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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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ILWU 10 Defense Committee Formed-Meeting April 14, 2011 7:00 PM
The following resolution was passed unanimously at the San Francisco Labor Council on April 11, 2011 and the first organizing committee to organize for action and solidarity will take place on Thursday April 14, 2011 at 7:00 PM on the 2nd Fl at the Henry Schmidt Room
400 North Point St/Mason St. San Francisco
Please come if you can and get your union/organization to support.
Sisters and Brothers:
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 4th when working people across this country demonstrated in solidarity with the Wisconsin state workers, the longshore workers of Local 10 in San Francisco did what they've always done, implemented their union's slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all." According to news media, the ports of San Francisco and Oakland were shut down in solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.
They did it in 1978 for the workers of Chile under the gun of Pinochet's bloody military dictatorship refusing to load bombs on a ship bound for Chile.
They did it in 1984 for the oppressed people of apartheid South Africa and according to Nelson Mandela helped bring down that racist regime.
They did it in 2000 for the Charleston longshore union under attack from police and politicians for defending their jobs.
They did it all in 2008 by shutting down all West Coast ports to demand an end to the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And last year they did it in solidarity with the Palestinian people being massacred in Gaza and protesting against the police killing in Oakland of an innocent young black man, Oscar Grant.
ILWU Local 10 has been the moral compass of the American labor movement. Now the employers' group, the Pacific Maritime Association, is trying to put an end to workers' solidarity actions by intimidating the longshore union through a court suit. Their bullying tactics must be stopped. ILWU Local 10 and the San Francisco Labor Council are organizing a broad defense campaign. There will be an EMERGENCY DEFENSE MEETING at Local 10 located near Fisherman's Wharf at 400 North Point Street (corner of Mason) Thursday April 14 at 7PM in the Henry Schmidt room. Be there to defend organized labor, civil liberties, the antiwar movement and immigrant workers' rights!
In solidarity,
Trent Willis
DEFEND ILWU LOCAL 10's APRIL 4 SOLIDARITY ACTION
April 11 SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL RESOLUTION
[Note: The following resolution was adopted unanimously at the San Francisco Labor Council Delegates Meeting on April 11, 2011. The first meeting of the committee will be held on Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7 p.m. at the Henry Schmidt Room of ILWU Local 10 (2nd floor), 400 North Point St/Mason St., San Francisco. Please come if you can and get your union/organization to support.]
Whereas, the delegates meeting of the Council voted unanimously on March 14 that "in the event that a Council affiliate votes to engage in an industrial action on April 4, the San Francisco Labor Council will call on all its affiliates ... to support such action ..."; and
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, a National Day of Action called by the AFL-CIO and a day for which ILWU International President Bob McEllrath on March 8th called for mobilizing in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin; and
Whereas, each rank-and-file member of Local 10 made this selfless choice on their own 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, consistent with its March 14th resolution, initiate a broad defense campaign of ILWU Local 10 by setting up a defense committee in collaboration with Local 10, by contacting and mobilizing the Labor Councils and AFL-CIO of the Bay Area, California and nationally; 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 25th to demand that the court suit be dropped and that the vindictive lynch mob 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.
Resolution submitted by the following SF Labor Council delegates:
Alan Benjamin, OPEIU Local 3 *; Frank Martin Del Campo, SF LCLAA; Tom Edminster, UESF *; Galina Gerasimova, AFT 2121 *; Maria Guillen, SEIU 1021 *; Ann Robertson, CFA, S.F. State *; Pablo Rodriguez, AFT 2121 *; Francesca Rosa, SEIU 1021 *; David Welsh, NALC 214 *
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"Hands Off Local 10!"
"Hands Off Local 10!" Says ILWU Local 10 Leader Clarence Thomas at 4/10/2011 SF Anti-War Rally
http://blip.tv/file/5007093
At an San Francisco anti-war rally on April 10, 2011, ILWU Local 10 past Secretary Treasurer and Executive Board member Clarence Thomas called for full support to the ILWU Local. The local has been sued by the Pacific Maritime Association PMA for stopping work on the national day of action for Wisconsin workers on April 4, 2011. Thomas called for full support to the local in its battle with the PMA.
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
New Documentary on Terrorism Against Cuba
and the Reasons for the Cuban 5
Saturday April 16, 7:00PM
La Brava Theater
2781 24th Street, San Francisco
Doors will open at 6PM
Tickets $15.00
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!"
and music by The Cuban Cowboys
Q & A by Saul Landau
Reception will follow
In April 1961, the CIA sent a force of Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban government. This resulted in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco. Fifty years later, a new documentary shows that US-backed violence against Cuba continued for decades. The new film, with Danny Glover, anti-Cuba terrorists, and Fidel Castro himself (filmed recently) is combined with fascinating archival footage and a rare recorded interview from prison with one of the Cuban 5. These men are serving long sentences in US prisons for trying to stop terrorism against tourist sites in their country.
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!"provides every professor and specialist with an invaluable teaching and learning tool about US-Cuba policy and the history of terrorism in that policy. It also explains the story of and context for the "Cuban 5," the Cuban agents who penetrated Miami exile groups to stop their plans for violence against the island, and ended up in US prisons." Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It's a real Who's Who of key figures in the more than half-century-long grudge match over Cuba." Tracey Eaton former Dallas Morning News' Bureau Chief, Havana
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!" produced by Emmy-Award Winner Saul Landau, with live music from the Cuban Cowboys. Won loud applause at the Havana Film Festival.
For more information call 415-647-2822 - To purchase tickets online go to www.brava.org
Organized by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 www.thecuban5.org
Special thanks to La Peña Cultural Center for their constant support
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
For updated information about the case visit: www.thecuban5.org
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NO MORE NUCLEAR VICTIMS
by Coffee House Teach Ins
PROTEST against Diablo and stand up for clean energy.
Join at a peaceful demonstration on
Saturday, April 16.
Meet at Avila Pier in Avila Beach, CA, at noon.
Bring signs and the messages that:
We can no longer ignore the warnings from Fukushima Daiichi,
Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island
Diablo Canyon is on shaky ground; the area is riddled with over a
dozen earthquake faults
Nuclear Energy is not worth the risk to our lives and our planet
Stop the license renewal process at Diablo
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
http://mothersforpeace.org
(805)773-3881
P.O. Box 3608
San Luis Obispo, CA 93403
Date: Sat, Apr 16th, 2011
Time: 12:00 pm
More Info: http://mothersforpeace.org
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Please circulate widely
Wed. April 20, 4-6pm
Protest at Obama Fundraiser in San Francisco
Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California St.
(btwn Jones and Taylor), SF
President Obama will be in San Francisco for a $35,800 per plate fundraiser and other events. Join the ANSWER Coalition and other organizations to say:
End the Wars and Occupations
Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti & everywhere!
Fund Jobs, Healthcare, Schools and Housing, Not War!
Stop budget cuts & layoffs! Stop the war on working people!
The People & the Planet, Not Nuclear Profits
No more gov't subsidies for nuclear corporations!
Call 415-821-6545 or reply to this email to endorse or for more info.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2969 Mission St.
415-821-6545
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Please announce, forward, share, come
For the Beauty of the Earth
Good Friday, Earth Day & the Bomb
The Cross in the Midst of Creation
Rev. Sharon Delgado, preaching
Liturgical dance led by Carla DeSolaa
April 22, 6:45 a.m.
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory
Vasco Road & Patterson Pass Road, Livermore
Livermore Lab was founded to develop the hydrogen bomb, and new weapons of mass destruction are still designed there. For more than 25 years, people of faith and others concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons have gathered on Good Friday outside the Livermore Laboratory.
This year Good Friday and Earth Day coincide. We will hear from Sharon Delgado, a longtime advocate for peace, justice and the environment, a United Methodist clergywoman, founder of interfaith Earth Justice Ministries, and author of Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization.
We will be led in dance by Carla DeSola a nationally recognized teacher of liturgical dance, presently teaching at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and through the Center for the Arts, Religion & Education.
After the service we will walk about one-half mile to the main gate, where there will be opportunity for nonviolent witness. Please bring banners, puppets and other visuals for the walk to the gate.
We invite your participation in this event, your financial support, and, if available, your organization's co-sponsorship
Information, downloadable flyer etc at http://www.epicalc.org/ email to epicalc@lmi.net
Surface mail to EPI PO Box 9334, Berkeley, CA 94702
Write or email us if you can help or want to participate in some way. Please spread the word.
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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./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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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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Save the Date!
NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO BUILD LABOR – COMMUNITY FIGHTBACK TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country — from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York and California — are facing unprecedented attacks by corpor-ations and the super rich and their allies in the federal, state and local governments.
In state capitols, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back in militant and creative ways. But if we’re going be successful in defeating the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services, we need to build unity within the labor movement in support of a national campaign for an alternative agenda. And we also need to forge 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.
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was formed earlier this year at an historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 for a national conference to kick off this national campaign for an alternative agenda – an agenda for jobs, peace and justice that says NO to cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, social services, and workers’ rights, and instead would expand all of them at a time when workers and the ommunity are under such duress. To win this agenda we need a fighting mass movement hich the Kent State conference can call for and help to advance.
Further details and a full Call will be available shortly. 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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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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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) Dangerously Wrong on Nuclear Radiation
Attack of the Nuclear Apologists
By HELEN CALDICOTT
Counterpunch
April 12, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/caldicott04122011.html
2) DEFEND ILWU LOCAL 10's APRIL 4 SOLIDARITY ACTION
April 11 SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL RESOLUTION
VIA Email
3) Pakistan Tells U.S. to Halt Drones
By ADAM ENTOUS And MATTHEW ROSENBERG
APRIL 12, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576257273696136418.html?mod=djemTEW_h
4) U.N. diplomat is denied private meeting with WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning
By Ellen Nakashima
Monday, April 11, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-diplomat-is-denied-unmonitored-meeting-with-wikileaks-suspect/2011/04/11/AFgfAzLD_print.html
5) Musings in a Time of Global Imperial War By Lynne Stewart, presented to April 9th and 10th antiwar demonstrations in N.Y. and San Francisco
6) France and Britain Urge Stronger NATO Action in Libya
By ALAN COWELL and KAREEM FAHIM
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/africa/13libya.html?hp
7) Japan Disaster Now as Bleak as Chernobyl
"Nevertheless, officials agreed that tens of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive materials have escaped the plant, far higher than acknowledged so far by Japanese authorities. Some in the nuclear industry had been saying for weeks that the accident had released far larger amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had until now played down this possibility. (A terabecquerel is a unit of measure representing a trillion small nuclear disintegrations per second.)"
By HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW POLLACK
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html?hp
8) Activist Starts Hunger Strike in Bahrain
"THEY JUST CAME! They took my dad, my dads blood is still on the stairs! They hit my dad so much! They beat him and he cudnt breath"
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 12, 2011, 11:29 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/activist-starts-hunger-strike-in-bahrain/?hp
9) Syrian University Protests Violently Suppressed
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/middleeast/12syria.html?ref=world
10) An Appalachian Radio Voice Threatened From Afar
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/us/12radio.html?ref=us
11) Gulf's Complexity and Resilience Seen in Studies of Oil Spill
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/12spill.html?ref=us
12) In Rape Trial of 2 Officers, Jurors Hear a 911 Call
By MICHAEL WILSON
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/nyregion/12rape.html?ref=nyregion
13) Labor Chieftain Seizes the Anti-Union Moment
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13mcentee.html?ref=business
14) Wall Street Slides as Nuclear Crisis in Japan Worsens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13markets.html?ref=business
15) Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz•
May 2011
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
16) The Middle East Children's Alliance joins the National Lawyers Guild in remembering the great attorney, advocate and friend Leonard Weinglass.
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/?
17) Seeking Execution Drug, States Cut Legal Corners
[This is as sick as it gets! And is a testament to the true nature of this system that puts the accumulation of privately-held capital before the interests of humanity as a whole that holes the death penalty over the heads of all of us...bw]
"In depositions from Arkansas officials, Wendy Kelley, a deputy director of the Department of Correction, said she obtained sodium thiopental from a company in England after hearing about it from corrections officers in Georgia. Her state, she said, at various times had given the drug to Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee free of charge, and obtained the drugs from Texas - traveling to Huntsville herself - and from Tennessee. 'I went wherever they had them,' Ms. Kelley said. 'As best as I'm aware, the agreement my director had with other directors, any time there was an exchange, was that there would be a payback when needed.' When Kentucky went searching for execution drugs earlier this year the state's corrections commissioner, LaDonna H. Thompson, wrote in a memo that she had contacted departments in Georgia, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee. A Georgia official 'referred me to a distributor in Georgia that he thought might have a supply,' and that she had gotten information on 'an organization in India,' Kayem Pharmaceuticals. (That company halted shipments to the United States last week under international pressure. [Because Kayem Pharmaceuticals is opposed to the death penalty...bw])"
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?hp
18) As the Mountaintops Fall, a Coal Town Vanishes
By DAN BARRY
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/us/13lindytown.html?hp
19) Hospital Is Drawn Into Bahrain Strife
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13bahrain.html?ref=world
20) Syria Presses Crackdown in Two Cities on Coast
By LIAM STACK and KATHERINE ZOEPF
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13syria.html?ref=world
21) Police Officers in Swaziland Squash Rally for Democracy
By BARRY BEARAK
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/africa/13swaziland.html?ref=world
22) 4 Die in Smuggling Tunnel Under Gaza-Egypt Border
By FARES AKRAM
[These deaths are the direct result of the U.S. funding of Israel's occupation of Palestine and the imprisonment--by a separation wall secured by Israeli military outposts--of the whole of Gaza with the intent of genocide against the Palestinian people...bw]
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13briefs-Gazabrf.html?ref=world
23) High Prices Sow Seeds of Erosion
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13erosion.html?ref=us
24) Quarterly Profit Surges 67% at JPMorgan
By ERIC DASH
April 13, 2011, 7:36 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/jpmorgan-quarterly-profit-rises-67/?ref=business
25) Exxon's CEO Compensation Up 6.6 Percent
[In case you were concerned about their wellbeing, have no fear. They're in the money!...bw]
By REUTERS
April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/04/13/business/business-us-exxon-pay.html?src=busln&pagewanted=print
26) Muslims made the history in New York on April 9,2011!
Standing Against Islamophobia, War & Terrorism
Muslim Peace Coalition USA
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org
26) Muslims made the history in New York on April 9,2011!
Standing Against Islamophobia, War & Terrorism
Muslim Peace Coalition USA
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/
A New, More United & More Diverse Peace Movement launched on April 9
April 12, 2011
By Abdul Malik Mujahid
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/stop-wars.php
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1) Dangerously Wrong on Nuclear Radiation
Attack of the Nuclear Apologists
By HELEN CALDICOTT
Counterpunch
April 12, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/caldicott04122011.html
Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the "nuclear renaissance" to slow down appears to be evident from the industry's attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima.
Proponents of nuclear power - including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects - accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of "cherry-picking" data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure - and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process.
To wit:
1) Mr Monbiot, who is a journalist not a scientist, appears unaware of the difference between external and internal radiation
Let me educate him.
The former is what populations were exposed to when the atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; their profound and on-going medical effects are well documented. [1]
Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication - that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.
The grave effects of internal emitters are of the most profound concern at Fukushima. It is inaccurate and misleading to use the term "acceptable levels of external radiation" in assessing internal radiation exposures. To do so, as Monbiot has done, is to propagate inaccuracies and to mislead the public worldwide (not to mention other journalists) who are seeking the truth about radiation's hazards.
2) Nuclear industry proponents often assert that low doses of radiation (eg below 100mSV) produce no ill effects and are therefore safe. But , as the US National Academy of Sciences BEIR VII report has concluded, no dose of radiation is safe, however small, including background radiation; exposure is cumulative and adds to an individual's risk of developing cancer.
3) Now let's turn to Chernobyl. Various seemingly reputable groups have issued differing reports on the morbidity and mortalities resulting from the 1986 radiation catastrophe. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2005 issued a report attributing only 43 human deaths directly to the Chernobyl disaster and estimating an additional 4,000 fatal cancers. In contrast, the 2009 report, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment", published by the New York Academy of Sciences, comes to a very different conclusion. The three scientist authors - Alexey V Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V Nesterenko - provide in its pages a translated synthesis and compilation of hundreds of scientific articles on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster that have appeared in Slavic language publications over the past 20 years. They estimate the number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl meltdown at about 980,000.
Monbiot dismisses the report as worthless, but to do so - to ignore and denigrate an entire body of literature, collectively hundreds of studies that provide evidence of large and significant impacts on human health and the environment - is arrogant and irresponsible. Scientists can and should argue over such things, for example, as confidence intervals around individual estimates (which signal the reliability of estimates), but to consign out of hand the entire report into a metaphorical dustbin is shameful.
