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Johannes Mehserle received two years for the murder of Oscar Grant. He will be released this Sunday, June 12!
RALLY ON THIS SUNDAY JUNE 12th!!!
Mehserle the murderer will be released from jail on Sunday, June 12th. We will meet at the Fruitvale BART station at 3 PM, rally and then march to 14th & Broadway for arrival at approximately 5 PM.
SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!! COME OUT AND HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD! STAND UP FOR THE PEOPLE AND SAY NO TO KILLER COPS!!!!!!
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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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Thurs. June 9, 7pm
2969 Mission St. at 26th, SF (near 24th St. BART)
Film Showing "South of the Border"
& Report Back from Cuba
Join us for a film showing of "South of the Border" following an update by Gloria La Riva. She recently returned from Cuba, where she was awarded the Friendship Medal by the Cuban Council of State. La Riva will discuss the new Cuban economic policies, their impact on the country's economy, and other developments in the struggle for liberation in Latin America.
There's a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn't know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media's misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her late husband and ex-President Nestor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region. (from www.southoftheborderdoc.com) 78min., 2009
$5-10 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Refreshments provided. Wheelchair accessible.
Sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition. Call 415-821-6545 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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6/10 SF Action: STOP NUKES And End The Cover-UP Of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - Close All Nuclear Plants In Japan, US And The World
STOP NUKES And End The Cover-Up Of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Catastrophe
Close All Nuclear Plants In Japan, US And the World
6/10/2011 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Rally Japan Consulate Mission and 50 Fremont St. San Francisco
With March to Bechtel Corporation 50 Beale St. San Francisco
The nuclear melt down and environmental catastrophe in Fushima, Japan
continues unabated. The nuclear workers, the communities and their children in the
Fukushima area continue to be contaminated. The Tokyo Electric Power Company TEPCO
along with the government have withheld information about this disaster to the, workers,people and their families and have changed the regulations protecting people from radioactive dangers.
At the same time, this radioactive leaking and contamination is spreading to the US and
around the world and the California nuclear power plants at San Louis Obispo and San
Onofre have been built right on faults as well. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
has also admitted that they have no plans for a regional environmental catastrophe like
the earthquake in the Sendai/Tohoku area.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/tr/2011/20110512.pdf
This means similar events can happen right here in the US. We will also be demanding
that all US nuclear plants by closed and that there be no US tax dollars used to subsidize the nuclear industry. Funds should be used for solar/clean energy and the building of a public/community controlled energy system along with a mass public transportation system that is energy efficient and not based to support the profit of these industries.
Today even in California for example in Fresno, efforts are still being made to build nuclear plants:
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/03/15/2311653/madera-co-oks-nuclear-support.html#storylink=mirelated
The US government in collaboration with GE, Westinghouse, Babcock-Wilcox, Bechtel and other corporations are pushing nuclear power plants and industry for profits despite the deadly dangers for humanity. It is time to call a halt to this nightmare.
Join with us to call for action to close these plants now.
NO NUKE Action Committee
http://nonuclearaction.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=218843821468487
For information or to endorse phone
(917)774-4079 or (415)867-0628
Endorsed by United Public Workers For Action UPWA, Veterans For Peace, Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, Labor Video Project
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Stop Coal Companies From Erasing Labor Union History
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-coal-companies-from-erasing-labor-union-history
In just a few hours, this petition has gained more than 17,000 signatures.
Here's some text from the petition page:
OVERVIEW
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed conflict on American soil since the Civil War and the largest labor confrontation ever. It erupted when more than 10,000 West Virginia coal miners confronted an industry-backed army for a week in 1921. The miners were fighting to gain collective bargaining rights, to escape the domination of coal operators, and for the basic right to live and work in decent, safe conditions.
The history of Blair Mountain is that of all Americans.
The coal miners who worked and struggled during the West Virginia Mine Wars formed a rock-hard union solidarity that diffused to the rest of the nation through the Appalachian outmigration that has occurred from the 1930s until today. They went to steel foundries in Pittsburgh, the car factories in Detroit, and the mills in Ohio. They carried with them the memory and heritage of the labor struggles in central Appalachia, and they were a major force in building the labor unions that in themselves helped build the prosperous middle class of the 20th century.
Blair Mountain stands at the heart of American prosperity, and the coal miners who fought and died there did so for the basic freedom of living and working in decent, safe conditions.
But most people have never heard of Blair Mountain. That's because West Virginia has, for years, resisted preserving or commemorating the site. Nowadays, major coal companies Arch Coal and Massey Energy (the one responsible for the deadly explosion last April) own a lot of the land and hold permits to blast away the landscape for the most devastating of all coal mining practices: Mountaintop removal mining. They literally want to erase history here.
This can be stopped. If only the National Register of Historic Places would list the site, then its preservation would be required. Except that federal official ultimately turned down a listing this year -- amid objections of 57 "landowners" filed by the state. According to activists, however, this list is flawed and some of these people are even dead. And, already, Friends of Blair Mountain has documented the disturbance of five locations on the 1,700 acre site.
Tell Interior Department officials and the state of West Virginia to save the site of the Battle of Blair Mountain without delay. It's time to stop the destruction of West Virginia and preserve this one small example of rebellion from the grip of Big Coal.
P.S. From June 4th-11th, supporters will unite for a weeklong solidarity march on Blair Mountain.The March on Blair Mountain is a peaceful, unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. The march commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. It will start in Charleston, West Virginia and end 50 miles later with a rally at Blair Mountain. Please consider attending if you can!
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best wishes,
richard myers
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Next UNAC general meeting is Sunday, June 12, 2:00 PM at Redstone Bldg., 16th Street and Capp. (Capp Street is one block or so below Mission Street.) Third Floor Conference Room, San Francisco. MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!
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Defend Carlos Montes! Drop the Charges Now!
RESIST GOVERNMENT ATTACKS AGAINST ACTIVISTS
On May 17, 2011 at 5:00 AM the SWAT Team of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and members of the FBI raided the home of Carlos Montes, a long time Chicano activist and active member of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Carlos has his first court date scheduled for June 16 in Los Angeles.
BAY AREA SOLIDARITY RALLY: Stop FBI Attacks on Political Activists
Thursday June 16, 4-6pm
OAKLAND FEDERAL BUILDING
1301 Clay Street, Oakland
Downtown Oakland near 12th Street BART
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Arab Resource and Organizing Center, 415.861.7444 or info@araborganizing.org
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Save the Date!
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country -- from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
In state capitals, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back. But if we're going to be successful in pushing back the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services and education, we need to build unity within our movement, including forging stronger ties with labor's allies: communities of color, students and youth, single-payer advocates, environmentalists, antiwar activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive forces.
Relying on politicians to defend us -- the so-called "friends of labor" -- has proven to be disastrous. During the past three decades, working people have suffered a dramatic decline in their standard of living while the rich have amassed an unprecedented amount of wealth at the top, regardless of which of the major parties was running the government. We have had every combination imaginable: Republicans occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, Democrats occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, or some kind of "divided government." But in each case the result for working people has been the same: conditions got worse for workers while the corporations prospered even more. Why should we continue this vicious cycle?
The working class has the power to put an end to this situation. And as the debate over the debt and the deficit intensifies, the need has never been greater for an organized campaign to demand "No Cuts, No Concessions!" whether in regard to social programs or workers' wages and benefits. We say place the burden for solving the financial crises squarely where it belongs: on the rich. They caused the crisis, let them pay for it!
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was initiated earlier this year at a historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 at Kent State University in Ohio for a national labor-community conference to spur the campaign to build a more militant fight-back movement and to launch a national campaign for an alternative agenda for working people. Together we can move forward on both fronts.
This conference is open to all who agree with its purpose, as explained in this Call. To register for the conference, please go to our website at www.laborfightback.org. If you prefer to register offline, write emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715 for a registration form.
For more information, e-mail emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715.
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Cultures of Resistance
Thursday June 30 -- 7pm, Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, 1/2 block from downtown Berkeley
The Middle East Children's Alliance & the Arab Film Festival present the Berkeley premiere of bay area filmmaker & activist Iara Lee's new feature film Cultures of Resistance.
The film won Best Documentary at the Tiburon International Film Festival and is showing around the globe, from Portugal to China to Ethiopia. Journeying through five continents, it captures creative change-makers using art and activism to turn our upside-down world right-side-up, for peace with justice. Their personal stories and strategies, told in many tongues, broaden our understanding of the geopolitical fault-lines behind modern day conflicts -- inspiring audiences to further engagement and action. Filmmaker Iara Lee will introduce the film and answer questions afterwards.
Tickets $10 general, $8 students. Benefit for clean water for children in Gaza. No one turned away for lack of funds. Wheelchair accessible.
For info: 510-548-0542, www.mecaforpeace.org, events@mecaforpeace.org
Cosponsored by: Global Studies Department/Berkeley City College and more!
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Cuba Caravan Send Off Party!!
-come help send the Cuba Caravan to Cuba
Saturday, July 9, 2011
4pm- snacks and music
5pm- program
6pm- Tamale dinner and more music
Eastside Arts Alliance,C
2277 International, Oakland ( AC #1 or 1R )
Donation requested to help support the Caravan (no one turned away)
Video- "People to People" about the Caravan
Speakers- Including Graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba
Come learn about the Caravan and help send it to Cuba.
For More Info: baypeace@baypeace.org 510-863-1737
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Physicians for a National Health Program California is having our 2nd annual California Single-Payer Health Care Summer Conference at USC's Tutor Campus Center Ballroom on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 from 9am - 5pm.
Summer Conference 2011 is designed to teach attendees about just, guaranteed, comprehensive health care for ALL who live in California. We are gearing this conference toward professionals working in health, policy, advocacy, education, and organizing arenas.
This year's conference will feature Dr. Carmen Rita Nevarez, Immediate Past President, American Public Health Association as our keynote speaker, plus three Leadership Institutes that will help you develop your skills to build the movement through public speaking, coalition building or grassroots advocacy.
Ticket prices are on a sliding scale, and people who are "new to the movement" receive a discount.
For more information and to register, go to healthisahumanright.eventbrite.com. Please also download our flyer here. Please help us spread the word!
If your organization would like to sponsor this event, you can download our sponsorship form here.
Hope you can join us this summer in Los Angeles. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Thanks,
Molly Tavella, MPH
Shearer Student Fellow
Physicians for a National Health Program California
2344 6th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 665-8523 office
(408) 892-1255 mobile
(510) 665-6027 fax
molly@pnhpcalifornia.org
www.cahpsa.org
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Protest, March & Die-In on 10th Anniversary of Afghanistan War
Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, 4:30-6:30pm
New Federal Building, 7th & Mission Sts, SF
End All the Wars & Occupations-Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Haiti . . .
Money for Jobs, Healthcare & Schools-Not for the Pentagon
Friday, October 7, 2011 will be the exact 10th anniversary of the U.S./NATO war on the people of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani people have been killed, wounded and displaced, and thousands of U.S. and NATO forces killed and wounded. The war costs more than $126 billion per year at a time when social programs are being slashed.
The true and brutal character of the U.S. strategy to "win hearts and minds" of the Afghani population was described by a Marine officer, quoted in a recent ANSWER Coalition statement:
"You can't just convince them [Afghani people] through projects and goodwill," another Marine officer said. "You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That's how you start convincing them." (To read the entire ANSWER statement, click here)
Mark your calendar now and help organize for the October 7 march and die-in in downtown San Francisco. There are several things you can do:
1. Reply to this email to endorse the protest and die-in.
2. Spread the word and help organize in your community, union, workplace and campus.
3. Make a donation to help with organizing expenses.
Only the people can stop the war!
