"The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!" -- Big Bill Haywood
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FYI:
Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
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Lifting the Veil
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. --HELEN KELLER
Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:
DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
Keep Wall Street Occupied (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlxbKtBkGM
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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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Tonight!
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up"
Wednesday January 4, 2012
Roxie Theater
3117 16th St
(one block from the 16th and Mission BART station)
Two showing
6:30 pm and 8:00 pm
FILMMAKER IN PERSON!
This film chronicles half a century of hostile US-Cuba relations by telling the story of "the Cuban Five": intelligence agents sent to penetrate Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami who are now serving long prison sentences.
WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP highlights decades of assassinations and sabotage at first backed - then ignored - by the very government that launched a "War on Terror".
From the Bay of Pigs to multiple attempts on Fidel Castro's life, a question is raised: what did Cuba do to deserve such hostile treatment? Directed by Saul Landau. Cinematography by Haskell Wexler. 2011. Digital. 65 mins. Original Music -- The Cuban Cowboys, Greg and Camilo Landau.
Read review by Lawrence Wilkerson (Colonel, US Army, Ret.)
http://www.thehavananote.com/node/890
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
For more information visit :
www.thecuban5.org
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The James Rivera family of Stockton will be having a rally to demand justice for James Rivera on Friday, Jan. 6 at 11 a.m. at the San Joaquin County DA's office at 222 E. Weber Avenue, Stockton, CA 95202.
Join family, friends and community to protest police violence and the police killing of James Rivera, Jr., the 16 year old unarmed black youth murdered by Stockton police and County Sheriffs on July 22, 2010 in a hail of at least 30 shots.
Carpools are leaving Oakland at 9:00 a.m. and Concord at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, January 6. For more information, please call 510-239-3570.
--
The Oscar Grant Committee meets the 1st Tuesday of every month at the Niebyl Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph (near Alcatraz) in Oakland at 7:00 p.m. Call us at 510-239-3570.
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SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 7:30pm
Palestinian human rights activist OMAR BARGHOUTI
Speaking on
"Occupy Wall Street not Palestine! BDS and the Global Struggle for Justice & Freedom in Palestine"
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway
Booksigning of Barghouti's book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights follows the program
Presented by the Middle East Children's Alliance & CODEPINK
Benefit for MECA's Maia Project: Clean Water for Children in Gaza. Wheelchair accessible, ASL interpreted.
Event includes Special Guests!
Buy Your Tickets Now! http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/216036
Tickets $10, no one turned away for lack of funds -For info: 510-548-0542, www.mecaforpeace.org
Cosponsored by: KPFA, Al-Awda, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, US Palestinian Community Network, Northern California Friends of Sabeel, Global Exchange, US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Bay Area Women in Black, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
--
Leena Al-Arian
Program and Communications Coordinator
Middle East Children's Alliance
1101 8th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-548-0542
www.mecaforpeace.org
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SF Bay Area Action Alert
Close Guantanamo: 10 Years Too Many
Generic - Gitmo Please join Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network in supporting the local "Close Guantanamo action"--one on many across the country next week in solidarity with the Washington DC action.
San Francisco Federal Building
(on 7th St. at Mission)
Wednesday, January 11th, Noon
We'll form a human chain of 171 people, each representing a detainee still held at Guantanamo. Also:
* Speakers, including a report back from Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade last month
* Poetry
* Musician David Rovics will perform "Guantanamo Bay" and "After We Torture our Prisoners"
Each person will have a detainee name tag, and we'll read the names aloud. Many participants will wear orange jumpsuits. Everyone to asked to dress in black and to wear a orange arm band that will be provided. Other activities will include writing brief notes to detainees (per the Reprieve UK project) and inviting people to fast in solidarity with the Witness Against Torture 10-day fast in DC.
Please RSVP so organizers can track of how many folks are coming:
National Day of Action Against Guantanamo
For more info, please contact Cynthia Papermaster at 510-333-6097, cynthia_papermaster@yahoo.com
SF Bay Area supporting organizations include:
Courage to Resist
Bradley Manning Support Network
Amnesty International
Witness Against Torture
Bay Area Religious Campaign Against Torture
No More Guantanamos
National Accountability Action Network
Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
War Resisters League--West
Codepink Women for Peace
warisacrime.org
Marin Task Force on the Americas
Veterans for Peace
World Can't Wait
PDA San Francisco
Northern California 9/11 Truth
Alliance National Network on Cuba
Movement for a Democratic Society--Bay Area
http://www.couragetoresist.org/
www.couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave # 41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
Other information:
www.facebook.com/couragetoresist
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Justice for Kenneth Harding Jr.
Sunday, January 22, 2012 Noon
3rd and Oakdale:
Protest and March to Candlestick Park
Kenneth Harding JR. was murdered by the San Francisco police on July 16, 2011 for allegedly evading a two-dollar Muni train fare. Kenneth was only nineteen years old when he was gunned down and left in the street for over twenty-eight minutes where he bled out and died on 3rd and Oakdale. The Kenneth Harding Fr. Foundation is asking for the community's support in bringing the noise. We are doing a protest and march down 3rd street to Gilman and Jamestown in order to surround Candlestick Stadium during the NFC championship game. We need justice for Kenneth Harding Jr., hands off the truth tellers, and to fight back against police brutality. We will start off at Kenneth's memorial sight and disburse at the stadiums park. We want to bring awareness to all game attendees that the police in the Bay View/Hunters Point community are killing our children, violating our rights, and trying to silence people for speaking out. Come out, take a stand and help support us. We are fighting for an injustice we want to see change. Kenny may be gone but he will never be forgotten. Help honor his memory by supporting his movement.
Contact facebook.com/justice4kennethhardingjr
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It's Time to "Occupy the Dream:" African-American Faith Community Joins Forces with Occupy Wall Street - First Day of Action on MLK Day, Jan 16 at Federal Reserve Banks
Members of the African-American faith community have joined forces with Occupy Wall Street to launch a new campaign for economic justice inspired by the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Faithful to its philosophical origin, the "Occupy the Dream" coalition has called for a National Day of Action on Martin Luther King Day - Monday, January 16, 2012 - when they will "Occupy the Federal Reserve," in multiple cities nationwide, focusing attention on the gross injustice visited upon the 99% by the financial elite. This will be the first of many actions leading up to a mass gathering in Washington D.C., to be held April 4 - 7, when millions will unite in celebration of the life and legacy of Dr King.
In support of this effort, StudioOccupy.org has created this inspiring video:
http://studiooccupy.org/#!/media/oici4d
The Occupy the Dream coalition was launched by a contemporary of Dr. King - Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. - and Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant of the Empowerment Temple Church, in partnership with Occupy Wall Street organizers. The following statement in support of the Occupy the Dream coalition was prepared by over 30 Occupy Wall Street organizers and read at the National Press Club in Washington, DC:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for social and economic justice with a deep moral commitment to non-violent civil disobedience. His legacy inspires many of us on the front lines of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Nearly fifty years since hundreds of thousands of people marched with Dr. King and filled the nation's capital, the dream that inspired our nation remains unfulfilled. As shocking as it is to believe, there is a more severe inequality of wealth in the United States today than there was back then. More Americans are living in poverty today than when Dr. King organized the Poor People's Campaign.
While the rich have grown richer, tens of millions of Americans have been exploited and left behind. In a time of great wealth and technological advancement, American families are desperately struggling to get by and to make ends meet.
Our political, economic, and legal systems have become wholly corrupted through a system of political bribery. Through campaign finance, lobbying, and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, our wealth has been consolidated into the hands of the few at the expense and suffering of the many.
Many of our brothers and sisters lead lives dominated by fear. Fear of losing a home. Fear of losing a job. Fear of losing medical coverage. Fear of losing the ability to provide food for our families. And for far too many, these fears have already become a reality.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is about people coming together to say "enough is enough." Our families have endured economic oppression for too long. The Occupy Wall Street movement draws its strength from people of all different walks of life, with opinions across the political spectrum, coming together to find common ground and unite against the global financial interests that have bought control of our government.
Dr. King's vision of economic justice is an edifying example of what we intend to achieve. The Occupy movement has become a powerful force by occupying communities throughout the country. The time has now come for us to embody the spirit of Dr. King and for us to "Occupy the Dream."
We are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the African-American Faith community in this campaign for economic fairness and justice. We are all in this fight together. We all want a healthy and secure future for our families. In the absence of a government that will defend and represent us, we are now taking it upon ourselves to stand up and defend our own families.
It is a great honor today to join with the spirit of Dr. King, to join with heroes of the civil rights movement, luminaries of the faith community, pioneers in music and all of you in attendance.
It is a great honor today to announce the birth of the "Occupy the Dream" movement.
Social Media Accounts
Twitter: @OccupyDreamOWS
Facebook: Occupy the Dream
For more information visit OccupyDream.org.
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KEEP ON THE LOOKOUT IN LATE JANUARY OR EARLY FEBRUARY:
A Call to Action
From the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council [Longview area, Washington]
January 2, 2012
"We are imploring all able working class people willing to take time out of his or her own lives, to come to Longview, Washington for a historic protest.
.... The class struggle never really goes away. Right now the rich and the ruling class are attempting to deal a blow that labor might never recover from....
.... If you believe in a better future for the 99% of us that work for a living, do what you can to support ILWU Local 21."
The resolution that was just passed by the Labor Council in the Longview area is attached. (This is the "Call to Action" to accompany the Resolution.)
A Call to Action: It is estimated, sometime in late January or early February the [scab] EGT facility at the port of Longview will receive its first grain ship to be loaded at its berth. The name and timing of this ship will undoubtedly be kept secret until the last possible moment. It is likely there will be a few days to as little as 24 hours notice of when the ship will dock. Notification will be given via the Internet and any other relevant means of networking throughout the country.
We are imploring all able working class people willing to take time out of his or her own lives, to come to Longview, Washington for a historic protest.
This is the time for workers everywhere to take a stand. Unions and the working class standard of living that have benefited from collective bargaining for so long are in danger of being extracted completely. You can see this systematically taking place over the last 30 years or longer, and especially in recent times. Unions have lost ground over this period of time due to unjust anti-labor laws, corporate influence on the government, and complacency on the part of organized labor among other reasons.
We recognize the danger of, and view the government attack on collective bargaining of public employees as a warning shot to labor as a whole. Wisconsin was ground zero and the spark that awoke the sleeping giant that is labor. Workers are beginning to remember there is indeed strength in numbers, regardless of how many unjust laws are made to divide us.
We have not been pacified long enough, as to give up our constitutional rights or to give up all the gains our forefathers fought and died to achieve over the last hundred years. People inherently ask WHY? Why should I, or others come to the aid of the ILWU? Why should I care, and what does it matter if this ship gets loaded and they lose this struggle?
The ILWU has a proud history of being arguably the strongest labor union in the world for almost 80 years. The secret of this success lies in the bottom up, rank and file democratic structure. This empowers and involves every member. And the intelligence and foresight of the leaders who knew without unity on the entire west coast and unity with the working class, there was no strength.
EGT is attempting to break the ILWU. EGT is operating on public port property where the ILWU have worked for decades. They are in violation of their lease agreement, which states that the ILWU is to be the workforce on port property. Longshoremen have done work in port grain elevators before the ILWU was formed [in the 1930s]. If EGT succeeds, they will have essentially broken the ILWU.
First, they will set a precedent that work on public port docks is no longer automatically Longshore Jurisdiction. Then within less than a year, when the northwest grain handlers agreement is set to be negotiated, all the other grain elevators will seek to either go non-ILWU or will seek to match the eroded standard EGT creates. Shortly thereafter in 2014, the ILWU will negotiate its master contract with the Pacific Maritime Association. If they lose, you can bet the PMA will take notice and hit hard.