Further, as Prof Dimitro Godzinsky, of the Ukranian National Academy of Sciences, states in his introduction to the report: "Against this background of such persuasive data some defenders of atomic energy look specious as they deny the obvious negative effects of radiation upon populations. In fact, their reactions include almost complete refusal to fund medical and biological studies, even liquidating government bodies that were in charge of the 'affairs of Chernobyl'. Under pressure from the nuclear lobby, officials have also diverted scientific personnel away from studying the problems caused by Chernobyl."
4) Monbiot expresses surprise that a UN-affiliated body such as WHOmight be under the influence of the nuclear power industry, causing its reporting on nuclear power matters to be biased. And yet that is precisely the case.
In the early days of nuclear power, WHO issued forthright statements on radiation risks such as its 1956 warning: "Genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, health and harmonious development of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation ... We also believe that new mutations that occur in humans are harmful to them and their offspring."
After 1959, WHO made no more statements on health and radioactivity. What happened? On 28 May 1959, at the 12th World Health Assembly, WHO drew up an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); clause 12.40 of this agreement says: "Whenever either organisation [the WHO or the IAEA] proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement." In other words, the WHO grants the right of prior approval over any research it might undertake or report on to the IAEA - a group that many people, including journalists, think is a neutral watchdog, but which is, in fact, an advocate for the nuclear power industry. The IAEA's founding papers state: "The agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity through the world."
Monbiot appears ignorant about the WHO's subjugation to the IAEA, yet this is widely known within the scientific radiation community. But it is clearly not the only matter on which he is ignorant after his apparent three-day perusal of the vast body of scientific information on radiation and radioactivity. As we have seen, he and other nuclear industry apologists sow confusion about radiation risks, and, in my view, in much the same way that the tobacco industry did in previous decades about the risks of smoking. Despite their claims, it is they, not the "anti-nuclear movement" who are "misleading the world about the impacts of radiation on human health."
Helen Caldicott is president of the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet and the author of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer
[1] See, for example, WJ Schull, Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (New York: Wiley-Lis, 1995) and DE Thompson, K Mabuchi, E Ron, M Soda, M Tokunaga, S Ochikubo, S Sugimoto, T Ikeda, M Terasaki, S Izumi et al. "Cancer incidence in atomic bomb survivors, Part I: Solid tumors, 1958-1987" in Radiat Res 137:S17-S67 (1994).
[2] This process is called bioaccumulation and comes in two subtypes as well, bioconcentration and biomagnification. For more information see: J.U. Clark and V.A. McFarland, Assessing Bioaccumulation in Aquatic Organisms Exposed to Contaminated Sediments, Miscellaneous Paper D-91-2 (1991), Environmental Laboratory, Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS and H.A. Vanderplog, D.C. Parzyck, W.H. Wilcox, J.R. Kercher, and S.V. Kaye, Bioaccumulation Factors for Radionuclides in Freshwater Biota, ORNL-5002 (1975), Environmental Sciences Division Publication, Number 783, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN.
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2) DEFEND ILWU LOCAL 10's APRIL 4 SOLIDARITY ACTION
April 11 SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL RESOLUTION
VIA Email
[Note: The following resolution was adopted unanimously at the San Francisco Labor Council Delegates Meeting on April 11, 2011. The first meeting of the committee will be held on Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7 p.m. at the Henry Schmidt Room of ILWU Local 10 (2nd floor), 400 North Point St/Mason St., San Francisco. Please come if you can and get your union/organization to support.]
Whereas, the delegates meeting of the Council voted unanimously on March 14 that "in the event that a Council affiliate votes to engage in an industrial action on April 4, the San Francisco Labor Council will call on all its affiliates ... to support such action ..."; and
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, a National Day of Action called by the AFL-CIO and a day for which ILWU International President Bob McEllrath on March 8th called for mobilizing in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin; and
Whereas, each rank-and-file member of Local 10 made this selfless choice on their own 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, consistent with its March 14th resolution, initiate a broad defense campaign of ILWU Local 10 by setting up a defense committee in collaboration with Local 10, by contacting and mobilizing the Labor Councils and AFL-CIO of the Bay Area, California and nationally; 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 25th to demand that the court suit be dropped and that the vindictive lynch mob 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.
Resolution submitted by the following SF Labor Council delegates:
Alan Benjamin, OPEIU Local 3 *; Frank Martin Del Campo, SF LCLAA; Tom Edminster, UESF *; Galina Gerasimova, AFT 2121 *; Maria Guillen, SEIU 1021 *; Ann Robertson, CFA, S.F. State *; Pablo Rodriguez, AFT 2121 *; Francesca Rosa, SEIU 1021 *; David Welsh, NALC 214 *
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"Hands Off Local 10!"
"Hands Off Local 10!" Says ILWU Local 10 Leader Clarence Thomas at 4/10/2011 SF Anti-War Rally
http://blip.tv/file/5007093
At an San Francisco anti-war rally on April 10, 2011, ILWU Local 10 past Secretary Treasurer and Executive Board member Clarence Thomas called for full support to the ILWU Local. The local has been sued by the Pacific Maritime Association PMA for stopping work on the national day of action for Wisconsin workers on April 4, 2011. Thomas called for full support to the local in its battle with the PMA.
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3) Pakistan Tells U.S. to Halt Drones
By ADAM ENTOUS And MATTHEW ROSENBERG
APRIL 12, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576257273696136418.html?mod=djemTEW_h
Pakistan has privately demanded the Central Intelligence Agency suspend drone strikes against militants on its territory, one of the U.S.'s most effective weapons against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, officials said.
Pakistan has also asked the U.S. to reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
The U.S. strategy in the war in Afghanistan hinges on going after militants taking refuge in Pakistan. The breakdown in intelligence cooperation has cast a pall over U.S.-Pakistani relations, with some officials in both countries saying intelligence ties are at their lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks spurred the alliance.
Beyond the Afghan battlefield, officials believe that without a robust counterterrorism relationship with Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups can operate with far greater impunity when planning attacks on the U.S. and Europe. The vast majority of attacks against the West in the last decade originated in Pakistan.
Relations have been under heightened strain since Pakistan's arrest in January of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was jailed after killing two armed Pakistani men in Lahore on Jan. 27. Mr. Davis was released last month, but the case fueled Pakistani resentment over the presence of U.S. operatives in their country.
Pakistani officials complained that Mr. Davis and potentially dozens of other CIA operatives were working without Islamabad's full knowledge.
Drone strikes are opposed by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, and are widely seen as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty.
The CIA's covert drone program has operated under an arrangement in which Pakistani officials deny involvement in the strikes and criticize them publicly, even as Pakistan's intelligence agency secretly relays targeting information to the CIA and allowed the agency to operate from its territory.
That arrangement appears to be unraveling. Pakistani civilian, military and intelligence officials have sent private messages in recent weeks objecting to the strikes, complaining they have gone too far and undercut the government's public standing.
Pakistani officials say the drones are responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths since the program was greatly expanded in the last half of 2008. Their U.S. counterparts say the number of civilians killed is at most a few dozen.
U.S. officials on Monday publicly sought to play down the tensions. CIA Director Leon Panetta met with the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha at CIA headquarters. After the meeting, CIA spokesman George Little said the intelligence relationship "remains on solid footing."
Some U.S. officials believe Pakistan is using the threat to cut off intelligence cooperation to get greater oversight of covert U.S. activities on its territory. Of special concern to Pakistanis are American efforts to gather intelligence on a number of militant groups with ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network. Lashkar was responsible for the 2008 attack on Mumbai; the Haqqani network is one of the pillars of the Taliban insurgency and is based in North Waziristan, a border tribal area frequently targeted by CIA drones.
"The Pakistanis have asked for more visibility into some things, and that request is being talked about," a U.S. official said. "The bottom line is that joint cooperation is essential to the security of the two nations. The stakes are too high."
The official added: "The United States expects to continue its aggressive counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, and it would be unfortunate if the Pakistanis somehow stepped back from counterterrorism efforts that protect Americans and their citizens alike."
Some U.S. officials say the breakdown in relations can be linked, in addition to the Davis case, to a civil court case brought in New York in November in which Lt. Gen. Pasha was named as a defendant. The case accuses the ISI of complicity in the assault on Mumbai. The ISI denies any involvement.
U.S. officials provided assurances to Lt. Gen. Pasha that he wouldn't be summoned for questioning in the case during his visit this week.
The CIA has been caught off guard by Islamabad's recent actions, including a rare public statement by Pakistan's Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, condemning a March 17 U.S. drone strike that Pakistan said killed up to 40 people in North Waziristan. The strike came a day after Mr. Davis's release; some Pakistani officials saw the strike as a provocation.
Mr. Kayani said the U.S. had "carelessly and callously targeted" a peaceful meeting of elders in North Waziristan. U.S. officials say they believe the dead were militants and dispute the high death toll.
Officials say Gen. Kayani's public condemnation has been matched with a series of private messages from Islamabad asking the Obama administration to curtail the drone strikes, and demanding a fuller accounting of the March 17 incident.
The U.S. hasn't committed to adjusting the drone program in response to Pakistan's request. The CIA operates covertly, meaning the program doesn't require Islamabad's support, under U.S. law. Some officials say the CIA operates with relative autonomy in the tribal areas. They played down the level of support they now receive from Pakistani intelligence.
Pakistan has limited control over the tribal areas, and the region has in the past decade become a home base for myriad militant groups. Some are focused on fighting U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan; others primarily hit targets inside Pakistan; and some operate on both sides of the frontier.
Yet without the cooperation of Pakistan, which has a far more extensive informant network in the tribal areas, U.S. and Pakistani officials say the effectiveness and accuracy of CIA strikes could suffer.
A senior Pakistani official said Pakistan's military had long been uncomfortable with the drone campaign. It now could no longer provide any "operational aid" to the campaign following a series of "intolerable outrages," the official said.
The Pakistani official cited the March 17 drone strike as a "catalyst" but said tensions had been mounting with the U.S. for some time. "Our people don't like it," the official said. "We don't like it."
U.S. officials overcame early Pakistani objections to the program by targeting leaders of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP, a group that has targeted the Pakistani government and security forces.
In August 2009, the TTP's founding leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a CIA drone strike. Officials from both countries said Pakistani intelligence had helped pinpoint Mr. Mehsud's location.
Write to Matthew Rosenberg at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com
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4) U.N. diplomat is denied private meeting with WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning
By Ellen Nakashima
Monday, April 11, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-diplomat-is-denied-unmonitored-meeting-with-wikileaks-suspect/2011/04/11/AFgfAzLD_print.html
By Ellen Nakashima, Monday, April 11, 3:46 PM
A United Nations diplomat charged with investigating claims of torture said Monday that he is "deeply disappointed and frustrated" that U.S. defense officials have refused his request for an unmonitored visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing classified material to WikiLeaks.
Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said his request for a private interview with Manning was denied by the Defense Department on Friday. Instead, he has been told that any visit must be supervised.
Mendez has been seeking to determine whether Manning's confinement at a military brig at Quantico amounts to torture, following complaints about his treatment and an incident in which the private was forced to strip in his cell at night and sleep without clothing.
"My request . . . is not onerous: for my part, a monitored conversation would not comply with the practices that my mandate applies in every country and detention center visited," Mendez said in a statement Monday, noting that at least 18 countries have allowed unmonitored interviews.
Manning, 23, has been held at Quantico since July 29 and is awaiting a possible court-martial on charges that he endangered national security by allegedly leaking classified military and diplomatic information.
For most of this time, military officials have kept Manning under "prevention of injury" watch, asserting that he poses a risk to himself. That means he spends 23 hours a day alone in his cell, with one hour allowed for exercise, and has no contact with other prisoners. He is allowed visitors for a few hours on the weekends. He must give up his prison uniform at night, though jail officials have now issued him a smock to wear.
U.S. officials have denied that Manning is being mistreated and have said that the circumstances of his confinement comply with U.S. law and Defense Department regulations.
Last month, however, P.J. Crowley, then the spokesman for the State Department, said the conditions of Manning's confinement were "counterproductive and stupid" a comment that angered the White House and prompted Crowley's resignation.
On Sunday, the New York Review of Books published a letter signed by more than 250 lawyers, professors and authors, including Harvard University constitutional law professor Laurence H. Tribe, that called the conditions of Manning's confinement "illegal and immoral." The British government has also raised concerns about the issue.
In an interview, Mendez said that "at first glance," Manning's case seems to be "of interest to my mandate," which is to investigate cases of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment and report them to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
To do his job, he said, he needs to be able to speak to Manning without witnesses, including guards patrolling nearby. Otherwise, he said, "I cannot be sure Manning is being absolutely candid and honest with me if he knows that he's being monitored."
He said he is willing to see Manning nonetheless, if Manning wishes to see him.
The Defense Department has also denied requests for unmonitored visits with Manning by a representative of Amnesty International and by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), according to the soldier's attorney.
nakashimae@washpost.com
(c) 2011 The Washington Post Company
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5) Musings in a Time of Global Imperial War By Lynne Stewart, presented to April 9th and 10th antiwar demonstrations in N.Y. and San Francisco
When April, the cruelest month comes upon us, We as a movement turn our focus from "local" struggles to the Imperialism we cannot escape and increasingly, no nation on earth is exempt from. Back in the '60's when I was a young struggler, our Vietnam anti war demonstrations were exhilarating, they lifted us--We knew we were supporting the winning side in peoples' liberation and we could not lose.
Today, things are murky. The enemy is more difficult to rally against. It is muddled.
Attention should be paid to the fact that the US, the world's greatest arms dealer, has supplied both sides of the conflicts in Libya, Bahrain. So any death there or elsewhere in the Middle East is stamped "Made in the USA". Win/Win for the profiteers.
Nevertheless the babies are still dying--as they died in Iraq (collateral damage said Madeline); and now as victims of KILL teams and drones inAfghanistan. As they die in Japan -- a result of natural disaster? yes but also the misguided capitalism that addicts the world at the behest of the almighty dollar.
But, Struggle and rally we must. Lift our voice against the outrage. Force Attention to be paid. For over 40 years I have raised my voice, and put my body front and center. Now I raise it from behind the walls where more and more good people who have said NO to government are paying for their audacity. More must join us. We must prevail.
Poem received from a Canadian Supporter in Ottawa John Bart Gerald (gandm@nightslantern.ca)
Now From a Distance
when you see this time
this grey day
from the distance of history
ask if some
without pretence
fought for freedom
lived with decency
by caring risked their
portion of life
matched
against the business of death
We Stand Against the Business of Death. End the Unjust Wars!
You can write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Contributions can be made to:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
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6) France and Britain Urge Stronger NATO Action in Libya
By ALAN COWELL and KAREEM FAHIM
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/africa/13libya.html?hp
PARIS - France and Britain urged NATO on Tuesday to intensify airstrikes against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces and called on the alliance to do more to shield noncombatants from loyalist attacks.
The remarks could well embolden rebels who have proved unable to hold on to terrain captured from loyalist forces in weeks of advances and retreats along the coastal highway leading westward from the insurgents' redoubts in eastern Libya.
The comments by William Hague, the British foreign secretary, and Alain Juppé, the French foreign minister, also appeared to signal a rift within the alliance only eight days after it assumed command from the United States for the air campaign over Libya.
NATO rejected the French and British criticism.
"NATO is conducting its military operations in Libya with vigor within the current mandate. The pace of the operations is determined by the need to protect the population," it said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
While the pace of NATO air attacks appeared to pick up Monday in the battleground between Ajdabiya and the oil town of Brega in eastern Libya, rebel leaders have complained bitterly of a lull that seemed to coincide with the handoff of responsibility from the allied coalition to NATO, about 10 days ago. NATO pilots were also involved in two friendly fire incidents that killed well over a dozen rebel fighters.
NATO has been criticized for a go-slow approach in the rebel-held western city of Misurata, which has fall into desperate straits as a weeks-long siege by pro-Qaddafi forces has stretched thin its stocks of food, water and medical supplies. The city's port, a vital lifeline that was opened in the initial Western air attacks, was choked off by Qaddafi's forces in the days after NATO took over.
The port has since reopened, but the city remains under attack by tanks, artillery and snipers, and rebel leaders are complaining that NATO is failing there in its central objective of protecting civilians.
The French and British comments coincided with a swirl of diplomatic activity as the battlefield situation offered neither the rebels nor their adversaries little immediate prospect of a definitive outcome.
Moussa Koussa, a former intelligence chief and foreign minister who defected to Britain almost two weeks ago, was allowed to leave Britain on Tuesday after issuing an unusual public statement urging all-party negotiations to prevent his country from becoming a "new Somalia."
The British authorities said Mr. Koussa was on his way to Qatar - the only Arab country to recognize the Libyan rebel administration in Benghazi - to attend a conference where he would "share his insights" on the inner workings of the Qaddafi government.
Mr. Koussa had previously been kept incommunicado at a safe house and questioned by British officials, intelligence officers and police seeking to establish whether he played a role in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.
A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office, speaking on the condition of anonymity under departmental rules, said on Tuesday that Mr. Koussa had been able to leave because he was "a free individual, who can travel to and from Britain as he wishes" - a remark that seemed to suggest he was not facing any imminent restriction related to the Lockerbie inquiry.
