http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O_Ao9w1u7c&feature=player_embedded
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The General Strike in Oakland on November 2 was a fantastic expression of solidarity and unity that will mark that day forever! It was overwhelmingly peaceful. People were friendly, and there was a real sense of community. It was the best feeling I've experienced in a crowd in a long time. And there were 30-40 thousand of us there!
And, yes, we shut that port DOWN!
We are the 99 percent!
Also, there has been a call from Occupy the Hood:
Occupy The Hood Calls On Young People of African Descent to Uplift the Community" On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities."
By Phillip Jackson
http://thyblackman.com/2011/11/01/occupy-the-hood-calls-young-people-uplift-the-community/
There is an ongoing Occupy movement in San Francisco and Oakland
• Solidarity with the world-wide Occupy movement!
• End police attacks on our communities!
• Defend Oakland schools and libraries!
• Against an economic system built on imperialism, inequality and corporate power that perpetuates all forms of oppression and the destruction of the environment!
There is a 24/hr presence/protest at:
Oakland at Oscar Grant (Frank Ogawa) Plaza
San Francisco at the Federal Reserve, 101 Market St., S.F. and the OccupySF encampment is at Justin Herman Plaza
This is only the beginning!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011
Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Portuguese
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
-- They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
-- They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
-- They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
-- They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
-- They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
-- They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
-- They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
-- They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay.
-- They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
-- They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
-- They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
-- They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
-- They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
-- They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
-- They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
-- They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
-- They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
-- They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
-- They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
-- They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
-- They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
-- They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
-- They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
-New York General Assembly #occupywallstreet, September 29, 2011
http://www.nycga.net/resources/declaration/
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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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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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Veteran's Day Benefit show for Courage to Resist!
8pm, Friday, November 11th at The Marsh-Berkeley
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon
in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years"
Limited advance tickets only $25 available at:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/?wid=47377
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley.
The story begins as Petrick reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford.
A twenty-year-old anti-war activist in 1966 when he was drafted into the Army, Pvt. Petrick was a model soldier except when the subject of Vietnam came up. At that point, he missed no opportunity to make his opinions known to his fellow GIs and anyone else who would listen. His activities helped ignite an antiwar movement in the barracks and led to a confrontation with the brass. Calls from the Pentagon! Threats of treason! By the time it was all over, Petrick, who never backed down, had become something of a celebrity. He even had a song written about him and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. From the ass-scratching first cook to the frustrated Military Intelligence officer, Petrick brings over twenty characters to life in this autobiographical solo piece.
"If Westmoreland can give a political partisan speech to the Press Club in New York City supporting the war, then I should be able to speak in uniform opposing the war." - Howard Petrick quoted in the Texas Observer in 1967.
It's a comedy that keeps hope alive. Here are more kudos for the show:
"Petrick made headlines as a GI for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, and he's turned his experiences into a deftly crafted solo show." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
His "aw shucks" attitude had me right there with him every step of the way, rooting for my new hero. Please don't miss this true tale. - Jenny Revue (Winnipeg)
"His ear for dialogue...is superb." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
"It's an engaging tale, often funny...Petrick's writing is strong...valuable as a piece of history in a time when for much of the population, Vietnam is just a vague, long-ago event." - Fresno Bee
"This is an important piece of history - from the common man's point of view." - Victoria Fringe
"A must see!" - The Plank (Vancouver)
Howard Petrick has studied solo performance with David Ford, Ann Randolph, James Donlon, Mark Kenward and Leonard Pitt. He has performed at FronteraFest, The Marsh, Words First, City Solo, San Francisco Theater Festival, Solo Sundays, Tell it on Tuesday, the Fresno Rogue Festival and Fringe Festivals in Boulder, Chicago, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.howardpetrick.com
Limited advance tickets available at:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/?wid=47377
Courage to Resist
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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Other showings:
Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
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Occupy Education -- Nov. 16, 2011 -- The 99% Say No Fee Hikes, No Cuts, No Privatization!
Meet at 7 am at UCSF Mission Bay Campus,
1555 6th Street, San Francisco
-- Occupy San Francisco
(adopted at the Oct. 19 General Assembly)
Call by Occupy San Francisco
We the 99% commit ourselves to mobilize against the privatization of public education being forced upon California and the country. The 1% -- the bankers, the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees, and the corporate politicians -- are pushing through vicious fee hikes, layoffs, and budget cuts under the pretext of the financial crisis that they created and profited off of.
They say cuts are inevitable because there are no funds -- but we know that if we really taxed the corporations, ended the wars, or took back the bailout funds, there would be no budget shortfall. They say we have to accept-- but we know that if we take mass collective action, we can defeat these attacks.
On November 16th, the UC Regents will be discussing and possibly voting on a proposal to raise fees up to 81% over the next 4 years -- raising tuition to over $22,000. This is a brutal attack against the 99% of California, particularly for communities of color and working families, and on all sectors of public education, from pre-K-12 to higher education.
We call on all the 99%, on all the Occupy general assemblies and camps throughout Northern California, on all student, labor, and community organizations, to come together in a massive display of non-violent civil disobedience to prevent the UC Regents meeting from taking place, to send the strongest message that we will not accept any fee hikes, cuts, or concessions in any level of public education.
We can win this struggle. Join us!
For more info, contact:
occupyeducation@gmail.com
www.occupyed.org
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CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Against the wars of occupation; Against the interference in the internal affairs of countries; In defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations
Algiers, Algeria -- December 3-5, 2011
Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops in 2001, under the pretext of the "War on Terror," and of Iraq in 2003, in the name of a so-called "struggle for democracy," imperialist governments, under the leadership of the U.S. government, have implemented a strategy based on international wars of occupation and plunder. This strategy has also included widespread interference in the internal affairs of nations, the astronomic growth of war budgets, the assault on democratic rights, and the massive cuts in social spending -- particularly in Europe and the United States.
Today, the governments of the imperialist powers -- specifically the U.S., French, British and Italian governments -- have opened a new front in the war; this time in the Maghreb region of Northern Africa. (*)
A new step has been taken with the further implementation of the U.S. government's Greater Middle East Plan, which was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003 at the time of the launching of the war of occupation and looting of Iraq. It's a plan that aims to dismantle nations along ethnic, religious and communitarian lines -- from Pakistan to Mauritania.
At the very moment when the Tunisian and Egyptian workers and peoples are struggling to exercise their full sovereignty by means of democracy, Libya is descending into chaos after a foreign military intervention under the aegis of NATO -- an intervention that threatens its territorial integrity.
By this means, all the countries of the Maghreb region are now facing threats to their integrity. But this is not all: The implications for the SAHEL countries (parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and, more generally, for sub-Saharan Africa are incalculable. This is because the conflict has gone way beyond the Libyan borders in terms of the movement of weapons -- including heavy weapons massively distributed among Libyan civilians and armed terrorist groups who have openly displayed them in the aftermath of the foreign military intervention.
This is not to mention the devastating effects on the economies of these countries, especially when combined with the massive return of hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been working in Libya, as well as more than one million Libyan refugees, mostly in Tunisia.
In reality, through the foreign military intervention in Libya, the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists seek to terrorize all the peoples of the region and the world.
No political party genuinely committed to the sovereignty of nations and to democracy can condone, under whatever pretext whatsoever, the imperialist war of occupation and plunder in Libya. No labor organization faithful to the traditions of the international labor movement can condone such a war. That is why we the undersigned reject another war on our African continent -- a continent that is already bloodied and torn apart by so-called ethnic conflicts, which are really nothing but the result of foreign plunder of the continent's natural resources, the repayment of foreign debt, and the various manipulations that result therewith.
We reject any foreign military presence in any form whatsoever in our region of the Maghreb, elsewhere across Northern Africa, and, more generally, on our continent of Africa.
We reject any and all attacks upon sovereign nations.
We reject the foreign looting of the riches and resources of the peoples of the Maghreb and of Africa as a whole. Taking control over these resources -- including through the installation of foreign military bases, starting with AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) -- is the real objective of the war of occupation in Libya, under the auspices of NATO. This is what's really at stake.
We denounce the imperialist designs of the governments that are racing to grab the reconstruction deals for the infrastructure of Libya, destroyed by NATO air strikes - another stake of the war.
We deny the imperialist governments, NATO and the mongers of war and chaos the right to decide the fate of the peoples of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and all peoples of the world.
We affirm that because there can be no popular sovereignty without national sovereignty, from the standpoint of democracy it is up to sovereign peoples -- and up to them alone -- to define their present and their future without external interference and foreign military intervention.
We call upon organizations and parties around the world and in our own country that oppose the imperialist wars to join us in supporting and participating in an Emergency International Conference in Algiers on December 3-5, 2011, against the wars of occupation, against the interference in the internal affairs of countries, and in defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations. (**)
signed/
A. Sidi Said
General Secretary
General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary
Workers Party of Algeria (PT)
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(*) The five countries that make up the Maghreb region are Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
(**) For more information about the conference or how you can get involved, please contact the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples in Paris at
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Occupy The Hood Calls On Young People of African Descent to Uplift the Community \" On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities."
By Phillip Jackson
http://thyblackman.com/2011/11/01/occupy-the-hood-calls-young-people-uplift-the-community/
(Liberia, West Africa) The Occupy Wall Street Movement has captured the imagination of the world. We now have Occupy Tokyo, Occupy Berlin, Occupy Mexico, Occupy Australia, Occupy Brazil, Occupy Denmark, Occupy Asia and even Occupy Antarctica. But where are the voices of young people of African descent and why are their voices silent?
On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities. But before occupying Wall Street or any street, we need to properly and successfully occupy the minds and spirits of people of African descent with thoughts of improvement, achievement, excellence, progress and cooperative labor. We must do this every day until we have created a new world in which people of African descent will thrive!
To look at the evening news on the occupations, it would seem as though young White men and women suffer most from the problems of our societies and the world in which we live. That is absolutely not true! In fact, the suffering from social and economic ills of people of African descent around the world is hugely disproportionate. So why has the "Occupy Movement" not inspired more young Black people across the globe to demand change and improvement in their world?
Some say Black people have too many "real" problems to be concerned about the volatility of the stock markets or whether Fortune 500 companies will each capture another billion dollars. Some say that Black Americans have forgotten the lessons learned from the civil rights movement. And others say that young Africans and young Black Americans today have been reprogrammed with technological toys, various forms of entertainment and other relatively mindless distractions. Regardless, young Black people around the world do not understand that decisions that govern the quality of their lives are being made without their input.
But a glimmer of hope has come to us in the form of a spinoff from Occupy Wall Street. It is called Occupy The Hood. While Occupy Wall Street addresses the viciousness of capitalism, uneven distribution and control of world resources, corrupt and ineffective governments, lack of human well-being across the world, climate change and the environment, wars and global violence and other dire issues, Occupy The Hood is being led by young people of African descent and addresses issues that cause people of African descent to suffer. And while we must absolutely stand in solidarity with our White, Asian, Arab and Hispanic brothers and sisters working to change the world, we must also organize to directly improve the conditions in our "hood."
To look at the evening news on the occupations, it would seem as though young White men and women suffer most from the problems of our societies and the world in which we live. That is absolutely not true! In fact, the suffering from social and economic ills of people of African descent around the world is hugely disproportionate. So why has the "Occupy Movement" not inspired more young Black people across the globe to demand change and improvement in their world?
Some say Black people have too many "real" problems to be concerned about the volatility of the stock markets or whether Fortune 500 companies will each capture another billion dollars. Some say that Black Americans have forgotten the lessons learned from the civil rights movement. And others say that young Africans and young Black Americans today have been reprogrammed with technological toys, various forms of entertainment and other relatively mindless distractions. Regardless, young Black people around the world do not understand that decisions that govern the quality of their lives are being made without their input.
But a glimmer of hope has come to us in the form of a spin-off from Occupy Wall Street. It is called Occupy The Hood. While Occupy Wall Street addresses the viciousness of capitalism, uneven distribution and control of world resources, corrupt and ineffective governments, lack of human well-being across the world, climate change and the environment, wars and global violence and other dire issues, Occupy The Hood is being led by young people of African descent and addresses issues that cause people of African descent to suffer. And while we must absolutely stand in solidarity with our White, Asian, Arab and Hispanic brothers and sisters working to change the world, we must also organize to directly improve the conditions in our "hood."
- November 1, 2011
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UNAC Conference: March 23-25, 2012
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
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NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
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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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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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We're Not Going Away
By Michael Moore, The Rachel Maddow Show
04 November 11
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8247-were-not-going-away
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show - Part 1 (11/3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaNyMA-1j-s&feature=player_embedded
What you see now are moms and dads bringing kids. You see grandparents. You see bus drivers. You see all kinds of people. And you see people who are suffering just complete abject poverty. So it really is quite a quilt, if I may say, of what this country is. And on all kinds of levels, everybody has sort of come together on this one basic issue which is that our democracy doesn't exist when it comes to our economy. And average, every day people don't have a say anymore as to how this economy runs, how it functions, how it effects people's lives. ... People's homes are underwater. They're facing foreclosure. They have been foreclosed. They have been thrown out. 50 million people -- you know all the stats, I don't need to go through this again -- who don't have healthcare. The horrible situation with our educational system. You go down the list and everybody has felt this on various levels and they've all come together now. And I'll tell you what, from what I've seen, there's no turning back. They are not going away. They have had it. They want that -- as I just said over here at the Occupy Denver rally -- they want that boot, that corporate boot, off of their necks."
-- Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show - Part 2 (11/3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdxM1MZXgZ0&feature=player_embedded
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Handful of Violent Rioters Don't Represent "Occupy" Protests
November 4, 2011 in Direct Action, Oakland, OccupyTogether, Saboteurs & Provocateurs, Video
By Washington's Blog
http://owsnews.org/handful-of-violent-rioters-dont-represent-occupy-protests/
While there was senseless destruction of property in Oakland, NBC Bay Area notes that people of Occupy Oakland say that "anarchists" not associated with the group are responsible for last night's violence.
The New York Times reports:
A belligerent fringe group that seemed intent on clashing with law enforcement and destroying property.
[They were] part of an Occupy Oakland subgroup that the city's interim police chief, Howard A. Jordan, described as "generally anarchists and provocateurs."
Some members of the group that had closed the port reprimanded those who smashed windows, threw rocks, ignited a 15-foot-high bonfire of garbage and covered downtown storefronts with graffiti.
When a man wearing a bandana broke a window with an empty beer bottle, another protester yelled, "Who are you? That isn't what this is about!"
Indeed, as the following two videos show, the overwhelming majority of protesters were peaceful and tried to stop the provocateurs:
Black Bloc Provocateurs Vandalize Property During Occupy Oakland's General Strike (11-02-2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWHjPdAS1oU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
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Provocateurs Used By Governments All Over the World to Discredit Peaceful protests
Wikipedia notes:
An agent provocateur may be a police officer or a secret agent of police who encourages suspects to carry out a crime ....
A political organization or government may use agents provocateurs against political opponents. The provocateurs try to incite the opponent to do counter-productive or ineffective acts to foster public disdain-or provide a pretext for aggression against the opponent (see Red-baiting).
Historically, labor spies, hired to infiltrate, monitor, disrupt, or subvert union activities, have used agent provocateur tactics.
There are numerous, documented cases from around the world of government provocateurs acting violently at peaceful protests in order to discredit the peaceful movements.
For example - during the Egyptian "Arab Spring" protests - Mubarak's security force thugs dressed as protesters and committed violence ... in order to discredit the protests.
An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that "elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked".
In Burma:
"They've ordered some soldiers in the military to shave their heads, so that they could pose as monks, and then those fake monks would attack soldiers to incite a military crackdown. The regime has done this before in Burma, and we believe they would do so again."
Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
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quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence. (And here is a video possibly showing a provocateur being let through the police line.)
In 2003, FAIR reported:
According to reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (1/7/03, 1/8/03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July 22 raid on the school. According to the BBC, the bombs had in fact been found elsewhere in the city, and Troijani now says planting them at the school was a "silly" thing to do.
The BBC and DPA also report that another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged over the course of a parliamentary inquiry into police conduct that was initiated by the Italian government under pressure from "domestic and international outrage over the blood-soaked G8 summit in Genoa" (London Guardian, 7/31/01). Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges.
The U.S. is not exempt from such shenanigans.
Denver police officers were found to have used undercover detectives to instigate violence against police during the 2008 Democratic National Convention (this ultimately resulted in the use of pepper spray against their own infiltrating agents).
The New York Times pointed out in 2005:
At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.
Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.
Activists ....say that police officers masquerading as protesters and bicycle riders distort their messages and provoke trouble.
At one point, the [apparent officer] seemed to try to rile bystanders.
Indeed, obvious provocateurs were filmed at the G20 in Pittsburgh:
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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As I noted in 2008:
When agents provocateur commit violence or destroy property at peaceful protests, they are carrying out false flag terrorism.
Wikipedia defines false flag terror as follows:
False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.
If intelligence agencies or federal, state or local police themselves commit acts of violence against people or property, and then blame it on peaceful protesters, that is - by definition - false flag terror.
Indeed, governments from around the world admit that they carry out false flag terror to discredit their enemies.
Oakland Rioters: Provocateurs?
While we are not yet sure whether the tiny group Oakland group of rioters (among tens of thousands of peaceful protesters) are police provocateurs, it is clear that they don't represent the Occupy protests in any way, shape or form.
The direct democracy practiced by the protesters is nothing at all like the violent rioting by the thugs.
Anyone who focuses on the handful of provocateurs - as opposed to the hundreds of millions of peaceful protesters and their supporters - is uninformed or dishonest.
For more on this issue, read: CopWatch Exposes Police Infiltrators at #OccupyOakland
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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
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Marine Vet at #OccupyWallStreet Tells Sean Hannity to "F**k Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaTGsGdp4c&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Chicago - War Protest March to Obama's 2012 HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkOincM93s
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
On Oct. 10, 2011, a combination of five feeder marches gathered in Chicago's Loop to protest the Futures & Options and American Mortgage Bankers Association expos. The feeders represented constituencies for jobs, housing, and public schools. They generated a combined march of 7,000, and finally ended up at the Art Institute where the banksters were having a reception dinner. Here are selected scenes and comments from a big spectrum of interests affected by the dictatorship of capital being forced upon the workers of Chicago. Includes the march for homes/housing starting from the Hyatt, the Occupy Chicago location where the teachers union gathered, and the final convergence at the Art Institute. Street interviews. Also, interview/speech by Karen Lewis, President of Chicago Teachers Union. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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Tom Morello (The Nightwatchman) - This Land Is Your Land @OccupyLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ImQ7Ylvdo&feature=player_embedded#!
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#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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600+ Protesters March on Bank of America - #Occupy Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1JOJ3joOA&feature=player_embedded
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Scenes From #Occupy Las Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=olatH3pSvlk
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#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
[This truly is an amazing thing to see -- no microphones allowed by NYPD yet the crowd is completely engaged with the speakers. The speeches have to be short because the words are repeated and passed along to those furthest away since they can't hear them. Mohammed's speech is great and there's no doubt that the crowd thinks so, too...Bonnie Weinstein]
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTERS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
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Police Raid on Occpy Boston 10 11 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G9agQjM60&noredirect=1
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Occupy Boston protesters arrested
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/occupy-boston-protesters-arrested/2011/10/11/gIQAsCzWdL_video.html
Boston police have arrested 129 people during Tuesday's Occupy Boston demonstrations. The early morning arrests were mostly for trespassing. (Oct. 11) (/The Associated Press)
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Video of Boston PD attacking veterans at OWS protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3zFca5znU&feature=relmfu
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Occupy Frankfurt Germany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmxQP2eMdMU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Rome - La manifestazione di Roma October 15th OccupyTogether
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25CWyNnJVOI&feature=player_embedded
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children's urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.
When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens' right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies "I don't know if they have that right."
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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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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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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. ...bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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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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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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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, René González, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing René and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow René Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of René Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
-- take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
-- ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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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
"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
Courage to Resist needs your support
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
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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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!
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/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
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
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
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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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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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!
http://lynnestewart.org/
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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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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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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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Court Lets Nashville Protesters Stay
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/us/court-lets-nashville-protesters-stay.html?ref=us
2) Brooklyn Detective Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People
By TIM STELLOH
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/nyregion/brooklyn-detective-convicted-of-planting-drugs-on-innocent-people.html?ref=nyregion
3) Bank of America Drops Plan for Debit Card Fee
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/bank-of-america-drops-plan-for-debit-card-fee.html?ref=business
4) Court Unlikely to Allow Private Prison to Be Sued
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/01/business/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Private-Prisons.html?src=busln
5) The Occupy Movement: "Historical Reflections on Our Current Tasks"
From Ralph SCHOENMAN
6) Fears of Fission Rise at Stricken Japanese Plant
By HIROKO TABUCHI
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/asia/bursts-of-fission-detected-at-fukushima-reactor-in-japan.html?ref=world
7) British Court Says WikiLeaks Founder Can Be Extradited for Questioning
By RAVI SOMAIYA
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/europe/wikileaks-founder-faces-extradition-hearing-in-london.html?ref=world
8) Firing Sought for One of Two Officers in Bell Shooting Case
By ROB HARRIS
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/nyregion/in-sean-bell-shooting-trial-prosecutors-urge-firing-of-one-officer.html?ref=nyregion
9) Cubans Can Buy and Sell Property, Government Says
By DAMIEN CAVE
November 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/americas/cubans-can-buy-and-sell-property-government-says.html?ref=business
10) BP Agrees to Pay Texas $50 Million for Pollution
[Just so you know, BP is worth about 100 billion...bw]
By REUTERS
November 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/11/03/business/business-us-texas-bp.html?src=busln
11) Murder as Instrument of Foreign Policy
By Liaquat Ali Khan
"Information Clearing House"
November 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29605.htm
12) Israel Intercepts Two Boats Bound for Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
November 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/world/middleeast/israel-intercepts-two-boats-bound-for-gaza.html?ref=world
13) Most of the Unemployed No Longer Receive Benefits
"The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent - a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/05/business/AP-US-Jobless-Without-Benefits.html?src=busln
14) New International Report Shreds Japan's Carefully Constructed Fukushima Scenario
Written by John Daly
Wednesday, 02 November 2011
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/New-International-Report-Shreds-Japan-s-Carefully-Constructed-Fukushima-Scenario.html
15) What Happened When I Tried to Get Some Answers About the Creepy NYPD Watchtower Monitoring OWS
By Nick Turse, AlterNet
Posted on November 6, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152954/what_happened_when_i_tried_to_get_some_answers_about_the_creepy_nypd_watchtower_monitoring_ows
16) Solidarity Statement From Cairo
Comrades from Cairo.
24th of October, 2011.
Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 2:39 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/solidarity-statement-cairo/
17) Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads
By CARA BUCKLEY and COLIN MOYNIHAN
November 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-protest-reaches-a-crossroads.html?hp
18) Police Force Wall Street Protesters Off Sidewalks
By AL BAKER
November 5, 2011, 9:16 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/police-force-wall-street-protesters-off-sidewalks/?ref=nyregion
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1) Court Lets Nashville Protesters Stay
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/us/court-lets-nashville-protesters-stay.html?ref=us
A federal judge on Monday ruled in support of dozens of protesters in Nashville who were arrested over the weekend.
The protesters are allowed to be on state property near the Tennessee Capitol at any time of day, according to the temporary order by Judge Aleta A. Trauger of Federal District Court.
The protesters, part of a national movement opposing corporate greed and wealth inequality that was inspired by Occupy Wall Street, were arrested on Friday and Saturday morning for violating a recently created curfew.
The judge's order came in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday arguing that the arrests violated the protesters' right to free assembly.
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2) Brooklyn Detective Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People
By TIM STELLOH
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/nyregion/brooklyn-detective-convicted-of-planting-drugs-on-innocent-people.html?ref=nyregion
The New York Police Department, already saddled with corruption scandals, saw its image further tainted on Tuesday with the conviction of a police detective for planting drugs on a woman and her boyfriend.
The bench verdict from Justice Gustin L. Reichbach in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn stemmed from incidents committed in 2007 by the defendant, Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year Police Department veteran.
But the case against Detective Arbeeny was rooted in a far larger tale of corruption in Police Department drug units: Several narcotics officers in Brooklyn have been caught mishandling drugs they seized as evidence, and hundreds of potentially tainted drug cases have been dismissed. The city has made payments to settle civil suits over wrongful incarcerations.
During the trial, prosecutors described the corruption within the Police Department drug units that Detective Arbeeny worked for; one former detective, who did not know the defendant, testified that officers in those units often planted drugs on innocent people. That former detective, Stephen Anderson, has pleaded guilty to official misconduct over a 2008 episode involving drug evidence and now faces two years to four years in prison.
The conviction of Detective Arbeeny on charges of falsifying business records, official misconduct and offering a false instrument for filing, was merely the latest example of police corruption, prosecutors said.
On Jan. 25, 2007, prosecutors said Detective Arbeeny planted a small bag of crack cocaine on two innocent people.
The detective's lawyer, Michael Elbaz, tried to discredit the most important prosecution witnesses, Yvelisse DeLeon and her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa. Ms. DeLeon had testified that the couple drove up to their apartment building in Coney Island and were approached by two plainclothes police officers. She said she then saw Detective Arbeeny remove a bag of powder from his pocket and place it in the vehicle.
"He brought out his pocket," Ms. DeLeon told the court. "He said, 'Look what I find.' It looked like little powder in a little bag."
Later in 2007, the detective was accused of stealing multiple bags of cocaine from the prisoner van he had been assigned to; Justice Reichbach found Detective Arbeeny not guilty of those charges.
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3) Bank of America Drops Plan for Debit Card Fee
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/bank-of-america-drops-plan-for-debit-card-fee.html?ref=business
Bank of America said Tuesday that it was abandoning its plan to charge its customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards, just a month after announcing the new fee.
The reversal follows a huge backlash from customers, one of whom collected more than 200,000 signatures urging the bank to rethink its plan.
The bank listened, but only after other large banks had indicated that they would not impose similar fees. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust and Regions Financial have all pulled back on their plans.
"We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee," David Darnell, co-chief operating officer at Bank of America, said in a statement. "As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so."
Wells Fargo said Friday that it was canceling a test that would have imposed a $3-a-month charge on debit card holders in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. JPMorgan Chase, which was testing a $3-a-month charge, decided it would not impose a stand-alone debit card use fee. And SunTrust and Regions have both said they would no longer charge the fees.