Most importantly to note is that grain accounts for 30% of the ILWU health and welfare package. If you lose a third of your bargaining power and your traditional jurisdiction on port property, what are you left with? Either no ILWU, or a union that would resemble nothing like what it once was. There would be little or no collective power up and down the west coast, and no way to fight for social justice or defend the working class, just as the ILWU has done for so long, in its entrenched and strategic position at the gates of international commerce.
Longshoremen have traditionally been a rough and tough bunch, but they always make sure to educate their members on the importance of history, unity and the power of collective bargaining. People nowadays forget or have not been taught their own history, they forget what it means to cross a picket line, and become a scab the rest of their life. For 30 years or more we have been sliding downhill, while some would argue unions have outlived their time. The reality is unions are the last defense when the imperfect system of checks and balances within our government fails to serve the interests of the workers.
The class struggle never really goes away. Right now the rich and the ruling class are attempting to deal a blow that labor might never recover from. The ILWU has always been the vanguard of labor everywhere. Today, the ILWU's value of "An Injury to One, Is an Injury to All" couldn't be any more pertinent for all organizations. So please, if you believe in a better future for the 99% of us that work for a living, do what you can to support ILWU Local 21.
"The most important word in the language of the working class is solidarity."- Harry Bridges
In Solidarity,
Kyle Mackey, Secretary/Treasurer Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council
ILWU Local 21 Member
Resolution of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties (Washington) Central Labor Council -
Adopted January 2, 2012
Whereas: the ILWU has always been at the forefront in the struggle for social justice and better working conditions. And,
Whereas: ILWU Local 21 has inspired working people worldwide. And,
Whereas: ILWU jurisdiction is under an unprecedented attack. And,
Whereas: It is clear to all working people that EGT is seeking to race to the bottom and destroy a long history of good family wage jobs throughout the area. And,
Whereas: The Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council, hereinafter called the council, recognize the blatant union busting tactics of EGT, as well, the danger of losing the ILWU as a powerful ally for the working class. And,
Be it Resolved: that this Council call out to friends of labor and the "99%" everywhere to come to the aid of ILWU Local 21, and to support them in any way possible in their fight against multi national conglomerate EGT. And,
Be it further Resolved: that this Council request that anyone willing to participate in a community and labor protest in Longview, Washington of the first EGT grain ship, do so when called upon by this body. And,
Finally be it Resolved: that the Council forward this resolution to all local unions, the Washington State Labor Council, Oregon Federation of Labor, California Labor Federation, the AFL-CIO, and all other relevant organizations.
Respectfully submitted,
Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council Executive Board
[Note: This is the Central Labor Council for the Longview, WA area.]
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On December 31, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This legislation:
1. Directs $662 billion dollars desperately needed by the 99% for housing, jobs, health care and schools towards war appropriations.
2. Slaps dangerous new sanctions on Iran.
3. Codifies indefinite detention without charges or trial on American soil.
The sanctions on Iran, which will cause severe economic hardship for the people of Iran and squeeze U.S. competitors like China who depend on Iranian oil, are just one more step toward a new U.S. war. The indefinite detention threat will be used to silence activists for social change and to ramp up Islamophobia and war fever here at home. Already, on January 1, a mosque in NYC and the homes of people of color were firebombed. Overall, the billions of dollars just appropriated are going to be used for provocative new military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
And this is just the beginning of 2012. On May 19, the U.S. will be hosting, simultaneously, the summits of the US led military coalition that has destroyed Afghanistan and Libya and threatens Syria and Iran-NATO-and the representative financial body of the rich nations-G8 - that are now imposing austerity and inequality on people everywhere.
Government leaders are preparing for expanded war and repression in 2012.
The 99% at home and around the globe will be watching to see if we are able to respond effectively.
Join us at a conference specifically designed to take up this challenge.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE
United National Antiwar Coalition
Say No! To the NATO / G8 Wars & Poverty Agenda
A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% on the 99% at Home and Abroad
March 23-25, 2012 Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT (just one Metro North train stop from NYC)
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22, 2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring together activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental movements. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
Workshop topics include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War; Global Economic Crisis; Climate Crisis and War; Women and War; War at Home on Black Community; War on the U.S.-Mexico Border; Islamophobia as a Tool of War; Labor; Defense of Iran and Syria; Afghanistan: Ten Years of Occupation; Is the U.S. Really Withdrawing from Iraq?; Updates on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen; What Next for the Arab Spring?; Occupation of Haiti; U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Colombia, and the rest of Latin America; No to Drone Warfare and Weapons in Space; Civil Liberties; Guantanamo, Torture and Rendition; U.S. Combat Troops Involved in New Scramble for Africa; Control of Media; Imperialism Nonviolence & Direct Action; Palestine: UN Statehood, Civil Resistance, BDS; Breaking the Siege of Gaza; Veterans Peace Team; Immigrant Rights and War; Human Rights in South Asia; Fight for Our Right to Protest; No War; No Warming; No Nukes; Philippines & the Pacific; Bring Our War $$ Home
Register now at www.unacpeace.org.
Donate to send an occupier or student to this conference!
Donate to help build the NATO/G8 permitted protest!
Send donations to: UNACpeace@gmail.com orto use a credit card, go here: https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
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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
NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.
In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.
We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:
Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.
During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.
Our demands are simple:
That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and
That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.
The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.
In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.
The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.
We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.
How you can help:
1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.
2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.
3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com
4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.
4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!
Formore info: www.CANG8.org or email us at cangate2012@gmail.com
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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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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at GM that began December 30, 1936:
According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was Roosevelt who saved the day!):
"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the strike was really won!
'With babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
Union Maid
By Woody Guthrie
(Song sung by Pete Seeger also at this site: http://www.actionext.com/names_w/woody_guthrie_lyrics/union_maid.html )
Lyrics:
There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
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Busby: Fukushima 'criminal event' calls for investigation
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Dec 27, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0uFAWV7uc&feature=player_embedded%23!
A newly released report on the Fukushima nuclear crisis says it was down to the plant's operators being ill-prepared and not responding properly to the earthquake and tsunami disaster. A major government inquiry said some engineers abandoned the plant as the trouble started and other staff delayed reporting significant radiation leaks. Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks, says health damage after contamination will be more serious than Japan announced.
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HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
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ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
Charlie Chaplin final speech in "The Great Dictator"
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.
Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men---machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it's written "the kingdom of God is within man", not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.
Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
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ILWU Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
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Lifting the Veil
"Our democracy is but a name...We choose between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" --Helen Keller, 1911
"It is naive to expect the initiative for reform of the state to issue from the political process that serves theinterests of political capitalism. This structure can only be reduced if citizens withdraw and direct their energies and civic commitment to finding new life forms...The old citizenship must be replaced by a fuller and wider notion of being whose politicalness will be expressed not in one or two modes of actibity--voting or protesting--but in many." --Sheldon Wolin
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/lifting-the-veil/
This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the graveyard of social movements, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.
Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet.
Noble is brilliantly pioneering the new film-making - incisive analysis, compelling sound and footage, fearless and independent reporting, and the aggregation of the best information out there into powerful, educational and free online feature films - all on a shoestring budget.
Viewer discretion advised - Video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war.
Lifting the Veil from S DN on Vimeo.
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Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera y Trotsky Video Original
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Z0keLaGhQ
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Toronto Emergency Public Warning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiGTGwQ9HM&feature=player_embedded
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Tom Morello Occupy LA
Uploaded by sandrineora on Dec 3, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChicrlyeKhg&feature=player_embedded
The Nightwatchman, Tom Morello, comes to lift the spirits of Occupy LA the evening after the raid on November 29, 2011.
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UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
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UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
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THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
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Occupy With Aloha -- Makana -- The Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M07v8N_eU&feature=channel_video_title
We Are The Many -- Makana -- The Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=relmfu
We Are The Many
Lyrics and Music by Makana
Makana Music LLC (c) 2011
Download song for free here:
http://makanamusic.com/?slide=we-are-the-many
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Rafeef Ziadah - 'Shades of anger', London, 12.11.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vFJE93LTI
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News: Massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Fukuoka Nov. 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_xKEWuj1I&feature=player_embedded
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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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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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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
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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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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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
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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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#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
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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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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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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
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding the Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.
The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific case raised in this petition...
"This email was sent to giobon@comcast.net
Manage Subscriptions for giobon@comcast.net
Sign Up for Updates from the White House
Unsubscribe giobon@comcast.net | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House
"The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111"
That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about Bradley:
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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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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ACLU: SAY NO TO INDEFINITE DETENTION!
He signed it. We'll fight it.
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision.
The dangerous new law can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.
Sign the ACLU's pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.
The Petition:
I'm outraged that the statute President Obama signed into law authorizes worldwide military detention without charge or trial. I pledge to stand with the ACLU in seeking the reversal of indefinite military detention authority for as long as it takes.
And I will support the ACLU as it actively opposes this new law in court, in Congress, and internationally.
Signed,
[your name]
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?emsrc=Nat_Appeal_AutologinEnabled&s_subsrc=120103_NDAA_GOL&pagename=120103_NDAAGOLAsk&emissue=indefinite_detention&emtype=pledge&JServSessionIdr004=d90jai6lu1.app224a
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Urgent Appeal to Occupy and All Social Justice Movements: Mobilize to Defend the Egyptian Revolution
Endorse the statement here:
http://www.defendegyptianrevolution.org/2011/12/19/defend-the-egyptian-revolution/
In recent days, protesters demanding civilian rule in Egypt have again been murdered, maimed and tortured by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Interior Security Forces (ISF).
The conspiracy, being brutally implemented in Egypt, is part of a global conspiracy to suffocate mass movements for socio-economic justice and is being done with direct assistance of the American government and the private interests which direct that government. We have word from friends in Egypt that SCAF, ISF and their hired thugs - armed by ongoing shipments of $1.3 billion in weapons from the U.S. government - plan to execute one by one all the leaders of the revolution, and as many activists as they can.
Accordingly, we need to ensure that people and organizers in the US and internationally are involved in closely monitoring the events unraveling in Egypt. By keeping track of the atrocities committed by SCAF and ISF, keeping track of those detained, tortured or targeted, and continuously contacting officials in Egypt and the US to demand accountability, cessation of the atrocities and justice, we can add pressure on SCAF, ISF and the forces they represent. In this way we may be able to play a role in helping save the lives of our Egyptian brothers and sisters.
Evidence of the conspiracy to execute the leaders and participants of Egyptian freedom movement, includes in very small part the following:
* Sheikh Emad of Al Azhar was killed by a bullet entering his right side from short range. This was seen at first hand by witnesses known to members of our coalition. Sheikh Emad was one of a small number of Azhar Imams issuing decrees in support of the revolution. His murder was no accident.
* Sally Tooma, Mona Seif, Ahdaf Soueif, and Sanaa Seif, all female friends and relatives of imprisoned blogger and activist Alaa abd El Fattah, and all known internationally for their political and/or literary work, were detained, and beaten in the Cabinet building.
* A woman protesting against General Tantawi, head of SCAF, was detained and then tortured by having the letter "T" in English carved into her scalp with knives.
* Detainees are being tortured while in courtroom holding pens. Two men (Mohammad Muhiy Hussein is one of them) were killed in those pens.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.
In every way, Egypt's fight is our fight. Just like us, Egyptians are the 99%, fighting for social, political and economic justice.
The same 1% that arms the Egyptian dictatorship commits systematic violence in this country against the Occupy movement; antiwar and solidarity activists; and Arabs, Muslims, and other communities of color.
As the US Palestinian Community Network recently observed, "the same US-made tear gas rains down on us in the streets of Oakland, Cairo and Bil`in."
Because of Egypt's key strategic location, the fate of its revolution echoes across the world. Its success will bring us all closer to achieving economic and social justice. But its defeat would be a major blow to social justice movements everywhere, including Occupy.
In short, Egypt is key to the continued success of the Arab Revolution, and movements she has inspired.
For all these reasons, we ask Occupy and all U.S. social justice activists to join us in mobilizing to defend our Egyptian brothers and sisters by immediately organizing mass convergences on Egyptian embassies, missions, consulates, and at U.S. government offices, to demand:
* Cancel all US aid and shipment of military and police materiel to Egypt!