"I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into a civil war. This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia," Mr. Koussa said in his statement late Monday, according to a translation from Arabic provided by the BBC.
"The solution in Libya will come from the Libyans themselves, and through discussion and democratic dialogue," Mr. Koussa said. His remarks may have indicated that he was seeking to position himself for a position in a successor government in Libya. The French and British calls for intensified aerial bombardment came after the rebels in eastern Libya rejected cease-fire proposals from a high-ranking African Union delegation, saying the plan did not provide for Colonel Qaddafi, his sons and his closest aides to leave the country.
Arriving for talks in Luxembourg with other European leaders, Mr. Hague said the allies had to "maintain and intensify" their efforts through NATO, noting that Britain had already deployed extra ground attack aircraft. "Of course, it would be welcome if other countries also did the same," he said. Like the Libyan rebels and the Obama administration, Mr. Hague urged Colonel Qaddafi to go. "Any viable future for Libya involves the departure of Colonel Qaddafi," he said.
Mr. Juppé declared in an earlier radio interview: "NATO must play its role in full."
"It wanted to take the operational lead, we accepted that," he said. "It must play its role today which means preventing Qaddafi from using heavy weapons to bomb populations." Currently, he said, the intensity of the air campaign was "not enough."
The comments by the two ministers seem certain to embolden the rebels in eastern Libya who have called for the allies to hit Colonel Qaddafi's forces harder. France, Britain and the United States sent their planes on the first sorties of the air campaign in Libya last month.
France was also the first country to recognize the rebel administration in Benghazi and, along with Britain, played a leading role in the diplomacy behind the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing NATO airstrikes.
Mr. Juppé's remarks seemed to underscore a broader frustration in the West and within the region that months after Arab uprisings toppled the autocratic leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, the clamor for democratic reform has stalled, with popular uprisings facing repression in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere.
The British and French comments came role after alliance warplanes were involved in two deadly friendly-fire incidents last week, just as rebels seeking cover to advance against Colonel Qaddafi's forces complained that the alliance was not providing sufficient air support.
On Monday, in the eastern city of Ajdabiya, a rebel fighter, Khaled Mohammed, said the westernmost rebel positions were about 25 miles west of the city. He said that under orders from rebel commanders, the fighters were not advancing beyond that point to lessen the chances that NATO warplanes would mistakenly bomb them.
The visit by the African Union negotiators to rebels in Benghazi came hours after the delegation had met in Tripoli with Colonel Qaddafi.
As they arrived in Benghazi, they faced a chilly reception, with hundreds of protesters imploring the rebel leadership not to accept anything less than the departure of Colonel Qaddafi and his family. News reports on Tuesday said the African Union had renewed its demand for the rebels to drop their political objections to a settlement plan, blaming Colonel Qaddafi's opponents for the failure so far to arrange a cease-fire.
As the shiny sedans carrying the African delegates pulled up to the Tibesti Hotel on Monday, one protester, Ghalia Sanfez, screamed: "How much blood does he need to let go? He killed enough. He killed so many young people."
Despite their rejection of the delegates' proposal, the rebels seemed to have a victory of sorts from the day's events. Visited for the first time by the presidents of several African nations, and joined by American and British envoys as they announced their demands, the rebel leaders reveled in the fleeting spotlight that shone on their de facto capital as they reminded the world of their cause.
Even so, the proposal's failure means that for the moment, there is no viable political solution on the horizon, as it appears less likely that either side will prevail on the battlefield.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated the Obama administration's call for Colonel Qaddafi to leave power and exit the country.
She said the United States would welcome a cease-fire, but she insisted on clear conditions. "We want to see the Libyan regime forces pull back from the areas that they have forcibly entered," she said.
Colonel Qaddafi has declared several cease-fires, but his forces have never stopped fighting. The rebels have also said they would welcome a cease-fire, but only under conditions the colonel is unlikely to accept, including the withdrawal of government troops from the perimeter of cities like Misurata that his forces have been attacking for weeks.
The only concession some of the rebels seemed willing to make was to let the colonel and his family leave with some of their money, in the hopes that it would change the focus of the discussion to the country to which the Qaddafis would flee.
"We have to open a door for him," said Salwa Bugaighis, a lawyer who is one of the rebel leaders. "We don't want all our young people to die."
Alan Cowell reported from Paris, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya. Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Washington, and Bryan Denton from Ajdabiya, Libya.
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7) Japan Disaster Now as Bleak as Chernobyl
"Nevertheless, officials agreed that tens of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive materials have escaped the plant, far higher than acknowledged so far by Japanese authorities. Some in the nuclear industry had been saying for weeks that the accident had released far larger amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had until now played down this possibility. (A terabecquerel is a unit of measure representing a trillion small nuclear disintegrations per second.)"
By HIROKO TABUCHI, KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW POLLACK
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/asia/13japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Japan has raised its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, in an acknowledgement that the human and environmental consequences of the nuclear crisis could be dire and long-lasting.
The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale, overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is based on new estimates by Japanese authorities that suggest that the total amount of radioactive materials released so far from Fukushima Daiichi since the beginning of the crisis had reached that threshold. Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan's nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that the total amount of radioactive materials released so far from Fukushima Daiichi equaled about 10 percent of that released in the Chernobyl disaster.
But at a separate news conference, an official from the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that the radiation release from Fukushima could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986.
"The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl," said Junichi Matsumoto, a nuclear executive for the company.
Nevertheless, officials agreed that tens of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive materials have escaped the plant, far higher than acknowledged so far by Japanese authorities. Some in the nuclear industry had been saying for weeks that the accident had released far larger amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had until now played down this possibility. (A terabecquerel is a unit of measure representing a trillion small nuclear disintegrations per second.)
A member of a government commission that oversees the nuclear regulator, NISA, said that those levels could be in error by a factor of two to three. That means the amount of radiation released could be up to three times lower, or higher, than government estimates.
Much of the radiation release happened within a week of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which ravaged the Fukushima plant, raising questions about the delay in acknowledging the severity of the crisis.
Mr. Nishiyama stressed that unlike the disaster at Chernobyl, where the reactor itself exploded and fire fanned the release of radioactive material, the containments at the four troubled reactors at Fukushima remained intact over all. Far less radiation has been released so far, he said, though he admitted that radiation leaks continue from Fukushima Daiichi as workers struggle to bring four of the plant's six reactors under control.
Mr. Nishiyama also said that the radiation release at Chernobyl forced workers to abandon the facility at one point. At Fukushima, workers have remained on site and continue efforts to contain the crisis, he said.
"We are trying to keep leaks of radioactive materials into the environment to a minimum, but they do continue to a certain extent," he said.
On the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 nuclear accident involves "widespread health and environmental effects" and the "external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory." The scale, developed by the I.A.E.A. and countries that use nuclear energy, leave it to the country where the accident occurs to calculate a rating based on complicated criteria.
Japan's previous rating of 5 placed the Fukushima accident at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Level 7 has been applied only to the disaster at Chernobyl, in Ukraine.
"This is an admission by the Japanese government that the amount of radiation released into the environment has reached a new order of magnitude," said Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University. "The fact that we have now confirmed the world's second-ever Level 7 accident will have huge consequences for the global nuclear industry. It shows that current safety standards are woefully inadequate."
Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator for 13 years in the United States, said that the biggest surprise in the Japanese reassessment was that it took a month for public confirmation that so much radiation had been released.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan called in a nationally televised speech on Tuesday evening for Japan to rebuild. While taking note of the decision to raise the severity of the nuclear accident at Fukushima to the worst level on the international scale, he took pains to say that the reactors were being stabilized and to emphasize that releases of radioactive material are now declining.
The prime minister said that he had ordered Tokyo Electric to present its plans and expectations for the stricken nuclear power plant. He also expressed concern about the economic consequences of the accident, calling on people across Japan to continue buying products from the affected areas of the country's northeast.
Mr. Kan defended the government's record in releasing information.
"What I can say for the information I obtained - of course the government is very large, so I don't have all the information - is that no information was ever suppressed or hidden after the accident," he said.
According to Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, a government panel, 370,000 to 630,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials have been released into the air from the Nos. 1 to 3 reactors of the plant.
Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner and the former director of the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University, said that a much of the radioactivity escaped the suppression chamber at Reactor No. 2, which is thought to have suffered a hydrogen explosion on March 15, four days after the quake.
"It went up with a bang with what could have been a hydrogen explosion at Reactor No. 2's suppression chamber, and the radioactive release has continued until now," Mr. Shiroya said at a briefing. After several hours of a high rate of release, he said, the release slowed significantly.
Mr. Shiroya also suggested that by alluding to the possibility that amounts of radiation released from Fukushima Daiichi could approach or even surpass that to Chernobyl, Tokyo Electric was probably touching on the extremely unlikely possibility that all of the radioactive inventory at the Fukushima plant might be released into the environment.
"If everything inside the reactor came out, obviously that would surpass Chernobyl. There was only one troubled reactor there, while we have three or more, so simply speaking, that's three times as worse," he said. But at Fukushima, he said, most of the reactors' radioactive elements remained within the reactor. "That is a big difference," he said.
The commissioner also provided an unexpected hint of a possible motive for the government to have initially minimized the severity of the nuclear accident. The Japanese government had only a vague grasp of the amounts of radiation released in initial weeks, and last week had the amounts down to an error margin within several digits, he said.
"Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk," he said. "If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction."
In terms of health effects, the Chernobyl accident is expected to remain far worse than the one in Fukushima.
In Chernobyl, at least 31 people died in the accident and in the immediate aftermath, mainly those trying to fight the fires. So far at Fukushima, about 20 workers have been injured.
There were about 6,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer in Chernobyl, according to a recent commentary by Dr. Robert Peter Gale, who led the international medical team responding to that accident.
In his article, which was published in the April 1 edition of The Cancer Letter, a Washington newsletter, Dr. Gale said that if the Fukushima accident got no worse, there might be few if any cases of thyroid cancer and about 200 to 1,500 cases of leukemia and other cancers combined over the next 50 years. During that interval, he wrote, 20 million Japanese will die of cancer unrelated to Fukushima.
Dr. Gale could not immediately be reached for comment to see if his analysis had changed in the last several days.
The announcement came as Japan was preparing to urge more residents around the crippled nuclear plant to evacuate, because of concerns over long-term exposure to radiation.
The authorities have already ordered people living within a 12-mile radius of the plant to evacuate, and recommended that people remain indoors or avoid an area within a radius of about 19 miles.
The government's decision to expand the zone came in response to radiation readings that would be worrisome over months in certain communities beyond those areas, underscoring how difficult it has been to predict the ways radiation spreads from the damaged plant.
Unlike the previous definitions of the areas to be evacuated, this time the government designated specific communities that should be evacuated, instead of a radius expressed in miles.
The radiation has not spread evenly from the reactors, but instead has been directed to some areas and not others by weather patterns and the terrain. Iitate, one of the communities told on Monday to prepare for evacuation, lies well beyond the 19-mile radius, but the winds over the last month have tended to blow northwest from the Fukushima plant toward Iitate, which may explain why high readings were detected there.
Officials are concerned that people in these communities are being exposed to radiation equivalent to at least 20 millisieverts a year, he said, which could be harmful to human health over the long term. In addition to Iitate, evacuation orders will come within a month for Katsurao, Namie and parts of Minamisoma and Kawamata, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.
People in five other areas may also be told to evacuate if the conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant grow worse, Mr. Edano said. Those areas are Hirono, Naraha, Kawauchi, Tamura and other sections of Minamisoma.
"This measure is not an order for you to evacuate or take actions immediately," he said. "We arrived at this decision by taking into account the risks of remaining in the area in the long term." He appealed for calm and said that the chance of a large-scale radiation leak from the Fukushima Daiichi plant had, in fact, decreased.
Mr. Edano also said that pregnant women, children and hospital patients should stay out of the area within 19 miles of the reactors and that schools in that zone would remain closed.
Until now, the Japanese government had refused to expand the evacuation zone, despite urging from the I.A.E.A. The United States and Australia have advised their citizens to stay at least 50 miles away from the plant.
The international agency, which is based in Vienna, said Sunday that its team measured radiation on Saturday of 0.4 to 3.7 microsieverts per hour at distances of 20 to 40 miles from the damaged plant - well outside the initial evacuation zone. At that rate of accumulation, it would take 225 days to 5.7 years to reach the Japanese government's threshold level for evacuations: radiation accumulating at a rate of at least 20 millisieverts per year.
In other words, only the areas with the highest readings would qualify for the new evacuation ordered by the government.
Aftershocks have continued in northeastern Japan since the March 11 quake and tsunami. The latest occurred Tuesday at 2 p.m. local time when a shock measuring magnitude 6.0 struck off the Fukushima coast at a relatively shallow depth of about six miles under the seabed, according to the United States Geological Survey. Officials at Tokyo Electric said that workers were moved to safer areas within the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but that there appeared to be no damage to the power supply and no disruption to pumps sending cooling water into the plant's four most severely damaged reactors.
The aftershock appeared to be centered very close to the epicenter of a magnitude 6.6 temblor that struck the area on Monday, knocking out power to the plant for almost an hour and stopping vital cooling work.
Ken Ijichi and Moshe Komata contributed reporting.
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8) Activist Starts Hunger Strike in Bahrain
"THEY JUST CAME! They took my dad, my dads blood is still on the stairs! They hit my dad so much! They beat him and he cudnt breath"
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 12, 2011, 11:29 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/activist-starts-hunger-strike-in-bahrain/?hp
After Bahrain's interior ministry acknowledged that two political prisoners had died in custody last week, the daughter of a detained human rights activist began a hunger strike on Monday, calling on the authorities to release her father and other members of her family who have been arrested.
Zainab Alkhawaja, who has used her Angry Arabiya Twitter feed to document the crackdown on dissent in Bahrain in recent weeks, explained in an open letter to President Obama posted on her blog that her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, was badly beaten in a predawn raid on her home on Saturday.
Ms. Alkhawaja's father is a former president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights who has also worked for a rights group based in Ireland, Front Line.
As she had explained on the social network minutes after the raid on Saturday, Ms. Alkhawaja's husband, Wafi Almajed, and brother-in-law, Hussein Ahmed, were arrested at the same time.
THEY JUST CAME! They took my dad, my dads blood is still on the stairs! They hit my dad so much! They beat him and he cudnt breath Fri Apr 08 23:49:04 via webangry arabiya
angryarabiya
At about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, Ms. Alkhawaja wrote in her letter to Mr. Obama:
Security forces attacked my home, broke our doors with sledgehammers, and terrified my family. Without any warning, without an arrest warrant and without giving any reasons; armed, masked men attacked my father. Although they said nothing, we all know that my father's crime is being a human rights activist. My father was grabbed by the neck, dragged down a flight of stairs and then beaten unconscious in front of me. He never raised his hand to resist them, and the only words he said were "I can't breathe". Even after he was unconscious the masked men kept kicking and beating him while cursing and saying that they were going to kill him. This is a very real threat considering that in the past two weeks alone three political prisoners have died in custody. The special forces also beat up and arrested my husband and brother-in-law.
Since their arrest, 3 days ago, we have heard nothing. We do not know where they are and whether they are safe or not. In fact, we still have no news of my uncle who was arrested 3 weeks ago, when troops put guns to the heads of his children and beat his wife severely.
Ms. Alkhawaja, who studied in the United States, also expressed her dismay at the muted American response to the violent suppression of protests by Bahrain's royal family - which comes from the country's Sunni Muslim minority:
I am writing this letter to let you know, that if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the AlKhalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime.
Since the protests began in Bahrain, Ms. Alkhawaja has posted updates on Twitter charting the movement and the bloody crackdown, which has grown increasingly more personal for her. Last month, in a series of updates, she gave a harrowing account of her visit to a police station to inquire about her uncle, Salah Alkhawaja, after his arrest.
On Tuesday, she expressed gratitude for the support she has gotten from some of her followers on the social network, but also said that she was getting messages "telling me my father is a terrorist" from people who had apparently just signed up for accounts to attack her.
new wave of trolls unleashed, all with 0-1 followers, telling me my father is a terrorist.Tue Apr 12 10:04:48 via webangry arabiya
angryarabiya
Ms. Alkhawaja also replied to one angry message from the blogger who writes the WeLoveKingHamad Twitter feed, in support of Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. After the king's supporter told his 4,600 followers that Ms. Alkhawaja's death by starvation would be a good thing, she wrote: "Yes, I would rather die than support a tyrant."
On Monday, the WeLoveKingHamad blogger also called on Bahrain's government to "punish" Ms. Alkhawaja sister, Maryam, who is also a rights activist, for her "actions against Bahrain." Maryam Alkhawaja is scheduled to speak on Tuesday afternoon at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington.
The current president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, has also come under pressure from the authorities.
On Monday, the country's interior ministry accused him of fabricating four graphic photographs he posted on Facebook, which appeared to show that a prisoner who died in police custody on Saturday had been badly beaten and whipped. Attempting to prove that the prisoner, Ali Issa Saqer, had not been tortured before his death on Saturday, the interior ministry published what it said were two photographs of his body in which there were no scars and scarcely any bruising.