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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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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Detained for photography in Baltimore Parts 1 and 2:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iMr76atjUA
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JOFwbiI8fQ
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Arrested for Filming Police in MD?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ew29IFVHw&NR=1
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Woman 'detained' for filming police search launches high court challenge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2MtGCp5scM&NR=1
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Adam Kokesh body slammed, choked, police brutality at Jefferson Memorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUU3yCy3uI&feature=player_embedded#at=575
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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Just Released! ANONYMOUS declares war on the system! JOIN THE RESISTANCE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET4Ki5Tr_CQ&feature=player_embedded
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Andy Griffith Vs the Patriot Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZF_oZEvybw
[You gotta watch this...bw]
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THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
ustogaza1's Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/ustogaza1
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS
http://fairewinds.com/updates
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) held a special ACRS meeting Thursday May 26, 2011 on the current status of Fukushima. Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak for 5 minutes concerning the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident as it pertains to the 23 Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR's) in the US and containment integrity. Mr. Gundersen was the first engineer to brief the NRC on the implication of Main Steam Isolation Valve (MSIV) Leakage in 1974, and he has been studying containment integrity since 1972. The NRC has constantly maintained in all of its calculations and reviews that there is zero probability of a containment leaking. For more than six years, in testimony and in correspondence with the NRC, Mr. Gundersen has disputed the NRC's stand that containment systems simply do not and cannot leak. The events at Fukushima have proven that Gundersen was correct. The explosions at Fukushima show that Mark 1 containments will lose their integrity and release huge amounts of radiation, as Mr. Gundersen has been telling the NRC for many years.
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Guy on wheelchair taken down by officers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdkJxw1mPoM
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The Last Mountain': Appalachia vs. Big Coal
Janet Donovan
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/60-60/6063-qthe-last-mountainq
Actor Woody Harrelson was a surprise guest at D.C. premiere of "The Last Mountain" at E Street Cinema, also attended by Sens. Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Boxer, Director Bill Haney, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. who speaks out on West Virginia's struggle.
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RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0&feature=player_embedded
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Paradise Gray Speaks At Jordan Miles Emergency Rally 05/06/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOLz1EYDYE&feature=player_embedded
Police Reassigned While CAPA Student's Beatdown Investigated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-6IsP3dUg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Pittsburgh Student Claims Police Brutality; Shows Hospital Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j_AVsTXZc&feature=relmfu
Justice For Jordan Miles
By jasiri x
http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Even though Pittsburgh Police beat Jordan Miles until he looked like this: (Photo at website)
And even though Jordan Miles, an honor student who plays the viola, broke no laws and committed no crimes, the Federal Government decided not to prosecute the 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers who savagely beat him.
To add insult to injury, Pittsburgh's Mayor and Police Chief immediately reinstated the 3 officers without so much as a apology. An outraged Pittsburgh community called for an emergency protest to pressure the local District Attorney to prosecute these officers to the fullest extent of the law.
Below is my good friend, and fellow One Hood founding member Paradise Gray (also a founding member of the Blackwatch Movement and the legendary rap group X-Clan) passionately demanding Justice for Jordan Miles and speaking on the futility of a war of terror overseas while black men are terrorized in their own neighborhoods.
For more information on how you can help get Justice For Jordan Miles go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
http://vimeo.com/22706805
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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New Video - Lupe Fiasco ft. Skylar Grey - 'Words I Never Said'
Thu, Apr 28 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0
Lupe Fiasco addresses some heavy issues in the latest video for his new single, 'Words I Never Said,' featuring Skylar Grey. In the 5 minute and 45 second dose of reality, Lupe tackles issues such as the war on terrorism, devastation, conspiracy theories, 9/11 and genocide. From the opening lyrics of "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh*t", Lupe doesn't hold back as he voices his socio-political concerns.
"If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of what the f-ks'
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homie that's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say s-t
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful."
Skylar Grey (who also lends her vocals to Dirty money's 'Coming Home' and Eminem's 'I Need A Doctor') does an excellent job of complementing the Alex Da Kid produced track.
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BREAKING ALERT: Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E.: Miss. Medical Examiner Dr. Adel Shaker On Frederick Carter Hanging (4/19/2011)
http://blip.tv/file/5057532
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environmet would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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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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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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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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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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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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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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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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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
Tell US Attorney Fitzgerald, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, DOJ Inspector General Fine, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders, U.N. Secy Gen Ban, and members of the media to STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Petition Text:
To: U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, President Barack Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,
cc: Vice President Biden, DOJ Inspector General Fine, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, U.N. Secy Gen Ban, and members of the media
** Drop All Charges against Carlos Montes, and immediately return all of his property!
** Stop the attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movements!
** Call Off the Chicago Grand Jury and Stop the Expanding Witchhunt against Anti-war and International Solidarity Activists!
** Hands Off Palestine Solidarity Activists!
** Throw Out the reactiviated subpoenas against Tracy Molm, Ann Pham and Sarah Martin in Minneapolis, and ALL of the 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of homes of anti-war and international solidarity activists.
**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.
I am writing to oppose the continuation and expansion of the FBI campaign of harassment of immigrant rights, anti-war and Palestine and other International Solidarity Activists, including the raid on the home of Carlos Montes and his arrest and the confiscation of his property, the 9 added subpoenas in the Chicago area, and reactivation of 3 of the original 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of anti-war and international solidarity activists' homes.
These activists are guilty of no crime but opposition to U.S. foreign policy. On Friday, September 24, 2010 the FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis. The FBI served subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to 13 activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California, Wisconsin and North Carolina. This is not the action of a lone prosecutor. The raids were coordinated nationally, spanned several cities, and many other activists have been visited and personally threatened by the FBI.
The FBI confiscated computers, email and mailing lists, cell phones , cameras, videos, books, and passports. This is a dangerous attack on the constitutional rights of free speech of every social justice, antiwar and human rights activist and organization in the U.S. today. The right to speak, meet and write opinions is guaranteed under the constitution.
This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. Grand Jury subpoenas investigating material support of terrorism are being used to silence highly respected and well known human rights activists. This is a dangerous national effort to shut down growing opposition to U.S. wars. It cannot be allowed.
The FBI and the Grand Jury are threatening courageous individuals who have written and spoken publicly to broaden understanding of social justice issues of war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
The FBI and the U.S. government must end this campaign of intimidation against anti-war and international solidarity activists. I am outraged at this disrespect of democratic rights. I ask that you intervene immediately to:
**Stop the Grand Jury Witchhunt!
**Stop the expanded repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.
**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.
Sincerely,
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter in the form above)
You can also call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov demanding an end to the FBI raids, return of all confiscated materials and an end to the Grand Jury witchhunt. Fitzgerald is in charge of the Northern District of Illinois and responsible for the FBI raids and Grand Jury investigation.
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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U.S. Attorney Escalates Attacks on Civil Liberties of Anti-War,
Palestinian Human Rights Activists
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald first thing Monday morning! (contact info at bottom of this email)
On Friday, May 6, the U.S. government froze the bank accounts of Hatem Abudayyeh and his wife, Naima. This unwarranted attack on a leading member of the Palestinian community in Chicago is the latest escalation of the repression of anti-war and Palestinian community organizers by the FBI, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Hatem Abudayyeh is one of 23 activists from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Chicago, and his home was raided by the FBI in September of last year. Neither Hatem Abudayyeh nor Naima Abudayyeh have been charged with any crime.
One of the bank accounts frozen was exclusively in Naima Abudayyeh's name. Leaders of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, as well as Chicago's Coalition to Protect People's Rights are appalled at the government's attempt to restrict the family's access to its finances, especially so soon before Mothers' Day. Not only does the government's action seriously disrupt the lives of the Abudayyehs and their five-year-old daughter, but it represents an attack on Chicago's Arab community and activist community and the fundamental rights of Americans to freedom of speech.
The persecution of the Abudayyeh family is another example of the criminalization of Palestinians, their supporters, and their movement for justice and liberation. There has been widespread criticism of the FBI and local law enforcement for their racial profiling and scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. These repressive tactics include infiltration of community centers and mosques, entrapment of young men, and the prominent case of 11 students from the University of California campuses at Irvine and Riverside who have been subpoenaed to a grand jury and persecuted for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US. The government's attempt to conflate the anti-war and human rights movements with terrorism is a cynical attempt to capitalize on the current political climate in order to silence Palestinians and other people of conscience who exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner which does not conform to the administration's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.
The issuance of subpoenas against the 23 activists has been met with widespread opposition and criticism across the country. Six members of the U.S. Congress, including five in the past month, have sent letters to either Holder or President Obama, expressing grave concern for the violations of the civil liberties and rights of the 23 activists whose freedom is on the line. Three additional U.S. representatives have also promised letters, as thousands of constituents and other people of conscience across the U.S. have demanded an end to this assault on legitimate political activism and dissent. Over 60 Minnesota state legislators also issued a resolution condemning the subpoenas.
The Midwest activists have been expecting indictments for some time. The freezing of the Abudayyeh family's bank accounts suggests that the danger of indictments is imminent.
Take action:
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Then dial 0 (zero) for the operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
Demand Fitzgerald
-- Unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family and
-- Stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
In solidarity,
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression and
The Coalition to Protect People's Rights
For more info go to StopFBI.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Abolish the Death Penalty Blog
http://www.ncadp.org/blog.cfm?postID=165
Abolish the Death Penalty is a blog dedicated to...well, you know. The purpose of Abolish is to tell the personal stories of crime victims and their loved ones, people on death row and their loved ones and those activists who are working toward abolition. You may, from time to time, see news articles or press releases here, but that is not the primary mission of Abolish the Death Penalty. Our mission is to put a human face on the debate over capital punishment.
You can also follow death penalty news by reading our News page and by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
1 Million Tweets for Troy! April 12, 2011
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
The state of Georgia is seeking to change the drugs they use to carry out executions so they can resume scheduling execution dates, including that of Troy Davis, a man with a strong claim of innocence. Doubts in the case persist, including the fact that no physical evidence links him to the murder, most of the witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony and newer testimony implicates a different person (including an eyewitness account).
The Davis case has already generated hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters in support of clemency, including from leaders such as the Pope, Jimmy Carter and former FBI chief Bill Sessions. We need to continue to amass petitions in support of clemency, demonstrating the widespread concern about this case and what it represents.
Please help us send a message to Georgia officials that they can do the right thing - they can intervene as the final failsafe by commuting Davis' sentence. Please help us generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis!
Share this tweet alert with your friends and family that care about justice and life as soon as you can.
More information about the case is available at www.justicefortroy.org
Here are some sample tweets:
When in doubt, don't execute!! Sign the petition for #TroyDavis! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Too much doubt! Stop the execution! #TroyDavis needs us! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No room for doubt! Stop the execution of #TroyDavis . Retweet, sign petition www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Case not "ironclad", yet Georgiacould execute #TroyDavis ! Not on our watch! Petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No murder weapon. No physical evidence. Stop the execution! #TroyDavis petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recanted. No physical evidence. Stop the execution of Troy Davis www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition #TroyDavis
Thanks!
Exonerated Death Row Survivors Urge Georgia to:
Stop the Execution of Troy Davis
Chairman James E. Donald
Georgia State Board of Pardons & Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, GA 30334
May 1, 2011
Dear Chairperson Donald and Members of the Board:
We, the undersigned, are alive today because some individual or small group of individuals decided that our insistent and persistent proclamations of innocence warranted one more look before we were sent to our death by execution. We are among the 138 individuals who have been legally exonerated and released from death rows in the United States since 1973. We are alive because a few thoughtful persons-attorneys, journalists, judges, jurists, etc.-had lingering doubts about our cases that caused them to say "stop" at a critical moment and halt the march to the execution chamber. When our innocence was ultimately revealed, when our lives were saved, and when our freedom was won, we thanked God and those individuals of conscience who took actions that allowed the truth to eventually come to light.