* Stop the murders, tortures and detentions!
* Release all detainees and political prisoners!
* Immediate end to military rule in Egypt!
Please endorse and circulate this appeal widely. Please send statements with these demands to the bodies listed below. By endorsing, your organization commits to making these phone calls and following up continuously for the next week.
www.defendegyptianrevolution.org and defendegyptianrevolution@gmail.com
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Tarek Mehanna - another victim of the U.S. War to Terrorize Everyone. He was targeted because he would not spy on his Muslim community for the FBI. Under the new NDAA indefinite military detention provision, Tarek is someone who likely would never come to a trial, although an American citizen. His sentencing is on April 12. There will be an appeal. Another right we may kiss goodbye. We should not accept the verdict and continue to fight for his release, just as we do for hero Bradley Manning, and all the many others unjustly persecuted by our government until it is the war criminals on trial, prosecuted by the people, and not the other way around.
Marilyn Levin
Official defense website: http://freetarek.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Free Tarek
Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 3:41 PM
Subject: [Tarek Mehanna Support] Today's verdict
All who have followed Tarek's trial with a belief in the possibility of justice through the court system will be shocked to learn that today the jury found him guilty on all seven counts of the indictment. In the six weeks that the prosecution used to present its case, it presented no evidence linking Tarek to an illegal action. Instead, it amassed a large and repetitive collection of videos, e-mails, translated documents, recorded telephone conversations and informant testimony aimed at demonstrating Tarek's political beliefs. The core belief under scrutiny was one that neither Tarek nor his defense team ever denied: Muslims have a right to defend their countries when invaded.
The prosecution relied upon coercion, prejudice, and ignorance to present their case; the defense relied upon truth, reason and responsibility. The government relied upon mounds of "evidence" showing that Tarek held political beliefs supporting the right to armed resistance against invading force; they mentioned Al-Qaeda and its leadership as often as possible while pointing at Tarek. It is clear they coerced Tarek's former friends and pressured them to lie, and many of them admitted to such. There is a long list of ways this trial proceeded unjustly, to which we will devote an entire post. The government's cynical calculation is that American juries, psychologically conditioned by a constant stream of propaganda in the "war on terrorism," will convict on the mere suggestion of terrorism, without regard for the law. Unfortunately, this strategy has proved successful in case after case.
Tarek's case will continue under appeal. We urge supporters to write to Tarek, stay informed, and continue supporting Tarek in his fight for justice. Sentencing will be April 12th, 2012. We will be sending out more information soon.
A beacon of hope and strength throughout this ordeal has been Tarek's strength and the amount of support he has received. Tarek has remained strong from day one, and even today he walked in with his head held high, stood unwavering as the verdict was read to him, and left the courtroom just as unbowed as ever. His body may be in prison now, but certainly this is a man whose spirit can never be caged. His strength must be an inspiration to us all, even in the face of grave circumstances. Before he left the courtroom, he turned to the crowd of supporters that was there for him, paused, and said, "Thank you, so much." We thank you too. Your support means the world to him.
You are here: Home » ACLU | "Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security" by Christopher Ott
ACLU | "Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security" by Christopher Ott
Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security
Submitted by Online Coordinator on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 14:31 First Amendment National Security
Decision today threatens writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
CONTACT:
Christopher Ott, Communications Director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BOSTON - The following statement on the conviction today of Tarek Mehanna may be attributed to American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts executive director Carol Rose:
"The ACLU of Massachusetts is gravely concerned that today's verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.
"Under the government's theory of the case, ordinary people-including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers-could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised.
"The government's prosecution does not make us safer. Speech about even the most unpopular ideas serves as a safety valve for the expression of dissent while government suppression of speech only drives ideas underground, where they cannot be openly debated or refuted.
"The ACLU believes that we can remain both safe and free, and, indeed, that our safety and our freedom go hand in hand."
The ACLU of Massachusetts has condemned the use of conspiracy and material support charges where the charges are based largely on First Amendment-protected expression.
In Mr. Mehanna's case, the charges against him have been based on allegations of such activity, such as watching videos about "jihad", discussing views about suicide bombings, translating texts available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers. Historically, government prosecutors have used conspiracy charges as a vehicle for the suppression of unpopular ideas, contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment and fundamental American values.
After the ACLU of Massachusetts submitted a memorandum of law in support of Mehanna's motion to dismiss the parts of the indictment against him that were based on protected expression, U.S. District Court Judge George O'Toole denied permission for the memorandum to be filed with the court. A copy of the memorandum is available here.
For more information, go to: http://aclum.org/usa_v_mehanna
via Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security | ACLU of Massachusetts.
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MUMIA HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO SCI MAHANOY!
From: info@freemumia.com
December 14, 2011
Greetings all,
Just verified with Superintendent John Kerestes that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in Administrative Custody at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA until he is cleared to enter general population within a few days.
We need phone calls to the institution to let them know that the WORLD is watching Mumia's movements and ask general questions so that they know that nothing they are doing is happening under cover of darkness.
Please also send cards and letters to Mumia at the new address so that he begins receiving mail immediately and it is known to all of the people there that we are with him!
PHONE NUMBER: 570-773-2158
MAILING ADDRESS:
Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
CURRENT VISITORS on Mumia's list will allegedly be OK'd to visit once their names are entered into the computer at Frackville. NEW VISITORS will have to receive the pertinent forms directly from Mumia.
DIRECTIONS TO THE PRISON are available at http://www.cheapjailcalls.com/correctional-facility-directory/state-prison-directory/item/sci-mahanoy
PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD!!!
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HANDS OFF IRAN PETITION
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hands-off-iran/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend
The Petition
To President Obama and Secretary Clinton:
At no time since the Iranian people rose up against the hated U.S-installed Shah has a U.S./Israeli military attack against Iran seemed more possible. Following three decades of unrelenting hostility, the last few months have seen a steady escalation of charges, threats, sanctions and actual preparations for an attack.
We, the undersigned demand No War, No Sanctions, no Internal Interference in Iran.
(For a complete analysis of the prospects of war, click here)
http://nepajac.org/unaciran.htm
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"A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship" book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
A Child's View from GazaA collection of drawings by children in the Gaza Strip, art that was censored by a museum in Oakland, California.
With a special forward by Alice Walker, this beautiful, full-color 80-page book from Pacific View Press features drawings by children like Asil, a ten-year-old girl from Rafah refugee camp, who drew a picture of herself in jail, with Arabic phrases in the spaces between the bars: "I have a right to live in peace," "I have a right to live this life," and "I have a right to play."
For international or bulk orders, please email: meca@mecaforpeace.org, or call: 510-548-0542
A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship [ISBN: 978-1-881896-35-7]
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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
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
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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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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
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Write to Bradley
http://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) The Port Shutdown Controversy: Corporate Profit vs. the Right to Protest
Ignoring history of port-related discord not wise
"Businessmen, politicians and even union officials have expressed outrage about the 'damage' done by port 'disruptions.' Yet when maritime employers shut down all West Coast ports for two weeks in 2002 by locking out longshore workers in the midst of contract negotiations, you could hardly see any complaints in the media or from politicians about the employers' 'disruption' of the port."
By Jack Heyman
December 30, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/30/EDQN1MI9VV.DTL
2) Tax Benefits From Options as Windfall for Businesses
"Thanks to a quirk in tax law, companies can claim a tax deduction in future years that is much bigger than the value of the stock options when they were granted to executives. This tax break will deprive the federal government of tens of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. And it is one of the many obscure provisions buried in the tax code that together enable most American companies to pay far less than the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent - in some cases, virtually nothing even in very profitable years."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/business/tax-breaks-from-options-a-windfall-for-businesses.html?hp
3) Deadliest Year on Record for Elephants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/africa/deadliest-year-on-record-for-elephants.html?ref=world
4) Factory Jobs Gain, but Wages Retreat
"'The trade-off is absolutely worth it; the alternatives are $15 an hour or zero dollars an hour,' Mayor Fischer said. ...'They were making $22 an hour and they are now making $15 an hour,' Ms. Thomas said, referring to a concessionary United Automobile Workers agreement. 'They were totally upset. But the alternative offered by the company was cut the wage scale or close the plant.'"
[Remember: "General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010" By JAKE TAPPER (@jaketapper), THE WHITE HOUSE, March 25, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558 "In fact, GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit." ...FYI, from Bonnie Weinstein]
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/business/us-manufacturing-gains-jobs-as-wages-retreat.html?ref=us
5) California: Homeless Campers Evicted
[Right out of John Steinbeck...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/california-homeless-campers-evicted-in-sacramento.html?ref=us
6) Pelican Bay State Prison, Short Corridor Update/Statement - **PLEASE SHARE AND PUBLISH*
(December 2011)
From: kendracastaneda55@gmail.com
7) After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill
"The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because "doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." He also said he would reject a "rigid across-the-board requirement" that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts. ...Under the terms of the bill, Mr. Obama can delay sanctions [think Iran] by six months to assess their impact on oil prices. The president can also apply to Congress for a waiver exempting a country's financial firms from sanctions, if he determines that the country significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil in the preceding 180 days. Or he can apply for a waiver exempting a country on national security grounds."
By MARK LANDLER
December 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html?ref=world
8) Surging Back Into Zuccotti Park, Protesters Are Cleared by Police
By COLIN MOYNIHAN and ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
December 31, 2011, 9:58 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/protesters-surge-back-into-zuccotti-park/?ref=nyregion
9) Young People More Likely To Favor Socialism Than Capitalism: Pew
"Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views -- making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism. ...There were only two other groups among whom socialism's positives outweighed its negatives -- blacks, who say they favor socialism 55 to 36 percent, and liberal Democrats, who say they favor socialism 59 to 39 percent."
by Alexander Eichler
December 30, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/young-people-socialism_n_1175218.html
10) Four Attacks in Queens With Homemade Firebombs
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
January 2, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/nyregion/four-attacks-in-queens-with-homemade-firebombs.html?hp
11) William Dale Singletary, Witness of Mumia's Innocence
(February 3, 1950 - December 31, 2011)
In the struggle for Mumia's freedom, Rachel Wolkenstein
December 31, 2011
Please circulate this as widely as possible.
12) Peru: Mine Protest Resumes
"The Newmont Mining Corporation, based in the United States, owns a majority share of the mine."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 2, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/americas/peru-mine-protest-resumes.html?ref=world
13) Parade ordinance power grab
City Hall proposal for new rules and harsher penalties for violations, allegedly occasioned by anticipated NATO and G-8 protests, would restrict all future demonstrations in Chicago
By Kristen Mack
Chicago Tribune
January 3, 2012
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-02/news/ct-met-emanuel-protest-permits-20120102_1_protest-rules-nato-and-g-8-future-demonstrations
14) F.D.A. Restricts Use of Antibiotics in Livestock
By GARDINER HARRIS
January 4, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/health/policy/fda-restricts-use-of-antibiotics-in-livestock.html?hp
15) The Forgotten Wages of War
By JOHN TIRMAN
January 3, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/the-forgotten-wages-of-war.html
16) Tiny Towns Fight for Post Offices, and Survival
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
January 4, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/arkansas-towns-with-a-post-office-and-little-else-fight-closings.html?ref=us
17) Three Arrested as Occupy Protesters March in Midtown
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
January 3, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/nyregion/3-arrested-as-occupy-protestors-march-in-midtown.html?ref=nyregion
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1) The Port Shutdown Controversy: Corporate Profit vs. the Right to Protest
Ignoring history of port-related discord not wise
"Businessmen, politicians and even union officials have expressed outrage about the 'damage' done by port 'disruptions.' Yet when maritime employers shut down all West Coast ports for two weeks in 2002 by locking out longshore workers in the midst of contract negotiations, you could hardly see any complaints in the media or from politicians about the employers' 'disruption' of the port."