According to the account of Bahrain's police, Mr. Saqer, who was 31, died of his injuries after he "created chaos" in a detention center and fought with officers who attempted to restrain him.
In a separate statement, the ministry also said that another political prisoner, Zakariya Rashid Hassan, who was detained last week "on charges of inciting hatred, publishing false news, promoting sectarianism and calling for the overthrow of the regime thorough e-forums," had died on Saturday from "complications related to sickle cell anaemia." The European Pressphoto Agency reported that Mr. Hassan's family disputed the official cause of his death, since they said that he was only a carrier of the blood disease.
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9) Syrian University Protests Violently Suppressed
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/middleeast/12syria.html?ref=world
Pro-democracy protests in Syria spread for the first time to a university campus and were violently suppressed on Monday, a day after the government of President Bashar al-Assad acknowledged that it was using force against protesters.
The admission came in a statement from Syria's Interior Ministry that was published Sunday by SANA, Syria's official news agency.
Human rights advocates say nearly 200 protesters have been killed since demonstrations began against Mr. Assad's authoritarian government in mid-March. Until the new statement, the Assad government had insisted that the deaths were caused by foreign infiltrators bent on destabilizing Syria.
"In recent weeks, groups of citizens gathered in demonstrations in several areas in Syria, particularly on Fridays, making a number of demands that were met with immediate response from the leadership," the statement said.
Certain "spiteful individuals," the statement continued, nevertheless burned government buildings, killed or wounded state security officers, and tried to sow distrust.
"The Syrian authorities, in order to preserve the security of the country, citizens and the governmental and services establishments, will confront these people and those behind them according to the law," the statement read. "The Ministry of Interior affirms that there is no more room for leniency or tolerance in enforcing law, preserving security of country and citizens and protecting general order."
Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian human rights activist who is a visiting scholar at George Washington University, said that the statement was an attempt to further intimidate protesters. Besides the protesters who have died, about 800 have been detained, according to figures compiled by him and other activists.
"I think the main reason behind this statement is to say that we are right now serious and we will not allow for any more protests in the street," Mr. Ziadeh said in a telephone interview.
The protests began March 15 after a group of schoolboys were arrested for writing antigovernment graffiti. As they have spread to dozens of communities across Syria and become more violent, it has become more difficult for the government to maintain that the deaths of protesters were the work of foreign saboteurs trying to spread terror.
"The Syrian people are sensitive," Mr. Ziadeh continued. "They don't believe the conspiracy story anymore."
Though the Monday protests at Damascus University's science campus were relatively small, with student demonstrators numbering a few hundred, the fact that the movement has spread to a university campus is highly significant, Mr. Ziadeh said.
"Damascus University has more than 75,000 students, and this could spread quickly," Mr. Ziadeh said. Witnesses at the university said that one student was killed as the protests were dispelled, but that could not be independently confirmed. "That's why they have to react very forcefully. They have to send a message."
Meanwhile, four protesters who were killed on Sunday in demonstrations in the Syrian port town of Baniyas were buried Monday.
George Jabbour, a former Syrian parliamentarian, said that he, like many Syrians, hoped that Mr. Assad's appointment of a new parliament, expected shortly, would help to calm the protests.
"The government is working towards reform as seriously as it can," Mr. Jabbour said. "I have no idea who is causing this bloodshed - I have not made up my mind." He added, "But I hope that the new government will be in harmony of the thinking of the protesters and that things will go more peacefully."
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10) An Appalachian Radio Voice Threatened From Afar
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/us/12radio.html?ref=us
WHITESBURG, Ky. - Rich Kirby, a part-time producer for WMMT, the community radio station here, was interviewing two local aid officials the other day about the effect of Washington's proposed budget cuts on this region, in the heart of Appalachia.
"We're in one of the poorest if not the poorest districts in the country," Ricky Baker, of the private Community Action Council, which receives 95 percent of its financing from the federal government, said into the microphone. Without that money, he added, "we'll have people either freeze to death, starve to death or die of a medical condition because they can't get appropriate health care."
Mr. Kirby refrained from chiming in that his own employer, WMMT, is also imperiled by the same budget ax. As lawmakers seek to cut billions of dollars in federal spending, the Republican-controlled House voted in February to end financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2013. While President Obama wants to continue financing the corporation, the current budget turmoil has left its long-term fate uncertain.
Juxtaposed against other hardships in Appalachia, the beaming of a radio signal might seem a luxury. But WMMT, which reaches across the mountains, coal fields and hollows of eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia, creates a connective tissue for its far-flung, geographically isolated listeners. It also offers respite from the daily grind. Like the redbud trees that are starting to burst forth in violet patches along the scrubby hillsides here, the sounds from the radio can be, if not essential, at least life-affirming.
"Whew, that young 'un has got a set of pipes on her," Andy Shepherd, a former federal marshal who is now a D.J. at the station, told listeners last week as he wrapped up his show with a tune by Ardetta Meade.
Mr. Shepherd and his wife, Cathy ("the Biscuit Burner"), share a three-hour program that features bluegrass, classic country and their own playful patter. Mrs. Shepherd talks off-air to several listeners, many of whom are homebound, just to buck them up.
Mayor James Wiley Craft, a Democrat, noted in an interview that the station also served vital communications functions. It alerted residents recently to an oil spill affecting their drinking water much more quickly than town officials could have.
"If that station were to be shut down for lack of funding, it would really, really hurt this town," Mr. Craft said.
Even a competitor has kind words for WMMT.
"They fill a void that commercial stations cannot fill," said G. C. Kincer, who once owned several such stations in the area but has downsized to one and who is also mayor of nearby Jenkins. Commercial operators are ruled by their advertisers, he said, while WMMT, not being able to afford listener surveys, goes on its hunches of what people want.
"I listen to them all the time," Mr. Kincer said.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributed $420 million last year to 1,300 public television and radio stations across the country. It gave WMMT, which is not affiliated with National Public Radio or a university, $86,000, or one third of the station's $256,000 budget.
Rural radio stations are far more dependent on federal money than their urban counterparts and more likely to go under if it is cut. Nearly two dozen rural stations, many of them on Indian reservations, rely on corporation financing for at least 50 percent of their revenue. (By contrast, grants from the corporation and other federal agencies supply about 2 percent of NPR's overall revenues.)
Rural stations face additional challenges. They need multiple transmitters to reach widely scattered areas. And their listeners are often on fixed incomes, with little or no discretionary money to donate, especially in a down economy.
"This is the worst threat we've ever had because the economic climate is so bad for everything else," said Jim Webb, 65, who hosts "Appalachian Attitude," featuring local and regional musicians.
WMMT is one of the few stations that still provide live, home-grown programs, both music and news, around the clock, except for the wee hours, when it repeats its hosts' musical playlists. The station has four full-time and three part-time workers and more than 50 volunteers, many of whom host shows and carry in their own recordings.
The local congressman, Representative Harold Rogers, a Republican first elected in 1980, is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and in February proposed cutting billions from the budget plus eliminating money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In a statement at the time, he said all of the cuts he proposed were "necessary to show that we are serious about returning our nation to a sustainable financial path."
Mr. Rogers has been steeped in budget negotiations and was not available for an interview, his spokeswoman said. But in an interview last year with WKMS, an NPR affiliate at Murray State University in western Kentucky, Mr. Rogers said he was proud of the federal money he had long brought to his district, which has relied on federal dollars for decades. It was the destitution of this region that inspired President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s, when the government expanded its role in social welfare programs.
"The second-poorest district in America," Mr. Rogers told WKMS. "And a district that is terribly needy and has, by and large over the years, been neglected by the state government. So there's no place else for our people to turn."
But with the rise of the Tea Party and with anti-earmark, budget-cutting fervor gripping the nation's capital, little of that sentiment is being expressed today, especially by Republicans. Advocates of ending financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting argue that government spending must be reined in and directed only toward essential services like national security.
Although WMMT broadcasts no NPR programming, which some critics say has a liberal bias, Mayor Craft said the station still had to battle a perception that it was "anti-coal," which is the local equivalent of liberal. He said that perception was wrong.
"Some of the people who are there are associated with other groups" that oppose mountaintop mining, he said, "but those people at the station are intelligent enough to know which side of their bread is buttered. This area depends on coal 100 percent."
In a fund-raising letter for the annual spring drive, Marcie Crim, the station's general manager, did not mention the threat of federal cuts. Rather, she focused on the station's ability to produce its own programming, "instead of airing shows produced in New York City."
Ms. Crim said that without the federal financing, the station could go dark, though she worries that such assessments could become self-fulfilling and "scare people into thinking we might not make it." David Fields, the station's director of development, said that the mention of federal money in fund drives "makes people frown" and prompts some to harass the station for asking for donations when those people already pay taxes.
Random interviews with people in town found a positive response to WMMT. "You grow up hearing it and you think just old people are listening to it," said Neil Perkins, 30, a radiology technician who was having his hair cut the other day. "But then you find yourself stopping on the same station."
Rebecca Winterhoff, 28, who recently moved from Florida because her husband found a job here, said WMMT was a big selling point.
"It's so local," she said. "You get the sense that real people are involved, and it's a community."
Ms. Winterhoff said she had never donated to public radio because she lived paycheck to paycheck, but she said she intended to start doing so now. Her new station may need it more than ever.
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11) Gulf's Complexity and Resilience Seen in Studies of Oil Spill
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/12spill.html?ref=us
In the year since the wellhead beneath the Deepwater Horizon rig began spewing rust-colored crude into the northern Gulf of Mexico, scientists have been working frantically to figure out what environmental harm really came of the largest oil spill in American history.
What has emerged in studies so far is not a final tally of damage, but a new window on the complexities of the gulf, and the vulnerabilities and capacities of biological systems in the face of environmental insults.
There is no doubt that gulf water, wildlife and wetlands sustained injury when, beginning on April 20 last year, some 4.9 million barrels of oil and 1.84 million gallons of dispersants poured into the waters off Louisiana. But the ecosystem was not passive in the face of this assault. The gulf, which experiences a natural seepage of millions of gallons of oil a year, had the innate capacity to digest some of crude and the methane gas mixed with it. Almost as soon as the well was capped, the deep became cleaner to the eye. By the same token, dozens of miles of marsh still remain blackened by heavy oil, government crews are still grooming away tar balls that wash up ceaselessly on beaches and traces of the dispersants are still found floating in the currents.
Biologists are nervously monitoring as yet unexplained dolphin strandings this year, trying to come up with a realistic count of birds and mammals killed during the spill and working to understand what happens when the gulf floor is covered with the remains of oil-eating bacteria. "It is really kind of hard to get a grasp of the big picture, and it is not for a lack of trying," said Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies long-term consequences of oil spills. "Hundreds of scientists are working day and night trying to carve out a piece of that giant puzzle, but it is an entire region and it is complicated."
How the regional ecosystem has responded, its strengths and weaknesses, will keep scientists busy analyzing data for years and help them in understanding the effects of environmental disasters.
An Army in Hot Pursuit
After an oil spill, the government is responsible for toting up the ecological damages in something called a Natural Resource Damage Assessment. The document, which requires battalions of researchers, makes the case for damages that the companies responsible for the spill should pay to restore the ecosystem to its pre-spill health. The companies hire their own teams of assessors, who might paint a very different picture. The two sides settle or go to court.
At of the end of January, the government said its scientists alone had taken 35,000 images, walked more than 4,000 miles of shoreline and culled more than 40,000 samples of water, sediment and tissue.
The scientists are also testing how to estimate what they can't count precisely, like animal deaths. One group of evaluators is scattering bird carcasses offshore and measuring how many sink and how many wash ashore. Those numbers will be used to calculate how many birds may have died in addition to the ones that were found and counted.
For all this effort, it will take time for some of the consequences to manifest themselves. It was three years after the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in Alaska, for example, that the herring fishery suddenly collapsed.
During the Deepwater Horizon disaster, as the slick was spreading, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service moved about 28,000 eggs from turtles' nests on at-risk beaches in Alabama to the coast of Florida. While 51 percent of the eggs hatched - roughly consistent with normal survival rates- it will be another two decades or so before the hatchlings that survive come back to Florida as adults to lay eggs. Only then will anyone know how successful the rescue effort really was.
Many of the results that have been gained so far, by government or private industry, are not yet public; they are awaiting rigorous review before eventual release. Moreover, in some key cases, scientists must keep their findings confidential because of continuing legal actions.
"We have a real responsibility to make sure that we come out of this process with as much compensation as is appropriate for the damages," said Bob Haddad, chief of the assessment and restoration division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is taking the lead in coordinating the damage assessment. "I don't want to get tripped on issues like inadmissibility of evidence."
Oil and Water Do Mix
Still, there has been some independent scientific work done in the gulf, and it has produced some good news. Because the spill occurred at very high pressure a mile beneath the ocean's surface, some of the oil was reduced to tiny droplets that remained suspended thousands of feet deep in a fine mist.
Terry C. Hazen, who leads the ecology department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, took 170 samples from around the Deepwater Horizon between July 27 and Aug. 26 last year, just weeks after the wellhead was capped.
Dr. Hazen was looking to track the fate of the underwater oil as it spread and instead found it to be entirely gone. "We can detect down to 2 parts per billion," he said, "but nothing was there."
His work was financed by a grant his lab won from BP, the owner of the well, long before the spill, and it was not in any way reviewed or influenced by the company, he said.
The results showed that the oil had not just been diluted with water but that it had largely been eaten by naturally occurring bacteria. Researchers worried early on that such bacteria might not exist thousands of feet down or that the process of digestion might be particularly slow because of colder temperatures at these depths. But Dr. Hazen's group found bacteria that specialized in oil eating in frigid temperatures.
Another byproduct of the spill was roughly 200,000 metric tons of methane gas. In June 2010 there was as much as 100,000 times as much methane dissolved gas in the gulf as normal. Scientists worried that it could remain dissolved in the water column, depleting oxygen levels, for years.
But by fall, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Texas A&M took water samples from 207 sites near the spill and found that methane proportions were back to normal.
John Kessler, an oceanographer at Texas A&M, said: "It appeared that the methane would be present in the gulf for years to come. Instead, methane respiration rates increased to levels higher than have ever been recorded."
In other words, bacteria ate it. Other scientists, however, are not convinced. Samantha B. Joye, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia, said her team found elevated methane levels at exactly the time Dr. Kessler's team did not.
Further, at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Joye said that the digestion of the oil and methane had not been entirely benign. Her team took sediment samples in a roughly 35-square-mile area at several different times, most recently in December, and found the muddy gulf floor covered with a blanket of dead bacteria, much of it oily and sticky. At every one of the sites she sampled, she said, bottom-dwelling invertebrates - worms, starfish, even coral - were dead.
"These are keystone species to the ecosystem," she said, "and we don't know what will happen without them."
Her findings have been substantiated in part by Charles Fisher, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University, who has documented dead fan corals seven miles from the wellhead, probably killed by oil plumes in the deep sea, Dr. Fisher said. "Fan corals live for hundreds, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "The odds that something beside the oil from the spill killed them are vanishingly small."
Dispersants in Diaspora
The fate of some 1.84 million gallons of dispersant poured into the gulf to get the oil to break into smaller pieces and thus degrade more quickly is less definitive than what happened to the oil and methane. Some 770,000 gallons were applied to the wellhead itself.
Dispersants have toxic elements, and at the time critics of the application saw it as a gigantic unregulated experiment.
The Environmental Protection Agency has now done extensive testing on the most commonly used dispersant, Corexit 9500, mixed with Louisiana crude and found it to be no more or less toxic to marine life than eight other alternative dispersants or than the oil alone. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said that not only was the toxicity of the dispersants evaluated, so was their effectiveness. "The chemicals helped break up the oil," Ms. Jackson said in a recent interview. "It was the right decision to use them."
That doesn't mean the dispersants were harmless, however. Elizabeth Kujawinski, an associate scientist in chemistry at Woods Hole, was able to track dispersants using highly sensitive tests. Dr. Kujawinski found that while they have become diluted, they are "not entirely biodegraded or decomposed."
In other words, she said, they remain in the gulf, but in amounts that the government does not consider dangerous.
"Toxicity looks at acute exposure - huge concentration, and then you are done," she said. "But in case of the Deepwater Horizon it was low concentrations, but over a long period of time. We don't know about how this affects living creatures in the deep water that can't move, like corals."
Death, Sudden and Otherwise
During the spill, the daily tallies of birds, turtles and sea mammals found dead or alive and covered in oil were heartbreaking. They were also just a beginning.
For every pelican or whale found beached or floating at sea, some much larger number died. After the Exxon Valdez accident, 30,000 birds were found, but 250,000 - eight times the number found - were eventually estimated to have been killed by the oil. Each situation is different, and scientists are trying to pin down the so-called death multipliers for this spill.