But Bank of America, the nation's second-largest bank after JPMorgan Chase, took the brunt of the criticism, which came from all corners, including Capitol Hill and the White House. Days after the bank announced that it would charge the fee, President Obama said customers should not be "mistreated" in pursuit of profit, while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called the move "incredibly tone deaf."
The debit card fee was supposed to have gone into effect in January.
The new fees were part of efforts by the banks to raise revenue lost elsewhere.
In October, a new rule went into effect that limits the fees banks can levy on merchants every time a consumer uses a debit card to make a purchase. The new limit is expected to cost the banks about $6.6 billion in revenue a year, beginning in 2012, according to Javelin Strategy and Research. That comes on top of another loss, of $5.6 billion, from new rules restricting overdraft fees, which went into effect in July 2010.
But consumers have little sympathy for the banks' loss of revenue. In fact, consumer groups have called for Saturday to be "Bank Transfer Day," where customers of big banks move their accounts to community banks and credit unions.
"Bank of America's new debit card fee was the last straw for many consumers who are tired of banks that got bailed out that are now turning around and hiking fees," Norma Garcia, manager of Consumer Union's financial services program, said in a statement.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 1, 2011
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Bank of America as the nation's largest bank. JPMorgan Chase has overtaken Bank of America in assets, according to third-quarter results released in October.
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4) Court Unlikely to Allow Private Prison to Be Sued
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/01/business/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Private-Prisons.html?src=busln
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court seems unlikely to allow employees at a privately run federal prison to be sued by an inmate in federal court.
The high court on Tuesday heard arguments by lawyers from the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Richard Lee Pollard could sue GEO officials for injuries he suffered while imprisoned in Taft, Calif.
But the company running the prison says their employees shouldn't be sued in federal court because prisoners are required to use state courts first.
Justices repeatedly questioned Pollard's lawyer about why his client did not file a state negligence lawsuit against GEO officials. Pollard's lawsuit will be dismissed if he can't sue in federal court, because the state statute of limitations has expired.
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5) "Historical Reflections on Our Current Tasks"
From Ralph SCHOENMAN
1. RECLAIMING THE SOCIALIST IDEAL
by Ralph Schoenman
Globally, mass disaffection, combined with the advancing terminal crisis of the financial system and of capitalism itself, has created the conditions for revolution.
Consequently, each mass response, however triggered, precipitates this dynamic.
The socialist movement and marxist tradition prepare us to understand that the central battle for a democratic polity is to ensure that the economic life of society is determined and controlled democratically.
That's basic.
The key contradiction of our era is that productive forces globally are so vast and, in the industrial metropole, so tied to technological power that we have now the capacity to create a society in which all basic necessities of people are a birthright - as free as the air we breathe.
Our demands should start from the premise that the 99% should determine democratically the purposes of production and the fruit of our labor.
Reclaiming the socialist ideal is inextricably bound up with the central insight of the growing mass movement, that in the U.S. as in other capitalist societies, 1% of the population owns more than 99% of the rest of us combined.
We need in each society political parties and program that advocate and implement the needs of the overwhelming majority of working people who produce all value through their labor.
Working people should determine whether houses and schools, hospitals and libraries, critical transport infrastructure, and the studied advance of scientific knowledge are the objectives of our common labor, or social production remains under the dictate of the exploitative few, a perpetual instrument of profit, exploitation, war and devastation.
Working people should enforce that wars to steal the natural resources and labor power of fellow workers across the world are eliminated and their perpetrators prosecuted as criminals.
We need to build political parties of the working population not the parasitic bosses. Our task is to end the dictatorship of capital that owns and pays for the political process and the dominant parties that service it.
That was the essence of Tony Mazzochi's slogan for the labor party: "the bosses have two parties; we need one of our own."
If democratic determination and control over the purposes of production are called "socialist" by our class opponents, our response should be the same as early American revolutionaries who challenged colonial rule and were demonized by the satraps of the ruling few: "If this be treason, make the most of it!"
"If this be socialism, make the most of it!" is our response.
Democracy requires a unity between economic and political functioning - in which the social fabric of the societies we inhabit and create is based upon economic emancipation of all living life with a political structure that facilitates and ensures basic and perpetual social growth and advance.
This is the arena in which new explosions of creativity will emerge with each generation and vindicate the declaration by Marx that we are living through our pre-history - the early infancy of growth, achievement and fulfillment for all species on this small planet.
2] What Strategy to Fight Global Capitalism?
Contribution to the Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights (OWC) discussion by Ralph Schoenman, author, past executor director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and member of the coordinating committee of the International Committee Against Repression (ICAR)
[Note: Ralph Schoenman, a longstanding fighter for trade union and democratic rights, was a panelist in the OWC's workshop on the "Struggle Against Racism and Oppression and in Defense of Democratic Rights." He submitted the article below as a contribution to the OWC report-back discussion and as a presentation to the plenary session.
By RALPH SCHOENMAN
The Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights (OWC) aims at building an international fight-back by workers and their unions against the onslaught of global capital.
We all know how powerful are the multinational corporations who operate in every country. What we must keep in mind as we raise our voices in defense of working people-the vast and overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of our planet-is that the great corporate conglomerates have captured the state in each and every one of our respective countries.
Whatever the forms of nominal governance, the real power is hidden and concentrated in the hands of a tiny oligarchy of the ruling rich. This is true whether our countries are run by a family dictatorship, as in Indonesia or Nigeria, or whether there are nominal forms of representation, as in the United States.
Regardless of the façade, in each and every one of our countries, the real power remains in the hands of the few.
In the United States, the New York Times estimated recently that one- half of one percent of the population in the United States owns more than the rest of the population combined. The top executives of eight companies, reported the Times on February 15, 1998, own personally $15 billion of their companies' equity.
No matter what yardstick we use, the powerful few run the show. The government administers the state and the rich purchase it. The state itself is their private instrument used to police the planet and to subsidize control over planetary resources and cheap labor by the corporations and the banks.
"Rich Control More of U.S. Wealth As Debts Grow for Poor," reads one headline in the New York Times. The article reports an in-depth study prepared by the University of Michigan that shows that wealth has become more concentrated than ever before since 1990.
Features of capitalism
Unionists and activists are mobilizing internationally against the sweatshops and starvation wages, which are the main feature of conditions of work in the global economy.
For every worker laboring from dawn to dusk in a condition of near slavery, there are vast numbers who have no work at all. These conditions are the result of political and economic policies. They are not natural phenomena. They are the inexorable workings of a capitalist economy in which profits depend upon a perpetual war on the earnings of the workers whose labor produces all wealth.
Thousands upon thousands mobilized on this International Day of Action because we want an end to the misery and exploitation that define the waking hours of billions of human beings.
We attribute this to the "trade" policies of global corporations, and while we are right to decry the results, it is important to examine what passes for trade in the global economy.
The notion of "trade" presupposes co-equals sitting down together to exchange things of value. It would be far more accurate to say that the policies of the global corporations who run the economies of our countries involve theft: theft of natural resources and theft of the labor of working people.
The global corporations design policies that they call "trade agreements"-such as NAFTA, Maastricht or the MAI. These are not trade agreements. These are strategic assaults upon the resources of the planet and the living standards of its inhabitants.
Take NAFTA. Since its imposition, the global corporations centered in the United States eliminated nearly a half million jobs. The wages of Mexican workers in the manufacturing sector have fallen 40 percent within Mexico and are one-eleventh of what had been paid for equivalent work to workers in the U.S.
Much work, however, has been concentrated along the border where U.S. companies produce goods for the U.S. market. At the Zenith plant in Reynosa, workers are paid 69 cents per hour.
Not only wages have been under siege. Social services have been assailed. Healthcare has deteriorated drastically. The cost of food and clothing has soared. The housing stock has dwindled to a fraction of its previous meager supply.
Are social clauses a solution?
Some contend that the introduction of social clauses-that is, environmental and labor clauses-into such pacts as NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI would soften the impact of these agreements by providing protections for workers and the environment.
There is no evidence that such protections are feasible or that corporate rulers would agree to them. The essence of NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI is the restructuring of work so that work becomes precarious and workers wholly vulnerable to corporate dictate. Job security, a living wage, social benefits, safe working conditions, and eight-hour day and independent union representation are precisely those gains of the workers' movement which these pacts target for elimination.
Even if some palliative passages were incorporated into these strategic corporate plans, NAFTA, Maastricht and the MAI were designed to dislocate and atomize workers. Such presumed protective clauses would be subject to the interpretation and implementation of the corporations themselves.
Moreover, whether the labor and environmental clauses are in the form of side agreements or whether they are within the body of the agreements themselves, there is no mechanism of enforcement on which the workers can rely.
Workers are being removed systematically from secure employment under NAFTA. Manufacturing jobs are offered on the basis of reduced wages and increased hours and, in large measure, are being replaced by sweatshop pass-through work. It should be clear, therefore, to all worker activists that such protective social clauses are incompatible with the entire dynamic of global capitalism today. Reliance on the bosses to implement protective language will prove to be an exercise in futility.
We cannot defend our interests by supplicating corporate rulers to be "good citizens" or to be nice and refrain from exploiting working people. Our demand must be for the right to independent trade unions and the protection of worker rights, so that the power of global capital can be confronted by workers on an international scale.
The agreements are not about trade. They are designed to render workers disposable, replaceable and without the capacity to organize collectively in their own interests.
Corporate capital is driven to this course because capitalism cannot sustain profits in the present era without deepening exploitation to levels not seen since the onset of the industrial revolution. This cannot be achieved without dislocating and fragmenting the organization of workers and undermining them as a cohesive class. Wherever workers have wrested gains, these gains and the organization of working people are under siege.
One-sided class warfare
NAFTA-as President Clinton has repeated ad nauseam-is the model that is to be imposed on the entire continent.
Does this super-exploitation translate into benefits for workers in the United States? Quite the opposite is the case. Full-time work is being eliminated in the United States and replaced with part-time, precarious work precisely so the corporations can pay wages of 69 cents an hour.
Is this a "trade" measure or a form of warfare-class warfare aga
Can we attribute this solely to "trade" agreements such as NAFTA or to the MAI? While these schemes are part of the arsenal of class warfare, it is essential for us to keep in mind that they are weapons in a brutal conflict and we must never lose sight of the war and who wages it.
Today we speak of the global corporations. A few years ago we called them multinationals and a few years before that we spoke and wrote about the Tri-Lateral Commission instead of about NAFTA and the MAI.
Yet, no matter the instrument through which exploitation is both managed and planned, it is the control of the state by concentrated capital that makes it possible.
Nor does it matter which of the two political parties financed by capital holds office. It is office without power because the two parties are the one big property party with separate names.
True face of imperialism
Woodrow Wilson spoke of "making the world safe for democracy," but when addressing the manufacturers of the United States, his message was clear:
"If," Wilson stated in 1912, "America had not had free enterprise, it would not have any sort of liberty at all." Later that year, he proclaimed Our industry has developed to the point where it collapses unless it finds a free opening on the world market. Our home market is insufficient. We must have a foreign trade." (cited in Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indochina, Editor John Duffett, New York, 1968)
Herbert Hoover expressed the core policy of the rule of capital in parallel terms:
"Foreign markets will be more important for us, to assure a stable and normal function of our industry. ... It assumes of an importance that is greater than the percentage of export in relation to home consumption." (Ibid.)
These were the identical preoccupations of Franklin Roosevelt and of the New Deal. Roosevelt's President of the National Industrial Conference Board, Virgil Jordan, put it like this on December 10, 1940:
"Whatever the outcome of the war may be, America has taken the road towards imperialism on an economic plane as on all other planes of life. Some fear this word 'imperialism,' some menacing and well known. Most people prefer, in the American way, to mask the fact under a more vague expression, such as 'defense of the Western Hemisphere.' But consciously or not, America is destined by her temperament, by her capacity by her resources, and by the course of world affairs, not alone of those of the last few years, but since 1900, destined to follow this road.
"Truly we have no choice. We have but to continue on the road that we have been going along for a quarter of a century and which began with the annexation of Cuba and the Philippines, etc. (sic)
"This Empire is seeing its possibilities for expansion on the southern part of this hemisphere and west - in the Pacific - disappearing. The scepter must fall in the hands of the U.S.A." (Ibid.)
Those who voted for Franklin Roosevelt did not give their knowing sanction to the seizure of countries and the imposition of empire. The CIO in that day was opposed to such things, even as the AFL-CIO today opposes NAFTA and the MAI.
The imperialism celebrated by Virgil Jordan was only possible because the support by organized labor for the Democratic Party demobilized working people and prevented them from forging their own political party to defend our interests. The "no-strike" pledges exacted by the Roosevelt administration permitted these policies to be carried out unopposed.
The gap widens
Today, as the U.S. Census Bureau Report confirms, "the gap between the affluent few and everyone else is wider than it has been since the end of World War Two." As the New York Times (6/19/96) commented, "each indicator has shown a pronounced increase in the gap between the incomes of the wealthy and those of the poor and the working class."
We suffer from greater poverty and deprivation than we did in this country a half- century ago.
The U.S. Census Bureau Report reveals that during the first two years of the Clinton administration, the share of national income claimed by the top 5% grew at a faster rate than in the previous eight years of the Reagan administration combined.
The Census Bureau Report concluded: "the widening disparity in the fortunes of American workers is becoming an entrenched fixture of the country's economy."