By Jack Heyman
December 30, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/30/EDQN1MI9VV.DTL
The San Francisco Chronicle's front-page headline "Governor to Oakland: 'Keep the port open' " could have been gleaned from the newspaper's 1934 edition when Gov. Frank Merriam vowed to bring order to the city and break the maritime strike by deploying the National Guard. It was the height of the Great Depression and workers were desperate for jobs or to share the existing jobs on the waterfront. But the union stood fast. After a general strike to protest the police killing of two strikers, the seamen and longshoremen won the union hiring hall that shared the available work equitably.
Once again, the Bay Area is at the forefront of social protest. Twice police evicted Occupy Oakland using tear gas and "less lethal" munitions, and twice supporters of the Occupy movement responded. Thousands of Occupy protesters peacefully marched to the Port of Oakland, shutting it down in protest of the depredations of what they call the 1 percent. The protesters proclaimed their solidarity with the longshore union's struggle in Longview, Wash., and with port truckers. The business community cheered the evictions, but now its members are up in arms, complaining about shutdowns at the port, the funnel for much of their profits. It's obvious which side they're on.
The Oakland Port Commission tried to stop the Dec. 12 protest with full-page ads in the Oakland Tribune, the New York Times and The Chronicle, shedding crocodile tears about the port truckers and other port workers who would be unable to work. The commissioners pose as defenders of the "99 percent," but in fact they stand in the way of the heavily exploited port truckers and port warehouse workers getting into a union with decent wages, benefits and conditions. Port workers recognize a sham when they see one and thus honored the picket lines.
Gov. Jerry Brown and Oakland City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente also have joined the fray by chastising Mayor Jean Quan for not stopping the protests. Yet both were involved in similar port protests 14 years ago.
Brown, just launching his mayoral campaign, participated in a solidarity picket line in 1997 that shut down the Oakland terminal for four days in support of 500 sacked Liverpool, England, dockworkers. And De La Fuente led the thousand-strong union protest through downtown Oakland in 1998 to demand the charges be dropped against the port protesters.
Now they're singing a different tune.
This isn't the first time Brown has called to use police power in the port. As Oakland mayor in April 2003, he called in the riot police to quash a peaceful antiwar demonstration at the port. Scores of demonstrators (and several longshoremen) were badly injured by some of the same munitions recently used on Occupy Oakland. The U.N. Human Rights Commission condemned the police action as the "most violent" repression of protests against the war. It cost the city more than $2 million. Brown promised to appoint a "blue ribbon" commission to investigate, but it never materialized. Now he admonishes Quan for not following his example.
Businessmen, politicians and even union officials have expressed outrage about the "damage" done by port "disruptions." Yet when maritime employers shut down all West Coast ports for two weeks in 2002 by locking out longshore workers in the midst of contract negotiations, you could hardly see any complaints in the media or from politicians about the employers' "disruption" of the port. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was lauded when she called on President George W. Bush to invoke the slave-labor Taft-Hartley Act, forcing longshoremen back to work under conditions favorable to the maritime companies. They knew which side they were on then, too.
And not only did ILWU protesters have the right to try to stop the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, they were right that the war was based on the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
A resolution proposed by De La Fuente, who is also an international vice president of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, would ban port shutdowns or disruptions. It was turned down as speaker after speaker warned that this would only set off more clashes.
What will happen in 2014 when the longshore union contract expires? Will they have the right to strike and to shut down ports? And what about work stoppages over health and safety issues in one of the most dangerous industries?
A more ominous question arises now. The will of the ILWU is being tested by an international grain consortium, EGT in Longview, Wash. The company that built a new $200 million terminal has refused to abide by the port contract to hire ILWU longshore workers. If EGT is successful in breaking the contract, it will immediately affect every U.S. port. What will longshore workers do when a ship arrives to load the grain?
San Francisco longshore Local 10 is organizing a caravan of Bay Area workers and Occupy activists to travel to Longview to greet the ship upon its arrival in two weeks. If an agreement is not reached with EGT and angry longshore workers view this dispute as a threat to all their jobs, then it's possible for the first time that ports on the West, East and Gulf coasts may be shut down.
Which side are you on?
Jack Heyman, a retired Oakland longshoreman, is chairman of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee ( www.transportworkers.org).
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2) Tax Benefits From Options as Windfall for Businesses
"Thanks to a quirk in tax law, companies can claim a tax deduction in future years that is much bigger than the value of the stock options when they were granted to executives. This tax break will deprive the federal government of tens of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. And it is one of the many obscure provisions buried in the tax code that together enable most American companies to pay far less than the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent - in some cases, virtually nothing even in very profitable years."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/business/tax-breaks-from-options-a-windfall-for-businesses.html?hp
The stock market's rebound from the financial crisis three years ago has created a potential windfall for hundreds of executives who were granted unusually large packages of stock options shortly after the market collapsed.
Now, the corporations that gave those generous awards are beginning to benefit, too, in the form of tax savings.
Thanks to a quirk in tax law, companies can claim a tax deduction in future years that is much bigger than the value of the stock options when they were granted to executives. This tax break will deprive the federal government of tens of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade. And it is one of the many obscure provisions buried in the tax code that together enable most American companies to pay far less than the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent - in some cases, virtually nothing even in very profitable years.
In Washington, where executive pay and taxes are highly charged issues, some critics in Congress have long sought to eliminate this tax benefit, saying it is bad policy to let companies claim such large deductions for stock options without having to make any cash outlay. Moreover, they say, the policy essentially forces taxpayers to subsidize executive pay, which has soared in recent decades. Those drawbacks have been magnified, they say, now that executives - and companies - are reaping inordinate benefits by taking advantage of once depressed stock prices.
A stock option entitles its owner to buy a share of company stock at a set price over a specified period. The corporate tax savings stem from the fact that executives typically cash in stock options at a much higher price than the initial value that companies report to shareholders when they are granted.
But companies are then allowed a tax deduction for that higher price.
For example, in the dark days of June 2009, Mel Karmazin, chief executive of Sirius XM Radio, was granted options to buy the company stock at 43 cents a share. At today's price of about $1.80 a share, the value of those options has risen to $165 million from the $35 million reported by the company as a compensation expense on its financial books when they were issued.
If he exercises and sells at that price, Mr. Karmazin would of course owe taxes on the $165 million as ordinary income. The company, meanwhile, would be entitled to deduct the full $165 million as compensation on its tax return, as if it had paid that amount in cash. That could reduce its federal tax bill by an estimated $57 million, at the top corporate tax rate.
SiriusXM did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Dozens of other major corporations doled out unusually large grants of stock options in late 2008 and 2009 - including Ford, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Google and Starbucks - and soon may be eligible for corresponding tax breaks.
Executive compensation experts say that barring another market collapse, the payouts to executives - and tax benefits for the companies - will run well into the billions of dollars in the coming years. Indeed, of the billions of shares worth of options issued after the crisis, only about 11 million have thus far been exercised, according to data compiled by InsiderScore, a consulting firm that compiles regulatory filings on insider stock sales.
"These options gave executives a highly leveraged bet that stock prices would rebound from their 2008 and 2009 lows, and are now rewarding them for rising tides rather than performance," said Robert J. Jackson Jr., an associate professor of law at Columbia who worked as an adviser to the office that oversaw compensation of executives at companies receiving federal bailout money. "The tax code does nothing to ensure that these rewards go only to executives who have created sustainable long-term value."
For some companies, awarding stock options can seem like a tempting bargain, since there is no cash outlay and the tax benefits can exceed the original cost.
Under standard accounting rules, companies calculate the fair market value of the options on the date they are granted and report that value as an expense, disclosed in regulatory filings. But the Internal Revenue Service allows companies to claim a tax deduction for any increase in value when those options are exercised, usually years later at a much higher price. The tax savings are listed in regulatory filings as "excess tax benefits from stock-based compensation."
For most companies, the primary advantage of using options is that options allow them to award large bonuses without actually depleting their cash, said Alan J. Straus, a New York tax lawyer and accountant. "But the tax treatment is a nice bonus," he said. "It's the only form of compensation where a company can get a deduction without having to come up with cash."
Some corporate watchdog groups, and a few members of Congress, call the corporate tax deduction an expensive loophole.
Many tax lawyers and accountants counter that the tax deduction is justifiable because the options represent a real cost to the company. And because the executives who exercise their options are taxed at high individual rates, the companies say that a change would result in an unfair form of double taxation.
Yet even those who support the existing tax policy say it was opportunistic for executives to avail themselves of big increases in stock options - which are supposed to be a performance-based reward - when a marketwide collapse meant that most companies' stock price seemed destined to go up.
The increases in the value of options granted during the financial crisis would not just cost the Treasury. Shareholder advocates and corporate governance experts say they come at the expense of other investors, too, whose stake in the company is diluted.
Well before the market downturn, hundreds of American corporations reduced their tax bills by billions of dollars a year through their shrewd use of stock options. A decade ago, companies like Cisco and Microsoft were widely criticized because their stock options created such big deductions that, in some years, they paid no federal taxes at all. When shareholders and regulators complained about the excessive use of stock options, Microsoft temporarily stopped issuing them in 2003.
From 2005 to 2008, Apple reported that the options exercised by its employees cut its federal income tax bill by more than $1.6 billion. Stock options reduced Goldman Sachs's federal income tax bill by $1.8 billion during that period, and Hewlett-Packard's by nearly $850 million, according to filings by the companies.
Companies say the tax treatment is justified because they are deducting the cost of paying an employee, just as they would if they paid a salary in cash.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has tried for nearly a decade to eliminate the tax break, which affects the most commonly granted stock options. He has introduced a bill that would limit a company's tax deduction for options to the same amount declared on its financial books. His proposal would also count options toward the maximum of $1 million that companies can deduct for an executive's pay each year (outside of performance-based bonuses).
The bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that if the senator's proposal were enacted, it would add $25 billion to the Treasury over the next decade.
Stock options became a popular reward for top executives in the 1990s after Congress imposed the $1 million cap. They lost a little of their appeal after accounting changes in 2005 forced companies to start counting the value of the options as an expense. Scandals over the backdating of options also made some companies wary. Restricted stock and other forms of equity sometimes replaced options. Once the stock market dropped in the fall of 2008, however, there was a spike in the number of options granted by companies. According to regulatory filings compiled by Equilar, an executive compensation consulting firm, the number of options issued by companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 jumped to 2.4 billion in 2009 from 2.1 billion in 2007, though they had been on the decline since 2003.
Goldman Sachs granted 36 million stock options in December 2008, 10 times more than the previous year.
General Electric, which granted 18 million options in 2007 and 25 million options in 2008, granted 159 million in 2009 and 105 million in 2010.
Some companies say that their options awards in 2008 and 2009 were decided before it was clear the stock market would recover. Others say that because share prices had plunged, they had to issue more options to reach the target compensation for their top executives.
General Electric acknowledged that it issued far more options after the market collapse because they offered a cheaper way to pay executives than restricted stock and other forms of compensation. A G.E. spokesman, Andrew Williams, said that tax considerations did not play a role in that decision.
To be sure, some executives whose option values have skyrocketed can point to notable accomplishments. Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, was granted options valued at $12 million in November 2008 that are today worth more than $100 million. In the years since, Starbucks has laid off thousands of employees, closed hundreds of stores and retooled its business plan. The strategy reversed the company's slide in earnings. Shares of Starbucks, which traded in the $30s during much of 2008 and fell below $8 after the near collapse, closed Thursday at $46.45.
But other companies whose executives have already cashed in some options issued during the crisis have not performed particularly well compared with their peers. The oil drilling company Halliburton is one.
And some financial services companies that have seen the value of the options they issued after the market collapse rise significantly - including Goldman Sachs and Capital One Financial - were able to weather the crisis, in some part, because of the billions in federal bailout money they received.