We are America's exonerated death row survivors. We are living proof that a system operated by human beings is capable of making an irreversible mistake. And while we have had our wrongful convictions overturned and have been freed from death row, we know that we are extremely fortunate to have been able to establish our innocence. We also know that many innocent people who have been executed or who face execution have not been so fortunate. Not all those with innocence claims have had access to the kinds of physical evidence, like DNA, that our courts accept as most reliable. However, we strongly believe that the examples of our cases are reason enough for those with power over life and death to choose life. We also believe that those in authority have a unique moral consideration when encountering individuals with cases where doubt still lingers about innocence or guilt.
One such case is the case of Troy Anthony Davis, whose 1991 conviction for killing Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail rested almost solely on witness testimony. We know that today, 20 years later, witness evidence is considered much less reliable than it was then. This has meant that, even though most of the witnesses who testified against him have now recanted, Troy Davis has been unable to convince the courts to overturn his conviction, or even his death sentence.
Troy Davis has been able to raise serious doubts about his guilt, however. Several witnesses testified at the evidentiary hearing last summer that they had been coerced by police into making false statements against Troy Davis. This courtroom testimony reinforced previous statements in sworn affidavits. Also at this hearing, one witness testified for the first time that he saw an alternative suspect, and not Troy Davis, commit the crime. We don't know if Troy Davis is in fact innocent, but, as people who were wrongfully sentenced to death (and in some cases scheduled for execution), we believe it is vitally important that no execution go forward when there are doubts about guilt. It is absolutely essential to ensuring that the innocent are not executed.
When you issued a temporary stay for Troy Davis in 2007, you stated that the Board "will not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused." This standard is a welcome development, and we urge you to apply it again now. Doubts persist in the case of Troy Davis, and commuting his sentence will reassure the people of Georgia that you will never permit an innocent person to be put to death in their name.
Freddie Lee Pitts, an exonerated death row survivor who faced execution by the state of Florida for a crime he didn't commit, once said, "You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can't release him from the grave."
Thank you for considering our request.
Respectfully,
Kirk Bloodsworth, Exonerated and freed from death row Maryland; Clarence Brandley, Exonerated and freed from death row in Texas; Dan Bright, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Albert Burrell, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Perry Cobb, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Gary Drinkard, Exonerated and freed from death row in Alabama; Nathson Fields, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Gary Gauger, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Michael Graham, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Shujaa Graham, Exonerated and freed from death row in California; Paul House, Exonerated and freed from death row in Tennessee; Derrick Jamison, Exonerated and freed from death row in Ohio; Dale Johnston, Exonerated and freed from death row in Ohio; Ron Keine, Exonerated and freed from death row in New Mexico; Ron Kitchen, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Ray Krone, Exonerated and freed from death row in Arizona; Herman Lindsey, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Juan Melendez, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Randal Padgett, Exonerated and freed from death row in Alabama; Freddie Lee Pitts, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Randy Steidl, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; John Thompson, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Delbert Tibbs, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; David Keaton, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Greg Wilhoit, Exonerated and freed from death row in Oklahoma; Harold Wilson, Exonerated and freed from death row in Pennsylvania.
-Witness to Innocence, May 11, 2011
http://www.witnesstoinnocence.com/view_news.php?Exonerated-Death-Row-Survivors-Urge-George-to-Stop-the-Execution-of-Troy-Davis-181
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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/
Bulletin from the cause: Bradley Manning Support Network
Go to Cause
Posted By: Tom Baxter
To: Members in Bradley Manning Support Network
A Good Address for Bradley!!!
We have a good address for Bradley,
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
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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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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she 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.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also 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 !)
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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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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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
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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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) Police war on videographers filming police brutality
To Protect and To Serve
by digby
Hullabaloo
June 05, 2011
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
2) Nurses Open Letter to Wisconsinites - Carry on!
Peaceful Protests are Important Tools to Protect our patients and our community
By Jean Ross, RN and Co-President for National Nurses United
June 7, 2011
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/entry/nurses-open-letter-to-wisconsinites-carry-on/
3) NATO Warplanes Pound Tripoli in Daylight Attack
By JOHN F. BURNS
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/world/africa/08tripoli.html?hp
4) An Awakening That Keeps Them Up All Night
By SUZANNE DALEY
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/world/europe/07spain.html
5) Radiation Understated After Quake, Japan Says
By HIROKO TABUCHI
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/world/asia/07japan.html?ref=world
6) Radiation's Unknowns Weigh on Japan
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/business/energy-environment/07radiation.html?ref=business
7) Oil Sands Project in Canada Will Go On if Pipeline Is Blocked
By IAN AUSTEN
"Environmentalists are using the project as a proxy for their general antagonism toward oil sands production, which consumes large amounts of water and energy and can be destructive to the boreal forest that sits on top of the tarry rock from which the oil is extracted. 'This is really a campaign against tar sands expansion rather than a single pipeline,' said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, the director of the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is a leading American critic of the process."
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/business/energy-environment/07pipeline.html?ref=business
8) Government to Sell £10 Billion of Public Land to Developers
By REUTERS
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/06/07/business/business-us-public-land-housing.html?src=busln
9) Corporate Media's Capital Crimes Against Libya-and Humanity
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
June 8, 2011
http://blackagendareport.com/content/corporate-media%E2%80%99s-capital-crimes-against-libya-%E2%80%93-and-humanity
10) Japan to report nuclear 'melt-throughs' to UN
AFP
June 7, 2011
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Japan+report+nuclear+melt+throughs/4905646/story.html
11) Resistance Grows
New York Times Editorial
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08wed1.html?hp
12) Drone Strikes Kill 20 in Pakistan, Reports Say
[I wonder just who ISN'T a "suspected militant" in Pakistan?...bw]
By SALMAN MASOOD
June 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09pakistan.html?hp
13) Don't Believe Scare Stories about Cyber War
By John Horgan
Friday, June 3, 2011
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=dont-believe-scare-stories-about-cy-2011-06-03&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110608
14) Capitalism, Energy Production and the Environment
An introduction to a Socialist Viewpoint discussion
By Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_01.html
15) Democracy or Tyranny?
By Bonnie Weinstein
May/June 2011
Socialist Viewpoint
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_05.html
16) Twenty-five to Life, What Does it Mean to Me?
By Herman Bell
May/June 2011
Socialist Viewpoint
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_43.html
17) S.W.A.T. Team Breaks Down Doors Looking For Student Loan Defaulters
By Sarah Jaffe, 358
Posted on June 8, 2011, Printed on June 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/609535/s.w.a.t._team_breaks_down_doors_looking_for_student_loan_defaulters
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1) Police war on videographers filming police brutality
To Protect and To Serve
by digby
Hullabaloo
June 05, 2011
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
The government's war on videographers is getting worse.
In Miami a bystander filmed police firing a hail of
bullets into a car and the cops went after him, smashed
his phone, threw him to the ground and took him to a
command center and photographed him.
Unfortunately for them:
But what they didn't know was that Narces Benoit had
removed the SIM card and hid it in his mouth, which
means the video survived.
Benoit showed the video to Miami Herald reporters on
Thursday, who described it in their article.
The three-minute video captured on Narces Benoit's
HTC EVO phone begins as officers crowd around the
east side of Herisse's car with guns drawn. Roughly
15 seconds into the video, officers open fire.
Benoit filmed the incident from the sidewalk on the
northeast corner of 13th Street and Collins Avenue,
close enough to see some officers' faces and
individual muzzle flashes.
Shortly after the gunfire ends, an officer points at
Benoit and police can be heard yelling for him to
turn off the camera. The voices are muffled at
times. The 35-year-old car stereo technician drops
his hand with the camera and hurries back to his
Ford Expedition parked further east on 13th Street.
The video shows Benoit get into the car, where his
girlfriend, Ericka Davis, sat in the driver's seat.
He raises his camera and an officer is seen
appearing on the driver's side with his gun drawn,
pointed at them.
The video ends as more officers are heard yelling
expletives, telling the couple to turn the video off
and get out of the car.
"They put guns to our heads and threw us on the
ground," Davis said.
Apparently it was quite a melee with bullets flying
everywhere and four bystanders wounded in the crossfire.
I have no idea if the police did anything wrong in the
incident, but their immediate action to destroy video
doesn't exactly reassure one that everything is on the
up and up. Why would that be their first instinct?
I've written before about the laws being proposed
throughout the country that make it illegal to film the
police in the line of duty (to protect their privacy,
don't you know) but they haven't made much headway. I
guess some police officers have just decided to destroy
the evidence on the spot.
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2) Nurses Open Letter to Wisconsinites - Carry on!
Peaceful Protests are Important Tools to Protect our patients and our community
By Jean Ross, RN and Co-President for National Nurses United
June 7, 2011
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/entry/nurses-open-letter-to-wisconsinites-carry-on/
The fight in Wisconsin continues to be an on-going an inspiration to the entire nation. As a registered nurse for 37 years, I have been part of a proud tradition of protest as well. My number one priority, as it is for all nurses, is to advocate for my patients. This is a daily struggle we must wage against corporate insurance and hospitals that care more about the bottom line than patient care. As nurses we fight every day for our patients -- by marching on our administrators, disrupting our halls of government, and protesting in the streets.
Our victories benefit our patients and our communities. In just the last week NNU nurses around the country have waged fights and won improved standards for patients and gains for nurses at two large public university hospital systems in Chicago and California. These victories came after long fights by nurses to defend their patients and themselves, in the public sector where many workers have been wrongly forced to accept concessions. Nurses won when we waged a long fight in California for the first safe staffing legislation in the country. And when then Governor Schwarzenegger tried to stop it in the courts, we fought back by shaming him at every public event he went to around the country. We won, protecting patient safe staffing levels and setting a standard for the nation.
Democracy goes far beyond voting and recalls. In order to protect and preserve our rights under a democracy we have an obligation to stand against injustice, to hold those we elect accountable to protect the public good.
In Wisconsin, Scott Walker and other corporate-backed Republicans tricked the public by saying nothing about their "Reverse Robbin' Hood" agenda during their campaign -- unleashing their attacks only after Walker was safely in office. This budget is not for the public good, and it's not about the deficit. It's about taking from the most vulnerable; seniors, students, disabled, farmers, and the poor, and giving to corporations and the rich, and increasing spending to make that happen.
This all out assault on Wisconsin's values goes so far as to consolidate this governor intent to sell off our public utilities for corporate gain, with no protections on future rate increases for consumers. Why not instead raise $2 billion dollars by closing corporate tax loopholes and ensuring banks that caused the crisis pay their bills. When we see policies that are morally bankrupt, we must speak out and take action.
Protest to stop this budget is happening right now, in the hearing rooms and outside the capitol, following in the footsteps of the Wisconsin farmer's 1933 statewide milk strike for fair prices, the Madison Teachers' 1976 strike forcing the state to adopt binding arbitration, and the 1999 five-day sit-in by students at UW-Madison to adopt anti-sweatshop policies. Our rich history shows we win through organized resistance and it is a roadmap for us today. We continued to build that history and a movement for social justice when we refused to leave the capitol and continue to protest the budget.
While the corporate interests that oppose us have deep pockets, we are the people and there's more of us than them. If we stand for our community and the public good, we will build this movement to win today and for years to come. Join us to stop this morally bankrupt budget and fight for a contract for Main Street NOT Wall Street.