How does this work? Forbes reveals that the top corporate rulers control $3.2 trillion in business assets alone. They own 50% of all common stock in America and 45% of all fixed non-residential private capital in the United States.
The conservative Cato Institute calculates that in every sector of our economy the giant corporations are subsidized by the Federal Government. Congress finances 125 subsidy programs for the largest corporations at a net cost of $85 billion per year, not including tax breaks. The top 17 corporations paid no federal income tax for a period of ten years. When we add in the tax breaks, that is a subsidy of over $100 billion-half the Federal deficit.
In agriculture, agro-conglomerates receive $31.3 billion in government subsidies and $2.9 billion in tax rebates. Energy corporations are subsidized to the tune of $15.3 billion. Transportation conglomerates receive $30.6 billion. Aerospace and high tech get $16.7 billion in subsidy. In construction, the major corporations receive $17.4 billion. Financial services-banks, brokerage houses and the great centers of stock and bond speculation-receive $42.3 billion, with tax breaks of $60.4 billion. Commodity credit subsidies are $9.81 billion.
These are not government programs. These are handouts to the corporate oligarchy that owns the government and finances both political parties with the proceeds.
This is why 60 cents of every tax dollar go to the Pentagon and less than a dime to health care. This is how 3 cents get allocated to housing and much of that housing for the affluent. This is why 2 cents go to education and most of that channeled to the schools of the affluent. This is what permits 1 cent to be allocated to generate employment.
While they do this, a child dies of poverty every 50 minutes in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of children are homeless each night. One in every five children goes to bed hungry and cold, without heat, running water and electricity in the rat-infested cages that pass for shelter in our inner cities.
The policies that transfer jobs to the global sweatshops have precise and measurable consequences, described by CNN on March 20. Ten million children will die each year from contaminated water in the countries from which the greatest profits are generated. One-fifth of the world's population lacks potable water. The World Health Organization estimates that over the next two decades, 70 million people will die from a form of tuberculosis that is curable by a simple administration of an antibiotic, and one billion people will be infected.
While the health of the workers of the world is in crisis mode, what of the compensation reaped by the health conglomerates and their corporate controllers?
Richard L. Scott of Columbia HCA received $265.5 million in one year. Peter Nicholson of Boston Scientific Corporation got $231.1 million. David Jones of Humana, Inc. obtained $194.4 million. Leon C. Hirsch of U.S. Surgical Company was paid $105.8 million.
This was just the salary. Leonard Abramson of U.S. Health Care received stock options of $11.4 million, but outright stock holdings of $783.9 million His total compensation package was $805,122,045. The total federal spending on AIDS was $1.4 billion-half of the value of the stockholdings of the top ten health industry executives.
These payments are across the board among corporate conglomerates, as documented in the Special Report in Business Week (April 20, 1998).
Working class independence
The power of global capital can only be challenged by a fight back on a global scale. Unless we organize ourselves in the workplace and politically in every country and build an international party of working people, we shall never escape the control of global capital.
We need organization and political parties independent of capital if we are to devise our own programs and fight for the power to implement them.
To achieve independent class organization, we must build labor parties that can break the capitalist monopoly over the political process. Without this, working people will be led repeatedly into an impasse, helpless and passive tools of the political instruments of their class enemy.
Let us join together in discussing how we can break with the political parties of capital in every country: with the Democrats no less than the Republicans in the United States, with the parties administering the policies of the IMF everywhere.
Let us join together in building that party of working people. As the anthem of the workers' movement proclaims, it is the final battle and, for humanity's sake, we must wage it to win.
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6) Fears of Fission Rise at Stricken Japanese Plant
By HIROKO TABUCHI
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/asia/bursts-of-fission-detected-at-fukushima-reactor-in-japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - Nuclear workers at the crippled Fukushima power plant raced to inject boric acid into the plant's No. 2 reactor early Wednesday after telltale radioactive elements were detected there, and the plant's owner admitted for the first time that fuel deep inside three stricken reactors was probably continuing to experience bursts of fission.
The unexpected bursts - something akin to flare-ups after a major fire - are extremely unlikely to presage a large-scale nuclear reaction with the resulting large-scale production of heat and radiation. But they threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts.
The disclosures raise startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The Japanese government has said that it aims to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a "cold shutdown" by the end of the year.
On Wednesday, the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that gas from Reactor No. 2 indicated the presence of radioactive xenon and other substances that could be byproducts of nuclear fission. The presence of xenon 135 in particular, which has a half-life of just nine hours, seemed to indicate that fission took place very recently.
Trade Minister Yukuo Edano censured Japan's nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, for failing to report the discovery to the prime minister's office for hours, according to local media reports.
The developments added to disquiet over how information related to the disaster has been handled. For almost two months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems, setting the stage for disaster, both company and government officials declared it was unlikely that any meltdowns had occurred. They finally conceded that melted fuel had likely breached containments in three reactors, and that it was likely pooled at the bottom of the vessels.
A 12-mile exclusion zone is still in effect around the plant. More than 80,000 households were displaced.
On Wednesday, Tokyo Electric said that the amount of xenon detected was small, and there was no rise in temperature, pressure or radiation levels at the reactor. Researchers were double-checking the data to make sure there were no errors, the company said. Experts concurred that it was possible that Tokyo Electric had made a simple error in its measurements.
But the urgent injection of boric acid underscored that the company was operating on the assumption that the measurements were valid. A naturally occurring element, boron, soaks up the neutrons released when an atom is split so that those neutrons cannot go on to split other atoms when material "goes critical" in the process of fission. Nuclear power plants harness the energy released in the form of heat to produce electricity.
It is impossible to determine exactly what state the fuel is in, given that even an intact reactor can offer only gauges for temperature, pressure and neutron flow, not visual observation. That lack of clarity is one of the most resonant lessons of the Fukushima disaster, when those trying to guide the response and assess the danger had to operate by what amounted to educated guesswork.
In reactors of the design used at Fukushima, the nuclear chain reaction is normally stopped when the operator gives a command to insert control rods, which rise up from the bottom of the core and separate the fuel assemblies. But the fuel in the cores of the three reactors is presumably a haphazard mass, without a strict gridlike geometry, so control rods cannot be inserted. Further, some experts believe some of the fuel has escaped the vessels and is in spaces underneath.
The jumble of material and conditions in the damaged reactors seem very unlikely to be able to produce sustained fission, but some experts have long suspected intermittent criticalities. In other accidents, nuclear material has burst into fission, but the released energy then rearranges the damaged fuel into a configuration that no longer support fission. Gradually, the material re-forms in a way to support another burst.
On Wednesday, Junichi Matsumoto, a Tokyo Electric spokesman, acknowledged episodes of fission, saying at a news conference: "There is a possibility that certain conditions came together temporarily that were conducive to re-criticality," and that the measurements indicated a burst that occurred at a slightly higher rate than prior cases.
"It's not that we've had zero fission until now," Mr. Matsumoto said. "But at this point, we do not think there is a large-scale and self-sustained re-criticality."
Mr. Matsumoto said detailed measurements had not yet been taken at the two other severely damaged reactors on the Fukushima site, but acknowledged the possibility of episodes of fission there, too. The three reactors - and spent fuel rods stored at a fourth damaged reactor - have been leaking radioactive material since the initial disaster. New episodes of fission would only increase their dangers.
"Re-criticality would produce more harmful radioactive material, and because the reactors are damaged, there would be a danger of a leak," said Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute, whose prescient warnings about nuclear safety have won him respect in Japan.
Mr. Koide holds that the nuclear fuel at the three reactors probably melted through containments and into the ground, raising the possibility of contaminated groundwater. If much of the fuel was indeed in the ground early in the crisis, the "feed and bleed" strategy initially taken by Tokyo Electric - pumping cooling water into the reactors, producing hundreds of tons of radioactive runoff - would have done little to help. Workers have now put in place a circulating cooling system that recycles water, which results in less runoff.
Tokyo Electric does not deny that the fuel may have burrowed into the ground, but its officials say that "most" is likely to remain within the reactor, albeit slumped at the bottom in a molten mass.
Some experts had not expected even bursts of re-criticality to occur, because it was unlikely that the fuel would melt in just the right way - and that another ingredient, water, would be present in just the right amounts - to allow for any nuclear reaction. If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, "our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head."
Other nuclear experts have debated for months whether nuclear reactions might be continuing, either in the fuel inside the reactors, or in the spent fuel pools at the plant. They have pointed, for example, to the continued reports of short-lived iodine in the spent fuel pool by Reactor No..3.
A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm said that sustained re-criticality remained highly unlikely. But his main concern was that officials could not pinpoint the exact location of the nuclear fuel - which would greatly complicate the cleanup.
The engineer, who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric, spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified by his former employers. He said that tiny fuel pellets could have been carried to different parts of the plant, like the spaces under the reactor, during attempts to vent them in the early days. That would explain several cases of lethally high radiation readings found outside the reactor cores.
"If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that's one thing," he said. "But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown."
The developments added to the disquiet over handling of information related to the disaster. For almost two months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, disaster, both company and government officials declared it was unlikely any meltdown had occurred at all at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex, finally conceding that the fuel had indeed slumped and had likely breached containments in three reactors.
The amount of detected xenon was small, and there was no rise in temperature, pressure or radiation levels at the reactor, Tokyo Electric said. Researchers were double-checking the data to make sure there were no errors, the company said. Experts concurred that it was possible that Tokyo Electric had made a simple error in its measurements.
But the urgent injection of boric acid underscored that the company was operating on the assumption that the measurements were valid. A naturally occurring element, boron soaks up the neutrons released when an atom is split so that those neutrons cannot go on to split other atoms in the process of fission. Nuclear power plants harness the energy released in the form of heat to produce electricity.
It is impossible to determine exactly what state the fuel is in, given that even an intact reactor can offer only limited gauges in the form of temperature, pressure readings and neutron flow, but not visual observation. That lack of clarity is one of the most resonant lessons of the Fukushima disaster, where those trying to guide the response and assess the danger operated by what amounted to educated guesswork.
In reactors of the design used at Fukushima, that chain reaction is normally stopped when the operator gives a command to insert control rods, which rise up from the bottom of the core and separate the fuel assemblies. But when the cores of three reactors at Fukushima melted, a large part of the fuel presumably formed a jumbled mass in the bottom of the vessel, and without a strict gridlike geometry, the control rods cannot be inserted. Some of the fuel has escaped the vessel, experts believe, and is in spaces underneath, where there is no way to use control rods to interrupt the flow of neutrons.
The jumble of material and conditions had seemed very unlikely to be able to produce sustained fission, but intermittent criticalities have long been suspected.
Junichi Matsumoto, a Tokyo Electric spokesman, acknowledged episodes of fission, telling a news conference: "There is a possibility that certain conditions came together temporarily that were conducive to re-criticality," and that the measurements indicated a burst that occurred at a slightly higher rate than prior cases. "It's not that we've had zero fission until now," Mr. Matsumoto said. "But at this point, we do not think there is a large-scale and self-sustained re-criticality."
A criticality could produce energy that would rearrange the wrecked fuel into a configuration that would no longer support fission, but gradually the material could come together in a form that would support a new burst of fission. That has been the case in previous so-called inadvertent criticalities in other accidents.
He said detailed measurements had not yet been taken at two other severely damaged reactors on the Fukushima site, but acknowledged the possibility of episodes of fission there too. The Fukushima complex, about 160 miles from Tokyo, was struck by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, which knocked out vital cooling systems and caused the nuclear fuel at three of the plant's six reactors to melt, with radiation leaks and releases whose damage is still being calculated. A 12-mile exclusion zone is still in effect around the plant. Over 80,000 households were displaced.
The three reactors - together with spent fuel rods stored at a fourth damaged reactor - have been leaking radioactive material since the initial disaster, and new episodes of fission would only increase their dangers.
"Re-criticality would produce more harmful radioactive material, and because the reactors are damaged, there would be a danger of a leak," said Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute, whose prescient warnings about nuclear safety have won him respect in Japan.
Mr. Koide holds that the nuclear fuel at the three reactors probably melted through containments and into the ground, raising the possibility of contaminated groundwater. If much of the fuel was indeed in the ground early in the crisis, the "feed and bleed" strategy initially taken by Tokyo Electric - where workers pumped cooling water into the reactors, producing hundreds of tons of radioactive runoff - would have prevented fuel still in the reactor from boiling itself dry and melting, but would not have done anything to reduce danger from fuel already in the soil - if it got that far. Workers have now put in place a circulating cooling system that recycles water, which results in less runoff.
Tokyo Electric does not deny the possibility that the fuel may have burrowed into the ground, but its officials say that "most" of the fuel likely remains within the reactor, albeit slumped at the bottom in a molten mass.
But even in their most dire assessments, some experts had not expected even bursts of re-criticality to occur, because it was unlikely that the fuel would melt in just the right way - and that another ingredient, water, would be present in just the right amounts - to allow for any nuclear reaction. If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, "our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head."
Some nuclear experts have debated for months whether nuclear reactions might be continuing, either in the fuel inside the reactors, or in the spent fuel pools at the plant. They have pointed, for example, to the continued reports of short-lived iodine in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 3.
A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm, meanwhile, said that sustained re-criticality remained highly unlikely. But his main concern was that officials could not pinpoint the exact location of the nuclear fuel - which would greatly complicate the cleanup.