Looking at annual carcass recovery rates for 14 groups of cetaceans - the mammal group that includes whales and dolphins - a group of biologists from the University of British Columbia recently said that the multiplier for that group should be around 50. So although 115 cetaceans were found dead or stranded during the spill and in the months immediately after, they might represent 5,000 actual deaths.
Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation in the gulf for the National Audubon Society, said similar multipliers may need to be applied to 8,000 birds so far discovered by the government, especially in a category known as secretive marsh birds. "They already hide in dark grasses naturally, so they were certainly missed," Ms. Driscoll said.
Some species may, however, have done better than it seemed at first. Jim Franks, a fisheries professor from the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, has been monitoring larvae of bluefin tuna. While he says oil did affect some of their spawning grounds, it spared some as well. Dr. Franks refuses to say what percentage of larvae might have been killed, but it certainly was not a total wipeout, as had been feared.
Plant life also suffered from the spill. Marshes in Bay Jimmy, south of New Orleans, were hit particularly hard and remain coated in heavy oil. Unknown amounts of pollution lay buried in the nearby sediments as well. Federal monitors are watching these areas now to see if new grasses come through the oiled ones this spring, or if it may be necessary to burn off some of the old, oiled growth.
In addition, professors at the Northern Gulf Institute at Mississippi State University and Jackson State University combined field observation and satellite imagery to estimate injury to marsh areas beyond those that were obviously still oiled. Their preliminary findings indicate 2010 to be an anomalous year.
Looking at the normal marsh growing season from June to October 2010 and comparing it with 2009, a year with similar conditions besides the oil spill, they found a significant spike in the amount of marsh that was brown. It was up to 150 square miles, from about 25 to 30 square miles. The part of the marsh that borders the open water is risk of dying and being subsumed by the sea.
And there are the deaths yet to come. In February 59 dolphins were founded stranded or dead on northern gulf beaches; 36 were premature or stillborn babies. That was nine times the average number that were found in the years 2002 through 2009. Dolphins began dying before the oil spill; 56 were stranded in March 2010. But the spike in neonatal dolphin deaths is new this year.
"Yes, their mothers were very likely in gestation during the spill," said Blair Mase, a marine mammal stranding coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "and exposure to petroleum in mammals can cause decreased success in keeping young."
But, Ms. Mase said, there could be other causes. For example, the dolphins may be fighting a virus that appeared before the spill, but is more dangerous because the exposure to oil has weakened the dolphins' immune systems.
As with so many of the effects of the spill, said Ms. Mase "right now we cannot say for sure."
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12) In Rape Trial of 2 Officers, Jurors Hear a 911 Call
By MICHAEL WILSON
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/nyregion/12rape.html?ref=nyregion
The recording of the 911 call stands out for its banality. Within minutes of calls from a furious skateboarder who had been struck by a vehicle and from people reporting a large, unruly crowd, a three-car crash and a woman screaming on a corner, a man called about a homeless person in his hallway, asleep.
"He smells really bad; he's a homeless guy," the caller said, describing a man inside his girlfriend's building on East 13th Street. "He's, like, right in the front door."
"And you want the police to do what?" the caller was asked.
"Get him out," he replied, adding that he was visiting from Canada and could not provide a callback number.
Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office have said that the 911 call, placed early on the morning of Dec. 7, 2008, came not from a man in a building, but from one of the two police officers charged with raping a drunken woman in her East 13th Street apartment that morning.
The prosecutors said the officers placed the fraudulent 911 call from a nearby pay telephone so that they themselves could respond to the call, near the woman's apartment, which they entered four times that morning.
The recording of the call was played in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Monday in the trial of the two officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin L. Mata. Around 1 a.m. that day, the officers responded to a call of a drunken woman in need of assistance on East 13th Street. They helped her into her apartment, and the woman later charged that Officer Moreno, 43, raped her there, while Officer Mata, 28, served as a lookout. Lawyers for the officers have said that Officer Moreno, a recovering alcoholic, was counseling the woman about drinking, and once kissed her on the shoulder.
The call about the homeless man in the foyer came several minutes after a minor car accident at 13th Street and First Avenue and the call from the skateboarder - "My back hurts!" he shouted. "Ow!" - and almost at the same time as the report of a large group at East Ninth Street. "There's a lot of screaming," that caller said.
The officers' car, identified as 9-Boy on the tapes, responded to the crowd situation, only to find nothing worth pursuing. An officer from 9-Boy told the dispatcher to slow or stop the response of other officers to the scene.
One of those backup cars - which was on cabaret duty, patrolling for noise and other quality-of-life violations amid the neighborhood's many bars - volunteered to visit the building with the sleeping homeless man. But as the dispatcher was repeating the address, 9-Boy interrupted.
"We got it," an officer said.
A dispatcher, Eddie Rodriguez, explained the exchange, laden with police codes and jargon, to the jurors: "That means that they wanted to handle the job. Although they were previously assigned to a few, they wanted to handle that one as well."
Cross-examination of Mr. Rodriguez began late in the afternoon, and the officers' lawyers did not raise the issue of whose voice was on the 911 call before the court adjourned for the day.
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13) Labor Chieftain Seizes the Anti-Union Moment
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13mcentee.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON - Perhaps more than any other American, Gerald W. McEntee has surfed the rising tide of public sector unions to success and power. As leader of the largest union of state and local government workers for three decades, he has amassed enormous political influence and a huge campaign war chest that he has not hesitated to use to advance his union's interests.
But now, with public sector unions under attack in deficit-plagued states and cities nationwide, Mr. McEntee faces the biggest challenge of his career - avoiding a wipeout.
In Wisconsin and Ohio, newly enacted laws will cripple the bargaining rights of 200,000 members of his union and may cause many to quit, jeopardizing the union's dues base and political clout. The union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, known as Afscme (pronounced AF-skmee), is also under assault in Florida and New Jersey, where governors and lawmakers are seeking to curb bargaining rights or achieve far-reaching concessions on what many say are overly generous health benefits and pensions.
Still combative at age 76, Mr. McEntee has pushed away talk of retirement and plunged into battle to defend his union, which has grown from 900,000 members when he took over to 1.4 million today.
"The Republicans who were elected last November promised to focus on jobs, but instead they're focusing on going after the unions," Mr. McEntee said. "That's a big overreach."
In Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican lawmakers argued that public sector unions had grown too powerful and that it was vital to weaken public employees' bargaining rights, so as to give state and local governments flexibility to help erase their budget deficits. In what is largely a decentralized union, Mr. McEntee is doing his utmost to serve as national field marshal, strategist and megaphone for the counterattack. He sent money to Wisconsin to help fight Governor Scott Walker's anti-union legislation, initially to mount the huge protests in Madison before the law was enacted and more recently to try to elect a labor-friendly Supreme Court justice and gather signatures to recall eight Republican state senators who voted for the law.
Mr. McEntee has also been pouring resources into Ohio to promote a statewide referendum to overturn that state's new anti-bargaining law.
Last week, he joined an emerging national battle - fighting House Republicans' plan to cut Medicare and Medicaid. In addition to plotting strategy with Democrats, Afscme is helping to pay for broadcast ads attacking Republican. The union is also urging 250,000 retirees to fight the plan by contacting lawmakers in Washington.
"He's a very political animal," said Richard A. Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader. "He'll be effective in fighting back."
The son of a Philadelphia street cleaner, Mr. McEntee followed his father into the labor movement in 1958, becoming Afscme's top official in Pennsylvania. In 1970, he played an important role in persuading that state's Republican governor and Republican-led Senate to give state employees the right to bargain collectively.
In 1981, in an upset victory, he defeated Afscme's secretary-treasurer to become the union's president. In 1995, frustrated with uninspired leadership at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he engineered a coup that pushed out its long-time president, Lane Kirkland, and installed John Sweeney.
Mr. McEntee relishes his active role in national and state politics. He heads the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s political committee, which has made him somewhat of a kingmaker in deciding political endorsements, and was an early backer of Bill Clinton for president.
After the Republican revolution of 1994, Mr. McEntee led a labor-financed advertising campaign to help derail Newt Gingrich's proposal to rein in Medicare spending. And when Mr. Gingrich, then the House speaker, precipitated a government shutdown, Mr. McEntee's union again ran ads hitting the Republicans, helping turn public opinion against Mr. Gingrich and in favor of President Clinton.
"Gerry's effort was very helpful," said Harold M. Ickes, who served as Mr. Clinton's deputy chief of staff. "Once Gerry makes up his mind on something, he's very forceful and dogged."
In 1996, Mr. McEntee joined Mr. Sweeney to persuade the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to spend $36 million, then a huge sum, to help re-elect President Clinton and Democratic House members. As the federation's political chairman, he helped overhaul labor's campaign operations to emphasize workplace fliers, door-knocking and get-out-the-vote efforts.
"He was the main mover and shaker in rebuilding labor's political clout," said Steve Rosenthal, a former A.F.L.-C.I.O. political director, who added, "He's a big personality and he rolls the dice in a very big way."
Mr. McEntee's critics say he can be brash, pushy and all too happy to pound political opponents in speeches and ads.
Mark Neumann, who was a Republican congressman from Wisconsin in the mid-1990s, still complains about the "horrible" ads Mr. McEntee ran against Mr. Gingrich's allies. One showed a middle-aged couple at their kitchen table, with the wife worrying that she might have to quit her job to take care of her mother if Mr. Gingrich's proposals were enacted. "Gingrich and his Republicans are starting to ram their Medicare and Medicaid cuts through Congress now," the same ad said. "so they can pay for more tax giveaways to the rich."
"They were misleading," Mr. Neumann said. He said Republicans were not planning cuts, but were merely trying to hold down Medicare spending increases to 7 percent a year from a projected 14 percent.
More recently, some of Mr. McEntee's political bets have gone more wrong than right.
During the 2008 primaries, he aggressively backed Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama, at one point saying Mr. Obama "has a problem with the blue-collar work and relating to that worker."
Last fall, he claimed that his union had spent $90 million in the 2010 campaign, making Afscme the biggest underwriter of the Democrats' efforts. Mr. McEntee now regrets his boastful words, acknowledging that they helped make public employee unions a target when Republicans swept to victory in many states.
"Some of this is political payback," he said. "The Republicans are thinking, 'The public sector unions are a major political force, and if we weaken them, that'll leave us with an awfully weakened Democratic Party.' "
Given recent events, public sector unions may well end up smaller and weaker.
In Wisconsin, where Afscme was founded in 1932, Governor Walker's legislation, which has been suspended pending a legal challenge, would all but end collective bargaining. It would bar state and local governments from collecting workers' union dues for public employee unions and would require employees to vote every year on whether they want to keep their union.
"I don't see how unions can survive in this situation," said William Powell Jones, a University of Wisconsin labor historian. "This bill is designed to make it almost impossible to operate a union."
Unlikely as it may sound, Mr. McEntee asserts that his union is on the offensive, not the defensive. He points to opinion polls showing that the public backs unions, not the Republican governors, in their recent clashes. He says many union members are feeling so angry toward the Republicans and so enthusiastic about their union that they will want to continue paying union dues - unlike in Indiana, where 90 percent of state employees stopped paying dues after Governor Mitch Daniels ended bargaining for them in 2005.
"We haven't had this kind of energy, this kind of spark, in our union in decades," Mr. McEntee said. "Look at the crowds that came out to protest in Wisconsin: 50,000, 70,000, 100,000. These people are jazzed up. They're ready to do battle."
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14) Wall Street Slides as Nuclear Crisis in Japan Worsens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13markets.html?ref=business
Wall Street indexes fell sharply on Tuesday after Japan upgraded its nuclear crisis to the highest level and Alcoa's first-quarter revenue growth disappointed Wall Street.
Japan's nuclear safety agency raised the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant incident by two notches to level 7, the highest on the scale and the same rating as the Chernobyl incident in 1986. The move, along with continuing earthquake aftershocks which have interfered with recovery work, sent ripples of unease through markets.
"It means slower growing coming out of Japan in the short term, and that's going to weigh on global growth," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners Inc.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell 1.7 percent. The British FTSE 100 index, French CAC-40 index and German DAX index all dropped 1.4 percent or more.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 96.31 points, or 0.78 percent, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index lost 8.19 points, or 0.627 percent. The technology heavy Nasdaq lost 22.33 points, or 0.81 percent.
The energy industry fell the most of the 10 sectors that make up the S.& P. 500 index. It dropped 3.3 percent, more than double the percentage loss of any other group, after oil prices fell 3.2 percent to $106.50 a barrel. Goldman Sachs, which had been bullish on oil prices, surprised the market with a report early Tuesday saying it now expects a "substantial pullback."
Alcoa started earnings season late Monday by saying it returned to a first-quarter profit. But it also said its revenue grew to just $5.96 billion from $4.89 billion. Analysts expected bigger growth, to $6.16 billion, according to FactSet. Alcoa's stock dropped 6.7 percent in early trading.
The aluminum company was the first blue-chip to report first-quarter results, and analysts are expecting to see revenue growth from companies over all. Much of the earnings growth so far this recovery has come from cutting jobs and other costs, rather than from demand growth.
Other big companies reporting results this week include JPMorgan Chase, Google and Bank of America.
In other news, the Commerce Department said the trade deficit fell 2.6 percent to $45.8 billion in February, after the country imported less oil and fewer automobiles.
Investors are also concerned that the global recovery is slowing amid high oil prices, as illustrated by economic figures out of Britain and Germany. The International Monetary Fund also downgraded its 2011 growth forecast for the United States, Japan and Britain - three of the world's top seven industrial countries - largely because of higher oil prices.
In the bond market, debt-heavy Greece managed to borrow 1.62 billion euros ($2.34 billion) in short-term loans at an interest rate that was marginally higher than in a similar debt auction last month.
The auction of 26-week bills had an interest rate of 4.8 percent, slightly above the 4.75 percent at a similar sale in March, Greece's public debt management agency said.
The agency had originally been seeking to raise 1.25 billion euros, but borrowed more as investor interest was strong - the auction was 3.81 times oversubscribed, compared with 3.59 times in March.
As Athens struggles with its tough savings goals, the president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy, warned that Greece had no option but to stick with its long-overdue economic overhaul.
"The key is to continue implementing the courageous reforms and privatizations that have been agreed in a timely and effective manner," Mr. Van Rompuy told reporters after talks in Athens with the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou. "On fiscal consolidation it is important to stick to the program objectives."
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15) Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz•
May 2011
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
It's no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation's income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous-12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades-and more-has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century-inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called "marginal-productivity theory." In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years-whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative-went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards "performance bonuses" that they felt compelled to change the name to "retention bonuses" (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year-an economy like America's-is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets-our people-in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality-such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests-undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires "collective action"-it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.
None of this should come as a surprise-it is simply what happens when a society's wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security-they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government-one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many "good" middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role-for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.
But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power-from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today's inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself-one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.
When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it's tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement-we started way behind the pack, but now we're doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we'll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s-a scandal whose dimensions, by today's standards, seem almost quaint-the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. "I certainly hope so," he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift-through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price-it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
America's inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect-people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military-the reality is that the "all-volunteer" army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the "core" labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment-things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don't need to care.
Or, more accurately, they think they don't. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from "food insecurity")-given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted "trickling down" from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation-voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.
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16) The Middle East Children's Alliance joins the National Lawyers Guild in remembering the great attorney, advocate and friend Leonard Weinglass.
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/?
Statement from the National Lawyers Guild
NEW YORK - March 24 - The National Lawyers Guild mourns yesterday's passing of an extraordinary criminal defense and civil rights attorney, Leonard I. Weinglass. A long-time member of the Guild, he now joins the pantheon of great lawyers who have devoted their careers to making human rights more sacred than property interests.
Weinglass graduated from Yale Law School in 1958 and went on to defend some of the most significant political cases of the century. He represented Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society when Hayden was indicted in the Newark riots. During the Vietnam War, he represented Anthony Russo in the Pentagon Papers case, and in 1969 he co-counseled in the Chicago Seven case, with the eventual overturning of the guilty verdicts. He also represented Jane Fonda in her suit against Richard Nixon, Puerto Rican independence fighters Los Macheteros, and eight Palestinian organizers facing deportation known as the LA 8.
When he represented Amy Carter in 1987 after her arrest for protesting CIA recruitment, Weinglass told the Hampshire County District court, "the students' reaction in that incident was the reaction any right-thinking American, peace-loving American, would have in the face of the serious harm the agency has done."
Weinglass served as lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for nearly 30 years. Other well-known clients included former Weatherman Kathy Boudin, Angela Davis when she was charged with murder for the Marin County shootout, and Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five. He also represented Bill and Emily Harris, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army who were charged with the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst.
The National Lawyers Guild honored Weinglass on several occasions, including at its 2003 national convention with the Bill Goodman Award. "For most lawyers, the work that Len did on any one of countless cases would be the achievement of a lifetime, not just for the brilliance of his advocacy but also for the causes he espoused and the passion with which he fought," said Guild President David Gespass.
A CRUCIAL VISIT
To Leonard Weinglass
You have not rested:
Injustice troubles you,
Justice invokes you.