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Jean Ross, RN, is a Co-President for National Nurses United. With 170,000 RNs in every state, (including more than 2,000 in WI,) NNU is the largest union and professional association for RNs in U.S. history.
With the erosion of living standards for many, and new attacks almost daily from Wall Street-funded politicians, all Americans need a new contract, a binding relationship for their security, for their families, and for future generations. To achieve these goals, NNU has launched a Main Street Campaign for the American People. For more information:
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/mainstreet
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3) NATO Warplanes Pound Tripoli in Daylight Attack
By JOHN F. BURNS
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/world/africa/08tripoli.html?hp
TRIPOLI, Libya - In a sudden, sharp escalation of NATO's air campaign over Libya, warplanes dropped more than 50 bombs on targets in Tripoli on Tuesday, obliterating large areas of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya command compound.
In response, Colonel Qaddafi posted an audio recording on Libyan state television vowing never to surrender or accept defeat. "We welcome death," he said. "Martyrdom is a million times better."
The unusual daylight raids, the most intense on the Libyan capital since the aerial campaign started more than 11 weeks ago, began in mid-morning and continued until dusk. What appeared to be bunker-busting bombs laid waste to an area of about two acres in one corner of the compound, destroying six or seven major buildings and leaving a twisted, smoking mass of steel and concrete.
Libyan officials said 10 to 15 people lay buried in the ruins of one building alone, though the only casualty seen by Western reporters who were bused to the scene was a man who was pulled from the rubble while they were there, identified by officials as a cleaner.
In the absence of any visible rescue operations, the man's body had been spotted by an American television crew, then laid out beneath a green sheet on a rubble-strewn roadway while an ambulance was summoned. Officials said the extent of the devastation made it impossible for the heavy machinery needed to search for bodies to reach the area.
In a city grown accustomed to the NATO raids, the attacks caused a heightened level of alarm, partly because they began so early in the day, when this capital of 2.5-million people was busy with its weekday routines. Most of the nearly 4,000 strike sorties flown by NATO since the air war began in March have been carried out deep into the night, partly, NATO officials have said, to minimize the risk of civilian casualties. But Tuesday's daylight raids emptied much of the city of traffic, with stores in large areas of the city shuttered and the few people out hurrying to complete their business and find shelter.
Colonel Qaddafi's government has become increasingly isolated as the conflict has dragged on, hindered by growing numbers of high-level defections and evidence that support for him even among residents of Tripoli, his stronghold, has become fractured. On Tuesday, Libya's labor minister, Al-Amin Manfur, added his name to the growing exodus, declaring at a meeting in Geneva of the International Labor Organization that he was now supporting the rebel government, the National Transitional Council, Agence France-Presse reported.
At a joint news conference with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, President Obama said the Qaddafi government was starting to collapse under the pressure of NATO airstrikes. "What you are seeing across the country is an inexorable trend of the regime forces being pushed back, being incapacitated," he said. "I think it is just a matter of time before Qaddafi goes."
Among the buildings ruined in Tuesday's attacks was a grand reception house and accompanying V.I.P. guesthouse where the South African president, Jacob Zuma, had been received in early April on a brief diplomatic mission on behalf of the African Union. But that attempt proved fruitless, as did a second effort a week ago, because Colonel Qaddafi rejected any deal under which he would leave the country. The NATO attacks have been increasing in frequency since the second peace plan foundered.
Up until Tuesday, most NATO aerial attacks on Tripoli have been carried out during the night hours. NATO officials had been saying they would be increasing the pace and intensity of the attacks on targets linked to Colonel Qaddafi and his military forces as part of an effort to oust him from power and stop his forces from attacking civilians who have joined the organized revolt against him.
The special envoy to Africa for the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, arrived in the rebel capital, Benghazi, on Tuesday with a similar mission, Reuters reported. The envoy, Mikhail Margelov, said he would try to establish a dialogue between Libya's warring factions, but it seemed likely that his effort would founder on the same diplomatic shoals as Mr. Zuma's.
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4) An Awakening That Keeps Them Up All Night
By SUZANNE DALEY
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/world/europe/07spain.html
MADRID - As daylight faded, a cluster of young protesters sat in a circle discussing whether to support a new tax on financial transactions.
They had gathered most evenings this week, hoping to turn two weeks of demonstrations that have filled city squares across this country and taken the political establishment by surprise, into something more lasting - a set of demands.
"We need change in this country," said Ruth Martínez, a member of the group who has been unemployed for nearly three years.
Until recently, young people in Spain were dismissed as an apathetic generation, uninterested in party politics. But the outpouring of young people who have taken to the streets since May 15 - at one point about 28,000 protesters spent the night in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square - has changed all that, forcing the country to take heed and reconsider.
The recession that has ravaged Spain, along with much of southern Europe, has had an especially hard impact on the young, with unemployment rates soaring to more than 40 percent for 20- to 24-year-olds, about twice the national average and the highest in the European Union. Many of them see limited hope of improvement unless they reshuffle the political deck and demand a new approach to creating jobs.
"Suddenly people are talking about politics everywhere," said María Luz Morán, a sociologist at the Complutense University of Madrid. "You go to have coffee or you are standing in the subway and you hear conversations about politics. It's been years since I heard anyone talking about politics."
Even young people who have jobs here are often caught in a system of poorly paid, temporary contracts. The contracts were once designed to help them break into the labor force, but they have served instead to put adulthood out of reach for many. Ms. Moran said that one survey showed that about 50 percent of 30-year-olds in Spain were still living with their parents.
"We call 32- and 35-year-olds young people in Spain, because they are forced to live like children," she said. "Thirty-year-olds should have their own homes."
Few experts are willing to say what the protesters might achieve. But already issues that were discussed only at the margins are being taken more seriously. One major conservative daily newspaper, ABC, polled constitutional experts this week about what it would take to change the election laws, one of the principal demands of the demonstrators, who say the current system heavily favors the country's two leading political parties.
"They have already had an impact," said Rafael Díaz-Salazar, another sociologist at Complutense, who believes that the protesters may represent about two million voters. "They are forcing people to take a look at this impoverished generation. There will have to talk about precarious work contracts and housing in the next election. They cannot avoid it anymore."
Experts say that there are two broad categories of unemployed and underemployed young people in Spain. At one end of the spectrum are relatively uneducated young people who left school in the past decade when the country's economy was booming and they could easily find work in the construction industry. Now those jobs have disappeared and are unlikely to come back.
At the other end are workers who have one or more university degrees, who cannot find work either, or who get hired on six-month contracts at low wages, often in menial jobs that have nothing to do with what they were trained for.
Lidia Posada García, 26, is one of them. She is active in ¡Democracia REAL Ya!, a group that helped rally protestors through the Internet. A lawyer, she is one of the few in her circle of friends who has a job. But she says she is paid as if she is doing administrative work.
"We all live at home," she said. "We are the most prepared, qualified generation. But there is not much for us."
One of the catchiest slogans to emerge from the protests is "no jobs, no houses, no pension, no fear."
Many of the protesters were so excited by the turnout on May 15 that they decided to pitch their tents and stay on. By May 21, the day before regional and local elections, there were thousands more protesters in squares across the country, ignoring official decrees that they should leave.
Since then, the numbers who camp out every night have dwindled, though nightly "general assemblies" in Madrid still draw thousands, including gawking tourists. The Puerta del Sol has taken on a circus feel. Some of the protesters sport dreadlocks, look ragged and lounge around on mattresses.
Still, between the tents and handmade plastic lean-tos there is all manner of activity, from massages to hardheaded efforts to organize, communicate and zero in on a list of demands. This week protesters have been trying to reach an agreement at the assemblies as to how and when to dismantle the tents and leave all but an information point in the square.
Historically, Spaniards have taken to the streets with some regularity, like most Europeans. But the events are usually organized by political parties and unions, organizations that the young have largely ignored. Many of the new protesters say they are disgusted with the unions that do little to represent their interests and with both of Spain's main parties, which they view as corrupt and unresponsive.
Early participants say the protests bloomed over Twitter and Facebook, triggered by several events that gnawed at the younger generation, including revelations from WikiLeaks documents that showed government officials to be less than forthright, and opposition to a recent antipiracy Internet law, which aims to shut down previously legal Web sites enabling the free downloading of music and films.
"WikiLeaks and the antipiracy law were not the reasons for the outpouring," said Enrique Dans, an economist and blogger at the IE Business School in Madrid, who became involved in protesting the antipiracy law and then helped to mobilize his followers. "But they were the spark. Just like the man who set himself on fire in Tunisia was not the reason, but the spark for what happened afterwards."
Mr. Dans arrived at the initial demonstration late and was stunned at the turnout. "I came around the corner and I thought, 'My God, there are people here,' " he said. "There has never really been a grass-roots movement in Spain."
Rachel Chaundler contributed reporting.
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5) Radiation Understated After Quake, Japan Says
By HIROKO TABUCHI
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/world/asia/07japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - Japan said Monday that radioactive emissions from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the early days of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster might have been more than twice as large as a previous estimate, suggesting the accident was more grave than the government had publicly acknowledged.
It is unclear whether a more accurate reading of emissions levels would have promoted a swifter or wider evacuation from around the plant. Still, the lag in reporting the true extent of the emissions added to what some critics have called a litany of confusing and contradictory data and analysis from the Japanese authorities, putting officials on the defensive about whether they delayed, or even blocked, the release of information to the public.
Last month the government acknowledged that three of the plant's reactors had probably suffered fuel meltdowns, after having denied that possibility.
On Monday, Japan's nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that the reactor pressure vessel at one of the plant's reactors appeared to have been compromised as early as five hours after the quake.
The agency also said it now estimated that the radioactive release from the plant totaled 770,000 terabecquerels in the first week after March 11. The agency had previously estimated 370,000 terabecquerels released in the first month.
A terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels, a commonly used measure of the radiation emitted by a radioactive material.
The agency suggested that the higher emissions estimate was equivalent to only about 10 percent of the radioactive materials released in 1986 by the explosion and fire at Chernobyl, still widely considered the world's worst nuclear plant disaster, in the former Soviet Union. But the 770,000 terabecquerels figure in fact comes to about 40 percent of the official Soviet estimate of emissions from Chernobyl.
Most experts say that the true emissions from Chernobyl were 1.5 to 2.5 times as high as the Soviet Union acknowledged. Assuming that true emissions from Chernobyl were twice the official figure, the Fukushima nuclear accident has released 20 percent as much as Chernobyl, according to Japan's new estimate.
Japanese officials have stressed other differences between Fukushima and Chernobyl. At Chernobyl, a burning graphite reactor pushed radioactive particles high into the atmosphere and downwind across Europe. At Fukushima, the leak mostly produced radioactive liquid runoff into the ocean and low-altitude radioactive particles that have dispersed into the ocean, which suggests that the crisis could pose fewer health risks.
Japan's assessment has been based largely on computer models showing heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium from March 14 to 16. Officials have said that the emissions peaked during those days, and have dropped sharply since.
Even at the time of the first estimate in April, Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent government panel, had called the reading too low. Its own estimate was 630,000 terabecquerels in the first month, or about 34 percent of the official Soviet estimate and 17 percent of the unofficial higher estimate.
The commission relied on a computer model that uses radiation measurements taken at various distances from a nuclear accident. The model produces an estimate of the radioactive material escaping from the source.
But the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency based its number on estimates of the damage to the reactors' radioactive cores. Its latest reading more accurately reflects the radioactive material spewed after hydrogen explosions at Reactors 2 and 3, the agency said.
Officials cautioned that there was a wide margin of error involved in both calculations.