The engineer, who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric, spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified by his former employers. He said that tiny fuel pellets could have been carried to different parts of the plant, like the spaces under the reactor during attempts to vent them in the early days. That would explain several cases of lethally high radiation readings found outside the reactor cores.
"If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that's one thing," he said. But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown."
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington, and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo.
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7) British Court Says WikiLeaks Founder Can Be Extradited for Questioning
By RAVI SOMAIYA
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/world/europe/wikileaks-founder-faces-extradition-hearing-in-london.html?ref=world
LONDON - A British court ruled Wednesday that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, can be extradited to Sweden for questioning over allegations of sexual abuse made against him by two women there last year. He will seek a final appeal at Britain's highest court, according to a person close to him.
Two of Britain's most senior judges dismissed all four arguments raised by Mr. Assange's defense team. The decision makes it increasingly likely that Mr. Assange will face his accusers in Sweden.
He has at least 14 days to ask for permission to bring his case before Britain's highest court, the Supreme Court, for a final appeal. The court hears only cases of constitutional or general public importance.
The 43-page ruling was the latest twist in an 11-month legal battle that has included multiple court appearances and brought out throngs of supporters, and it comes as WikiLeaks has been temporarily shuttered because of continuing financing troubles. Mr. Assange was briefly jailed last December, as Swedish authorities filed an arrest warrant demanding he return to face accusations made by two WikiLeaks volunteers in Stockholm in August 2010. He is accused of two counts of sexual molestation, one count of unlawful coercion and one count of rape based on their allegations that consensual sex became nonconsensual.
He vehemently denies the allegations and has engaged a series of high-profile lawyers to fight the extradition warrant, arguing, among other things, that he could not get a fair trial. Mr. Assange has given interviews condemning Sweden's strict sexual crimes laws, calling the country "the Saudi Arabia of feminism."
Wednesday's ruling marks the second time a British court has rejected his appeals. After the ruling Mr. Assange and a coterie of advisers and friends huddled in the courthouse to discuss their options, flanked by security guards.
"We will consider our next steps in the coming days," he said in a brief statement to the throng of reporters gathered outside. But a person close to Mr. Assange said he would appear in court again to seek permission to appeal. If the court does not allow him to move his case forward, Mr. Assange will be extradited to Sweden within 10 days of the court's decision.
Mr. Assange appeared for an initial interview with the police in Sweden in 2010, but flew to London before further questioning could be completed, a court here was subsequently told.
He has told friends that he has refused to return to Stockholm to face questioning because he fears that the country is run by a cabal of interconnected people who are aligned against him.
Mr. Assange's lawyers have also argued that if he were extradited from Sweden to the United States, he could face the death penalty over the leaking of classified American documents, citing comments by conservative politicians, including the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who said he should be hunted down as an anti-American operative. In addition, Mr. Assange has hinted that he believes world powers might be behind the sexual abuse charges, seeing them as a way of silencing him and halting embarrassing leaks.
The WikiLeaks release of hundreds of thousands of United States military documents on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and State Department diplomatic cables dominated the front pages of newspapers across the world last year. Mr. Assange has hoped that releases of such documents would reshape the very nature of government. WikiLeaks cables in which American diplomats reported on the corruption of Tunisia's rulers did, in fact, help fuel the uprising that overthrew Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, jumpstarting the Arab Spring.
WikiLeaks has foundered since Mr. Assange was briefly jailed last December, before being placed under virtual house arrest at the country mansion of a wealthy friend in eastern England. Mr. Assange told a press conference in London last month that WikiLeaks would cease its publishing activities because it lacked money following a blockade on donations by credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard, and the payments services Western Union and PayPal.
The organization has also been severely weakened by a spate of defections from its core of computer-programmer volunteers, insiders have said. Many, tired of what they described as Mr. Assange's imperiousness, have formed their own document-leaking sites.
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8) Firing Sought for One of Two Officers in Bell Shooting Case
By ROB HARRIS
November 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/nyregion/in-sean-bell-shooting-trial-prosecutors-urge-firing-of-one-officer.html?ref=nyregion
Prosecutors with the New York Police Department recommended on Wednesday that one of the two officers being tried in connection with the killing of Sean Bell five years ago should be allowed to stay on the force while the other should be fired.
In closing arguments in a departmental administrative trial, prosecutors said that Detective Gescard F. Isnora, who fired the first shots in a 50-bullet barrage that killed Mr. Bell on what was supposed to have been his wedding day, should lose his job, but a lesser punishment - the loss of 30 vacation days - was appropriate for Officer Michael Carey, who fired three of the shots.
"Maybe Detective Isnora was frightened; maybe Detective Isnora was nervous," said Nancy Slater, one of the prosecutors. "I submit he overreacted."
Ms. Slater also questioned the detective's judgment in coming out of his undercover role, approaching Mr. Bell's car with his gun drawn and his shield clipped to his collar, and opening fire on the car early on the morning of Nov. 25, 2006.
Last week, Detective Isnora testified that he thought Mr. Bell and his friend Joseph Guzman, who were parked outside a strip club in Jamaica, Queens, were about to take part in a drive-by shooting. He has said his belief that Mr. Guzman had a gun was based on a heated argument that he overheard in front of the strip club.
But Ms. Slater argued that going from thinking that the man may have had a gun to "I alone have to come out of role and stop a drive-by" was "a huge leap of logic."
In contrast, Ms. Slater characterized Officer Carey as the victim of "contagious firing" and blamed him for relying too heavily on Detective Isnora's actions when he decided to start shooting.
"He didn't know who he was firing at; he didn't know why he was firing," Ms. Slater said.
In his closing arguments, Detective Isnora's lawyer, Philip E. Karasyk, argued that the prosecution was unfairly judging an officer "who has to make life or death decisions in a heartbeat."
"In that split-second judgment call, Detective Isnora believed Joseph Guzman had a firearm and was about to use it," Mr. Karasyk said. The police did not find a weapon on Mr. Guzman.
Detective Isnora was acquitted of criminal charges in a State Supreme Court trial in 2008. Officer Carey was not charged criminally.
Officer Carey's lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, argued that his client's decision to open fire was based on the information that he had at the time, and that if Mr. Guzman had had a weapon and Officer Carey had not fired, he would have been accused of failing to defend a fellow officer.
The judge presiding over the case, Deputy Commissioner Martin G. Karopkin, will send a recommendation to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who will decide the professional fate of the two officers.
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9) Cubans Can Buy and Sell Property, Government Says
By DAMIEN CAVE
November 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/americas/cubans-can-buy-and-sell-property-government-says.html?ref=business
MEXICO CITY - Cuba announced a new property law Thursday that will allow citizens and permanent residents to buy and sell real estate - the most significant market reform yet approved by the government of Raúl Castro, and one that will likely reshape Cuba's cities and conceptions of class.
The new rules, which affect residential property only, will go into effect Nov. 10, according to Cuba´s state-run newspaper. The official article said more information would be forthcoming, but the bundle of released details confirm that the new law represents a major break from decades of socialist housing policy.
It states that moving will no longer be subject to government approval, that owners will be able to have two homes (a residence and a vacation home) and that purchases, sales, donations and trades will be recognized even in cases of "divorce, death or permanent departure from the country."
The last item, depending on the fine print, could lead to a wave of sales and migration as Cubans unload property and use the proceeds to flee. But experts and Cuban residents - who have anticipating the law for months - say its implications are likely to be much more far-reaching. In a country defined by limited change for more than 50 years, the law will likely open a Pandora's box of benefits and risks.
On one hand, billions of dollars in property assets that have that have been essentially unvalued or undervalued and locked in place would be available for sale.
Economists on the island favoring freer-market changes have said the country's other reforms - making room for small businesses, and private agriculture - have been limited by lack of internal demand, and some experts have argued that home sales could free up the capital needed to jumpstart the island's seized economy. At the very least, they argue, it will likely lead to a wave of renovation.
"With a housing market, suddenly people have some wealth and that's a stake in the economy that generates activity," said Ted Henken, a Latin American Studies professor at Baruch College in New York. He added: "This is a very positive step in the right direction."
Yet there are also significant social concerns. Mario Coyula, Havana's director of urbanism and architecture in the 1970s and '80s, said that wide-scale buying and selling will lead to a "huge rearrangement" in Havana and other cities as wealthy Cubans move to better areas.
The limit of two houses per owner appears to be an effort to limit the accumulation of wealth, and absentee landlords. But because the island has a shortage of housing supply - with many families and even divorced couples continuing to live together for lack of a better option - critics say that any displacement could raise the prospect of homelessness for some.
Many Cubans have expressed a mix of excitement and fear about the potential for a property market. Some people eager to move said that even if they could sell, they preferred to stick with the established "permuta" system of trading one home for another because it would guarantee that they had a place to live. Others said they would sell immediately, especially if they could leave the country.
Many were waiting to see how much the government would charge them to buy and sell, and that appears to now be established: both the buyer and seller will pay a tax equivalent to 4 percent of the value of the transaction, whether it is a sale or an exchange of homes of equal value.
A major unanswered question in all of this involves the role of foreigners, and Cuban exiles. The law generally requires residency, but the notice in the state-run newspaper, Granma, says the rules will also apply to areas of "descanso or veraneo" - technically rest or holiday zones, presumably resort areas. That raises the possibility of foreign ownership in selected places, perhaps coastal areas, Old Havana and the golf communities that are currently under development with foreign investment.
Cuban-Americans are likely to be very involved. With President Obama's 2009 decision to allow unlimited travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans, a constant flow of money and visits is now the norm. In exile communities like Miami, there are already efforts under way to funnel money to relatives so that they can buy new homes, or old family homes confiscated after the 1959 Revolution.
Most experts, and Cubans on the island, expect these efforts to accelerate even it is not formally allowed. Indeed, Nov. 10 may amount to the starting gun of an investment race, especially among younger Cuban-Americans who left recently or are the offspring of those who fled after the contentious 1960s.
"I don't know if they will control the market," said Philip Peters, an expert at the Lexington Institute in Washington. "But it is certainly going to be the case that the market is going to settle in a way that's heavily influenced by demand from outside Cuba coming from relatives."
Mr. Henken provided his own succinct assessment: "This is something that is going to change the structure of how things work."
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10) BP Agrees to Pay Texas $50 Million for Pollution
[Just so you know, BP is worth about 100 billion...bw]
By REUTERS
November 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/11/03/business/business-us-texas-bp.html?src=busln
HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc's U.S. subsidiary has agreed to pay $50 million (31 million pound) in civil penalties to the state of Texas for pollution from its Texas City refinery, including the deadly March 2005 explosion, state Attorney General Greg Abbott said.
The fine is equal to the amount BP Products North America paid in 2009 to the federal government for pollution from the explosion, which killed 15 workers and injured 180 other people.
With the agreement, BP clears another hurdle in the way of its plan to sell the 406,540 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery, which accounts for 2.2 percent of U.S. refining capacity.
In addition to the $100 million in fines paid for pollution stemming from the refinery, BP has paid the U.S. Occupational and Safety Administration $71.6 million for worker safety violations and over $2 billion settling legal claims from the explosion.
"The agreement reflects the state's commitment to protecting air quality and holding polluters accountable for illegal emissions," Abbott said.
The agreement must be approved by a state court judge in Austin, Texas, before it will take effect. The court must wait 30 days after the agreement is made public before it can act.
Unlike the federal penalties, which were paid after BP pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Clean Air Act, the London-based energy giant admits no liability for the pollution, which also includes emissions made five years after the explosion.
"BP does not admit liability and enters into this judgement because of the uncertainty and costs of litigation," according to the agreement to be submitted to the court.
In a statement, the company said it was pleased with the agreement.
"BP has maintained a steady focus on improving safety and compliance at Texas City, and this agreement is an important milestone in the progress of operations at the facility," the company said in a statement.
In February, BP said it wanted to sell the Texas City refinery along with its 265,000 bpd Carson, California, refinery.
Of the $50 million, $500,000 will go directly to the attorney general's office for costs of bringing a lawsuit against BP in 2009 and the rest will go to the state treasury.
(Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Jim Marshall)
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11) Murder as Instrument of Foreign Policy
By Liaquat Ali Khan
"Information Clearing House"
November 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29605.htm
President Obama has openly deployed murder as an instrument of foreign policy. Soon after assuming office, Obama authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan and execute the murder of terrorists and other enemies, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens. Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Muammar Gaddafi are the prominent murder victims while numerous others in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Pakistan have been purposely targeted and killed.
The legitimization of extra-judicial killing is a disturbing development in international law as other nations are certain to follow suit. In pursuit of pre-meditated murders, the collateral damage (the killing of the obviously innocent) has been extensive. The claim that such murders can be executed with electronic precision, though false, serves as an incentive for other nations to develop drones to perpetrate their own surgical assassinations. For now, however, the CIA enjoys the monopoly over drone kills.
Covert Murders
The 1947 National Security Act created the CIA for the purpose of gathering and evaluating information necessary to protect the nation from foreign threats. Right from the beginning, however, the CIA assumed a proactive role in promoting U.S. economic and military interests. In 1948, the CIA was transformed into a paramilitary organization, empowered under law to engage in "propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion against hostile states through assistance to underground resistance movements and guerillas." Ever since, the CIA has engineered world events for U.S. hegemony.