You have hardly slept to come see me.
Honestly,
I do not see you just as a lawyer,
But as an upright man,
A comrade,
A friend.
Antonio Guerrero, the Cuban Five
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17) Seeking Execution Drug, States Cut Legal Corners
[This is as sick as it gets! And is a testament to the true nature of this system that puts the accumulation of privately-held capital before the interests of humanity as a whole that holes the death penalty over the heads of all of us...bw]
"In depositions from Arkansas officials, Wendy Kelley, a deputy director of the Department of Correction, said she obtained sodium thiopental from a company in England after hearing about it from corrections officers in Georgia. Her state, she said, at various times had given the drug to Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee free of charge, and obtained the drugs from Texas - traveling to Huntsville herself - and from Tennessee. 'I went wherever they had them,' Ms. Kelley said. 'As best as I'm aware, the agreement my director had with other directors, any time there was an exchange, was that there would be a payback when needed.' When Kentucky went searching for execution drugs earlier this year the state's corrections commissioner, LaDonna H. Thompson, wrote in a memo that she had contacted departments in Georgia, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee. A Georgia official 'referred me to a distributor in Georgia that he thought might have a supply,' and that she had gotten information on 'an organization in India,' Kayem Pharmaceuticals. (That company halted shipments to the United States last week under international pressure. [Because Kayem Pharmaceuticals is opposed to the death penalty...bw])"
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/us/14lethal.html?hp
A shortage of one of the three drugs used in most lethal injections has caused disarray as states pursue a desperate and sometimes furtive search that might run afoul of federal drug laws.
At the same time, it has given death-penalty opponents fresh arguments for suing to block executions.
Until recently, states that use the drug, the barbiturate sodium thiopental, got it from a domestic supplier, Hospira Inc. But that company stopped manufacturing the drug in 2009 because of manufacturing problems, and announced earlier this year that it would stop selling the drug altogether. International pressure on suppliers by groups opposed to the death penalty has further restricted access to the drug. States had to find a new source, but importation of sodium thiopental is highly restricted under federal law.
Recently released documents emerging from lawsuits in many states reveal the intense communication among prison systems to help each other obtain sodium thiopental, and what amounts to a legally questionable swap club among prisons to ensure that each has the drug when it is needed for an execution.
In depositions from Arkansas officials, Wendy Kelley, a deputy director of the Department of Correction, said she obtained sodium thiopental from a company in England after hearing about it from corrections officers in Georgia. Her state, she said, at various times had given the drug to Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee free of charge, and obtained the drugs from Texas - traveling to Huntsville herself - and from Tennessee.
"I went wherever they had them," Ms. Kelley said. "As best as I'm aware, the agreement my director had with other directors, any time there was an exchange, was that there would be a payback when needed."
When Kentucky went searching for execution drugs earlier this year the state's corrections commissioner, LaDonna H. Thompson, wrote in a memo that she had contacted departments in Georgia, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee. A Georgia official "referred me to a distributor in Georgia that he thought might have a supply," and that she had gotten information on "an organization in India," Kayem Pharmaceuticals. (That company halted shipments to the United States last week under international pressure.)
Bradford A. Berenson, a Washington lawyer who on behalf of death row inmates has urged the Food and Drug Administration and the attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to block the importation of unapproved execution drugs into the United States, said that the states had been "pretty heedless of the legal lines" regarding the purchase and importation of powerful drugs like sodium thiopental. It was as if "because this was death-penalty related, it was somehow exempt from all the normal rules," Mr. Berenson said. "As a legal matter that was not true."
States sometimes took remarkable measures to obtain the drugs, the documents suggest.
Georgia prison officials were clearly growing antsy last summer as their supply of thiopental neared expiration and a shipment from England lay stalled for weeks in Memphis. Customs agents had detained the package pending inspection by the Food and Drug Administration. By July 6, a corrections official sent a terse e-mail message to a colleague asking, "Any word?"
The response: "We got word but not the 'good' word." The shipment was still held up. "I continue to track the package several times each day." So officials explored a new tactic: instead of going through the usual channels of ordering the drug through a Georgia health care company and a local pharmacy, might the British company simply send the drug directly to the department?
The owner of Dream Pharma, a wholesaler run out of the back room of a driving academy's offices in London, replied "I am more than happy to assist." Matt Alavi, the owner, also warned that a certain carrier is "very stringent with US customs." A Georgia corrections official approved the deal - "Yes. Make it happen" - with instructions to seek a supply with long expiration dates, and the drugs were soon winging their way to the United States.
This approach might well have broken federal drug laws, said John T. Bentivoglio, a former associate deputy attorney general, in a February letter to Mr. Holder on behalf of a Georgia death row prisoner, Andrew Grant DeYoung. The Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's drugs last month, and earlier this month Kentucky and Tennessee turned over theirs as well.
"I think it's quite reasonable to expect a state criminal justice agency like departments of corrections to abide by federal law," Mr. Bentivoglio said in an interview.
Other documents show close cooperation among the states. A California road trip that brought sodium thiopental from Arizona to San Quentin emerged in nearly 1,000 pages of documents released by the A.C.L.U. of Northern California late last year. They showed e-mails from Scott Kernan, under secretary for operations for California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, telling aides of a "secret and important mission," and warning that it was "very political and media sensitive." Mr. Kernan sent a thank-you note to Charles Flanagan, the deputy director of Arizona's Department of Corrections, that read, "You guys in AZ are life savers," adding, "by you a beer next time I get that way."
When Arizona ordered its own shipment in September, documents show that the state worked closely with Customs and Food and Drug Administration officials to prevent the kind of delays that plagued Georgia, and made sure that the port of entry was Phoenix, where their own broker could help. The shipments were labeled as being for veterinary use, which lawyers for the prisoners argue was intended to get the drugs lighter regulatory scrutiny.
"Based upon our review of documents released by federal agencies it appears that there was a culture of premeditated deception," said Dale Baich, of the federal public defender's office in Arizona. "Someone came up with a plan to bypass the process that would have stopped the drugs at the border."
Kent E. Cattani, chief counsel for capital litigation in the Arizona attorney general's office, called the accusation of deception "absurd," and cited correspondence going back as far as December with the Food and Drug Administration explicitly stating that the drugs were necessary "for carrying out an execution warrant."
Representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Justice said agencies' policies did not allow comment on pending litigation.
Until the drug shortage, the routine for lethal injections had been a fairly settled process. States allowed little change for fear of deviating too far from practices that have been declared Constitutional. The three-drug protocol widely used to bring death for a quarter-century involves sodium thiopental or a similar sedative, pentobarbitol, to render the prisoner unconscious. A second drug, pancuronium bromide, brings on paralysis and a third, potassium chloride, stops the heart.
Supporters of the death penalty criticize the recent challenges as yet another delaying tactic in a long history of try-anything challenges. To Kent S. Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said the conflicts "seem to be accelerating the switch to pentobarbitol," which is more readily available, but also show vulnerabilities inherent in lethal injection. He recently called for a return to the gas chamber, using nontoxic gases that would displace oxygen in the chamber.
Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University, an expert on sentencing and punishment, says it is something more than a mere inconvenience to the process. "This mess is a speed bump," he said, "but one that does raise serious issues about the death penalty." The bigger issue beyond what he called the "Keystone Kops" fumbling of state officials is what the incidents say about the temperamental nature of what death-penalty abolitionists call the "machinery of death."
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18) As the Mountaintops Fall, a Coal Town Vanishes
By DAN BARRY
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/us/13lindytown.html?hp
LINDYTOWN, W.Va.
To reach a lost American place, here just a moment ago, follow a thin country road as it unspools across an Appalachian valley's grimy floor, past a coal operation or two, a church or two, a village called Twilight. Beware of the truck traffic. Watch out for that car-chasing dog.
After passing an abandoned union hall with its front door agape, look to the right for a solitary house, tidy, yellow and tucked into the stillness. This is nearly all that remains of a West Virginia community called Lindytown.
In the small living room, five generations of family portraits gaze upon Quinnie Richmond, 85, who has trouble summoning the memories, and her son, Roger, 62, who cannot forget them: the many children all about, enough to fill Mr. Cook's school bus every morning; the Sunday services at the simple church; the white laundry strung on clotheslines; the echoing clatter of evening horseshoes; the sense of home.
But the coal that helped to create Lindytown also destroyed it. Here was the church; here was its steeple; now it's all gone, along with its people. Gone, too, are the surrounding mountaintops. To mine the soft rock that we burn to help power our light bulbs, our laptops, our way of life, heavy equipment has stripped away the trees, the soil, the rock - what coal companies call the "overburden."
Now, the faint, mechanical beeps and grinds from above are all that disturb the Lindytown quiet, save for the occasional, seam-splintering blast.
A couple of years ago, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, which owns a sprawling mine operation behind and above the Richmond home, bought up Lindytown. Many of its residents signed Massey-proffered documents in which they also agreed not to sue, testify against, seek inspection of or "make adverse comment" about coal-mining operations in the vicinity.
You might say that both parties were motivated. Massey preferred not to have people living so close to its mountaintop mining operations. And the residents, some with area roots deep into the 19th century, preferred not to live amid a dusty industrial operation that was altering the natural world about them. So the Greens sold, as did the Cooks, and the Workmans, and the Webbs ...
But Quinnie Richmond's husband, Lawrence - who died a few months ago, at 85 - feared that leaving the home they built in 1947 might upset his wife, who has Alzheimer's. He and his son Roger, a retired coal miner who lives next door, chose instead to sign easements granting the coal company certain rights over their properties. In exchange for also agreeing not to make adverse comment, the two Richmond households received $25,000 each, Roger Richmond recalls.
"Hush money," he says, half-smiling.
As Mr. Richmond speaks, the mining on the mountain behind him continues to transform, if not erase, the woodsy stretches he explored in boyhood. It has also exposed a massive rock that almost seems to be teetering above the Richmond home. Some days, an anxious Mrs. Richmond will check on the rock from her small kitchen window, step away, then come back to check again.
And again.
A Dictator of Destiny
Here in Boone County, coal rules. The rich seams of bituminous black have dictated the region's destiny for many generations: through the advent of railroads; the company-controlled coal camps; the bloody mine wars; the increased use of mechanization and surface mining, including mountaintop removal; the related decrease in jobs.
The county has the largest surface-mining project (the Massey operation) in the state and the largest number of coal-company employees (more than 3,600). Every year it receives several million dollars in tax severance payments from the coal industry, and every June it plays host to the West Virginia Coal Festival, with fireworks, a beauty pageant, a memorial service for dead miners, and displays of the latest mining equipment. Without coal, says Larry V. Lodato, the director of the county's Community and Economic Development Corporation, "You might as well turn out the lights and leave."
In recent years, surface mining has eclipsed underground mining as the county's most productive method. This includes mountaintop removal - or, as the industry prefers to call it, mountaintop mining - a now-commonplace technique that remains startling in its capacity to change things.
Various government regulations require that coal companies return the stripped area to its "approximate original contour," or "reclaim" the land for development in a state whose undulating topography can thwart plans for even a simple parking lot. As a result, the companies often dump the removed earth into a nearby valley to create a plateau, and then spray this topsy-turvy land with seed, fertilizer and mulch.
The coal industry maintains that by removing some mountaintops from the "Mountain State," it is creating developable land that makes the state more economically viable. State and coal officials point to successful developments on land reclaimed by surface mining, developments that they say have led to the creation of some 13,000 jobs.
But Ken Ward Jr., a reporter for The Charleston Gazette, has pointed out that two-fifths of these jobs are seasonal or temporary; a third of the full-time jobs are at one project, in the northern part of the state; and the majority of the jobs are far from southern West Virginia, where most of the mountaintop removal is occurring, and where unemployment is most dire. In Boone County, development on reclaimed land has basically meant the building of the regional headquarters for the county's dominant employer - Massey Energy.
And with reclamation, there is also loss.
"I'm not familiar at all with Lindytown," says Mr. Lodato, the county's economic development director. "I know it used to be a community, and it's close to Twilight."
A Fighter
About 10 miles from Lindytown, outside a drab convenience store in the unincorporated town of Van, a rake-thin woman named Maria Gunnoe climbs into a maroon Ford pickup that is adorned with a bumper sticker reading: "Mountains Matter - Organize." The daughter, granddaughter and sister of union coal miners, Ms. Gunnoe is 42, with sorrowful dark eyes, long black hair and a desire to be on the road only between shift changes at the local mining operations - and only with her German shepherd and her gun.
Less than a decade ago, Ms. Gunnoe was working as a waitress, just trying to get along, when a mountaintop removal operation in the small map dot of Bob White disrupted her "home place." It filled the valley behind her house, flooded her property, contaminated her well and transformed her into a fierce opponent of mountaintop removal. Through her work with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, she has become such an effective environmental advocate that in 2009 she received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. But no one threw a parade for her in Boone County, where some deride her as anti-coal; that is, anti-job.
Ms. Gunnoe turns onto the two-lane road, Route 26, and heads toward the remains of Lindytown. On her right stands Van High School, her alma mater, where D. Ray White, the gifted and doomed Appalachian dancer, used to kick up his heels at homecomings. On her left, the community center where dozens of coal-company workers disrupted a meeting of environmentalists back in 2007.
"There was a gentleman who pushed me backward, over my daughter, who was about 12 or 13, and crying," Ms. Gunnoe later recalls. "I pushed him back, and he filed charges against me for battery. He was 250 pounds, and I had a broken arm."
A jury acquitted her within minutes.
Ms. Gunnoe drives on. Past the long-closed Grill bar, its facade marred by graffiti. Past an out-of-context clot of land that rises hundreds of feet in the air - "a valley fill," she says, that has been "hydroseeded" with fast-growing, non-native plants to replace the area's lost natural growth: its ginseng root, its goldenseal, it hickory and oak, maple and poplar, black cherry and sassafras.
"And it will never be back," she says.
Ms. Gunnoe has a point. James Burger, a professor emeritus of forestry and soil science at Virginia Tech University, said the valley fill process often sends the original topsoil to the bottom and crushed rock from deeper in the ground to the top. With the topography and soil properties altered, Dr. Burger says, native plants and trees do not grow as well.
"You have hundreds of species of flora and fauna that have acclimated to the native, undisturbed conditions over the millennia," he says. "And now you're inverting the geologic profile."
Dr. Burger says that he and other scientists have developed a reclamation approach that uses native seeds, trees, topsoil and selected rock material to help restore an area's natural diversity, at no additional expense. Unfortunately, he says, these methods have not been adopted in most Appalachian states, including West Virginia.
Past a coal operation called a loadout, an oversized Tinker Toy structure where coal is crushed and loaded on trucks and rail cars. Past the house cluster called Bandytown, home of Leo Cook, 75, the former school bus driver who once collected Roger Richmond and the other kids from Lindytown, where he often spent evenings at a horseshoe pit, now overgrown.
"We got to have coal," says Mr. Cook, a retired miner. "What's going to keep the power on? But I believe with all my heart that there's a better way to get that coal."
Ms. Gunnoe continues deeper into the mud-brown landscape, where the fleeting appearance of trucks animates the flattened mountaintops. On her right, a dark, winding stream damaged by mining; on her left, several sediment-control ponds that filter out pollutants from the runoff of mining operations. Past the place called Twilight, a jumble of homes and trailers, where the faded sign of the old Twilight Super Market still promises Royal Crown Cola for sale.
Soon she passes the abandoned hall for Local 8377 of the United Mine Workers of America, empty since some underground mining operations shut down a couple of decades ago. Its open door beckons you to examine the papers piled on the floor: a Wages, Lost Time, and Expense Voucher booklet from 1987; the burial fund's bylaws; canceled checks bearing familiar surnames.
On, finally, to Lindytown.
The Company Line
According to a statement from Shane Harvey, the general counsel for Massey, this is what happened: Many of Lindytown's residents were either retired miners or their widows and descendants who welcomed the opportunity to move to places more metropolitan or with easier access to medical facilities. Interested in selling their properties, they contacted Massey, which began making offers in December 2008 - offers that for the most part were accepted.
"It is important to note that none of these properties had to be bought," Mr. Harvey said. "The entire mine plan could have been legally mined without the purchase of these homes. We agreed to purchase the properties as an additional precaution."
When asked to elaborate, Mr. Harvey responded, in writing, that Massey voluntarily bought the properties "as an additional backup to the state and federal regulations" that protect people who live near mining operations.
James Smith, 68, a retired coal miner from Lindytown, says the company's statement is true, as far as it goes. Yes, Lindytown had become home mostly to retired union miners and their families; when the Robin Hood No. 8 mine shut down, for example, his three sons had to leave the state to work. And yes, some people approached Massey about selling their homes.
But, Mr. Smith says, many residents wanted to leave Lindytown only because the mountaintop operations above had ruined the quality of life below.
His family went back generations here. He married a local woman, raised kids, became widowed and married again. A brother lived in one house, a sister lived in another, and nieces, nephews and cousins were all around. And there was this God-given setting, where he could wander for days, hunting raccoon or searching for ginseng.