"The reason the C.E.O.'s and corporate boards gave all those options during the crisis is because they expected the market to recover - and because the economy is cyclical, everyone knew it would recover," said Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "And the whole game is played with other people's money - the market's money and the taxpayers' money."
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3) Deadliest Year on Record for Elephants
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/africa/deadliest-year-on-record-for-elephants.html?ref=world
Large seizures of elephant tusks made 2011 the worst year on record for elephants since ivory sales were banned in 1989, experts said on Thursday. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 3,000 elephants were killed by poachers, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an advocacy group. Tom Milliken, an elephant and rhino specialist for Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, said that most cases involve the smuggling of ivory from Africa into Asia, where growing wealth has fed the desire for ivory ornaments and for rhino horn that is used in traditional medicine, though scientists have proved it has no medicinal value.
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4) Factory Jobs Gain, but Wages Retreat
"'The trade-off is absolutely worth it; the alternatives are $15 an hour or zero dollars an hour,' Mayor Fischer said. ...'They were making $22 an hour and they are now making $15 an hour,' Ms. Thomas said, referring to a concessionary United Automobile Workers agreement. 'They were totally upset. But the alternative offered by the company was cut the wage scale or close the plant.'"
[Remember: "General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010" By JAKE TAPPER (@jaketapper), THE WHITE HOUSE, March 25, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558 "In fact, GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit." ...FYI, from Bonnie Weinstein]
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/business/us-manufacturing-gains-jobs-as-wages-retreat.html?ref=us
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Manufacturers are hiring again in America, softening a long slide in factory employment. But for a new generation of blue-collar workers, even those protected by unions, the price of employment is likely to be lower wages stretching to retirement.
That is particularly true of global manufacturers like General Electric. With labor costs moving down at its appliance factories here, the company is bringing home the production of water heaters as well as some refrigerators, and expanding its work force to do so.
The wages for the new hires, however, are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff - with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future. Such union-endorsed contracts are also showing up in the auto industry, at steel and tire companies, and at manufacturers of farm implements and other heavy equipment, according to Gordon Pavy, president of the Labor and Employment Relations Association and, until recently, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s director of collective bargaining.
"Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia," Mr. Pavy said, "but in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers."
The shrunken pay scale for newcomers - $12 to $19 an hour versus $21 to $32 an hour for longtime workers - threatens to undo the middle-class status of even the best-paid blue-collar jobs still left in manufacturing. A similar contract limits the wages of new hires at a nearby Ford Motor Company stamping plant, but neither G.E.'s 2,000 hourly workers nor Ford's 2,900, nor their unions nor the mayor, Greg Fischer, have objected.
Quite the contrary, all argue that job creation must take precedence over holding the line on wages, given that the unemployment rate in this Ohio River city is above 9 percent and several thousand people apply for every unfilled, $13-an-hour factory job. "The trade-off is absolutely worth it," Mayor Fischer said, arguing that while the city is actively subsidizing G.E.'s expansion here, mainly through tax rebates, that is not enough. "You must have a globally competitive wage to create jobs," the mayor insisted.
The generational setback implicit in a "globally competitive wage" is evident at G.E.'s Appliance Park, the complex of factories where G.E. makes refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and other household appliances. Six years into the adoption of lower wages for new hires, half of the hourly workers are paid at the reduced scale.
In an earlier era, that would have been a source of friction, perhaps protest. Now it isn't, and in an interview William Masden, 62, earning $31.78 an hour after 42 years at Appliance Park, attempted an explanation. The younger workers still get annual raises, he noted, and by the time they top out, he and his peers - the oldest baby boomers - "won't be here any longer to remind them of what they are missing."
Linda Thomas, 37, one of the first to be hired in 2005 under the new arrangement, amends that explanation. Her hourly wage, $18.19, has almost topped out, although it is nearly $14 an hour less than Mr. Masden's. But she keeps silent. Too many unemployed people, she explained, would clamor for her job and her wage if she were to protest.
"You don't want to rock the boat," Ms. Thomas said. "You take a chance on losing everything you have if you do."
Mr. Masden's final years at G.E., doing safety checks, and Ms. Thomas's willingness, however reluctant, to do equivalent work as a forklift driver at a much lower wage illustrate a big reason that General Electric decided to expand production here. A new hybrid electric water heater will be manufactured in Louisville in a factory now being renovated, rather than in China, where G.E. makes its current model. And some production of refrigerators is being repatriated, mainly from Mexico.
"We have gotten to a point where making things in America is as viable as making things any place in the world," said James P. Campbell, president and chief executive of G.E.'s appliances and lighting division, citing the drop in labor costs as a crucial reason. "They are significantly less with the competitive wage," he said, "and that is a big help."
The revival is in an early stage. By 2005, G.E.'s employment in Louisville had fallen to 2,300 hourly workers from a high of 17,000 in the 1970s. At that point, with the company insisting on concessions, Local 761 of the IUE-CWA union, representing the hourly factory workers, agreed to the lower wage scale for new hires. The union has ratified it in subsequent contracts.
Employment, in turn, has finally stopped falling and is beginning to inch up from a low of 2,000 early this year as new hires start to come aboard faster than older workers leave. But the new people are always at the lower wage scale, except for some specialists - like machinists, who earn up to $26 an hour.
"We are getting from the company an $800 million investment in Appliance Park over the next two years, and what we had to do for that investment was accept the 'competitive wage,' " said Jerry Carney, president of Local 761.
Even so, G.E.'s work force in America is slightly smaller than its work force overseas - 133,000 to 154,000. Nearly 80 percent of those in America are in manufacturing, reflecting G.E.'s origins and still its greatest strength. It has 219 factories in this country and 16 more are being built or renovated, including two in Louisville. An additional 230 G.E. plants are overseas, which helps to explain why 53 percent of the company's $150.2 billion in revenue last year - from all sources - was generated abroad, up from 35 percent a decade ago.
Mr. Carney's competitive wage - a euphemism that G.E. officials also use - is really, as both sides acknowledge, the price of halting or at least slowing this migration. It is, in effect, the lower tier of a two-tier system first introduced in the 1980s. That system limited those consigned to the lower tier to 20 percent of a company's work force. In addition, new hires eventually advanced to the higher tier. Bonuses and profit sharing eased the pain, and they still do, but for a new generation of workers, graduation to the upper tier is disappearing, and the lower tier is becoming a new hire's lifetime wage scale.
"My hope is that we will rebuild wages to their old levels over time as the economy strengthens and the demand for workers rises," said Thomas A. Kochan, a management expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But that is by no means a certainty."
Neither the nation's unions nor the government has tracked the number of jobs downgraded to the equivalent of a lower-tier wage scale, or the number of people who, like Ms. Thomas, have gone through the experience of a downgrade: in her case, from $19 an hour at the Ford auto body stamping plant - until she was laid off in 2005 - to a starting wage at G.E. a few months later of $12 an hour.
"At the time I was very angry about the comedown," she said, "but then I asked a couple of others who had gone through the same experience how they felt and they said, 'We're thankful to have a job.' "
The decline in unit labor costs is striking. In manufacturing, the wages and benefits invested in each unit of production have fallen in eight of the past 10 years, a net decline of 13.6 percentage points, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Productivity played a role - modern factories require fewer workers. Still, the decline is the greatest in such a short time since the statistic was first tracked in 1951.
In China, in sharp contrast, unit labor costs in manufacturing have risen in recent years, which means the gap between the United States and China, while still great, is nevertheless narrowing slightly - one reason that G.E. is making its new water heater here instead of there.
"We are at an inflection point in manufacturing in terms of relative cost structures," said Mark M. Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. "Ten years ago, it was a no-brainer to locate in China, and now it isn't so clear whether China is the low-cost place to produce."
The downshift in wages, however, is not G.E.'s only explanation for the rise in domestic production. In interviews, G.E. executives put almost as much emphasis on "lean manufacturing." Production workers on a lean factory floor are encouraged to point out inefficiencies in assembly line routines and to participate in altering the routines.
Given the productivity gains implicit in lean practices, G.E. envisions a growing hourly work force at Appliance Park, but one that comes nowhere near its size in the 1970s.
"The trade-off is absolutely worth it; the alternatives are $15 an hour or zero dollars an hour," Mayor Fischer said.
Mr. Masden, divorced with two grown daughters, and Ms. Thomas, single and childless, reluctantly accept this view. He wonders if the next generation will ever make it into the middle class, as he did. "I never had to think about pay," he said. "I just kept putting money in my pocket."
Ms. Thomas doubts that her pay will rise above the $19 an hour she had earned at the Ford plant before her layoff. Two older sisters still employed there are similarly worried.
"They were making $22 an hour and they are now making $15 an hour," Ms. Thomas said, referring to a concessionary United Automobile Workers agreement. "They were totally upset. But the alternative offered by the company was cut the wage scale or close the plant."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 29, 2011
An earlier version of this article said that General Electric's employment in America was slightly greater than that overseas.
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5) California: Homeless Campers Evicted
[Right out of John Steinbeck...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/california-homeless-campers-evicted-in-sacramento.html?ref=us
The Sacramento police have evicted about 150 homeless people who had set up tents along the American River. One man was arrested Wednesday after refusing orders to move. City officials said the eviction was needed to protect the environment along the river and to satisfy nearby property owners. It was not clear where the campers would go.
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6) Pelican Bay State Prison, Short Corridor Update/Statement - **PLEASE SHARE AND PUBLISH*
(December 2011)
From: kendracastaneda55@gmail.com
Everyone: I received the attached statement/update from the men at Pelican Bay Short Corridor yesterday. They wrote me saying for me to send this out to all media outlets asap, forward this email, please make this viral on the internet, send to friends, supporters, family members ASAP. Thank You! - Kendra Castaneda
A Shout-out of respect and solidarity - from the Pelican Bay Short Corridor - Collective - to all similarly situated prisoners subject to the continuing torturous conditions of confinement in these barbaric SHU & Ad/Seg units across this country and around the world.
This is our update of where things currently stand and where we're going with this struggle - for an end to draconian policies and practices - summarized in our "Formal Complaint" (and many related documents published and posted online, since early 2011)
As many of you know... beginning in early (2010), the PBSP - SHU Short Corridor Collective initiated action to educate people and bring wide spread exposure to - the (25+) years of ongoing - progressive human rights violations going unchecked here in the California Department of Corruption - via dissemination of our "Formal Complaint" to 100's of people, organizations, lawmakers, Secretary Cate, etc... wherein, we also sought support and meaningful change.
The response by CDCR - Secretary Cate was "file an inmate appeal" (collectively, we'd filed thousands); therefore, after much reconsideration and dialogue, the collective decided to take the fight to the next level via peaceful protest action - in the form of hunger strike.
With the above in mind - beginning in early (2011)... we again sought to educate people about the ongoing torture prevalent in these prison systems - solitary confinement units; and pointing out our position that - the administrative grievance process is a sham, and the court system's turned a blind eye to such blatantly illegal practices - Leaving us with no other meaningful avenue for obtaining relief, other than to put our lives on the line and thereby draw the line and force changes, via collective peaceful protest hunger strike action.
We believed this was the only - fully advantageous - way for us to expose such outrageous abuse of state power, to the world and gain the outside support needed to help force real change.
We requested support in the form of - asking people to write letters to those in power... we received more support than we ever expected - in the form of letters, rallies, and hunger strike "participants" - more than (18,000) similarly situated prisoners and some people on the outside!
All united in solidarity, with a collective awareness - that the draconian torture practices described in our "Formal Complaint" are prevalent across the land; and that - united in peaceful action, we have the power to force changes.
The hunger strike actions of (2011) achieved some success, in the form of - mainstream world wide exposure - solid, continuing outside support - some small improvements to SHU/Ad-Seg unit conditions ... and assurances of more meaningful - substantive changes to the overall policies and practices re: basis for placement and amount of time spent, in such units - a substantive review of all prisoners files, per new criteria - and more change to the actual conditions in such units.