The murder policy under the CIA aegis is by no means an Obama invention. Over the decades, the CIA has spearheaded what Vice President Dick Cheney once described as the "dark side" of the United States. Previously, however, the murders were covert, not to be openly admitted. In the 1960s, the CIA planned the murders of "communists who threatened the free world," including those of Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Fidel Castro of Cuba. Researchers dispute over whether the CIA participated in Che Guevara's murder. The evidence is mounting, however, that the CIA head in Bolivia had a "prior agreement or understanding with the Bolivians that Che would be killed if captured." (See Ratner & Smith, Who Killed Che?: How the CIA Got Away with Murder).
Covert murders were planned to shield the President from the attendant foreign policy fallout and the moral discomfort emanating from cold-blooded strategies. Notably, the President chairs the National Security Council (NSC), the supreme body that empowers the CIA to conduct covert operations. In the early decades, intelligence experts instituted the doctrine of plausible deniability under which the facts of a covert operation were reported to the President in a way that he could deny the knowledge of a murder. The words "killing" or "murder" or "assassination" were rarely used in oral and written memos to the President. For example, Che's murder was reported to President Johnson as a "stupid murder." Such wink, wink linguistic deceptions allow the President to occupy the high moral ground and deny that the U.S. "murders" foreign enemies or "tortures" detainees. The President's veil of deniability was considered necessary to safeguard America's image as "the city on the hill," "the beacon of liberty," "the greatest nation in the world," etc.
Audacity of Murder
Since the 9/11 attacks, the policy logistics of murder have been dramatically transformed. The doctrine of plausible deniability has been discarded. Moral constraints on killing enemies, including heads of states and governments, have been cast away. The notion of the U.S. as a "moral nation" is now viewed as an impediment in the conduct of international relations. The "dark side" freely informs the foreign policy. The audacity of murder has gained depth and momentum. The President does not think twice about the moral implications of boasting a drone kill.
In a major policy shift, the murder has been institutionalized. Now, the NSC may itself approve a pending murder. Remember the President and statutory members of the NSC (including Secretaries of State and Defense and the CIA Director) watching bin Laden's murder as it was happening. The NSC released the picture for public consumption, implying that watching the murder of a noted enemy is morally acceptable. Imagine barbarism if this practice is writ large in the world. No one would be surprised if the NSC itself has authorized the murder of Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen or if the NSC itself has authorized the drone attack on the Gaddafi motorcade to flush him out for murder in public view.
These and similar international murders are no longer the CIA secrets that the Senate needs to investigate as it did in the 1970s. This time, the fascination with murder has metastasized. It is bipartisan. Except Ron Paul, Republican Presidential candidates endorse the murder of "terrorists" who threaten "our way of life." (Juxtapose the historical massacres of Indian "savages" who too threatened "our way of life."). Upon the execution of a successful murder, President Obama walks to the podium to express joy in a causal tone of voice. Many politicians join the happy hours. Congratulations are exchanged. The corporate media invites the public to celebrate the great news. This is the most vivid moral collapse of a nation that brazenly talks about human rights and universal values. The American people cannot choose to be silent. They must restore the nation's moral dignity.
Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas and the author of A Theory of International Terrorism (2006).
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12) Israel Intercepts Two Boats Bound for Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER
November 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/world/middleeast/israel-intercepts-two-boats-bound-for-gaza.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - The Israeli military intercepted activists sailing toward Gaza on Friday, boarding their two small boats in international waters and leading them instead to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
The episode ended with no reports of violence or injuries. The encounter was being watched intensely after the military's raid of a flotilla last year left nine activists dead and led to widespread condemnation of Israel.
The two boats, one Canadian and the other Irish, carried 27 pro-Palestinian activists, journalists and crew members from nine countries who were challenging Israel's maritime blockade of the Palestinian enclave. The military had made clear that it would not allow the boats to reach Gaza, which is governed by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The Israeli Navy initially notified the boats that they were en route to an area under blockade and advised them to turn back, or to sail to a port in Egypt or Israel, the military said in a statement.
Shortly afterward, an Israeli military spokeswoman said the boats had been boarded.
The latest attempt to breach the blockade led to a public relations battle, much of it waged on social media, to support the two sides' opposing narratives. Israel says it maintains the blockade to prevent weapons from entering Gaza, where they can be turned on Israel; the activists say the blockade punishes too many innocent Palestinians.
Backers of the activists posted updates on Twitter, using the hash tag #FreedomWaves, while the Israeli government used #provocatilla.
One posting from the military said "every precaution" had been taken to ensure the safety of the activists.
A military spokeswoman said the boats docked in Ashdod before midnight. There the activists were to be handed over to the police and immigration authorities. They were expected to be questioned, then deported.
The two boats sailed from a Turkish port on Wednesday, four months after the last international flotilla to Gaza was stalled by the Greek authorities, who held some vessels in port. Two other boats, including the Irish boat intercepted on Friday, were damaged under mysterious circumstances. The protesters alleged sabotage.
Hoping to avoid a repeat of that experience, the organizers of the miniflotilla kept their plans secret until they left Turkey for international waters.
The Israeli authorities view the efforts to break the blockade as provocations intended to embarrass Israel and undermine its security. In May 2010, Israeli commandos raided a large flotilla and fatally shot nine protesters - eight Turkish citizens and an American citizen of Turkish descent - after meeting violent resistance on the deck of a Turkish passenger vessel.
This time there was little expectation of a violent confrontation. An organizer on the Canadian boat, Ehab Lotayef, a Canadian electrical engineer of Egyptian origin, said in a video message on Wednesday after leaving Turkey that the participants "are not going to challenge Israel physically."
"We are a peaceful mission that is committed to the safety of the personnel on board" the two boats, Mr. Lotayef said. The goal is "to say that the blockade is illegal and inhumane," he added.
When the Israeli Navy contacted the Canadian boat and asked for its destination, Mr. Lotayef first replied, "The conscience of humanity," then, "The betterment of mankind," according to a news release from the activists.
Israel contends that the maritime blockade of Gaza is in accordance with international law. Its position is backed by the Palmer report, a United Nations review of Israel's 2010 raid published in September that found the blockade of Gaza to be legal and appropriate.
Fintan Lane, the organizer of the Irish boat, rejected the Palmer report, saying in a statement that "the report itself acknowledges that it was 'not asked to make determinations of the legal issues' associated with the blockade." Its "legal speculations have been comprehensively repudiated," he said.
Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, shot back, saying, "They can reject anything they want," and noting that the Palmer report was adopted by the United Nations secretary general.
He said the necessity of the blockade was underlined by the firing of dozens of rockets from Gaza in the past week. One hit south of Ashdod on Friday night, the military said, but caused no damages or injuries. The longer-range rockets are imported to Gaza.
Israel formally imposed the maritime blockade in early January 2009, during its three-week military offensive against Hamas, though other restrictions have been in place since 2007.
A land blockade has been eased under international pressure since the deadly raid on the Turkish-led flotilla. Goods flow into Gaza across the land crossings with Israel, though exports out of Gaza are still severely restricted for security reasons, according to Israel. The Egyptian authorities recently reopened the Rafah crossing, on the Egypt-Gaza border, for passengers, but travel in and out of Gaza is still limited.
J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.
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13) Most of the Unemployed No Longer Receive Benefits
"The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits. Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent - a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/05/business/AP-US-Jobless-Without-Benefits.html?src=busln
WASHINGTON (AP) - The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.
Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent - a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.
Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further.
The ranks of the poor would also rise. The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four.
Yet for a growing share of the unemployed, a vote in Congress to extend the benefits to 99 weeks is irrelevant. They've had no job for more than 99 weeks. They're no longer eligible for benefits.
Their options include food stamps or other social programs. Nearly 46 million people received food stamps in August, a record total. That figure could grow as more people lose unemployment benefits.
So could the government's disability rolls. Applications for the disability insurance program have jumped about 50 percent since 2007.
"There's going to be increased hardship," said Wayne Vroman, an economist at the Urban Institute.
The number of unemployed has been roughly stable this year. Yet the number receiving benefits has plunged 30 percent.
Government unemployment benefits weren't designed to sustain people for long stretches without work. They usually don't have to. In the recoveries from the previous three recessions, the longest average duration of unemployment was 21 weeks, in July 1983.
By contrast, in the wake of the Great Recession, the figure reached 41 weeks in September. That's the longest on records dating to 1948. The figure is now 39 weeks.
"It was a good safety net for a shorter recession," said Carl Van Horn, an economist at Rutgers University. It assumes "the economy will experience short interruptions and then go back to normal."
Weekly unemployment checks average about $300 nationwide. If the extended benefits aren't renewed, growth could slow by up to a half-percentage point next year, economists say.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth. The CBO has found that the program is the most effective government policy for increasing growth among 11 options it's analyzed.
Jon Polis lives in East Greenwich, R.I., one of the 20 states where 99 weeks of benefits are available. He used them all up after losing his job as a warehouse worker in 2008. His benefits paid for groceries, car maintenance and health insurance.
Now, Polis, 55, receives disability insurance payments, food stamps and lives in government-subsidized housing. He's been unable to find work because employers in his field want computer skills he doesn't have.
"Employers are crying that they can't find qualified help," he said. But the ones he interviewed with "weren't willing to train anybody."
From late 2007, when the recession began, to early 2010, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose more than four-fold, to 11.5 million.
But the economy has remained so weak that an analysis of long-term unemployment data suggests that about 2 million people have used up 99 weeks of checks and still can't find work.
Contributing to the smaller share of the unemployed who are receiving benefits: Some of them are college graduates or others seeking jobs for the first time. They aren't eligible. Only those who have lost a job through no fault of their own qualify.
The proportion of the unemployed receiving benefits usually falls below 50 percent during an economic recovery. Many have either quit jobs or are new to the job market and don't qualify.
Today, the proportion is falling for a very different reason: Jobs remain scarce. So more of the unemployed are exhausting their benefits.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has noted that the long-term unemployed increasingly find it hard to find work as their skills and professional networks erode. In a speech last month, Bernanke called long-term unemployment a "national crisis" that should be a top priority for Congress.
Lawmakers will have to decide whether to continue the extended benefits by the end of this year. If the program ends, nearly 2.2 million people will be cut off by February.
Congress has extended the program nine times. But it might balk at the $45 billion cost. It will be the first time the Republican-led House will vote on the issue.
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14) New International Report Shreds Japan's Carefully Constructed Fukushima Scenario
Written by John Daly
Wednesday, 02 November 2011
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/New-International-Report-Shreds-Japan-s-Carefully-Constructed-Fukushima-Scenario.html
Japan's six reactor Fukushima Daichi nuclear complex has inadvertently become the world's bell-weather poster child for the inherent risks of nuclear power ever since the 11 March Tohoku offshore earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, triggered a devastating tsunami that effectively destroyed the complex.
Ever since, specialists have wrangled about how damaging the consequences of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami actually were, not only for the facility but the rest of the world.
The Fukushima Daichi complex was one of the 25 largest nuclear power stations in the world and the Fukushima I reactor was the first GE designed nuclear plant to be constructed and run entirely by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO.
Needless to say, in the aftermath of the disaster, both TEPCO and the Japanese government were at pains to minimize the disaster's consequences, hardly surprising given the country's densely populated regions.
But now, an independent study has effectively demolished TEPCO and the Japanese government's carefully constructed minimalist scenario. Mainichi news agency reported that France's l'Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire (Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, or IRSN) has issued a recent report stating that the amount of radioactive cesium-137 that entered the Pacific after 11 March was probably nearly 30 times the amount stated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. in May.
According to IRSN, the amount of the radioactive isotope cesium-137 that flowed into the ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant between March 21 and mid-July reached an estimated 27.1 quadrillion becquerels.
Why should this matter? Aren't the Japanese authorities on top of the issue?
Cesium-137 can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death at sufficient doses. It can contaminate food and water and, if ingested, gets distributed around the body, where it builds up in soft tissues, such as muscles. Over time, it is expelled from the body in urine.
And where might tingested cesium-137 come from?
Seafood, anyone? One of the problems of the release of radioactivity into a maritime environment is that is represents a cumulative food chain, from plankton consumed by larger organisms, as evidenced by mercury contamination of swordfish, none of whom swam around ingesting globules of the silvery metal.
IRSN estimated that of the total amount, 82 percent had flowed into the sea by 8 April, adding that the Pacific was polluted at exceptional speed because the devastated Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant (NPP) is situated in a coastal area with strong currents.
If the IRSN report contained any good news, it was that the impact of the cesium-137 contamination on marine life in remote waters is likely to lessen later this year.
The radioactive silver lining? Radioactive cesium-137 has a half life of roughly 30 years, so if the IRSN estimates are accurate, then my 2041 the Pacific's aquatic life will only be subjected to a mere 13.55 quadrillion becquerels of radiation.
This is not to suggest that Japanese will shortly be keeling over from consuming their sushi but rather, that for better or for worse, a significant amount of cesium 137 has entered the Pacific's aquatic environment, and the long-term effects of low-level exposure on the population consuming Pacific seafood are unknown. Numerous tests since 1945, when before it was believed that only massive bursts of radiation were hazardous to human health, have documented the insidious effects of long-term, low level radiological exposure to humans.
Fukushima sits at the nexus where the Kuroshio Current, running northward off the eastern coast of Japan, collides with the cold subarctic Oyashio Current that flows southwards, circulating counterclockwise along the western North Pacific Ocean. Their interaction produces the North Pacific Current, a slow warm water eastwards flowing current between 40 and 50 degrees north in the Pacific Ocean. In the eastern northern Pacific, the North Pacific Current divides into the southern flowing California Current and the northern Alaska Current.