But when the explosions began, dust filled the air. "You could wash your car today, and tomorrow you could write your name on it in the dust," he says. "It was just unpleasant to live in that town. Period."
Massey was a motivated buyer, he argues, given that it was probably cheaper to buy out a small community than to deal with all the complaint-generated inspections, or the possible lawsuits over silica dust and "fly rock."
"Hell, what they paid for that wasn't a drop in the bucket," he says.
Massey did not elaborate on why it bought out Lindytown, though general concerns about public health have been mounting. In blocking another West Virginia mountaintop-removal project earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency cited research suggesting that health disparities in the Appalachian region are "concentrated where surface coal mining activity takes place."
In the end, Mr. Smith says, he would not be living 150 miles away, far from relations and old neighbors, if mountaintop removal hadn't ruined Lindytown. "You might as well take the money and get rid of your torment," he says, adding that he received more than $300,000 for his property. "After they destroyed our place, they done us a favor and bought it."
Memories, What's Left
Ms. Gunnoe pulls up to one of the last houses in Lindytown, the tidy yellow one, and visits with Quinnie and Roger Richmond. He uses his words to re-animate the community he knew.
For many years, his grandfather was the preacher at the small church down the road, where the ringing of a bell gave fair warning that Sunday service was about to begin. And his grandmother lived in the house still standing next door; she toiled in her garden well past 100, growing the kale, spinach and mustard greens that she loved so much.
His father, Lawrence, joined the military in World War II after his older brother, Carson, was killed in Sicily. He returned, married Quinnie, and built this house. Before long, he became a section foreman in the mines, beloved by his men in part because of Quinnie's fried-apple pies.
After graduating from Van High School - that's his senior photograph, there on the wall - Roger Richmond followed his father into the mines. He married, had children, divorced, made do when the local mine shut down, eventually retired and, in 2001, set up his mobile home beside his parents' house.
By now, things had changed. With the local underground mine shut down, there were nowhere near as many jobs, or kids. And this powder from the mountaintops was settling on everything, turning to brown paste in the rain. People no long hung their whites on the clotheslines.
Soon, rumors of buyouts from Massey became fact, as neighbors began selling and moving away. "Some of them were tired of fighting it," Mr. Richmond says. "Of having to put up with all the dust. Plus, you couldn't get out into the hills the way you used to."
One example. Mr. Richmond's Uncle Carson, killed in World War II, is buried in one of the small cemeteries scattered about the mountains. If he wanted to pay his respects, in accordance with government regulations for active surface-mining areas, he would have to make an appointment with a coal company, be certified in work site safety, don a construction helmet and be escorted by a coal-company representative.
In the end, the Richmonds decided to sell various land rights to Massey, but remain in Lindytown, as the homes of longtime neighbors were boarded up and knocked down late last year, and as looters arrived at all hours of the day to steal the windows, the wiring, the pillars from Elmer Smith's front porch - even the peaches, every one of them, growing from trees on the Richmond property.
"They was good peaches, too," says Mr. Richmond.
"I like peaches," says his mother.
Would Lindytown have died anyway? Would it have died even without the removal of its surrounding mountaintops? These are the questions that Bill Raney, the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, raises. Sometimes, he says, depopulation is part of the natural order of things. People move to be closer to hospitals, or restaurants, or the Wal-Mart. There is also that West Virginia truism, he adds:
"When the coal's gone, you go to where the next coal seam is."
Of course, in the case of Lindytown, the coal is still here; it's the people who are mostly gone. Now, when darkness comes to this particular hollow, you can see a small light shining from the kitchen window of a solitary, yellow house - and, sometimes, a face, peering out.
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19) Hospital Is Drawn Into Bahrain Strife
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13bahrain.html?ref=world
MANAMA, Bahrain - A handful of soldiers, their faces covered by black masks to hide their identities, guard the front gate of Salmaniya Medical Complex. Inside, clinics are virtually empty of patients, many of whom, doctors say, have been hauled away for detention after participating in protests.
Doctors and nurses have been arrested, too, and the police trail ambulance drivers, health care workers said.
To the government, Salmaniya, Bahrain's largest public hospital, and local clinics are nests of radical Shiite conspirators trying to destabilize the country. But to many doctors at Salmaniya, the hospital has been converted into an apparatus of state terrorism, and sick people have nowhere to go for care.
The scene is a grim sign that health care has been drawn into Bahrain's civil conflict, which burst into violence last month when the army and security forces cleared not only Pearl Square but also the hospital's grounds, which had become a hub for opposition activities.
At least a dozen doctors and nurses have been arrested and held prisoner during the last month, and more paramedics and ambulance drivers are missing. Ambulances have been blocked from aiding wounded patients, according to health care workers and human rights advocates.
Meanwhile, the security forces, manning roadblocks around the country, inspect drivers and their passengers for birdshot wounds - the most common injury to demonstrators confronted by security forces - and those with the telltale black bruises are seized and detained.
"You have an assault on the health care system and the people who practice in it," said Dan Williams, a senior researcher for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, who is now investigating in Bahrain. "Hospitals are supposed to be used for health care and not as arbitrary detention centers."
Bahraini doctors and international human rights workers say the purpose of the crackdown appears to be to instill terror in doctors, so they will not care for wounded demonstrators, and fear in dissidents, who might think twice about confronting the police if they know that being injured might mark them for arrest.
Government officials say that wounded demonstrators are handed to the police only after they have been taken care of, and reports of violations are being investigated.
At a news conference on Monday, the acting health minister, Fatima al-Balooshi, accused scores of doctors and health care workers at Salmaniya and elsewhere of joining "a conspiracy against Bahrain from the outside" - usually a code for Iran - to destabilize the government.
She said that 30 doctors and nurses had been suspended or otherwise kept from practicing medicine in recent weeks, and that 150 more were being investigated.
Ms. Balooshi said doctors had deprived some people of medical care for sectarian reasons, had worsened patients' wounds to get stories of repression into the news media and had received overtime pay for attending demonstrations. She also said that sophisticated weaponry had been found hidden in the hospital, and that health care workers had set up a tent for propaganda purposes during demonstrations in Pearl Square last month.
"They violated their duties, against international standards for health services," Ms. Balooshi said of the doctors. "Now, thank God, they have been stopped."
Most doctors in Bahrain are Shiite, as is a majority of the population, in a country that is ruled by a Sunni monarchy that now governs with the support of more than 1,000 Saudi Arabian troops. The opposition is predominately, though not entirely, Shiite.
The crackdown is centered on Salmaniya, the country's main referral hospital, ambulance depot, center for emergency care and blood bank. But doctors at neighborhood clinics say that patients are afraid to visit them as well, and that they do not have enough blood, antibiotics and emergency equipment to care for patients who would otherwise go to Salmaniya.
The problems at Salmaniya began two months ago when demonstrators began using the parking lot in front of the emergency ward for protests, and some doctors joined in while they were supposedly on duty.
When the security forces cleared Pearl Square on March 16, they also blockaded Salmaniya. According to one doctor who was in the hospital, the staff was terrified as it watched a nurse get dragged away and beaten by five officers after she apparently tried to escape. She said the police hauled away a paramedic and his driver, who are still missing.
The next day, the doctor said, the security forces went to the second floor, handcuffed about 10 patients who were wounded in the demonstrations and took them to the sixth floor for questioning under torture. Others were taken upstairs later.
In interviews that were given on the condition that their names not be published, four doctors and nurses and several family members of arrested health care workers said the medical community had been terrorized.
As they tell it, a pattern has emerged in which health workers are called to the Salmaniya administration offices and then taken to a criminal investigation center. The arrested doctors and nurses are allowed to make calls home to say they are fine. Family members then take them clothes, but rarely if ever see them.
Many of the health care workers arrested were involved in protests, but others were not. Dr. Nahad al-Shirawi was reportedly arrested after she appeared in a published photograph weeping in the hospital over a victim who died in a protest.
Yasser Ali Abdulla, a paramedic, and Mohsen Ashour, his driver, were dispatched on March 15 to the village of Sitra to care for wounded demonstrators who were attacked by police. They never came home.
Mr. Abdulla's father spotted their ambulance several days later parked at a local police station. Though the father was not allowed to see his son, Mr. Abdulla was allowed later that day to call his wife for a few seconds to tell her he was alive, according to a family member who spoke on the condition that she not be identified by name or relationship.
He called a week later but has not been heard from since. "They say his crime was he stole the ambulance, but he was on duty and in uniform," the relative said.
Richard Sollom, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights, said the security forces have gone so far as to steal medical records like X-rays of people injured in demonstrations, apparently to hide human rights violations.
"They are quite sophisticated," said Mr. Sollom, who just completed a fact-finding trip here. "Doctors are the one group of people who have evidence."
A few days ago, three doctors at Salmaniya were slapped and taunted by security guards in the middle of the night simply because they did not have a picture of the prime minister hanging on the wall of their dormitory room.
"We were standing and shaking, and we didn't know where this would end," recalled one of the doctors, who did not want to be identified for fear that he would be arrested. "Going to work every day is a calculated risk of being beaten, harassed or even taken away."
Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting.
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20) Syria Presses Crackdown in Two Cities on Coast
By LIAM STACK and KATHERINE ZOEPF
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13syria.html?ref=world
CAIRO - The security crackdown on Syria's coastal region tightened on Tuesday, with checkpoints blocking off access to the city of Baniyas and its outlying areas and a violent raid by government security forces on the nearby village of Bayda, local human rights advocates said.
On Sunday, four protesters were killed by state security forces during pro-democracy demonstrations in Baniyas, a port city known for its nearby orchards and its large oil refinery. On Monday an eyewitness in the city told the news channel that shooting continued to be heard in the city's Al-Nabe'a district, where the biggest clashes between protesters and security forces took place Sunday.
The village of Bayda was being "punished" for offering refuge to people fleeing Baniyas, and because residents were rumored to be planning a protest of their own, said Wissam Tarif, a Syrian human rights advocate. He said security forces had raided houses in the village and pulled both men and women into the town square, where they were "collectively beaten" by security agents.
"They formed circles around them in the square, and they beat them," Mr. Tarif said. "They felt like the town was supporting Baniyas."
His organization, Insan, has confirmed one death in Bayda and was told of two more in Baniyas, which he said it had been unable to confirm. Mr. Tarif was speaking by phone from Tartous, about 20 miles south of Baniyas.
Razan Zeitouneh, a Damascus-based human rights advocate, said in an e-mail that her sources backed up Mr. Tarif's account of the attack on Bayda and added that there was mounting anxiety in Baniyas about another assault.
"Baniyas is still surrounded by army and security," Ms. Zeitouneh wrote. "There is fears that it will be attacked this night."
Several hours after sending the e-mail, Ms. Zeitouneh, who has routinely used her Facebook page to publicize the findings of her organization, the Syrian Human Rights Information Link, began posting what she said were eyewitness accounts of nighttime attacks on villages near Baniyas.
"Heavy shooting at the southern entrance of Baniyas now," read one post.
"Finishing invasion of the orchards and arresting tens, and starting to invade the neighborhoods of al-Basyia and al-Oudima," read another.
Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, has remained mostly silent about the events in and around Baniyas, reporting only on what it said were the killings of nine Syrian soldiers "at the criminal hands of a group of terrorists and thugs" in Baniyas on Sunday. Some members of the Syrian opposition have claimed that the soldiers were killed by security forces for refusing to fire at protesters.
Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist and professor at the University of Oklahoma who is married to a Syrian, reported on his blog, Syria Comment, that his wife's first cousin, Lt. Col. Yasir Qash'ur, was one of those killed.
Of the people commenting on his blog, many of whom identify themselves as Syrians or people of Syrian origin living overseas, Mr. Landis said: "Half of the people on my site are writing in and saying that the government is killing soldiers in order to incite civil war. The other half are saying that it was the protesters who killed the soldiers."
Information about events in Syria has become increasingly difficult to verify in recent weeks, as the government has banned foreign journalists from traveling outside of Damascus.
"No one has good information, and everyone has something completely different," Mr. Landis said. "This is an indication of how horribly divided Syrians are."
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch issued a statement Tuesday asserting that some of the protesters who have been wounded in the pro-democracy demonstrations that began in mid-March have been prevented from getting medical care.
"We've been getting reports of a number of people who have died in mosques of bullet wounds," Nadim Houry, the Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a phone interview from Beirut.
In some cases, security forces have surrounded hospitals so wounded protesters cannot get treatment. "We've also heard about shooting of demonstrators who were trying to pull people to safety into buildings," Mr. Houry said. "We've talked to seven or eight people who have been involved in or witnessed such incidents."
The White House issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the government's response to the protests as "outrageous."
"We are deeply concerned by reports that Syrians who have been wounded by their government are being denied access to medical care," it said.
Professor Landis said: "It is clear that the gloves are off and the regime is going to do whatever it takes to stay in power. This is war at this point. The government cannot afford to have this level of violence continue much longer."
Liam Stack reported from Cairo, and Katherine Zoepf from New York.
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21) Police Officers in Swaziland Squash Rally for Democracy
By BARRY BEARAK
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/africa/13swaziland.html?ref=world
JOHANNESBURG - The police in Swaziland, the last absolute monarchy in Africa, squelched a long-planned pro-democracy rally on Tuesday, firing water cannons and tear gas into crowds in Manzini, the nation's largest city.
Organizers had dubbed the protest "the April 12 Uprising," recalling the day, 38 years ago, when King Sobhuza II had abandoned the country's British-style Constitution and rid himself of the inconvenience of political parties.
His son, Mswati III, is now king. Some things have changed, some not. The old king had more than 70 wives, the new one 14. Mswati III is one of the world's richest monarchs, and he provides most of his spouses with their own retinue, a palace and a new BMW; two-thirds of his 1.2 million subjects live on less than $1 a day. They have the world's highest H.I.V. infection rate.
There is again a Constitution, instituted in 2006, though not one assuring political freedom. A pro-democracy movement has existed for decades, but it has had more fits than starts. Many of its leaders are routinely jailed, and on Tuesday, this was done peremptorily with the morning arrests of the trade unionists at the vanguard of the rally.
What followed then were blunt tactics of crowd dispersal. People standing in groups of more than two or three were clubbed by police officers, witnesses said. Buses full of protesters were stopped at roadblocks and turned back.
"Some people were taken away in big trucks, and they were dumped way out in the bush where there is no transportation," said Mary da Silva, a lawyer and coordinator of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign.
Ms. da Silva herself was briefly arrested, seized while giving an interview to a journalist. "Basically, what they are doing is kidnapping activists," she said in a telephone interview. "There are roadblocks all over the place. No one can get into Manzini. And those of us here, we are under constant threat. They punched me in the stomach."
The Rev. Pius Magagula, project manager for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, said, "The police tried to block people behind a gate, and then when the people fought their way out and went to the bus terminal, the police pounced on them like nobody's business."
The bare-knuckle tactics were successful against a crowd of about 2,000, according to Father Magagula, who was also contacted by phone.
"The police used water cannons and then the swinging batons," he said. "It was bad, very bad."
A police spokeswoman, Wendy Hleta, told The Associated Press that officials had been concerned about threats to overthrow the government. Force was used only after provocation, she said.
"The situation almost got out of control," Ms. Hleta said about a gathering of hundreds of teachers at a training site. The police "were compelled to shoot tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd."
The government is sure to draw international criticism. The United States Embassy in Mbabane, the capital, issued a statement expressing concern about efforts "to prevent the peaceful assembly of labor and opposition groups."
Swaziland, a mountainous and generally peaceful place, is wedged between South Africa and Mozambique. Its chief source of revenue has been its share of import duties from the multicountry Southern African Customs Union.
But the group's distribution formula was recently revised, and Swaziland's $741 million share was cut to $281 million. The government announced an austerity program. Every ministry had to cut its budget by as much as 25 percent. Thousands of public workers were furloughed. Street lights were turned off.
The dismal economy has heightened political discontent. Tuesday's rally follows a protest last month when 2,000 people marched to the prime minister's office. King Mswati III disapprovingly took note of the demonstration.
He told his people to "work harder and sacrifice more."
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22) 4 Die in Smuggling Tunnel Under Gaza-Egypt Border
By FARES AKRAM
[These deaths are the direct result of the U.S. funding of Israel's occupation of Palestine and the imprisonment--by a separation wall secured by Israeli military outposts--of the whole of Gaza...bw]
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/world/middleeast/13briefs-Gazabrf.html?ref=world
Four Palestinians died Tuesday in a smuggling tunnel beneath the Gaza-Egypt border, according to medics in Gaza. Authorities with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the men suffocated while repairing the tunnel, which they said had been hit by an Israeli missile several days ago during a recent wave of violence. Some people have died in the tunnels in the past after being overcome by fumes while smuggling fuel to Gaza.
