammunition at peaceful protesters."
The events could prove pivotal for a movement that so far has failed to gain the same momentum and social cohesion as protests over similar concerns in northern Africa.
"The rioting shows that people need change of government," said Annek Cabine, a bystander at the market where the protest came through. "Otherwise, this problem could become like Libya."
But many still see the protest movement as contrived, propped up by politicians bitter over brutal electoral losses. Others wonder whether it has a chance of displacing Mr. Museveni, who has been in power for a quarter-century.
"The key to regime change is of course the army," said Dr. Elliot Green, a Uganda specialist at the London School of Economics, who said that Mr. Museveni had "done well" in keeping the army "in his pocket."
But Dr. Green said Africa had a long history of urban food riots that brought down governments.
"Obviously the current situation in Burkina Faso should also worry Museveni, where a riot by soldiers was sparked by a food riot," said Dr. Green. "Museveni has a lot to be worried about."
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26) New Hampshire Senate Approves Bill Curbing Unions
"...a law is expected to be adopted that would prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees and disallow collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join a labor union."
By KATIE ZEZIMA
April 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/22newhampshire.html?ref=us
The latest battle front over limitations on unions has opened in New Hampshire, where a law is expected to be adopted that would prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees and disallow collective bargaining agreements that require employees to join a labor union.
The State Senate passed the bill Wednesday - by a veto-proof vote of 16 to 8 - that would make New Hampshire the 23rd right-to-work state, and the first in the Northeast. The House passed a similar bill in February.
"I thought it was simply a freedom-of-choice issue," said State Senator Raymond White, a Republican who supported the bill. "At the end of the day it's simply a bill about does a person have to pay union dues?"
The two houses of the Legislature must work out a compromise bill that will be sent to Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, who has said he will veto it. The bill will then return to the Legislature for an expected override vote, at which point it will become law.
"The governor has been clear he would veto this legislation," Colin Manning, a spokesman for Mr. Lynch, said in an e-mail. "The governor does not believe the state should be passing laws dictating the terms of contracts between private employers and workers."
The battle over the legislation has been especially rancorous for New Hampshire. Protests were held at the Capitol in Concord last week, unusually loud and vitriolic events in a state where only 11 percent of employees are union members.
"We see this as an attack, really, on the middle class and working people and on our ability to negotiate," said Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire A.F.L.-C.I.O. "Our economy is doing better than most. There is no public outcry for right-to-work in the state."
The vote illustrates the major political shift that occurred in November, when conservative Republicans took a majority of the House and swept into the Senate, replacing the moderate bloc.
"These are not your typical New England moderate Republicans," said Dante J. Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. "They're more libertarian-minded Republicans that think unions should be out of the question in a contract between employee and employer."
Like Republicans in other states, supporters in New Hampshire say the legislation is a way to improve a business climate in which there is competition with businesses in neighboring states.
"Right to work means more economic growth and more jobs here in New Hampshire, plain and simple," House Speaker William O'Brien and the majority leader, David Bettencourt, said in a statement.
Labor groups plan to mobilize for the veto fight with rallies this weekend and calls to legislators.
"The antiworker group has taken control of the State Capitol," Mr. MacKenzie said. "This is a street fight now."
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