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6) Radiation's Unknowns Weigh on Japan
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/business/energy-environment/07radiation.html?ref=business
As officials in Japan agonize over what constitutes a safe radiation dose for people who live near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, the state of the science has been a daunting problem. Studies on the effects of exposure are based mostly on large doses delivered quickly by atomic bombs, while radiation from the Fukushima disaster would more likely result in small doses delivered over many years.
So far the debate in Japan has centered on the risks to children. Government guidelines set after the disaster allowed schoolchildren in Fukushima Prefecture to be exposed to 20 times the radiation dose previously permitted. The new level is equal to the international standard for adult workers at nuclear power plants.
After a huge outcry from parents, the government promised that it would lower the permissible level and that it would pay to remove contaminated topsoil from school grounds.
But the debate is not limited to children; the authorities have to weigh the risks of allowing thousands of people, including the elderly, to be exposed to levels that remain far above natural background radiation.
The general assumption is that when people are exposed to small doses for decades, the incidence of cancer will rise over time. But that prediction is based on extrapolating from data on people who were exposed to acute brief doses when atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 - not on observing individuals exposed to small doses over decades.
Some researchers argue that all humans are regularly exposed to a low natural level of radiation, and that it is not harmful when below a certain threshold, although fetuses may be an exception. Another vocal minority argues that there is statistical evidence for higher cancer rates among people exposed to tiny incremental doses.
Still, the mainstream view is that extrapolating from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data is more prudent.
"There's a point beneath which you just don't know, and a straight line is the simplest assumption," said Dr. Richard R. Monson, an epidemiologist and chairman of the committee that wrote an influential report released in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences on low-level radiation exposures.
His committee based its recommendations on a hypothesis known as the "linear, no threshold model." Under this hypothesis, if a given dose will cause fatal cancers in a certain number of people in a population, then half that dose will cause fatal cancer in half as many people, and a millionth of that dose will cause fatal cancer in a millionth as many people.
Dr. Monson's committee largely extrapolated from the health records of thousands of Japanese civilians exposed to a sudden burst of high-energy gamma radiation by atomic bombs. Over the next 65 years, most of those people died from cancers that may or may not have been caused by radiation, and others from causes common to old age.
Their death rate from cancer exceeded the one recorded for populations of Japanese not exposed to the radiation. But applying this data to the risks faced at Fukushima Daiichi is problematic, experts say, and could lead to overstating or understating the risk to people who live near the plant.
The most obvious difference is that the bomb survivors' exposure in 1945 was nearly instantaneous. People in the Fukushima area are confronting regular levels of contamination in the range of 5 to 10 times what people are normally exposed to in natural background radiation.
What is more, some of the radiation to which people are being exposed around Fukushima is inside the body; it comes from radioactive materials that contaminated their food or water. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many of the victims experienced only a quick external irradiation.
Evan B. Douple, the associate chief of research for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint Japanese-American science institute that analyzes health data from the bomb survivors, said that a dose delivered slowly over time was less damaging than an equal dose delivered quickly.
"It is well known in radiation biology that radiation-induced damage from a given dose of radiation is less effective if it is protracted or fractionated," he said. The reason, he said, is that the body's repair mechanisms work during the extended period of exposure.
The 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that the effect of a given amount of radiation is 1.5 times worse when the dose is given all at once than when it is extended. But there are no authoritative details on varying doses over time.
As if this were not complex enough, another school of thought suggests that the radiation effect on people exposed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was worse than the official statistics show.
This theory holds that weaker individuals were killed off by the bombs and by the hardships suffered in those cities at the end of World War II. The people who survived past that period, on whom the estimates are based, are not representative because they were stronger than average.
So the deaths counted in the following decades occurred among a hardier-than-average population, critics say.
In the United States, most of the policies involving radiation exposure involve people who are exposed to low levels on the job, like nuclear plant workers. If the United States faced decisions like those now confronting Japanese officials, "there really isn't any coherent policy," said Robert Alvarez, a former senior staff member at the Energy Department who works as a consultant for groups worried about nuclear risks.
Kuniko Tanioka, a member of the Japanese Parliament who traveled to Washington to research how the United States government conducts independent inquiries after major technological disasters, said that advising the public after a nuclear accident poses grave challenges in both countries.
Ms. Tanioka suggested that the best course that Japan could take would be to distribute all the raw data it has on radiation exposure to the international community and allow outside interpretations.
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7) Oil Sands Project in Canada Will Go On if Pipeline Is Blocked
By IAN AUSTEN
"Environmentalists are using the project as a proxy for their general antagonism toward oil sands production, which consumes large amounts of water and energy and can be destructive to the boreal forest that sits on top of the tarry rock from which the oil is extracted. 'This is really a campaign against tar sands expansion rather than a single pipeline,' said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, the director of the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is a leading American critic of the process."
June 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/business/energy-environment/07pipeline.html?ref=business
OTTAWA - One way or another - by rail or ship or a network of pipelines - Canada will export oil from its vast northern oil sands projects to the United States and other markets.
So the regulatory battle over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would link the oil sands to the Gulf Coast of the United States, may be little more than a symbolic clash of ideology, industry experts say. Even if the Obama administration rejects the Keystone plan, the pace of oil sands development in northern Alberta is unlikely to slow.
Oil producers in Canada have several alternatives for reaching the United States market. And recent investments by Chinese companies in the oil sands suggest that a growing alternative market lies across the Pacific.
"The Canadian oil sands will continue to be developed irrespective of whether the pipeline goes ahead," said Russell K. Girling, the president and chief executive of TransCanada, the company behind the $7 billion project.
That determination to proceed has become almost beside the point in the battle over Keystone XL's fate, which has dragged on since November 2008.
Environmentalists are using the project as a proxy for their general antagonism toward oil sands production, which consumes large amounts of water and energy and can be destructive to the boreal forest that sits on top of the tarry rock from which the oil is extracted.
"This is really a campaign against tar sands expansion rather than a single pipeline," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, the director of the international program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that is a leading American critic of the process.
Advocates, meanwhile, say that oil sands extraction is getting cleaner and represents a potentially major source of oil from a politically stable ally that will help ensure America's energy security.
The stakes are enormous. The oils sands have reserves of 171.3 billion barrels, according to estimates by the provincial government of Alberta - enough to change the balance of world oil markets, some energy experts say; by comparison, Saudi Arabia has reserves of 264.2 billion barrels.
Because of that, the debate over the pipeline has been unusually protracted and fractious, and, according to some analysts, characterized by hyperbole on both sides.
"This situation has reached such talismanic significance that whatever the U.S. government does will be read far more deeply than the substance merits," said Michael A. Levi, the senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The State Department, which must approve the project because it crosses international borders, is nearing the end of its environmental review and then will examine national interest questions. It has said it expects to make a ruling by the end of the year.
As the world's largest importer of oil and a next-door neighbor of Canada, the United States is the most attractive and logical market for oil sands crude and already buys virtually all that Canada exports. But producers are eager to move their product all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where there are more refineries capable of handling the unusually thick crude.
It is now shipped through an existing pipeline - an earlier part of the Keystone project - to Cushing, Okla., where large storage facilities are fed by a variety of pipelines. There, it is priced against lighter oil and generally commands a lower price.
Because demand for oil in the United States is unlikely to fall significantly in the foreseeable future, Canadian producers are sure to look for other ways to ship their oil south if the Keystone XL project is rejected. While backup plans are not fully developed, other options do exist.
Shipping by rail is one. Last October, in a joint venture with the Canadian National Railway of Montreal, Altex Energy, an oil shipping company, began shipping relatively small amounts of tar sands crude along Canadian National's tracks directly to the Gulf of Mexico.
Not only does rail avoid billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, it also escapes any regulatory reviews in the United States.
"It's no different than shipping grain," said Glen Perry, the president of Altex, which is based in Calgary, Alberta.
Mr. Perry acknowledged that rail was considerably more expensive than pipeline shipping. Pipelines, however, require the oil sands crude to be diluted with chemicals that thin it and make it flow more easily. Rail cars do not.
In addition to rail, there are other pipelines available. The Trans Mountain pipeline owned by Kinder Morgan already moves Alberta oil, including tar sands production, to ports on Canada's Pacific Coast. Some of that travels by sea to refineries in the United States.
While that pipeline is operating at near capacity, Kinder Morgan is considering increasing its capacity to the coast and has already upgraded the line inland.
Enbridge, another large Canadian pipeline company, is proposing its own line, from just north of Edmonton, Alberta, to the northern British Columbia port of Kitimat.
While both of those projects have encountered opposition from environmentalists and some aboriginal groups, the political climate favors the energy industry. Last month Canadians re-elected a Conservative government that has its traditional power base in Alberta, which has staunchly promoted the oil sands.
Other pipeline projects could develop if Keystone XL does not. It is technically feasible to convert one of two natural gas pipelines to eastern Canada to carry oil. Once there, shipments could enter the United States through existing trans-border crossings in Ontario and Quebec.
Ronald Liepert, the energy minister in Alberta, said that while Canada would prefer to sell its oil to the United States, "this commodity will go someplace."
In particular, he said, China is already a major consumer of other Canadian natural resources and a small investor in the oil sands. "I can predict confidently that at some point China will take every drop of oil Canada can produce."
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8) Government to Sell £10 Billion of Public Land to Developers
By REUTERS
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/06/07/business/business-us-public-land-housing.html?src=busln
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain plans to sell public land worth an estimated 10 billion pounds to address a chronic housing shortage and help erode its record budget deficit.
All government departments with significant landbanks will be asked to identify, by the autumn, land suitable for sale for homes, Housing Minister Grant Shapps will say on Wednesday.
This will be used to build 100,000 homes over the next three to four years, in a scheme that is expected to support as many as 25,000 jobs.
The 10 billion pounds estimate of surplus land is based on government figures for land values in England from HM Treasury in 2005, supplied by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA).
"As one of the country's biggest landlords, the government has a critical role to play in making sites available for developers so we can get the homes this country needs built," Shapps will say in a statement.
"Over the coming months, property specialists will work to make sure no stone is left unturned and no site is left unused, and every department's plans will come under the close scrutiny of a cabinet committee."
Some of the land will be sold under a "Build Now, Buy Later" deal, and the names of the first three sites -- to be made available immediately to developers -- will be announced on Wednesday.
"It will be a boost in the arm for house builders," said a spokesman at the Home Builders Federation, a 300-member trade association which represents builders such as Persimmon, Barratt Developments and Taylor Wimpey
"We only built 100,000 homes last year and, if implemented practically, this could mean an extra 30,000 homes a year, which is clearly a significant increase."
The HBF estimates a shortage approaching 1 million homes in England, and forecasts 232,000 homes need to be built per year to close the gap.
CHRONIC SHORTAGE
Britain's housing market has been slowing since the middle of last year and recent data show mortgage approvals fell in April to just half their long-run average, before the financial crisis, of 90,000 per month.
Last week it emerged house builders are in talks with British banks to find ways of helping buyers overcome tight lending conditions, which have caused market gridlock.
Housing organisations are concerned the land may not be sold at subsidised levels, leaving few incentives for developers to build affordable housing, of which there is a chronic shortage.
"With the Treasury under pressure to generate high sales receipts, decisions as to what kind of development takes place and where could be driven simply by the highest bidder," said Hugh Ellis, Chief Planner at the TCPA.
"The private sector could be left having to squeeze every penny out of development."
(Editing by David Hulmes)
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9) Corporate Media's Capital Crimes Against Libya-and Humanity
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
June 8, 2011
http://blackagendareport.com/content/corporate-media%E2%80%99s-capital-crimes-against-libya-%E2%80%93-and-humanity
Every day, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Congo and now Libya, the U.S. corporate media commit crimes against humanity that are equal to the crimes perpetrated by the United States government. As facilitators of those crimes-through ceaseless propaganda, lies and demonization of those targeted by the United States-the corporate media are just as guilty of the grossest human rights violations as the government they serve. The New York Times and the rest of the howling corporate propagandists that call themselves journalists behave no differently than the German newspaper publisher Julius Streicher, who was hanged for his media crimes against humanity in October 1946.