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23) High Prices Sow Seeds of Erosion
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
April 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/13erosion.html?ref=us
When prices for corn and soybeans surged last fall, Bill Hammitt, a farmer in the fertile hill country of western Iowa, began to see the bulldozers come out, clearing steep hillsides of trees and pastureland to make way for more acres of the state's staple crops. Now, as spring planting begins, with the chance of drenching rains, Mr. Hammitt worries that such steep ground is at high risk for soil erosion - a farmland scourge that feels as distant to most Americans as tales of the Dust Bowl and Woody Guthrie ballads.
Long in decline, erosion is once again rearing as a threat because of an aggressive push to plant on more land, changing weather patterns and inadequate enforcement of protections, scientists and environmentalists say.
"There's a lot of land being converted into row crop in this area that never has been farmed before," said Mr. Hammitt, 59, explaining that the bulldozed land was too steep and costly to farm to be profitable in years of ordinary prices. "It brings more highly erodible land into production because they're out to make more money on every acre."
Now, research by scientists at Iowa State University provides evidence that erosion in some parts of the state is occurring at levels far beyond government estimates. It is being exacerbated, they say, by severe storms, which have occurred more often in recent years, possibly because of broader climate shifts.
"The thing that's really smacking us now are the high-intensity, high-volume rainstorms that we're getting," said Richard M. Cruse, an agronomy professor at Iowa State who directs the Iowa Daily Erosion Project. "In a variety of locations, we're losing topsoil considerably faster - 10 to as much as 50 times faster - than it's forming."
Erosion can do major damage to water quality, silting streams and lakes and dumping fertilizers and pesticides into the water supply. Fertilizer runoff is responsible for a vast "dead zone," an oxygen-depleted region where little or no sea life can exist, in the Gulf of Mexico. And because it washes away rich topsoil, erosion can threaten crop yields. Significant gains were made in combating erosion in the 1980s and early 1990s, as the federal government began to require that farmers receiving agricultural subsidies carry out individually tailored soil conservation plans.
Those plans often included measures such as terracing steep ground or sowing buffer strips with perennial grasses to stabilize areas prone to erosion, such as the edges of fields near streams or borders between crops.
Many farmers, such as Mr. Hammitt, who is on the board of the Harrison County soil and water conservation district, also do little or no plowing and leave crop residues on harvested fields, techniques that reduce runoff.
But environmentalists claim that enforcement of conservation plans by the United States Department of Agriculture is not as strict as it should be and that the gains in fighting erosion have stalled or are being undercut.
U.S.D.A. data shows that the amount of farmland erosion nationwide from water fell substantially from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, then largely stagnated.
Enforcement is needed more than ever, environmentalists say, because high crop prices provide a strong incentive for farmers to plant as much ground as possible and to take fewer protective measures like grass buffer strips.
Other factors are also at work. Farmers increasingly rent the land they cultivate, which can mean they are less familiar with areas at risk for erosion or are less invested in caring for the land over the long run. In addition, farmers using modern supersize tractors, built to efficiently cover swaths of land, can find it inconvenient to break up land into smaller sections through buffer areas or terraces. Widely used herbicides can kill the grass in buffer strips, leaving them more vulnerable to erosion. And government biofuels policies that have increased the demand for corn have encouraged farmers to plant more. "You've got all these market forces and public policies and biofuel mandates and more severe storms," said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group that will release a report on erosion Wednesday. "It's all coming together, and we're asleep at the switch."
Mr. Cox said that he flew over parts of Iowa in a helicopter last spring after a severe storm and found that deep gullies had formed in unprotected farmland, becoming conduits for soil runoff. Farmers frequently level off such gullies after harvesting in the fall, he said, and then replant the same low-lying areas year after year, leaving them susceptible to further erosion.
Thomas W. Christensen, an Agriculture Department regional conservationist, disagreed, saying, "Conservation compliance is working," and adding that improvements to its enforcement program were in the works. Last year, however, the agency reviewed fewer than 1 percent of the tracts nationwide that it considered highly erodible to make sure that farmers were following conservation plans. About 1 percent of those reviewed were found to be in violation. But the new federal budget deal cuts 12 percent from the agency's conservation spending, which could hamper soil efforts. Agency officials said they were still assessing the impact.
The information from the Iowa Daily Erosion Project paints a grimmer picture than a recent assessment by federal officials. The U.S.D.A's 2007 National Resources Inventory, released last year, estimated that erosion in Iowa averaged 5.2 tons an acre each year. That was slightly higher than the five tons per acre that the department estimated was a tolerable annual rate of erosion for most Iowa soils, meaning that it allowed a high level of crop productivity to be maintained indefinitely.
Five tons of soil would fill a small dump truck; spread over an acre it would make a layer slightly less than the thickness of a dime, Mr. Cruse said.
While the federal report estimates average rates of erosion for states and regions over a full year, the Erosion Project uses detailed information on rainfall and field conditions to estimate soil loss in 1,581 Iowa townships - nearly all of them - after each storm. Last year, according to Erosion Project data analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, the average estimated rate of erosion exceeded the sustainable level in 133 townships. In 2009, an estimated 641 townships exceeded the sustainable rate, including nearly 400 that had double or more that rate.
The project also provides a picture of the erosion caused by severe storms, like the one that dumped more than seven inches of rain in parts of southwest Iowa in May 2007. In a single day, the figures show, 69 townships had average estimated soil losses of more than 10 tons an acre. Of those, 14 townships were estimated to have an average loss between 20 tons and nearly 40 tons per acre. The 2007 storm was exceptionally damaging, but severe storms are becoming more frequent, according to a state report on climate change submitted in January to the Iowa Legislature and governor.
Despite the concerns, Iowa is not on the brink of becoming a new Dust Bowl. Many farmers use good conservation practices, and the state's rich topsoil in many areas is deep enough to last decades with moderate amounts of erosion.
But agronomists say that heavy erosion in unprotected areas can significantly diminish crop yields, and, over time, land that is not well cared for can become depleted. That means farmers must use more fertilizer to increase yields.
Erosion also does major harm to water quality.
More than anything else this year, farmers are making decisions based on how they can best take advantage of corn and soybean prices, which have soared in recent months.
Dr. Cruse said that creates a paradox. When crop prices are low and farmers are scraping by, many say they cannot afford to take steps to protect their fields from erosion. Now, he said, they say they still cannot afford it because there is too much profit to be made from farming every bit of land.
The same incentives have landowners clearing steep hillsides or converting pasture to cropland to cultivate or rent out.
"The requests to farm the marginal areas and the pressure on our noncropped areas have really increased with these commodity prices," said Todd G. Duncan, an Agriculture Department district conservationist in Winneshiek County in northeast Iowa, another area of the state with steep hills. "We have some people that are making bad land-use decisions right now."
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24) Quarterly Profit Surges 67% at JPMorgan
By ERIC DASH
April 13, 2011, 7:36 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/jpmorgan-quarterly-profit-rises-67/?ref=business
9:35 a.m. | Updated JPMorgan Chase kicked off bank earnings season on Wednesday, reporting that first quarter profit surged 67 percent even as problems in its mortgage lending business continued to mount.
Strong results from its investment banking and trading businesses helped offset losses from the retail bank, which continues to deal with bad loans and set aside an additional $650 million to cover potential legal claims. JPMorgan's first quarter numbers also got a boost from the credit card group, where the reversal of loan-loss provisions added $2 billion to the bottom line.
The bank's profit of $5.6 billion, or $1.28 a share, handily exceeded analysts' consensus estimate of $1.16. A year ago, the company earned $3.3 billion, or 74 cents a share.
But revenue - as is the case for much of the industry - remained under pressure. It fell to $25.8 billion in the first quarter, down 8 percent from a year earlier, driven by a slowdown in mortgage lending and new rules curtailing overdraft fees. Investors may see that drop as a indication of what's to come at other banks at a time when they are increasingly worried about the industry's ability to grow.
In early trading on Wednesday, shares of JPMorgan were essentially flat at roughly $46.50.
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chairman and chief executive, offered an upbeat outlook for his bank. In a statement, he praised the "strong quarter" across most of its major businesses, like credit cards and investment banking, and said that the retail business demonstrated "good underlying performance."
Mr. Dimon also said he was pleased to have received approval from regulators to increase the bank's annual dividend to $1 from 20 cents, and to begin an $8 billion share buyback program.
"We will only buy back stock if we believe the price is appropriate," he said. "In the meantime, we will pursue the significant organic growth opportunities we see in each of our businesses."
Still, he acknowledged the troubles in home lending, where "extraordinarily high losses" have been running at $4 billion a year. "Rest assured, we are fully engaged in fixing our problems and addressing our mistakes from the past," he said.
JPMorgan, meanwhile, faces billions of dollars in potential legal claims stemming from the mortgage crisis. Federal regulators are expected to order the nation's biggest mortgage players to make sweeping changes to their loan servicing practices, which would drive up operating costs.
"We are adding a lot of intensive manpower and talent to fix the problems of the past," Mr. Dimon said, on a conference call with journalists. JPMorgan plans to add between 2,000 and 3,000 new employees in order to comply with the regulators demands. The bank, as a result, took a $1.1 billion charge to reflect the increased costs of its mortgage servicing operations.
The bank is also ensnared by state investigations over questionable foreclosure practices, as well as lawsuits from private investors seeking to recover losses on troubled loans and securities the bank sold.
The bank put aside an additional $650 million in the first quarter to cover those potential legal claims, after increasing its litigation reserves by more than $6.7 billion in 2010.
The bank previously set aside a separate reserve of more than $5.6 billion to cover expected losses stemming from the repurchase of faulty loans that it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled housing finance companies. It absorbed about $420 million of losses on those loans in the first quarter. The bank also took a $1.1 billion charge to reflect the increased costs of its mortgage servicing business.
Banking analysts say the mortgage problems could end up costing the bank up to $10 billion. But armed with those reserves, JPMorgan executives have said they have ample resources to handle claims.
"I think a good global settlement will be good for everybody and most important, the United States of America, its citizens, and the housing market," Mr. Dimon said on the conference call. "Keeping this mess going on is not good for anybody
All told, Chase Retail Financial Services, the consumer banking arm that includes home lending, reported a loss of $208 million in first quarter, compared with a loss of $131 million the previous year. Revenue was down 19 percent, reflecting narrower lending margins and a slowdown in refinancing activity.
There was better news elsewhere. JPMorgan's investment bank had a solid quarter, although not as good as the period a year earlier, when unusually strong trading environment led to record profits. Investment banking fees were up 23 percent, with JPMorgan involved in dozens of deals, including AT&T's $39 billion planned acquisition of T-Mobile USA.
Fixed income trading revenue was up 33 percent from the prior year, while revenue from its equities group fell 8 percent on lower client volumes. Overall, earnings for the investment banking unit fell 4 percent, to $2.4 billion.
The corporate bank reported earnings of $546 million, up 3 percent from the period a year earlier. Bank officials said an improvement in the number of midsize businesses seeking credit helped the bottom line.
The credit card unit reported a $1.3 billion profit, up 3 percent from the period a year earlier. But much of that gain was a result of the bank's decision to release about $2 billion it had previously set aside to cover losses.
Revenue was down 10 percent, reflecting the effect of more stringent rules to protect consumers from abusive penalty fees and lower loan balances.
JPMorgan was the first major bank to report quarterly earnings, with Bank of America set to release its financial results on Friday. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley report earnings next week.
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25) Exxon's CEO Compensation Up 6.6 Percent
[In case you were concerned about their wellbeing, have no fear. They're in the money!...bw]
By REUTERS
April 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/04/13/business/business-us-exxon-pay.html?src=busln&pagewanted=print
HOUSTON (Reuters) - The chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, received $29 million in total compensation in 2010, a 6.6 percent increase from the previous year, a regulatory filing showed on Wednesday.
Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson's pay included $2.2 million in salary, a $3.4 million bonus, and stock awards valued at $15.5 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Factors the company's board considered when awarding Tillerson's pay included a 58 percent increase in earnings, safety results and the completion and integration of Exxon's purchase of U.S. natural gas company XTO Energy Inc.
Exxon's shares rose 7 percent in 2010, underperforming a 12 percent increase in the CBOE index of oil companies and a 13 percent increase in the Standard and Poor's 500 index.
The compensation data was included in the company's proxy statement ahead of its May 25 annual meeting. Among the shareholder proposals is a call for Exxon to separate the jobs of CEO and chairman, positions Tillerson currently holds.
In 2008, the Irving, Texas, company faced a challenge from members of the wealthy U.S. Rockefeller family, who urged the company to name an independent chairman.
John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Co in 1870, which was a precursor to Exxon Mobil.
Shares of Exxon fell 14 cents to $83.04 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Anna Driver; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Gunna Dickson)
Corrects month of annual meeting in paragraph 5
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26) Muslims made the history in New York on April 9,2011!
Standing Against Islamophobia, War & Terrorism
Muslim Peace Coalition USA
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/
A New, More United & More Diverse Peace Movement launched on April 9
April 12, 2011
By Abdul Malik Mujahid
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/stop-wars.php
Assalamu Alaikum
Greetings!
Muslims made the history in New York on April 9,2011!
Congratulations for a successful Rally focusing on War, Terrorism, and Islamophobia as one set.
Please fill out this survey with your feedback about the rally and the next steps.
Please donate 8 dollars today for the Muslim Peace Coalition USA so we can be effective member of the United National Anti-War Committee.
Ten unique things about April 9 anti-war rallies:
1. It was a younger crowd as compared to most other anti-war rallies
2. The crowd reflected the diversity of America
3. Muslims joined this anti-war rally in large numbers led by Muslim Peace Coalition USA reflecting a fresh assertiveness that they are no longer willing to stay silent
4. The connection of war at home and war abroad was well established
5. It was the largest anti-war march in the last five years in New York
6. Some protesters dressed as Guantanamo Bay Prisoners stood in silence at Union Square
7. The rally was endorsed by 100 plus imams from the New York area. Many of these imams were in the rally
8. The rally was endorsed by 500 organizations
9. There were many young children walking as well as elderly
10. There were signs for free Palestine, Free Bradely Mannings, Free Dr. Afia Siddiqi, Free Lynne Stewart, anti-Nuke signs carried by Japanese-Americans, and banners against Drone attacks on Pakistan
See photos of the rally here:
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/
See videos of the Muslim speakers here (we are still waiting for Imam Zaid Shakir's video from San Francisco Rally):
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/april-9-ny-rally.php
A New, More United & More Diverse Peace Movement launched on April 9
April 12, 2011
By Abdul Malik Mujahid
http://www.muslimpeacecoalition.org/stop-wars.php
He could barely walk. His could not even stand straight probably because of his age. But he marched for about two miles with ten thousand plus people on April 9, 2011 protesting war and asking for peace. I walked with him. He only paused a few brief moments to sip a little water but not rest. Sam initially did not share his age with me. But at the end of the rally he told me he is 87 years old. The first time he had marched in a rally was in the 60s. I didn’t want to part from his wisdom so I forwent my invitation to lead the rally at the front. I marveled while walking with Sam how committed his generation is to peace; his resilience, determination, and patience are a lesson for all of us who wish to work towards peace and justice. Sam probably did not want to forgo the largest anti-war rally in New York in five years.
It was heartening for me to see the lively gathering of such diverse people coming together for peace, and justice. Although the resilient peaceniks generation was well represented, there was a refreshing presence of younger people as well as African Americans, Latinos and Muslims of diverse backgrounds. This pointed out the fact that the United National Anti-War Committee (UNAC) has come long way from its Albany summit last July where white folks of the sixties were the majority. More than 500 organizations endorsed this rally. Sara Flounders, one of the organizers felt that there were about 15,000 people who attended the rallies. Joe Lambardo, the co-chair of the United National Anti-War Committee said that “The march stretched for over 20 blocks at one point.”
There was another significant rally taking place simultaneously in Time Square in support of Wisconsin labor. If both rallies were put together it might have been 50,000 strong. Unfortunately both rallies were miles apart, both still need to get the message from Wisconsin that war at home and war abroad are connected, money being spent in war is being sucked from social programs, economic programs and the workers unions’ ability to bargain.
Major peace movement leaders like the former Attorney General Ramzi Clark, famous anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, & former Army Colonel Ann Wright who used to work for the state department were the major speakers.
A prominent element of this rally was the extraordinary mobilization of the Muslim Peace Coalition USA. More than a hundred Imams, led by Imam Shamsi Ali, Imam Al-Ameen Abdul Latif, and Imam Dalouer Hossain broke the silence of Muslims by opposing war. Often Muslims are so busy condemning terrorism, almost five times a day that it seems it is a pillar of Islam. Yet Imams are more effective when they have connected war, terror, and islamophobia as the conjoined triplet of evil. I sincerely hope that we will continue to see more of such movements that bring together diverse people in a shared effort to combat the injustices and dangers we as a nation and society face.
Join Our Mailing List!
Muslim Peace Coalition, USA
202-643-JUST
www.MuslimPeaceCoalition.org
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Muslim Peace Coalition USA
The Muslim Peace Coalition USA is a grassroots alliance that has spread to 14 states since its inception. The Coalition's mission is to work closely with the peace movement and civil rights organizations to oppose war, terrorism and Islamophobia.
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