However, this fight is far from over! Notably, the second hunger strike action was suspended in mid-October ... in response to top CDCR administrator's presentation that the substantive changes be finalized... would be provided to "the stakeholders" (this includes our attorneys), within 60 days for comment. To date, CDCR hasn't produced anything re: SHU/Ad-Seg policy changes; and PBSP's Warden has not even replied to the (2) memo's we've sent him concerning - additional program - privilege issues, per core demand #5 (see footnote #1 below)
Naturally, many people are not happy about CDCR's failure to abide by their word - again - and they are asking... "what's the next move in this struggle?"
Based on our collective discussions, our response is ... people need to remain focused, and continue to apply pressure on CDCR, via letters, emails, fax, etc... summarizing the continuing core demands - immediately! There's real power in numbers!! (see addresses to contact below, at footnote #2)
It's important for everyone to stay objective and on the same page - remember... united we win, divided we lose. And, if we don't see real substantive changes within the next 6 months... we'll have to re-evaluate our position.
Additionally, now is a good time for people to start a dialogue about changing the climate on these level IV mainlines... As it stands now, these lines are warehouses, with all the money meant for programs - rehabilitation, going into guard pockets.
It's in all of our best interests to change this in a big way, and thereby force CDCR to open these lines up and provide all of us with the programs and rehabilitative services that we all should have coming to us!!
Respect and Solidarity,
T. Ashker, A. Castellanos, Sitawa (s/n Dewberry), A. Guillen
-Dec. 2011-
Footnote#1: To date, we've received zero improvements re: core demand #5 ... while Corcoran and Tehachapi have gained on canteen and dip-pull up bars - which, is all good. This is an example of what we pointed out in our "Formal Complaint" re: disparate treatment at PBSP-SHU compared to other SHU's.
This is also a typical CDCR attempt to create discord and disruption to our unified struggle...we're certain this feeble move will fail because all of us understand what our main objective is - an end to long term torture in these isolation units! It is our fundamental right to be treated humanely... we can no longer accept state sanctioned torture - of our selves! (and, our loved ones!) and we remain unified in our resistance!!
Footnote#2: Addresses of people to write:
1. Tom Ammiano, Assemblyman, Capitol Bldg. Rm# 4005, Sacramento, CA 95814, Phone# 916-319-2013, Fax# 916-319-2113.
2. Gov. Edmund G. Brown, State Capitol, Ste #1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, Phone# 916-446-2841, Fax# 916-558-3160
3. CDCR - Secretary Matthew Cate, 1515 S. St. Ste. #330, Sacramento, CA 95811, Phone# 916-323-6001
4. Carol Strickman, Attorney at Law, 1540 Market Street, Ste. #490, San Francisco, CA 94102, Phone# 415-255-7036, Fax# 415-552-3150
All inmates writing to these people should be sent 'confidential mail' and anyone outside of prison, supporters, family members, etc... please write and also email.
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7) After Struggle on Detainees, Obama Signs Defense Bill
"The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because "doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." He also said he would reject a "rigid across-the-board requirement" that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts. ...Under the terms of the bill, Mr. Obama can delay sanctions [think Iran] by six months to assess their impact on oil prices. The president can also apply to Congress for a waiver exempting a country's financial firms from sanctions, if he determines that the country significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil in the preceding 180 days. Or he can apply for a waiver exempting a country on national security grounds."
By MARK LANDLER
December 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html?ref=world
HONOLULU - President Obama, after objecting to provisions of a military spending bill that would have forced him to try terrorism suspects in military courts and impose strict sanctions on Iran's oil exports, signed the bill on Saturday.
He said that although he did not support all of it, changes made by Congress after negotiations with the White House had satisfied most of his concerns and had given him enough latitude to manage counterterrorism and foreign policy in keeping with administration principles.
"The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it," Mr. Obama said in a statement issued in Hawaii, where he is on vacation. "I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists."
The bill authorizes $662 billion in military spending through 2012. It is a smaller amount than the Pentagon had asked for, but it does not impose the radical cuts that the military faces in coming years.
The White House had said that the legislation could lead to an improper military role in overseeing detention and court proceedings and could infringe on the president's authority in dealing with terrorism suspects. But it said that Mr. Obama could interpret the statute in a way that would preserve his authority.
The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because "doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation." He also said he would reject a "rigid across-the-board requirement" that suspects be tried in military courts rather than civilian courts.
Congress dropped a provision in the House version of the bill that would have banned using civilian courts to prosecute those suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. It also dropped a new authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda and its allies.
Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, still oppose the law, in part because of its authorization of military detention camps overseas. But Mr. Obama's signature is likely to settle, at least for now, the battle between the White House and Congress over executive authority in the treatment of detainees.
The White House also wrestled with Congress over requirements that the United States punish foreign financial firms that purchase Iranian oil, including through Iran's central bank. Such a step would greatly increase the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.
But the administration feared that if the measures were imposed too hastily, they could disrupt the oil market, driving up prices and alienating countries, including close allies, that the United States is seeking to enlist in its pressure campaign against Iran.
Under the terms of the bill, Mr. Obama can delay sanctions by six months to assess their impact on oil prices. The president can also apply to Congress for a waiver exempting a country's financial firms from sanctions, if he determines that the country significantly reduced its purchases of Iranian oil in the preceding 180 days. Or he can apply for a waiver exempting a country on national security grounds.
Senate Republicans, who pushed for the tougher sanctions, said it would be difficult for Mr. Obama to invoke a waiver, since it could make him look weak on Iran in an election year. But the administration said it was committed to imposing the sanctions.
"We have to do it in a timely way and phased way to avoid repercussions to the oil market, and make sure the revenues to Iran are reduced," said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But we believe we can do that."
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8) Surging Back Into Zuccotti Park, Protesters Are Cleared by Police
By COLIN MOYNIHAN and ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
December 31, 2011, 9:58 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/protesters-surge-back-into-zuccotti-park/?ref=nyregion
2:10 a.m. | Updated More than 500 people associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement gathered in Zuccotti Park on Saturday and, in a return to scenes from earlier in the year, the evening began with the sound of drumming and calls of the now familiar slogan, "We are the 99 percent" - and it ended with torn-down barricades and a scuffle with police officers.
Just after 10:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve, officers carried a person out of the park, prompting protesters to follow behind them, shouting "Shame!" The reason the person was escorted away was unclear.
About 20 minutes later, a group of protesters grabbed some of the metal barricades that surround the park and began piling them inside. As they gripped the barricades, police officers took hold as well, and a shoving match began, the silver bars trapped in between. At least one police officer fired an arch of pepper spray into the crowd behind those barricades.
Moments later, at least a dozen police officers charged into the park, plowing directly into a crowd of people, some of whom were trying to flee, pushing and shoving. One man was thrown down and pinned to the ground by several officers.
In the park, some protesters shouted "Peaceful!" and "Nonviolent!"
As the scuffle subsided, a group of police officers gathered on Cedar Street.
The evening began more diplomatically.
About 100 people arrived at the park at about 7 p.m., according to witnesses, and someone put up what was described as a small multicolored tent, about two feet tall, made for a child. Two young girls, who were at the park with their mother, began playing inside.
Though the New York City Police Department had officers fanned out throughout the city for the holiday, there were police officers lined up across the street from Zuccotti Park, at the ready alongside private security guards. They stepped in.
Police officers and security guards, who stood at the ready across the street, told protesters to remove the tent, saying it violated rules issued by the park's owner, Brookfield Properties. Meanwhile, an officer and a guard blocked other protesters, and at least one reporter, from entering the park. Some people disregarded their instructions and squeezed through the spaces between metal barricades along other parts of the perimeter.
According to Brendan Burke, an organizer with the Occupy movement, police and security officers said that if the tent was taken down, people would be permitted to enter. So shortly after 8 p.m., demonstrators dismantled the brightly colored tent and handed it over to security guards. The guards stepped aside, and protesters were allowed in, after their bags were searched.
In the six weeks since officers cleared the park in an overnight raid, a spot in its northeast corner has been cordoned off with bright yellow tape. That corner, with its high granite ledge, is where general assembly meetings were usually held. On Saturday night, the tape was down and the meeting reopened.
At one point, a man stood on the ledge and was ordered down by a security guard.
"You're fighting a losing battle," the man answered. "Give me one good reason why I should get down.
As midnight approached, the hundreds in Zuccotti Park shouted "Whose year? Our year!"
Just before 1:30 a.m., security guards and police officers entered the park, where only about 150 people remained. A line of officers pushed protesters from the park and led about five people out in handcuffs. One officer used two hands to repeatedly shove backwards a credentialed news photographer who was preparing to document an arrest.
A police commander announced through a megaphone that the park, which is normally open 24 hours a day, was closed until 9 a.m., but did not provide a reason. A few moments later, officers told the crowd that had just been moved from the park that the sidewalks surrounding Zuccotti Park were also closed, and directed people across Broadway.
Just before the park was cleared, about 200 protesters marched north through SoHo and into the East Village. At 13th Street and 2nd Avenue, officers surrounded dozens of protesters walking on the sidewalk around 3:00 a.m. and began arresting some of them.
"We were trying to go to Tompkins Square Park," Isham Christie, who was on the march, said. "The police blocked us and we doubled back and they blocked us again."
Mr. Christie said that about 50 people were eventually surrounded by officers on a stretch of sidewalk on Second Avenue. "They arrested most of them," he said.
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9) Young People More Likely To Favor Socialism Than Capitalism: Pew
"Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views -- making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism. ...There were only two other groups among whom socialism's positives outweighed its negatives -- blacks, who say they favor socialism 55 to 36 percent, and liberal Democrats, who say they favor socialism 59 to 39 percent."
by Alexander Eichler
December 30, 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/young-people-socialism_n_1175218.html
Young people -- the collegiate and post-college crowd, who have served as the most visible face of the Occupy Wall Street movement -- might be getting more comfortable with socialism. That's the surprising result from a Pew Research Center poll that aims to measure American sentiments toward different political labels.
The poll, published Wednesday, found that while Americans overall tend to oppose socialism by a strong margin -- 60 percent say they have a negative view of it, versus just 31 percent who say they have a positive view -- socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.
And while those numbers aren't very far apart, it's noteworthy that they were reversed just 20 months ago, when Pew conducted a similar poll. In that survey, published May 2010, 43 percent of people age 18-29 said they had a positive view of socialism, and 49 percent said their opinion was negative.
It's not clear why young people have evidently begun to change their thinking on socialism. In the past several years, the poor economy has had any number of effects on young adults -- keeping them at home with their parents, making it difficult for them to get jobs, and likely depressing their earning potential for years to come -- that might have dampened enthusiasm for the free market among this crowd.
Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views -- making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism.
Young people have also been among the most involved in the nationwide Occupy movement, whose members have leveled pointed criticism at the capitalist ethos and often called for a more equal distribution of American wealth.
In general, income inequality -- which a Congressional Budget Office report recently pointed out is at historic levels -- has received more and more attention in politics and the media since the Occupy movement launched in mid-September. Usage of the term rose dramatically in news coverage following the start of the protests, and politicians from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to President Barack Obama have used the movement's language to describe divisions in the American public.
Still, the nationwide Occupy demonstrations notwithstanding, socialism doesn't score very well in other age groups in the Pew poll, or across other demographic categories.
Pew broke down its results by age, race, income and political affiliation, as well as support for the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements. There were only two other groups among whom socialism's positives outweighed its negatives -- blacks, who say they favor socialism 55 to 36 percent, and liberal Democrats, who say they favor socialism 59 to 39 percent. These were also the only two groups to show net favor for socialism in the 2010 poll.
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10) Four Attacks in Queens With Homemade Firebombs
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
January 2, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/nyregion/four-attacks-in-queens-with-homemade-firebombs.html?hp
A Fire Department official said on Monday that the series of arson attacks across eastern Queens on Sunday night could have been much worse because in most of the attacks, which are being investigated as possible bias crimes against Muslims, the damage from the firebombs was relatively minor.