Streicher paid with his life for having used his newspaper, Der Sturmer, to demonize Jews and thus, in the words of the death sentence against him, "infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution" of Jews. Streicher was not a member of the German military, and he did not take part in the Holocaust, but the judgment of Nuremburg was that his brand of journalism was a crime against humanity, and warranted his execution.
If the verdict was appropriate for the NAZI journalist Streicher in 1946, it should certainly apply to those in the corporate media today who "infect" the American mind with murderous emotions and feed the public lies that seek to transform aggressive war into a humanitarian rescue mission, and mock the victims of NATO's savage bombing of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
John Burns, of the New York Times, is a celebrity media criminal. In addition to demonizing Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi in precisely the same way that he and his colleagues portrayed Iraq's Saddam Hussein-and that a previous generation of journalistic degenerates depicted Fidel Castro-Burns' current mission is to deny that hundreds of NATO bombing sorties against Tripoli have killed Libyan civilians. His constant dismissal of Libyan casualties is vulgar and racist in the extreme, and has the effect of inviting more NATO bombing and more civilian deaths. If anybody calling themselves a journalist had been running around London at the time of the 1940 NAZI blitz, claiming that British civilian bombing casualties were negligible or minimal, they would have been arrested and probably hanged.
Burns' colleagues among the lying pack of corporate media criminals camped out in Tripoli hotels create the propaganda that causes death to rain down on the city's citizens. But, according to Burns' June 7 story, Western reporters keep NATO informed when they leave their hotels, so that they will not be caught in the bombing. Once the imperialist press is safely back at the hotel, the killing can begin again.
Burns' colleagues in rebel held regions of Libya spend most of their time glorifying an opposition that is riddled with exactly the kind of Islamic jihadis that these same reporters demonize as deserving of death in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. corporate media understand full well that the power to demonize is a weapon of war, and they point that weapon in whatever direction their government wishes. In the final reckoning, they are as guilty as the government they serve.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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10) Japan to report nuclear 'melt-throughs' to UN
AFP
June 7, 2011
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Japan+report+nuclear+melt+throughs/4905646/story.html
TOKYO - Japan in a report prepared for the UN nuclear watchdog on Tuesday said for the first time that fuel in its crippled Fukushima plant may have melted through three reactor core vessels.
Almost three months after the massive March 11 seabed quake and tsunami sparked the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, Tokyo also promised to tighten its nuclear industry safety standards and mechanisms.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, approving the 750-page report, said that "above all, it is most important to inform the international community with thorough transparency in order for us to regain its confidence in Japan."
Japan is due to submit the report to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which sent its own multinational fact-finding team to Japan and is due to discuss the disaster at its Vienna headquarters this month.
The document was released a day after Japan more than doubled its earlier estimate of total radiation released into the air from the plant in the first days after the tsunami knocked out its reactor cooling systems.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) now says it believes 770,000 terabecquerels escaped into the atmosphere in the first six days - compared to its earlier estimate of 370,000 terabecquerels.
NISA's revised radiation figure is likely to fuel criticism of the initially slow and vague flow of information from the Kan government and embattled plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
The new estimate is closer to that of Japan's independent Nuclear Safety Commission which had initially estimated a release at 630,000 terabecquerels in the first month after the 14-metre (46-foot) ocean wave crashed into the plant.
NISA also said in its review that it believes much of the nuclear fuel inside three reactors melted down faster than previously believed.
TEPCO has said it believes the molten fuel is now being cooled by water at the bottom of the number one, two and three reactors, citing the relatively low outside temperatures of the containers.
In its report, Japan's government informs the IAEA that fuel is assumed to have melted down and may have burnt through the reactor pressure vessels of units one, two and three and into their outer steel containment vessels.
Tokyo also pledged to reform its nuclear safety systems, including by separating the watchdog NISA from the ministry of economy, trade and industry, which promotes nuclear power - echoing an IAEA recommendation.
In the report, Japan apologises to the international community for the disaster, expressing its "remorse that this accident has raised concerns around the world about the safety of nuclear power generation."
Also on Tuesday, a 10-member expert panel independent of the nuclear industry met for the first time to look into the causes of the world's worst atomic accident since Chernobyl, in Ukraine, a quarter-century ago.
Panel leader Yotaro Hatamura, a Tokyo University professor emeritus on the study of human error, said at the meeting that "nuclear power has higher energy density and is dangerous. It was a mistake to consider it safe."
Meanwhile, frantic efforts continued at the plant to meet TEPCO's stated deadline of bringing all six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi to a stable state of "cold shutdown" some time between October and January.
Months of hosing operations have left more than 100,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water in buildings, basements and ditches at the plant, and TEPCO is struggling to remove the runoff so it can resume crucial repair work.
Contaminated water has spilled or been released several times into the Pacific Ocean, and environmental group Greenpeace has warned that it has found unsafe radiation levels in marine species as far as 50 kilometres (30 miles) offshore.
TEPCO has been testing decontamination equipment, some provided by U.S. and French companies, to remove radioactive substances, oil and sea salt from the runoff water so it can be reused as a reactor coolant from about mid-June.
With the advent of the summer rainy season, it has also started to ship to the plant 370 truck-sized water tanks with a total capacity of more than 40,000 tonnes to store excess contaminated water.
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11) Resistance Grows
New York Times Editorial
June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08wed1.html?hp
Add Massachusetts to the groundswell of states and localities opposing President Obama's misconceived and failing immigration dragnet.
Gov. Deval Patrick announced on Monday that his state would not participate in Secure Communities, the fingerprint-sharing program that the Obama administration wants to impose nationwide by 2013. Gov. Andrew Cuomo halted New York's involvement last week. Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois rejected it last month. They join a long list of elected officials, Congress members and law-enforcement professionals who want nothing to do with the program for the simple reason that it does more harm than good.
The program sends the fingerprints of every person booked by state or local police to federal databases to be checked for immigration violations. It was supposed to focus on dangerous felons. But it catches mostly noncriminals and minor offenders, as New York said, "compromising public safety by deterring witnesses to crime and others from working with law enforcement."
For years Mr. Obama, like George W. Bush before him, has relentlessly pushed forward with immigration enforcement schemes while failing to give any relief to millions desperate to shed their illegal status.
Real reform requires a comprehensive strategy: stricter enforcement plus legalization for the millions whom it would be foolish to uproot from our society and economy. As Mr. Obama has driven deportations to record levels, he has gotten no closer to fixing a failed system. But he has made Republican hard-liners happy by bolstering the noxious argument that all undocumented immigrants are mere criminals, deportees-in-waiting.
This is a failure of decency and good sense. It merely punishes and does nothing to actually come to grips with the problem of illegal immigration. Resistance has mostly been heard at the ground level, from immigrants and advocates who say families are being split apart, workers frightened and exploited, the American dream dishonored. So it's good to hear powerful Democrats - Mr. Obama's friends and allies from large states - telling him that with Secure Communities he has gone way overboard.
What these states' actions mean, practically speaking, is unclear. States like New York signed contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to enter Secure Communities, and now the administration insists that they must participate. If they send suspects' fingerprints to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for criminal checks - as states must and will continue to do routinely - then the F.B.I. will share that data with the Department of Homeland Security. There is no way to opt out.
We'll see about that. The idea that the federal government can commandeer states' resources for its enforcement schemes seems ripe for legal challenge. And it's wrong to make state and local police departments the gatekeepers of immigration enforcement. It should not be up to local cops to drive federal policy by deciding which neighborhoods and people are the focus of their crackdowns.
We welcome the votes of no-confidence in Secure Communities. The message is clear and growing louder: Mr. Obama and the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, need to try something else. That something else is real immigration reform that combines a path to legality with necessary measures to secure our borders and deport real criminals who are here illegally.
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12) Drone Strikes Kill 20 in Pakistan, Reports Say
By SALMAN MASOOD
June 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/asia/09pakistan.html?hp
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - At least 20 suspected militants were killed in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region Wednesday in what were described as a pair of American drone strikes, local news media reported.
The strikes hit a fortresslike compound suspected of housing militants in the Shawal area of North Waziristan, a forested mountainous valley considered to be a stronghold of militants of various stripes. A second strike from the drone also hit a vehicle, according to reports in local news media.
Details of the strike remained murky, and there was no official confirmation on the number of casualties. The identities of those killed could also not be immediately confirmed. The vehicle and the compound were said to be destroyed in the attacks.
The United States has stepped up the pace and intensity of its drone attacks in Pakistan, much to the dismay of nationalists and opposition political parties who have described the strikes as a breach of the Pakistan's sovereignty.
The semiautonomous tribal region of North Waziristan is a redoubt of elements of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. American officials have for long urged Pakistan to begin an operation in the region and renewed such calls after May 2, when Osama bin Laden was found and killed by American forces in a night raid in Abbottabad, a garrison town in the country's northwestern province.
However, Pakistani officials have balked at such demands, and maintain that the army will begin an operation at a time of its own choosing.
North Waziristan is also a stronghold of Haqqani network, the Taliban network run by Sirajuddin Haqqani. His network works closely with Al Qaeda and runs part of the insurgency against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
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13) Don't Believe Scare Stories about Cyber War
By John Horgan
Friday, June 3, 2011
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=dont-believe-scare-stories-about-cy-2011-06-03&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110608
For years, a friend I'll call Chip, knowing my obsession with war, has been telling me: "Cyber War! That's what you should be writing about! Real war is passé!" Chip keeps sending me stories about all the damage digital attacks do-or rather, might do, because as far as I can tell cyber war hasn't claimed a single life. My admittedly glib response has been that if nations start waging war with 1s and 0s rather than bombs and bullets, that's progress.
But Chip finally goaded me into writing about cyber war by alerting me to a May 31 Wall Street Journal article, "Cyber Combat: Act of War." The Pentagon "has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force," according to the article. It adds: "If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a 'use of force' consideration, which could merit retaliation."
This report follows years of scare stories about cyber attacks. One of the best known involves a mysterious program called "Stuxnet," which supposedly disrupted Iran's nuclear program by infecting its computer systems; the Stuxnet attack may have been carried out by Israel, possibly with U.S. help. Other stories have alleged attacks by Russia and China on U.S. computers belonging to our defense agencies and contractors as well as civilian businesses, such as Google.
One obvious problem with the Pentagon's new retaliation policy is that tracing cyber attacks to their sources can be difficult. Sophisticated hackers can concoct false trails, leading the targets to suspect and possibly retaliate against an innocent group. As one unnamed Pentagon official told The New York Times, "How do we know when it's a hacker and when it's the People's Liberation Army?"
Here's another question: How do we know whether cyber war poses a genuine threat to the U.S. and other nations? The military-industrial complex has a long history of exaggerating threats. Remember the " missile gap," the Soviet Union's illusory superiority in nuclear missiles, which justified enormous investments in the U.S. nuclear arsenal?
U.S. security agencies today are trying to justify and even increase their already immense budgets by hyping the threat of cyber war, according to an article published in The New Yorker last November by the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. He quoted former U.S. security officials Richard Clarke and Michael McConnell, among others, warning that the U.S. could be vulnerable to "catastrophic" cyber attacks.
Hersh noted that cyber security, into which the U.S. already pours as much $14 billion a year, "is a major growth industry, and warnings from Clark, McConnell and others have helped to create what has become a military-cyber complex." Both Clarke and McConnell, Hersh pointed out, work for consulting groups that have grabbed pieces of the cyber-security pie.