The potential level of pollution outlined in the IRSN report indicate that it is long overdue for both TEPCO and the Japanese government to stop dribbling out information about the true state of events since Fukushima was devastated, and that foreign governments, particularly the United States, whose western shores are washed by the same currents that pass by Fukushima, insist that they do so.
While trillions of dollars are at stake in the worldwide nuclear industry, the potential health consequences are now simply too significant to ignore.
By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com
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15) What Happened When I Tried to Get Some Answers About the Creepy NYPD Watchtower Monitoring OWS
By Nick Turse, AlterNet
Posted on November 6, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152954/what_happened_when_i_tried_to_get_some_answers_about_the_creepy_nypd_watchtower_monitoring_ows
LIBERTY SQUARE - The drummers drummed. The guitarists strummed. And the hearty souls building a new society in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park traded in their tarps for tents as the temperature dropped. All the while, Officer Guzman stood watch.
But there was something special about Officer Guzman. He wasn't one of the 25 police officers I counted standing on the perimeter of Liberty Square that first wintery day. He wasn't one of dozens more shooting the breeze with their partners inside a police van or sitting alone in a cruiser texting. Officer Guzman spent the day suspended in the air, two stories up, at the corner of Trinity Place and Liberty Street, inside a little metal box that goes by the name Sky Watch.
For the initiated, Sky Watch is like one of those mechanical forest walkers from the Star Wars movies without the lasers or the walking. Imagine an 7-foot by 6-foot metal box, with blacked out windows on its four sides, bristling with cameras, spotlights, and a small spinning anemometer (to calculate wind speed), atop spindly hydraulic legs that allow it to sit on the ground or rise up two stories. Inside that climate-controlled cube is a control panel with switches to turn on the lights, a joystick to raise and lower the unit, and various other remote controls that Officer Guzman or someone like him can use to direct the cameras and watch their feeds on video screens (while they are recorded on multiple digital video recorders).
Also used by the U.S. military, from Marines in the tiny African nation of Djibouti to sailors at a Navy base in the United Arab Emirates, as well as police departments all around the U.S., the 8,000-plus pound Panopticon-like structure -- originally used by hunters to shoot quarry from overhead -- has become a favorite of those who are partial to coercive surveillance. As the company that makes them puts it, Sky Watch provides "the vantage point necessary for law enforcement officials to deploy their forces to the greatest effectiveness while simultaneously acting providing [sic] a continuous crime deterrent."
"We have cameras for everything"
Officer Guzman seemed like the strong silent type. At least he looked strong. But what I can most vouch for was his silence. He preferred to let other officers speak for him.
When a couple of "special" cops came to gas up Guzman's Sky Watch tower, I called out a question about how frequently they needed to feed the mechanical beast. "I can't tell you that information," was the cold response I got from one of the policemen. As I scrawled down the terse reply and snapped a few photos, another strode over to the metal barricade I was leaning on. "What's your name?" he asked.
Nick, what's yours?
Anthony. What, are you writing a report?
I'm a reporter.
Do you have some ID that says you're a reporter?
Nah, you guys like badges, not me.
As I produced a couple pieces of identification, I asked why he needed to see ID from someone asking an innocuous question while standing on a public sidewalk. "What interests me is that you're taking information about our Sky Watch and asking questions about our Sky Watch so it makes me wonder why you're doing it. I'd like to know that."
Then I asked to see his ID. "You have my ID," he said. But I didn't. He was a fancy cop. No badge and nameplate on his chest, so I insisted. "I don't. I only know your name is Anthony." To his credit, he produced some. Anthony Torres. Shield #4528. So I told him of my interest in Sky Watch and the mini-surveillance state the police had set up more generally. Why, I asked, did the NYPD need a Sky Watch surveillance unit on-site when they also had a permanent camera stationed across the street from the park, a surveillance truck up the street with a camera on a 20-foot pole, dozens of cops stationed on the park's perimeter at all times and, no doubt, other less conspicuous methods to spy on a park, already surrounded by metal pens, filled with unarmed, nonviolent protesters?
In the meantime, Officer Guzman had descended and emerged from the Sky Watch box to take a closer look at me face to face. I gave a quizzical look as my ID was, without my permission, handed off to him. I watched him closely as he wrote down all my information "We're just gonna take your name down. That you're a reporter and that you're asking questions about our Sky Watch. Don't worry. No summons," Torres said. Guzman just glowered.
As Guzman stayed mum, Torres and I talked. He insisted that the location of the Sky Watch had nothing to do with the protests. Sort of. His long pauses made me wonder as I questioned him. But he was adamant that while the surveillance truck at the other end of the block was a response to the occupation of Zuccotti Park, the Sky Watch unit was to keep an eye on the nearby World Trade Center site. Now, the fact that Sky Watch's four cameras never seemed to point toward "Ground Zero," but instead the streets right around the park suggested otherwise. So did Sky Watch's location and a high fence around the construction site, so I pressed him about which cameras were for which surveillance task. "We have cameras for everything," he responded.
With time, Torres mellowed and glad-handed me for a bit, so I hoped it would rub off on the silent Guzman. I asked him how long they kept him cooped up in that little metal box. He gave me a long stare and stayed stony silent. "That's not a question we like to give out answers to," Torres responded in his stead, breaking into laughter and noting that while there's often someone inside the metal cube, it didn't much matter because there were always cameras running.
Satisfied with my answers, Torres soon left and Guzman re-entered the Sky Watch. As the metal contraption rose on its hydraulic legs, I took note of exactly which directions its four cameras were facing. As per usual, none were pointing at the World Trade Center site. Instead, the main roof cam swiveled to focus on me. Maybe Guzman did have a sense of humor. Or maybe that was his way of sticking it to me. Who knows what he was thinking behind those blacked-out windows. So I waved to him a few times, circled around to take notes on all the cameras and moved on.
Over the course of the afternoon, I would loop back to Sky Watch to survey its cameras, noticing that a cruiser, with a cop inside, had now taken up a spot next to its base.
Whenever I stopped to take notes on the cameras, which never did point anywhere but at the environs of the park or the sidewalks around the tower -- at least when I was near -- the cop in the cruiser would take note of me.
"I'm Not Here to Think"
About two hours after Torres and I parted ways, I noticed the main camera on the top swing around to focus on me. That Guzman! Maybe this was his way of cracking a smile? So I moved and watched the camera follow. Then I moved again, as if I would walk past, but instead doubled back to my starting point. The camera swung about, looking for me, I guessed.
I was hardly shocked when Officer Husain left his cruiser and approached. "Is there any reason why you're taking pictures of our..." he asked, never even getting the words "Sky Watch" out. Maybe he thought it was classified. I told him there was and asked if Guzman was still inside. "Yeah," he said. So I said I was a reporter and told him about my earlier conversation with Officer Guzman.
"What are you so curious about?" he asked. So I told him. Nonviolent protesters. Fixed cameras. Surveillance truck. Scores of cops. Ring of steel. The whole shebang.
Like Torres, he wanted my ID and when I handed it over, he had the same issue. Why didn't I have a reporter's ID? "You guys have a fetish about badges and stuff like that," I said, but explained that I didn't. I assured him he could look me up online to verify. When I asked for his ID, he reminded me he was a beat cop. I read it off his chest: Husain. Badge #12922.
Husain still wanted to know why I was so interested in security around the park, so I tried to explain again. I told him how four top cops had recently complained to the New York Post that the large police presence at Occupy Wall Street was the reason for a spike in shootings across the city. If so, I asked him, wasn't it overkill to have so much surveillance, so many vehicles, so many barricades, so many cops, for this modest encampment if shootings were surging? Did he think they needed this many cops for a protest in a tiny park? "I'm not here to think," he responded.
"Are you called into action a lot," I asked. "Or am I about as threatening as it gets?"
It's not that. You're a reporter. But I don't know you're a reporter. You're not carrying any credentials on you. A tourist taking a picture is okay. But someone recording everything we're doing is not.
But you're recording everything I'm doing with Sky Watch and all these cameras.
I know.
And you've got weapons.
What difference does that make?
Because, what kind of threat can I possibly be to you? To all of you?
Husain seemed to be getting flustered. Maybe nobody had bothered to explain to him why he needed to sit in a squad car at the base of a metal tower bristling with cameras. Maybe he never questioned why someone actually had his job. But he recovered and then played his trump card. "We're not here for the protests. We're here for counter-terrorism," he said before lapsing into semi-incoherence about having to protect the Sky Watch, presumably from terrorists. "Wait, you're saying someone is going to attack that?" I said gesturing to the Sky Watch tower. In a city filled with iconic structures, terrorists might target a metal box on stilts with, maybe, one cop inside. Really?
He seemed confused and ended our conversation abruptly with: "It's much more than simple words."
I doubt I'll ever know what he meant by that. Chances are, he might not either. But his statement said a lot about the police response to Occupy Wall Street, about surveillance for surveillance's sake, and about the increasing hollowness of using "terrorism" as a get-out-of-jail-free card in New York City. It also taught me something about how a person -- even packing a pistol, handcuffs, a nightstick, a radio to call countless numbers of similarly armed individuals, and the authority conferred by a badge -- can feel insecure if he doesn't know what he is doing or why.
The activists across the street in Liberty Square have frequently been assailed for a lack of concrete demands and clear positions on issues, but they sure know what they're doing. Surrounded by a ring of metal barricades, a not-so-thin-blue line of armed men and women who watch their every move, plainclothes officers and undercover cops who surreptitiously monitor them, a panoply of police vehicles, fixed cameras, mobile cameras, and all manner of other gear, they are building a new society.
From what I've seen, it's a society in which a somewhat surly, armed man sitting 25 feet up in a little metal box spying on people, protected by a similarly armed, perhaps slightly confused, young man in a car, would be considered odd and unnecessary. The fact that New York City is now a place where you're not supposed to notice such things, much less question them (and, if you do, you're questioned for it), says a lot about where the United States is as a society and why, perhaps, there are hardy souls braving the cold in Zuccotti Park to build a new one.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor at AlterNet. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso). You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.
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16) Solidarity Statement From Cairo
Comrades from Cairo.
24th of October, 2011.
Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 2:39 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/solidarity-statement-cairo/
To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.
Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call "The Arab Spring" has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a System that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.
An entire generation across the globe has grown up realizing, rationally and emotionally, that we have no future in the current order of things. Living under structural adjustment policies and the supposed expertise of international organizations like the World Bank and IMF, we watched as our resources, industries and public services were sold off and dismantled as the "free market" pushed an addiction to foreign goods, to foreign food even. The profits and benefits of those freed markets went elsewhere, while Egypt and other countries in the South found their immiseration reinforced by a massive increase in police repression and torture.
The current crisis in America and Western Europe has begun to bring this reality home to you as well: that as things stand we will all work ourselves raw, our backs broken by personal debt and public austerity. Not content with carving out the remnants of the public sphere and the welfare state, capitalism and the austerity-state now even attack the private realm and people's right to decent dwelling as thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners find themselves both homeless and indebted to the banks who have forced them on to the streets.
So we stand with you not just in your attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new. We are not protesting. Who is there to protest to? What could we ask them for that they could grant? We are occupying. We are reclaiming those same spaces of public practice that have been commodified, privatized and locked into the hands of faceless bureaucracy , real estate portfolios, and police 'protection'. Hold on to these spaces, nurture them, and let the boundaries of your occupations grow. After all, who built these parks, these plazas, these buildings? Whose labor made them real and livable? Why should it seem so natural that they should be withheld from us, policed and disciplined? Reclaiming these spaces and managing them justly and collectively is proof enough of our legitimacy.
In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the Square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces forgathering, leisure, meeting, and interacting - these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalized, excluded and for those groups who have suffered the worst .
What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as "real democracy"; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.
But the ideologies of property and propriety will manifest themselves again. Whether through the overt opposition of property owners or municipalities to your encampments or the more subtle attempts to control space through traffic regulations, anti-camping laws or health and safety rules. There is a direct conflict between what we seek to make of our cities and our spaces and what the law and the systems of policing standing behind it would have us do.
We faced such direct and indirect violence , and continue to face it . Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28 th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities.
It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted "peaceful" with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to "make a point", we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.
By way of concluding then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus, and democracy. Discover new ways to use these spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never givethem up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.
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17) Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads
By CARA BUCKLEY and COLIN MOYNIHAN
November 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-protest-reaches-a-crossroads.html?hp
THE signs seemed to point toward the end of Occupy Wall Street. The day after the city stripped the protesters encamped in Lower Manhattan of their generators and fuel, the Northeast was hit with a bone-chilling snowstorm that blanketed their tents and tarps with sleet and ice, and left at least one protester hospitalized for hypothermia. Yet the encampment at Zuccotti Park endured.
Seven weeks in, the protest has become a fact of life in New York City, a tourist draw to rival ground zero, and a teachable moment for parents. Its slogan, "We are the 99 percent" is a staple of the popular discourse.
More than $500,000 in donations has flowed to the protesters in Lower Manhattan, while labor unions and elected officials have come to their aid. Marches and occupations that have sprung up nationwide have served as a national microphone for the cause.