"It was a good night for the F.D.N.Y. and the people of south Jamaica," said the official, Lt. Chris Corbin, as he stood outside the scene of one of the attacks, a private home at 146-62 107th Avenue.
No one was hurt in the four attacks, in which homemade firebombs were apparently used. In three of the four attacks, the police said, Molotov cocktails were made with Starbucks bottles.
The first attack occurred just before 8 p.m. at a bodega at 179-46 Hillside Avenue.
Ten minutes later, another crude firebomb was thrown, this time at the home at 107th Avenue, and the house caught fire.
Half an hour after that, an Islamic center at 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway was the target. The last attack occurred at a house at 88-20 170th Street, the police said.
Although the home on 107th Avenue was several damaged by the fire, Lt. Corbin said the attacks caused little or no damage at the other three sites.
Shortly after 8 p.m., someone called 911, saying that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown at their home on 107th Avenue. The house caught fire, and it took more than 60 firefighters about 40 minutes to bring it under control.
Still, Lt. Corbin said the fire at the home "could have been a lot worse than it was. They were lucky."
Those who lived in the home, however, had to find another place to stay as the home was boarded up on Monday and charred mattresses were strewn on the sidewalk.
"Everything's gone. There's nothing left," Bernadette Jackson, who lived in a ground-floor apartment, said, pointing to her house. "We don't know who did it. We didn't have any problems with anybody here. It's a mystery."
The Islamic center, the Imam Al-Khoei Foundation, houses one of the most prominent Shiite mosques in New York. According to its Web site it offers funeral services, counseling and free SAT classes. It lists branches in several cities, including Montreal and Islamabad, Pakistan. Calls to the foundation were not returned Sunday night.
The firebomb, made with a glass Starbucks bottle, was thrown at the door of the center, possibly from a van as it drove it by, the police said. The door was blackened, but the building did not catch fire.
A similar weapon was found at the bodega, the site of the first attack, according to the police. The bomb might have been thrown from inside the store, because the counter sustained some damage, the police said.
It was the second attack, on 107th Avenue, police and fire officials said, that caused the most damage.
Shortly after 8 p.m., someone called 911, saying that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown at their home. The house caught fire, and it took more than 60 firefighters about 40 minutes to bring it under control.
In the fourth attack, two bottles were thrown at the house on 170th Street. A spokesman for the Fire Department said that the person who called 911 said they saw a vehicle drive by as the bottles were hurled toward their home. But the flames quickly fizzled.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg both issued statements condemning the attacks.
Attacks such as this have no place in our open and inclusive society," Mr. Cuomo said, "and we must do all we can to ensure New York remains a safe and tolerant place for all."
Noah Rosenberg contributed reporting.
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11) William Dale Singletary, Witness of Mumia's Innocence
(February 3, 1950 - December 31, 2011)
In the struggle for Mumia's freedom, Rachel Wolkenstein
December 31, 2011
Please circulate this as widely as possible.
Introductory note: I learned from William Singletary's wife, Jeannette, that he died this morning. Bill was a courageous man who lived fighting to make the truth known -that Mumia is innocent in the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. For that Bill suffered severe personal and financial consequences. I've known Bill since June 1990 when he came forward with his eyewitness testimony for Mumia and as a witness at the PCRA hearing in 1995, when I was co-counsel for Mumia.
William Dale Singletary died on December 31, 2011 at the age of sixty-one. Being an eyewitness to the murder of Daniel Faulkner, and his unwavering insistence that Mumia was not the shooter, forever changed his life.
His wife Jeannette had a final message from Bill to Mumia and all his supporters: "I didn't know Mumia personally, but love him like a brother. I know what he's gone through and he is innocent. I would give up everything for Mumia to be free."
William Singletary was one of the first victims of the police vendetta against Mumia. At the Round House immediately following the December 9, 1981 shooting, homicide detectives interrogated Bill for hours and threatened him with bodily harm and the end of his business unless he either said he saw Mumia shot Daniel Faulkner or that he didn't witness the shooting at all. He wasn't allowed to leave the Round House until he wrote what the police wanted. Bill, a Vietnam veteran, was the owner of a car repair and towing company. In the months before Mumia's trial police officers appeared at Bill's business with drawn guns, hassled his drivers and trashed his workplace. This harassment forced him to close his business and Bill was driven from Philadelphia out of fear for his life and the safety of his family.
In 1995 William Singletary testified at Mumia's PCRA hearing to his true eyewitness account. The Philadelphia's Daily News front-page story after Bill's August 11, 1995 testimony was headlined, "For Mumia ... Best Comes Last. Final defense witness claims another man murdered Officer Faulkner. Witness: Mumia Innocent."
On the stand under oath, Bill described that Mumia did not shoot police officer Faulkner and arrived after Faulkner was shot. He said a tall passenger in Bill Cook's VW wearing a green army jacket shot Faulkner. Cynthia White, the prosecution's star witness, was not on the scene, but came up to Bill afterwards. He testified that numbers of police, including "white shirts" appeared within moments of the shooting. Bill also graphically described how the police viciously beat and kicked Mumia, who was shot and critically wounded, before throwing him into the police wagon.
Bill testified that detectives tore up his witness statements at the Round House. "A Detective Green told me to write what he wanted me to write or they would take me in the elevator and beat me up." The prosecution aided the suppression of the truth that Mumia was not the shooter, and fabricated a statement from a police office that Bill was not on the scene during the shooting.
William Singletary's testimony was a key component of the evidence produced at the three PCRA hearings in 1995, 1996 and 1997 that the prosecution's case for Mumia's conviction had no basis in reality. The purported eyewitness statements, ballistics evidence and supposed confession resulted from police and prosecutorial coercion, suppression, favors and outright fabrication. "Hanging judge" Albert Sabo dismissed William Singletary's testimony as incredible.
It is a testament to the integrity and courage of William Singletary that he came forward to testify in Mumia's defense. He gave much of his life to the fight for the truth in Mumia's case-that Mumia is innocent in the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner and that Mumia's arrest, conviction and death sentence resulted from a police and prosecutorial frame-up.
William Singletary was living in North Carolina when he died. He is survived by his wife Jeannette and daughter Sheadale.
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12) Peru: Mine Protest Resumes
"The Newmont Mining Corporation, based in the United States, owns a majority share of the mine."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 2, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/americas/peru-mine-protest-resumes.html?ref=world
Demonstrators resumed their protests on Monday against plans to develop a $4.8 billion gold mine, saying they feared that it would harm their water supplies. About 2,000 Peruvians joined the protest march in the northern city of Cajamarca. In early December, the government imposed a state of emergency to restore order after a general strike and clashes with the police in which dozens of people were injured. Protesters fear that the Conga mine, which would produce gold and copper as well as silver, will taint their water and affect a major aquifer. The Newmont Mining Corporation, based in the United States, owns a majority share of the mine.
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13) Parade ordinance power grab
City Hall proposal for new rules and harsher penalties for violations, allegedly occasioned by anticipated NATO and G-8 protests, would restrict all future demonstrations in Chicago
By Kristen Mack
Chicago Tribune
January 3, 2012
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-02/news/ct-met-emanuel-protest-permits-20120102_1_protest-rules-nato-and-g-8-future-demonstrations
A City Hall rewrite to tighten rules for protesters at this spring's gathering of international leaders in Chicago would also place permanent and little-publicized restrictions on all future demonstrations.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed the changes to the city's parade ordinance in his December request to the City Council for expanded powers to deal with the NATO and G-8 summits, set to overlap between May 19-21. The mayor said his request for new spending authority and additional restrictions on public gatherings "is temporary and it's just for the conference and it's appropriate."
But the mayor's office now acknowledges the protest rules would be permanent. And a closer look at Emanuel's proposals reveals a series of changes to arcane parade regulations that would be accompanied by a large boost in fines for violations - from the current $50 for some to a minimum $1,000 per violation.
Stiffening rules on typically fluid demonstrations will increase the likelihood of violations, giving police more opportunity to crack down and making it more costly for demonstrators, free speech advocates said.
"It's clear the more stringent the provisions, the more numerous, the greater the difficulty in complying with those provisions," said Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. "It's an unnecessary show of authority and something that will have very little meaning in terms of altering conduct."
The City Council is expected to consider the changes at its Jan. 18 meeting. But before that, demonstration organizers for the most well-known local protest groups plan to submit applications for an assembly point and parade route on Tuesday, the day for groups wanting to be first in line for consideration.
To rally at Daley Plaza, where protesters want to start their demonstration, they must file an application with the private real estate company that manages the coveted gathering spot on behalf of the city. To march in Chicago's streets, a separate form must be filed with the city's Department of Transportation.
Joshua Kaunert, an Occupy Chicago protester who plans to demonstrate during the international summits, said Emanuel is attempting to "punish those who seek to voice their grievances, while simultaneously obstructing the permit process for rallies or marches."
"This legislation is not a temporary solution to the perceived problems that the mayor supposes the upcoming NATO and G-8 summits will present the city of Chicago, but a permanent legislative change that will restrict our freedoms indefinitely," Kaunert said.
The proposed changes would change the hours for legal demonstrations, add new requirements and boost punishments for all sorts of violations.
The duration of demonstrations would be reduced by 15 minutes to exactly two hours. Public parks and beaches would be closed until 6 a.m., two hours later than now. Loud noise, amplified sound and music at parades and public assemblies would be allowed only between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.
One new requirement calls for organizers to provide a parade marshal for every 100 participants. The marshals would be responsible for ushering parade participants at the assembly point, along the route and at the disbanding areas.
None of the changes appear to account for the inherent unpredictably of public demonstrations, said Andy Thayer, with the group Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda. It is hard enough to corral a large group of individuals who want to voice their dissent, much less keep them in line and get them to disband in a little more than two hours, organizers said.
"We never know how many people are going to show up. The changes are subtle ...but it gives the city a lot more latitude to frankly punish demonstrating organizers," said Thayer, a longtime activist who said he has repeatedly been cited for violations of city parade rules.
Under Emanuel's proposed parade ordinance, the maximum fine for violations would double to $2,000. Emanuel also is asking aldermen to double the maximum fine to $1,000 for protesters charged with resisting or obstructing police officers. The minimum fine would be hiked from $25 to $200.
The threat of increased fines is unlikely to deter protesters, Grossman said, especially those who are interested in conducting themselves in a lawful and peaceful fashion.
"It's a little bit of phony posturing and a lot of bravado," Grossman said.
The back-to-back summits will be held at the McCormick Place convention center. The events are expected to bring roughly 10,000 visitors to Chicago, according to the host committee.
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14) F.D.A. Restricts Use of Antibiotics in Livestock
By GARDINER HARRIS
January 4, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/health/policy/fda-restricts-use-of-antibiotics-in-livestock.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Federal drug regulators announced Wednesday that farmers and ranchers must restrict their use of a critical class of antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys because such practices may have contributed to the growing threat of bacterial infections in people that are resistant to treatment.
The medicines belong to a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins and include such brands as Cefzil and Keflex. They are among the most common antibiotics prescribed to treat strep throat, bronchitis, skin infections and urinary tract infections. Surgeons also often use them before surgery to prevent bacterial infections.
The drugs' use in agriculture has, according to many microbiologists, led to the development of bacteria that are resistant to the drugs' effects, a development that many doctors say has endangered the lives of patients.
Antibiotics are often added to animal feed and are used routinely to encourage rapid growth of livestock, but officials at the Food and Drug Administration have been increasingly vocal in their concerns that overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is endangering human health. The agency proposed rules in 2010 to slow the use of penicillin, tetracycline and other antibiotics simply to promote growth or prevent disease in feed animals, but those rules have yet to be made final.
Cephalosporins are not used as widely among livestock as penicillin, since they still require a prescription from veterinarians. But the drugs are routinely injected into fertilized eggs and are also used in large doses to treat various infections in cattle.