Hersh also cited "military, technical and intelligence experts" who contend that the danger of cyber attacks that shut down nuclear power plants, air-traffic control computers and other truly critical systems-as depicted in fictional TV shows such as 24-"have been exaggerated." Privacy advocates also warn that the military-cyber complex is seeking more control over civilian information systems, so that it can eavesdrop on communications more readily. Of course, by boosting its cyber defensive-and, no doubt, offensive-capabilities, the U.S. may encourage other countries to do so, triggering a cyber arms race that makes us more rather than less vulnerable.
Here's a bit more context for the cyber warfare debate: Over the past decade the U.S. defense budget has doubled, and it is now almost as large as the military budgets of all other nations combined. The vast, super-secret National Security Agency (NSA), which oversees U.S. digital security and intelligence-gathering, is "three times the size of the CIA and with a third of the U.S.'s entire intelligence budget," Jane Mayer noted in the May 23 issue of The New Yorker.
Mayer reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is zealously prosecuting a former NSA employee and whistle-blower, Thomas Drake, who dared raise questions about the agency's financial waste and illegal surveillance-even though President Barack Obama once praised whistleblowers as "often the best source of information about waste, fraud and abuse in government." Mayer quoted a law professor at Yale University, Jack Balkin, who said of the Drake prosecution and similar cases, "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."
Cyber fear mongering originated during the George W. Bush administration, but it has continued under Bush's successor, who as a candidate criticized Bush's warrantless wiretapping of Americans. I'm no longer surprised by the Obama administration's hawkishness. Just disappointed.
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14) Capitalism, Energy Production and the Environment
An introduction to a Socialist Viewpoint discussion
By Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_01.html
The earthquake and resultant tsunami that took out the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan on March 11, 2011, has inspired a new discussion among the environmental movement, including the socialist left. Not just about the safety of nuclear energy, but the safety of all energy production under capitalism. The capitalist mode of production-for-profit has always taken priority over the health and safety of people and the planet. The ruling class has shown time and again, and as you will see in the excerpts from the New York Times below, that safety is sacrificed for profit, even at nuclear power plants.
As socialists, we do offer solutions to these problems and have contributions to make to this discussion. At the same time, we know that these problems will continue and multiply as long as the capitalist profit motive is allowed to persist.
In this issue we present a selection of articles representing current trends of thought in this ongoing discussion of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries and their impact on the planet. We hope this discussion will shed some light on the "bottom line," i.e., capitalism's gotta go!
Some background
In a New York Times article dated April 26, 2011 by Norimitsu Onishi and Ken Belson titled, "Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant:"
"In 2000, Kei Sugaoka, a Japanese-American nuclear inspector who had done work for General Electric at Daiichi, told Japan's main nuclear regulator about a cracked steam dryer that he believed was being concealed. If exposed, the revelations could have forced the operator, Tokyo Electric Power, to do what utilities least want to do: undertake costly repairs. ...Just as in any Japanese village, the like-minded-nuclear industry officials, bureaucrats, politicians and scientists-have prospered by rewarding one another with construction projects, lucrative positions, and political, financial and regulatory support. The few openly skeptical of nuclear power's safety become village outcasts, losing out on promotions and backing."
And in another Times article dated May 7, 2011 by Tom Zeller Jr. titled, "Nuclear Agency Is Criticized as Too Close to Its Industry:"
"In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe-one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment-when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.
"The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.
"The plant's owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick-less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness-would be good enough.
"Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.
"Exelon's risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission's inspector general.
"Exelon's penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations-a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general's office who led the Byron inquiry."
Clearly, the safety of nuclear energy production under capitalism takes a back seat to the pursuit of profits.
Nuclear, fossil and renewable energy
While this discussion focuses primarily on nuclear energy, the safety of fossil fuel extraction-fracking1, mountaintop removal, traditional coal mining; oil drilling-especially deep water drilling-and their related energy production methods are also called into question.
Also under discussion is whether or not alternative, renewable energy resources can produce the quantity of energy necessary for a modern, industrial society that includes supplying energy to all those who currently have no access to electricity or running water-let alone things like mass transportation and the Internet. And certainly, insuring energy and safety in industrial production is a monumental task requiring a profound motivation by masses of people to make it so.
As Marxists-as international socialists and humanitarians-we at Socialist Viewpoint realize that centuries of capitalism have made a mess of everything. Those who accumulate huge sums of private profits from the ownership and sale of energy extraction and all production-have very little incentive to do anything that cuts into their profits, including shelling out the extra expense for safety inspections and repairs.
In fact, according to a May 5, 2011 article, "AFL-CIO Report: 4,340 Workers Killed on the Job in 2009:"
"The AFL-CIO's latest annual study, 'Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,' says 4,340 workers died on the job in 2009, an average of 12 per-day, and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"More than 4.1 million work-related injuries and illnesses were reported, but due to underreporting, the true toll of job injuries is two to three times greater-about 8 million to 12 million job injuries and illnesses each year, according to the AFL-CIO."2
Death and injury to workers on the job in all industry is routine. In particular, the nuclear industry's repeated failure to heed warnings of safety violations reported by workers shows how the commanders of industry cover-up and lie about safety violations as a matter of course anywhere there's a profit to be had!
But we can be optimistic. Because today the responsibility of the very survival of the planet has been placed directly into the able hands of the world's working class.
Workers know best
The logical way to insure that safety violations are constantly addressed and monitored is to remove the incentive to skip them, i.e., to remove the profit motive. In other words, to nationalize the whole industry and put it under the democratic control of the workers and experts who operate it; and to run it for the benefit of all who need it while putting safety first. (Part of this discussion is whether or not nuclear energy can be made safe-even under worker's control.)
It is indisputable that in every environmental disaster related to energy production in recent years, it has been shown that workers have warned management of everything from methane gas build-up in the coal mines; to cracks in the walls of nuclear containment vessels and leaks in their pipes; to the crumbling of a critical gasket that was a crucial part of the blow-out preventer on the Deep Water Horizon rig in the BP Gulf Oil disaster. (The crumbled gasket, called an annular, was reported to management at the time it happened, four weeks before the disaster, by Mike Williams, a rig-worker who was holding the broken and crumbled pieces of rubber in his hands. "According to Williams, when parts of the annular start coming up on the deck someone from Transocean says, 'Look, don't worry about it.'" Luckily, Williams survived the explosion to tell his story.)3
It is capitalist industries' modus operandi to put profits before people and worse, not only to disregard the health and safety warnings of workers on the job, but to use working people as cannon fodder in their wars to increase their power and control over potential new profits and the resources needed to extract, process and create them.
They not only wage war against working people, but also, against each other, in their race to the top of the economic pile! Can there be any doubt that the commanders of U.S. capital are in a fierce battle to firmly plant themselves at the very top and above the proverbial world economic pyramid-at any cost?
And what do we working people get to say about it? We do the actual work. In fact, if it was up to us, we could do the work much more safely and efficiently. In fact, if it were up to us alone, we could, instead of giving all our profits back to the boss, use those profits to put safety first, cut working hours for everyone while maintaining the same rate of pay, and to hire the unemployed.
By removing the private ownership of the means of production, including energy production-and by ending the private accumulation of wealth from the profits of that labor-not only could we put safety and efficiency first, we could concentrate on producing things that people need and want, eliminating wasteful production of inferior goods and overproduction.
Who are the "deciders" and who should be "the deciders?"
What chance do we working people get to make democratic decisions about the things that impact our lives? We don't vote on war; or how much to tax the rich; or how much to bail out the corporations; or on home foreclosures; or money for education or healthcare; or whether to build more jails than schools; or whether workers can go out on strike in support of workers in other jobs or industries; or how much we should get paid; or how much the boss should get paid; or whether he/she should even be the boss!
We workers have no say in any of the most important aspects our lives-not on or off the job; not in our schools; not at the ballot box!
All these things are decided by the wealthy, and the lawyers they hire to write the laws that will benefit them AND control us-with the full backing of both military and police might!
Socialist Viewpoint's view is that it is with utmost urgency that, although capitalism still exists, we must demand that all energy production be nationalized and placed under the democratic control of the working class and our allies who are committed to health and safety first-at the expense of capitalist profits! We demand that capitalist industry sacrifice profits-not people and the environment!
Privately owned corporations do not have the right to take our air, water, oil and other minerals and natural resources-the bounty of the Earth-as their own private property!
Socialists profoundly believe that all life on Earth has the right to share fully in the bounty the Earth provides.
This requires rational planning based upon the collective needs and wants of all, and not for the private accumulation of wealth for the very few.
Neither energy production, or any production under the capitalist profit motive, can be safe. It will take the complete overthrow of capitalism by a democratically organized, worker-controlled, revolutionary socialist movement to rid the world of the vast environmental crises that capitalist production and wars for private-profit inevitably create.
Democracy and the world in turmoil
We present this dialogue on energy and the environment under capitalism as an example of the type of discussion working people could and should be having on a world scale under a society democratically organized in the best interests of all.
These are the decisions we working people must begin to collectively and democratically make if we have any hope of repairing the environmental damage that capitalism has already done. Let alone, to prevent even worse catastrophes sure to come as long as capitalism continues.
We present the following articles for your information, education and consideration and welcome serious contributions to this and other topics presented in Socialist Viewpoint.
We reserve the right to select those articles that we feel will bring better understanding for the urgent need of a democratically organized, working class-led, world socialist revolution firmly placing us on the road to a truly humane and equitable society.
1. Fracking (also often referred to as hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking) is a process in which a fluid is injected at high pressure into oil or methane gas deposits to fracture the rock above and release the liquid or gas below. The process and its aftermath has generated controversy because of harm to drinking water and health where it has been used, in Colorado and New Mexico, and more recently in expanded drilling plans in the Marcellus Shale in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fracking
2. http://ohsonline.com/articles/2011/05/05/afl-cio-report-4340-workers-killed-on-the-job-in-2009.aspx?admgarea=ht.RegulationsStandards
3. From the TV program, "60 Minutes," as quoted in The Daily KOS
http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002708/
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15) Democracy or Tyranny?
By Bonnie Weinstein
May/June 2011
Socialist Viewpoint
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_05.html
We have included in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint many articles relating to the purported killing of Osama bin Laden and his assumed connection to the events of 9/11.
We would like to qualify these articles and statements by pointing out that Obama and his bi-partisan administration has offered NO proof of any of these accusations and, in fact, has methodically destroyed the evidence.
Certainly, raiding a compound supposedly occupied by bin Laden, summarily executing a man that was reported to be bin Laden, then dumping this person's body into the ocean, is not proof that it was bin Laden-just the opposite-it makes it impossible to prove it was him.
Murder by decree
However, this murderous action taken by President Obama does serve a purpose. Not only to reaffirm all the fear and myths related to the War on Terror, but it is also meant to set a deadly precedent.
The President of the United States can simply point a finger at someone, send assassins to kill that person, then destroy the evidence of who that person is by dumping the body in the ocean-with no questions asked or allowed.
Make no mistake about it, this was designed to have a tremendous, chilling and terrifying impact on all working people-especially any who dare to speak out against the injustices at home and abroad carried out by this U.S. bi-partisan government and its minions.
According to a May 21, 2011 article on Salon.com, by Justin Elliot titled, "Four more years! (Of the Patriot Act...)," a deal has been reached in Congress that will allow such actions-including killing U.S. citizens anywhere in the world by secret order of the President-to continue unabated and with impunity for the next four years.
Obama declares Bradley Manning guilty!