And yet, winter looms and authorities in other cities have been cracking down on encampments, sometimes violently. The mayor's patience with the occupation seems to be wearing thin, and local residents have tired of the headaches associated with the protest. An influx of outsiders to the park, meanwhile, has threatened the protesters' ability to organize.
More broadly, the protest's leaderless and nonhierarchical structure raises the question of how effective it can be. The demonstrators have yet to proffer clear demands and have rejected any involvement in electoral politics. And it remains to be seen what will become of the action should they lose their foothold at Zuccotti Park.
If the question used to be "What do they want?" it has shifted in recent days to "How long will it last?"
Trouble in the Camp
When protesters first unrolled sleeping bags and blankets in Zuccotti Park on the night of Sept. 17, only a few dozen people spent the night. Now, upward of 200 people - students, veterans, train-hopping travelers - stay overnight in the sprawling encampment of tents and tarps that covers the granite expanse of the park. Sleeping in Zuccotti once was evidence of a deep commitment to Occupy's politics, but now, some people seem to be there mainly for the donated clothes and free food.
A few have gotten into fights or have been accused of assaults, including Tonye Iketubosin, a 26-year-old man from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who frequented the park for about a week and whom the police charged on Wednesday with sexually abusing an 18-year-old woman in a tent there. On Thursday, a Florida man was arrested after being accused of punching a protester in the eye.
Many protesters say the lawless visitors constitute a tiny fringe and are not representative of the movement, which, they say, has espoused nonviolence and mutual aid. Some have suggested moving the kitchen area and the comfort station out of the park to discourage freeloaders from congregating there.
But there are concerns that even if the criminal and antisocial elements are a small minority, they are becoming visible enough to tarnish the image of the entire group.
"We have a serious problem with hangers-on," said Patrick Bruner, 23, a protester and spokesman. "We're trying to bring people into the fold instead of willfully excluding them."
The assimilation tactic has only partly worked, as some visitors have resisted inclusion. Several protesters said they believed that the group could rise to the challenge of keeping the park safe, just as they took it upon themselves to scrub it in mid-October when its owner, Brookfield Office Properties, complained that the area had not been washed in weeks and the city threatened to evict the protesters.
But that task has been complicated because Zuccotti Park is obliged through an agreement with the city to remain open 24 hours a day. The protesters can no more forbid certain visitors than the police can ban the protesters.
Hero Vincent, 21, who is from North Carolina and is a member of the park security team, said he had begun offering a blunt opinion when discussing how to handle such people.
"If you are coming here, contribute something," he said. "If you want to spread poison, go somewhere else."
Toll on the Neighborhood
On Monday, a group of four local government officials sent a letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, insisting that he address the rising tensions in Lower Manhattan.
Some protesters were still using the streets as toilets, they complained. Drumming was disturbing nearby residents. Long lines of barricades were making the sidewalks feel as congested as cattle drives. The city should enforce noise and sanitation laws more strictly, the letter said, and take the barricades down.
But should it kick the protesters out? Adamantly no.
"The quality of life needs to be solved but should not be an excuse by those unsympathetic to the message or the protesters' First Amendment rights," one of the letter's authors, State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, said.
That conflicting message mirrors the neighborhood's deeply mixed feelings about the protest. Community Board 1, which represents the area, recently passed a resolution to support Occupy Wall Street. Loving the protesters and hating the problems that have accompanied them "are not mutually exclusive," said the community board chairwoman, Julie Menin.
"Half the residents are completely out of their minds and need Occupy Wall Street to leave immediately," said Patricia L. Moore, who lives near Zuccotti Park and also leads the Quality of Life Committee for the community board. "And half are residents who came to the last meeting and said, 'Welcome to the neighborhood.' "
Ms. Moore said that most of the residents' complaints were less about Occupy Wall Street's presence than about getting the city to make life better for the protesters and the neighborhood.
"It's not about getting them out," Ms. Moore said of the protesters. "It's about public officials doing their jobs."
Officials said they were responding. A police spokesman said several summonses had been issued. Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for City Hall, said the city was working closely with the community to address its complaints. On Wednesday, most of the barriers in the area were taken down, though some went back up when it seemed the protesters might march.
As for bathroom access, though the city had long been saying that portable toilets could not be installed on the sidewalks because there was too much foot traffic in the area, Occupy Wall Street announced on Friday that it had reached a deal for 24-hour access to a loading dock in the area where three portable bathrooms would be installed, along with round-the-clock security.
Not all residents embrace the protesters. Several people who live nearby and said they supported Occupy's overall message said they nevertheless believed that the group had overstayed its welcome.
But Mark Scherzer, a lawyer who lives and works near the protest site, said Occupy Wall Street had become a scapegoat for broader neighborhood issues. The near-constant drilling of bedrock by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was worse than any drumming, he said, and the need for bathroom facilities had mushroomed before the protesters arrived.
"While O.W.S. has brought more people to the neighborhood," he wrote in response to the officials' letter, "so has the 9/11 Memorial. All of them need to use toilets."
'We're All Leaders'
Perhaps most puzzling to outsiders, and maddening for the police and City Hall, has been the protest's lack of official leaders.
"Leaderless is a funny word; we don't have leaders, yet we're all leaders," said Jackie DiSalvo, who is on the protest's labor outreach working committee and teaches English at Baruch College. "It doesn't have a single hierarchical leadership, but there are a lot of people exerting leadership over what's going on."
The template for Occupy Wall Street was cast in its earliest days, when activists gathered in Lower Manhattan in early August in response to a call from the Canadian magazine Adbusters. At first, the initial meeting was dominated by a traditional protest group, with banners and speeches. But a small group of people broke off and sat in a circle on the grass a short distance away. David Graeber, an anarchist and anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, was among them. The "horizontals" as Mr. Graeber called them, reject a top-down "vertical" leadership structure.
At that meeting and the subsequent ones, everyone was free to talk, and a facilitator moderated the discussion, a format that has continued for Occupy's nightly meetings. Decisions required talking until, Mr. Graeber said, a consensus that "most people like and everybody else can live with" was reached.
As the protest's numbers swelled, this devotion to ensuring that everyone was heard resulted in unwieldy meetings lasting hours.
One night in mid-October, hundreds of people had gathered, trying to agree on whether to buy brewing equipment, coffee and tea. Queries were fired from the crowd:
Would it be free-trade coffee?
Could they avoid using disposable cups?
How would they chill the milk and cream?
An hour later, the same proposal was still being debated.
"Can't we just make a decision?" a young protester whispered to his girlfriend.
Recently, the protesters voted to revamp the process: the general assembly would still decide broader issues, but representatives of smaller groups would form a "spokescouncil" to handle day-to-day operations. The change was voted on last weekend. Some opponents feared that the general assembly would lose power. Others worried that small groups would gain a disproportionate voice.
"Mikhail Bakunin warned us of the hierarchy of bureaucrats," one participant cautioned the group, citing the 19th-century Russian anarchist.
"We really are trying to arrive at a solution right now; otherwise there are endless meetings," someone replied.
A few minutes later, more than 90 percent of the group voted for the new framework.
The protesters say the horizontal structure must remain. And far from being weaknesses, they say, their lack of hierarchy and the absence of concrete demands have helped fuel their growth.
"It has allowed Occupy Wall Street to pop up in all these different cities where the occupations, the needs and the populations are different," said Willie Osterweil, 25, one of the protest's first organizers.
Not having leaders has also made the movement difficult for authorities to pin down. When Brookfield Office Properties sent in workers to distribute fliers detailing new rules banning sleeping bags and tents, the protesters folded the fliers into origami. When the police wanted to communicate their demands, the protesters gave them no face or body to negotiate with. When the police entered the park in the protest's early days, the protesters followed them with cameras and lights, calling their photographers "the coparazzi."
"The police are absolutely actors in this theater production," said Justin Wedes, a protester who has worked with the culture-jamming pranksters the Yes Men. "They are onstage with us, and the world is who is watching."
Question of History
But will the world continue to pay attention if wintry weather or an influx of outsiders or a city-ordered eviction results in the protesters' losing Zuccotti Park, their physical and symbolic heart?
Or as Marshall L. Glanz, senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard, put it, "Is it a moment or is it a movement?"
For all the symbolism now attached to it, the park's selection was almost accidental. Protesters had originally zeroed in on Chase Manhattan Plaza, at the foot of a soaring skyscraper on William Street, for their encampment. But after discussion of the choice on a listserv, fences suddenly appeared around the space. Zuccotti was one of a few possible locations, selected more or less on the fly on the day the protest began.
"We marched up Broadway and held a general assembly there and decided it was nice," Mr. Osterweil said of the group's arrival.
Some academics say that while the occupation of the park was a good tactic, it is time to move beyond it.
"It's not a tactic that puts any pressure on the 1 percent," Jeff Goodwin, a sociology professor at New York University, said. "It's inconceivable that the movement can get what it wants without engaging legislatures."
The protesters have made it clear that they have little interest in electoral politics, though. Several said they became embittered after campaigning and voting for President Obama, only to be repeatedly let down.
Mr. Graeber, whose most recent book is "Debt: The First 5,000 Years," an examination of barter systems, is credited with suggesting that "we are the 99 percent" become the rallying cry for the movement. He described many of the protesters' view in an e-mail: "Both parties govern in the name of the 1% of Americans who have received pretty much all the proceeds of economic growth, who are the only people completely recovered from the 2008 recession, who control the political system, who control almost all financial wealth."
History has not always been kind to leaderless protests. David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California at Irvine, said that in the past, grass-roots groups with similar democratic structures - the movement against nuclear power, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - followed one of two paths. "It falls apart, or it gets seized by disciplined factions from within," he said.
"All made big gains," he added. "But they couldn't survive their success."
Yet some grass-roots movements have had potency. Doug McAdam, a sociology professor at Stanford University, noted that most groundswell uprisings did not have an organized central structure, among them the civil rights movement, the modern women's movement and, more recently, the Tea Party. He said the protest could inspire a more concrete movement. "Successful movements start out as expressions of anger, and then quickly move beyond that," he said. "It's very difficult for opponents to control or repress a movement that has many heads."
The group's supporters, meanwhile, are waiting for the protesters' next move - whatever it may be. "We don't know what we're supporting yet," said Ed Ott, former executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. "But what I'm learning is that 60-year-olds don't make revolutions; 20-year-olds do."
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18) Police Force Wall Street Protesters Off Sidewalks
By AL BAKER
November 5, 2011, 9:16 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/police-force-wall-street-protesters-off-sidewalks/?ref=nyregion
Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators streamed into a desolate part of Foley Square on Saturday afternoon, but their slow-moving march turned chaotic as a phalanx of police officers issued orders to vacate the sidewalks - and then swept in to force the issue.
One police official said that at least 20 protesters were arrested in a series of fast-moving encounters with officers outside the public square in Lower Manhattan that is hemmed in by several government buildings: the State Supreme Court building, a United States courthouse and 26 Federal Plaza, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation has its New York headquarters.
About 3 p.m., a police chief was heard issuing orders for subordinates to get bullhorns and a prisoner van to help clear the sidewalks on the eastern edge of Foley Square, where a line of officers blocked the steps to the state courthouse.
The marchers, who had streamed into the area, split into two groups, with about 200 on the sidewalk outside the court buildings and a larger group across the street on a large pedestrian island. Some of the protesters marched briskly toward the granite steps at 60 Centre Street, but officers ran to block their path.
A lieutenant, using a bullhorn, said the crowd was not permitted on the steps. At another point, an officer ordered the protesters to leave the sidewalk, saying, "You are blocking pedestrian traffic."
But many in the crowd of demonstrators shouted back, "We are pedestrian traffic."
It was not long before the sides were verbally sparring and scuffles erupted as officers took protesters into custody. The arrests took place over about an hour.
Until Saturday, the police, as a practical matter, had worked to keep protesters confined to the sidewalks, often moving to arrest those who took to the roadways.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that Saturday's order to clear the sidewalk "came after some of the protesters attempted to climb the stairs of the courthouse and protesters began chanting, 'Take the steps; take the steps.' "
"Additionally," he said, " the volume of protesters made it difficult for others to walk safely on the sidewalk, causing people to spill into the street."
The total number of those arrested, and the charges against them, was not immediately clear.
On a day the protesters devoted to putting a bull's-eye on the nation's big banks, several hundred demonstrators set out from Zuccotti Park.
At one point at Foley Square, officers waded into a crowd of people on the sidewalk, grabbed a woman wearing a blue skirt and holding a pink bongo drum and took her to the top of the courthouse steps. Using a bullhorn, a lieutenant warned that anyone who remained would face disorderly conduct charges. The crowd booed. Many remained, and some began walking in wide circles to avoid arrest. The lieutenant announced again that the sidewalk was closed, and the crowd mocked the idea that a public sidewalk could be closed.
"Right now it's a hazard," the lieutenant announced through the bullhorn. "Later it will be opened up. We want everyone to get home safe."
The protesters shouted back, "This is a peaceful protest." The police seemed to back off. The protesters moved in again.
As the confrontation continued, the police kept yelling orders that the sidewalk was closed, or temporarily closed, or had to be closed to keep order. They fanned out in a line, stretching orange mesh netting across the breadth of the sidewalk, and walked along, pushing protesters back and sweeping them away.
The strategy drew expressions of puzzlement from many in the area.
"The police warned these people to move because of pedestrian traffic, but this is an empty place," said Robert Rosen, 66. "Who are they talking about?"
Rob Harris and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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