The F.D.A. announcement on Wednesday has the effect of restricting some but not all uses of cephalosporins in agriculture and is therefore a modest step that is likely to please some consumer advocates but lead others to grumble that the agency needs to do much more.
"We believe this is an imperative step in preserving the effectiveness of this class of important antimicrobials that takes into account the need to protect the health of both humans and animals," said Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the agency.
The F.D.A. initially proposed its cephalosporin restrictions in 2008 but withdrew the rule before it became effective because of opposition from farmers and ranchers. The rule announced Wednesday is less strict than the one proposed in 2008; it allows for unrestricted use of cephapirin, an older member of the class of cephalosporins that is not thought to contribute significantly to antimicrobial resistance. And the new rule allows veterinarians to continue to use the drugs to treat many illnesses in feed animals as long as they follow guidelines about dosing and duration of use. The new rule also allows for use of the drugs in ducks and rabbits.
Agricultural organizations have disputed claims that antibiotics are overused in animals and that those uses have contributed to antimicrobial resistance, saying that farmers and ranchers use the medicines judiciously. While legislation has been proposed in Congress to restrict the use of antibiotics in agriculture, powerful agricultural interests have blocked these bills and consecutive administrations have been unwilling to challenge these interests by using F.D.A. rules to crack down on antibiotic use in feed animals.
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15) The Forgotten Wages of War
By JOHN TIRMAN
January 3, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/the-forgotten-wages-of-war.html
Cambridge, Mass.
THE end of the Iraq war occasioned few reflections on the scale of destruction we have wrought there. As is our habit, the discussion focused on the costs to America in blood and treasure, the false premises of the war and the continuing challenges of instability in the region. What happened to Iraqis was largely ignored. And in Libya, the recent investigation of civilian casualties during NATO's bombing campaign was the first such accounting of what many believed was a largely victimless war.
We rarely question that wars cause extensive damage, but our view of America's wars has been blind to one specific aspect of destruction: the human toll of those who live in war zones.
We tune out the voices of the victims and belittle their complaints about the midnight raids, the house-to-house searches, the checkpoints, the drone attacks, the bombs that fall on weddings instead of Al Qaeda.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks famously said during the early days of the war in Afghanistan, "We don't do body counts." But someone should. What we learn from body counts tells us much about war and those who wage it.
More than 10 years after the war in Afghanistan began, we have only the sketchiest notion of how many people have died as a consequence of the conflict. The United Nations office in Kabul assembles some figures from morgues and other sources, but they are incomplete. The same has been true for Iraq, although a number of independent efforts have been made there to account for the dead.
But such numbers, which run into the hundreds of thousands, gain scant attention. American political and military leaders, like the public, show little interest in non-American casualties.
Denial, after all, is politically convenient. Failing to consider the mortality figures, the refugees, the impoverished, the demolished hospitals and clean water systems and schools is to deny, in effect, that the war ever happened.
The American military cannot afford to be so cavalier about the dynamics of war. The consequences of how we fight wars reveals a great deal about how and why others fight us.
In Iraq, for example, the causes of the Sunni resistance were often attributed to lost social status; the role of American violence against civilians early in the conflict was rarely discussed. Yet many of the captured Iraqis said they were defending their communities by resisting the occupying forces. Roughing up, detaining or killing suspected enemy fighters - as the coalition forces did in countless operations - prompted some Iraqis to take up the gun, the I.E.D. and the suicide bomb. The more violence from the occupiers, the more ferocious their reaction.
Gen. David H. Petraeus recognized this and sought to reform Army practice. In a field manual he co-authored in 2006, he explained that when "forces fail to provide security or threaten the security of civilians, the population is likely to seek security guarantees from insurgents, militias or other armed groups. This situation can feed support for an insurgency."
In several opinion polls, Iraqis identified American forces as the primary cause of the violence besetting their country. And although the violence of war and occupation was a proximate cause of the Iraqi resistance, we have few metrics to understand its scope. WikiLeaks released military documents in October 2010 that included accounts of Iraqi fatalities, but such reports are incomplete and sometimes biased, and they reflect only what the troops actually witnessed. News media reports are similarly limited. And our political and military leaders barely consider these numbers anyway.
They dwell instead in a make-believe world of vastly less mayhem, oblivious to what actually besets the civilian population. In 2006, two separate household surveys, by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, found between 400,000 and 650,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq as a result of the war. At the time, however, the commanding general in Iraq put the number at 50,000 and President Bush had claimed in late 2005 that it was just 30,000.
If our leaders are unwilling to grasp the scale of death and social disruption, and the meaning of this chaos for the local population, then American war efforts are likely to end badly and relationships with allies will become strained, as has happened with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai's repeated complaints about NATO actions that cause civilian casualties are often dismissed in the West as political posturing, but his persistence on this issue indicates how deeply it resonates with Afghans. While we dismiss it, Muslims around the world take note.
Ignoring the extent of civilian casualties and the damage they cause is a moral failing as well as a strategic blunder. We need to adopt reliable ways to measure the destruction our wars cause - an "epistemology of war," as another general, William Tecumseh Sherman, called it - to break through the collective amnesia that has gripped us.
If we do not demand a full accounting of the wages of war, future failures are all the more likely - and warranted.
John Tirman, the executive director of the Center for International Studies at M.I.T., is the author of "The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars."
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16) Tiny Towns Fight for Post Offices, and Survival
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
January 4, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/arkansas-towns-with-a-post-office-and-little-else-fight-closings.html?ref=us
FOX, Ark. - People over a certain age here remember what happened to Mozart.
It sat there perfectly content for years, a little community on a crooked mountain road in the southern Ozarks. Then one day they closed the post office. Now Mozart is a place on the road where only those who knew it was there would know it was there. The same thing happened with Newnata, Rushing and Cozahome.
But if the people in Fox have a say, it will not happen again, at least not here.
"There are those who have been downtrodden so long, they can't get back up," said Stanley Morrison, 59, a logger and a justice of the peace here in rural Stone County. "And there are others who've been downtrodden so long they decide to fight back."
Along with the residents of other tiny towns across the country, from Challenge, Calif., to Economy, Ind., the people of Fox learned last summer that their post office was being studied for possible closing by the United States Postal Service. It was one of the more than 3,600 deemed by postal authorities to have too little a workload - less than $27,500 annual revenue is one such measurement - or to be too close to another office to justify keeping open by an agency that is billions in debt and facing a steeply and steadily declining revenue stream.
The response, here as elsewhere, has been swift. Letters have been sent, petitions drawn up. People have taken day trips to their representatives' offices, bringing so much political pressure that Congress persuaded the Postal Service last month to declare a moratorium on the closings until May.
Still, McKinney Boyd, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said the process would pick right back up at the end of the moratorium.
"We understand that many people in small communities are extremely passionate about their post offices, but at the same time we're losing more than $23 million a day," he said. "With those kinds of losses the Postal Service has to look at ways to offset its expenses."
The residents of Fox are planning to pick right back up where they left off, too.
The resistance movement here has been led by Renee Carr, the director of the Rural Community Alliance, a nonprofit group. She has filed public-records requests, badgered elected officials, made a YouTube video and created a chart of the local post office's revenues, which, she says, is more accurate than the figures she managed to obtain, at long last and with the help of a United States senator, from the postal authorities.
She has been joined in her campaign by a dogged brigade of retired postmasters, waging similar fights in little communities and four-building towns across Arkansas, where roughly a third of post offices are on the list of possible closings.
Over in Tilly, a no-stoplight community where the post office sits in the back corner of Fountain Grocery, residents created a fact-filled PowerPoint presentation and prepared for a visit by postal authorities with a series of dry-runs at the church.
"I don't remember an issue where we had to pull together like this," said Charlene Fountain, whose mother was the postmaster until her sister took over.
The people of tiny Ida, which was on an early list of closures, came together and filed a formal appeal, helped in their data gathering by the longtime but recently retired postmaster. In Prim, residents are considering a fund-raiser so that they can hire a lawyer if an appeal becomes necessary.
The campaigners mount their defense of the rural post office on practical grounds, as the place where the elderly have their medications sent, where those living on remote mountain roads far outside town keep a letter box, where the Pentecostals who do not look kindly on computers conduct much of their business and where postmasters discreetly read letters for the customers who are unable to do so themselves. These arguments are bolstered by what data they can get their hands on. While Ms. Carr and others acknowledge that rural post offices generally run at a steep deficit, they take issue with the calculations used by the Postal Service to make its decisions about closings - a criticism also raised by the Postal Regulatory Commission in a recent report.
The deeper anxiety is an existential one. Prim, Tilly, Ida, Fox - all of these communities were named into existence decades ago, and in some cases more than a century ago, by a postmaster. While postal authorities insist that there will be alternatives to stand-alone offices - for example, an outdoor bank of boxes like those at apartment buildings - residents fear that places that began with post office buildings would simply cease to exist with their departure.
"I haul logs and I see a lot of the country," Mr. Morrison said. "The places that have lost their post offices have just died."
The letter-writing campaigns have gotten the right attention. Even Republican members of Congress who came into office on the wave of fiscal hawkishness in 2010, like Senator John Boozman and Representative Rick Crawford, are coming to the defense of the rural post office.
Mr. Boozman, in an interview, raised the same concerns echoed by his constituents and the Postal Regulatory Commission: that the closing process has been frustratingly opaque.
"It appears that their method so far has been pretty arbitrary," he said.
The lack of clarity has given rise to suspicion in areas unaccustomed to rancor but now in a fight for survival. Talk of politics, friends with connections, even Masonic conspiracies has surfaced to explain why one office made the list and another, remoter one inexplicably did not.
Mr. Boozman has even proposed legislation that would ban the closing of any post office if the nearest one is more than 10 miles away.
"There are times when it's not as profitable," he said, explaining this apparent departure from small-government orthodoxy, "but it's important to provide that service."
The politics here are obvious, said Steve Brawner, a columnist for The Arkansas News Bureau, as anything contributing to the decline of rural America, like school consolidation, is especially difficult to take in a state like Arkansas.
But Mr. Brawner argued in a November column that the Postal Service's dire fiscal challenges, like others the nation is facing, mean that nobody will be able to get everything he wants.
"People make choices about where they live and how they navigate their lives," he wrote. "Congress should let the Postal Service make choices as well, like any business would when times change and it starts losing money."
Those fighting for their post offices said that they would be willing to pay more for postage or give up mail on Saturday, or even every other day, to keep their buildings. They even say that it makes sense to close some offices - if not theirs.
What galls many, though, is the argument made by the Postal Service that the Internet is killing the traditional mail service. That may be so, they say, but it is in the very places facing the closings where it is least so.
"We were going to use the Internet to get bulk postage," said Jane Carlton, a member of Prim's five-woman committee to save the post office, describing their effort to begin a letter-writing campaign. "But no one could figure it out how to do it."
So, she said, they got in their cars and spent an afternoon taking the letters door to door.
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17) Three Arrested as Occupy Protesters March in Midtown
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
January 3, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/nyregion/3-arrested-as-occupy-protestors-march-in-midtown.html?ref=nyregion
About 150 people associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrated on Tuesday at several Midtown locations, including Grand Central Terminal, where three people were arrested, the authorities said.
Brendan Burke, an organizer with the movement, said the protesters were demonstrating against the National Defense Authorization Act, a military spending bill that President Obama signed last week. "There's an amendment in there that basically makes our country a place where any citizen can be detained indefinitely without a trial and without due process," Mr. Burke said.
The president has expressed reservations about provisions in the bill regarding the detention of suspected terrorists, but has offered assurances that he would never allow the indefinite military detention of an American citizen. The protesters met at noon in front of the main branch of the New York Public Library, then marched to the offices of New York's United States senators, Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand. They also demonstrated at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.
At about 5 p.m., just in time for the evening rush, the protesters went to Grand Central Terminal.
A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said that three people were arrested, on charges including disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Two other protesters were issued summonses.
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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