The Patriot Act also gives the President the authority to declare whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, the young Army private accused of leaking information on U.S. war crimes to the news service, WikiLeaks, guilty before he is even tried.
On Thursday April 21, 2011 in San Francisco a group of Bradley Manning supporters protested the prosecution of Manning at a Barack Obama fundraising event. One of Manning's supporters was able to question the President directly afterwards. During that conversation, Obama said-and it was recorded on videotape-that Manning was guilty.1
Obviously, these comments by the President of the United States are extremely prejudicial to Manning's case and, in fact, are grounds to free Bradley Manning now! Instead, Manning still faces the death penalty and has yet to have his day in court after almost a year in jail-most of that time spent in severe isolation and humiliation!
Kill the messenger
The President is still in a frenzy to try to criminalize Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for leaking the proof of U.S. war crimes to the press without having to also criminalize all the other press and mass-media outlets. They have all publicized the "secret" war crimes documents exposing the many corrupt actions by the U.S. government, its military and contractors. All were leaked by the same news service-Julian Assange's WiliLeaks.
The fear of death
The bin Laden death fiasco makes Obama's message clear. Any attempt to expose the treachery of the U.S. bi-partisan government of, by and for the wealthy, will be met with the utmost brutality, violence and torture-including illegal and indefinite incarceration.
To hell with the right to habeas corpus; or "Innocent until proven guilty;" or the right to confront your accuser; or the right to free speech; or to protest war and social injustice; or to fight for better pay or working conditions-without being threatened with government FBI, CIA and police repression-including the specter of outright assassination by secret order of the President!
These are not the ways of democracy; they are the ways of tyranny!
The "biggest purveyors of violence in the world"-the U.S. bi-partisan government and its allies-are in charge and have shown they will use any means necessary to keep their dominion over all!
They will continue to get away with it and worse, unless and until we stand together in our huge majority, and disarm and de-throne them.
Only then can we begin to make rational and democratically-derived decisions based on our common interests and for the benefit and wellbeing of all life on the planet.
Democracy has nothing to do with voting for one wealthy tyrant over another.
Democracy is the freedom of the majority to discuss, democratically decide and, most importantly, to carry out our well-informed decisions. That's what socialism is all about.
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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16) Twenty-five to Life, What Does it Mean to Me?
By Herman Bell
May/June 2011
Socialist Viewpoint
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_11/mayjun_11_43.html
Herman Bell has been incarcerated for more than 30 years, sentenced to 25 years to life. Despite an exemplary prison record he is regularly turned down for parole because of "the seriousness of the crime" for which he was convicted: the killing of a policeman. A mentor to many of the younger brothers at Sullivan where Herman is incarcerated, he recently spoke at a "Lifers" event where he gave this presentation. The Prisoner Justice Network of New York State is fighting for the change of such inhuman parole regulations that keep thousands of sisters and brothers incarcerated for decades despite having served their terms and having excellent prison records.
Although I have served more than 37 years in prison, I am still unable to wrap my mind around what that means; years of locking in-and-out of cells, letters from home and the occasional family photo; one letter telling that the new baby has arrived, another telling that my niece or nephew is doing well in school and that the neighbor next door died in his sleep; the photo shows Ma-dear and Dad looking good but are noticeably older. Twenty-five to life, what does that mean to me?
If you were a family man, like I was, with a young wife and two rambunctious boys, the separation had to have been heart-wrenching. It was for me. My boys, Johnes and Keith, had thoroughly broken me into domesticity: feeding them, changing and washing their diapers, dressing them, consoling them, taking them for their shots. Hoping the family dog wouldn't bite me for reprimanding them. Their mother, high-spirited and the love of my life, was no less challenging; a borderline red-bone, with a delightful spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks, almond-shaped eyes and pouty lips. During our feuds, rather than talk, we wrote notes to each other and the children handed them to us.
What does doing twenty-five to life mean to me? As I mull over this question, I am reminded of the Elmina Castle, the Portuguese slave fortress, located on the West coast of Ghana from which enchained Afrikans were led through its infamous "door-of-no-return" to the holds of waiting slave ships that would take them to the New World. I too feel as though I've walked through a "door-of-no-return."
Imprisonment: a modern plantation
If one knew nothing about the geography of a town in upstate New York where one is imprisoned, then one can readily imagine what the Afrikan slave must have felt on a southern plantation-not knowing where to run or how to get there. For me, getting from Attica or Clinton Dannemora, to my hood, seemed no different than for the Afrikan on a slave plantation in Georgia getting from there back to Afrika. Across the country, I have been held in many jails, and my family has had to travel thousands of miles to see me at considerable expense.
You know how families are received at these places: standing in the elements to get in; suffering the indignities of disparaging remarks; seating arrangements; frustrating package rules. Prison is where spiteful, petty, contemptible, morally unkind acts find free expression at the whim of those who have authority over us. The keepers are vigilant and they instinctively ferret out unguarded self-esteem, courage, and strength. Prison is designed to break you down, not build you up. It casually destroys the weak and unwary (as though they were an afterthought), and turns the spiritually debased into beasts. What's not so strange about this is that the spiritually debased elicits no particular attention from the keepers. Twenty-five to life, what does that mean to me?
As the years go by
Time, faces, and relationships change, and like sand cascading down the funnel of an hourglass, nothing can resist this change. One day, you look in the mirror and see gray hair and a face that tells you you've aged; your body tells you that too. Some of your old friends have moved on and new ones have come to take their place.
Your mother and father may have passed away, as have mine, and I was unable to see them buried. You may have contemplated numerous possible scenarios, should you be imprisoned, but never that; and neither did I. The years take their toll, the people you believed in, the certainties you once embraced might have led you to realize that the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. With luck, we come to understand that humility and wisdom come with age and experience, and that death is often merciful.
Release time and its uncertainty
In doing 25-life, you never know when your release time will come; as it is with death, you can never foretell the day it will knock on your door. Yet, in both instances, you better be prepared.
Make time work for you
(self-improvement)
The old-timers in here will tell you: make time work for you, not against you.
Education
I earned a dual Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and sociology and a master's in sociology. It was hard work and could not have been accomplished without discipline, commitment, and sacrifice. Through the self-help projects I've developed on the outside while imprisoned, e.g., Calendar, Community Gardens, I have built remarkable relationships inside and outside these walls. And I have managed to keep a good name (which is all one can rightly claim as one's own in here). Because of that, I have managed to make it through the day, one day at a time. Twenty-five to life, what does that mean to me?
The parole board
Parole is discretionary, we are told, not a right. When one's freedom is withheld by another, be it a state institution or a private individual, it's tantamount to slavery and is a poignant reminder that slavery was never abolished in the U.S.-the 13th Amendment preserved it.
State parole commissioners have guidelines to aid them in their parole decision; that decision, nevertheless, is still subjective. A host of variables weigh in on this process, including the kind of day a commissioner is having, societal stereotypes, the crime that one committed 30 years ago. As a parole candidate, one has to be impressed by what I've accomplished inside and on the outside; and my disciplinary is exemplary. Yet my next Board appearance will mark ten years beyond my minimum sentence. And I am not alone in this experience. Because of consistent denials, one is led to conclude that more is involved in these parole denials than meets the eye. One is led to conclude that power, politics, and economics are driving them. And that this triumvirate serves special interests. Yet those invested in this practice, and who profit handsomely from it, still argue that the mission of prisons is and always shall be about corrections and rehabilitation. They argue that prisons are not used as an employment agency or as a tool of social repression. But if that were true, then surely fewer people would be in prison today.
Conclusion
This is just a tiny piece of the picture. The point is that we remain in the grips of an economic order and culture that's as formidable and treacherous as the recent quake, tsunami, and meltdown in Japan, and I wish it were not so.
Think about it. What do you or I produce in prison? Okay, there is the Corcraft Industry, which generates a few million dollars a year, yet it's a pittance compared to the bigger picture relating to you and me. Billions are made just by keeping us in a cell. Our very presence is the raw product that sustains the prison industry. It did the same during chattel slavery for almost 400 years, and, like today, we've benefited none from it. Today, our people spend well over 500 billion in the U.S. economy, and we control practically none of it. The only institution of any consequence we control today is the Black church.
Today, the sons and daughters of the people employed to keep us here have begun to keep watch over us and our children, who now are finding themselves in here. We have to get out of these places, stay out of them and keep others out. And while still in here, it is our duty to use this time constructively, and thus be an asset to our communities when we get out. That way, we turn this thing on its head, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, which in this instance is what is meant by "falling in a shithouse and coming out smelling like a rose."
For more info: www.nyprisonerjustice.org or call 518-434-4037
March 26, 2011
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17) S.W.A.T. Team Breaks Down Doors Looking For Student Loan Defaulters
By Sarah Jaffe, 358
Posted on June 8, 2011, Printed on June 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/609535/s.w.a.t._team_breaks_down_doors_looking_for_student_loan_defaulters
UPDATE: Department of Education now denies that the raid was over student loan defaults. As the video below [video is posted with the article at the link provided above...bw] explains, the spokesman for the department did not clarify why the raid was conducted, but did say that it was regarding a criminal investigation.
Has it become illegal to attend college without a giant bank account?
Kenneth Wright of Stockton, California was almost knocked down by a S.W.A.T. team breaking down his door one morning. He says they then handcuffed him and put him in the back of a police car.
Federal agents confirmed that the Department of Education was behind the raid on Wright's house. They were in search of his estranged wife, who had defaulted on her loans.
As we reported last week, recent college graduates face an unemployment rate nearly double that of the rest of the population, and African-American grads (like Wright and his wife) are looking at an unemployment rate of 19 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of a college degree is at an all-time high, up 3,400 percent since 1972.
With the government still doing little to create jobs, even a bill that would allow grads to clear student loans off their slate in a bankruptcy filing will do little to help those laboring to pay back their loan burden.
And if this incident is any indication, it looks like those borrowers will be facing more than just bad credit when they default.
So much for the American dream.
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18) Shackling Students: Why is One Mississippi School Handcuffing Bad Kids to Poles?
By Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet
Posted on June 9, 2011, Printed on June 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/611597/shackling_students%3A_why_is_one_mississippi_school_handcuffing_bad_kids_to_poles
Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal class action lawsuit against Jackson Public School District in Mississippi for allowing an alternative school to shackle and handcuff students for hours on end as punishment for the most minor infractions, like speaking too loudly or not wearing a belt.
At Capital City Alternative School, administration would actually shackle students to railings and poles, then walk away and leave them tied up and unsupervised like dogs. One student, shackled to a railing for the entire school day for not wearing a belt, had no choice but to eat his lunch handcuffed. Other examples of the school's bondage punishment policy include a 15-year-old girl handcuffed to a railing for hours after greeting a friend too loudly in the hallway and a student who was shackled up for not wearing the right colored shoes.
The SPLC filed the lawsuit after the school district refused to respond to a letter asking that the school's strict punishment policy be stopped.
"At the highest level of the district, Jackson Public Schools officials have failed to protect students from a prison-like environment where children are subject to regular shackling and chained to poles and railings as a consequence for minor, non-criminal violations of school rules." said Jody Owens, who leads the SPLC\'s Mississippi office. "Not only does this handcuffing policy violate the U.S. Constitution but it demonstrates a diseased school culture and a broken model of school discipline that focuses on criminalizing students at the expense of educating them."
Making matters worse, a 2009 ACLU report said Jackson's Capital City Alternative School had an "especially punitive atmosphere" and used the shackle policy "to deliberately push out challenging and 'undesirable' students."
The law suit is part of the SPLC's education reform project Mississippi Youth Justice Project, which works to break the cycle of juvenile incarceration by making juvenile justice and education systems more responsive to children's needs.
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