*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
TRAILER: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhydyxRjujU&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Protest: No Cuts To Any of the Services that We, the Workers Earn and Deserve
Tues. Aug. 25, 12noon-2pm
State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco
Our taxes are supposed to help us, the workers, have services that guarantee healthcare, education, housing and jobs for ourselves and our families, but the government is only thinking of and protecting the rich.
They gave 4.7 trillion to the financial sector to help them in their “crisis”; meanwhile they cut 500,000 children from receiving healthcare.
The Chevron Corporation made a profit of $24 billion last year, yet they haven't paid one penny in taxes for extracting the oil in California. Meanwhile, the government is cutting in-home care for thousands of disabled people.
The government gave trillions to save the housing industry and banks, and the bankers gave themselves million dollar bonuses, meanwhile the workers that lost and continue to lose their houses have not been given one penny to save their homes.
The government gave billions to the Chrysler and Ford auto industry and in return the auto industry laid off thousands of workers.
We must fight for our right to housing, healthcare, education and jobs.
We should be the ones to decide where cuts should take place. We do not need investigating units to investigate the poor and their services. We demand investigating units to investigate the rich and their thievery. We must cut the bureaucrats that do nothing but shuffle papers and recommend cutting programs in order to save their $200,000 jobs.
We don't need more police that only protect the rich and kill the poor like Oscar Grant.
What we need is what belongs to us; a decent life for all. It is our right, we work for it.
If you want to fight for yourself, join us.
We will demonstrate in front of the State Building to tell them where the cuts should be.
Sponsored by Companeros Del Barrio, Barrio Unido, ANSWER Coalition, and the Party for Socialism & Liberation (PSL). Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8/25 Solidarity Rally For BART 1555 Workers and CA Public Workers
August 25th (Tuesday) 2009 , 7:00 PM
Alameda Labor Temple
8400 Enterprise St at Hegenberger, Oakland
Oakland Solidarity Rally for ATU 1555 BART Workers
and CA Public Workers
Defend ATU 1555 BART Transit Workers And All Public Workers
Stop the Concessions and Union Busting Now
ATU 1555 Transit Workers are under a massive corporate attack blam-
ing them for any strike and charging them with making greedy demands.
The call by BART bosses for the public to confront ATU 1555 members
individually has resulted in BART workers facing being shot at by BBs
and verbally harassed and attacked on the job by people who are buying
this propaganda.
This anti-labor hysteria is not only aimed against the ATU 1555 BART
workers but all public workers in California. This has been orchestrated
by BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger who made $452,453 last
year and the anti-labor BART board of directors who voted unanimously
to impose an union busting contract on ATU 1555.
The governor as well is attacking SEIU 1000 state workers with imposed furloughs and is now aiming to destroy the public pensions of all those in the State Pension plans in California. In the bay area Richmond United Teachers face possible strike action along with the Oakland Education Association and many other workers in Northern California. The closure as well of the UAW NUMMI Toyota plant is another attack on organized labor.
All transportation and public workers need to come together to back each other up and unite in action the 1.5 million public workers in California. The working people of California can no longer afford to have public workers pitted against other workers and to fight in isolation against these assaults.
Join us and bring your brothers and sisters to hear from SPEAKERS: (Partial list)
ATU 1555 BART Workers
Betty Olson-Jones - Oakland Education Association President
Charles Smith - AFSCME 444 Chief Shop Steward
Jack Heyman - ILWU Local 10 Executive Board Member
Diane Brown - UTR member and Progressive Teachers Caucus leader
ATU 192 AC Members of Transit Workers Action Caucus (TWAC)
Sponsored by AFSCME 444, Transport Workers Solidarity Committee TWSC www.transportworkers.org, United Public Workers For Action www.upwa.info
Labor Donated
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Notice of planning meeting for October 17:
Saturday, August 29 at 11:00 a.m.
Unitarian Universalist Church
1187 Franklin (at Geary)
San Francisco
We will meet in the Chapel. Follow the signs.
(The church is wheelchair accessible via the side entrance on Geary. Simply, turn left on Geary as you pass the church and enter through a walkway on the left. Use the ramp. There you will find two large doors that must be opened from the inside. A person accompanying a wheelchair person should first go inside the church at the Franklin entrance to make arrangements for the sextons to open the doors. We will make every effort to be there early to assist.)
There was a unanimous vote to have a rally/protest to build for Oct 17 on Sept. 4, 2009 at 8:00 AM at the St. Francis Hotel where Nancy Pelosi will be speaking at a breakfast.
Solidarity,
Jeff
510-268-9429
Report:
A broad group of antiwar groups and individuals met Saturday, August 15 and voted to organize a local/regional march and rally Saturday, October 17. The rally will be at U.N. Plaza. The march route is still to be determined. The consensus is to have a "New Orleans"-style funeral march. Committees are working on permits, logistics, outreach, program, finances, etc.
The group adopted the following demands:
Money for Human Needs Not War!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia.
End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the Seige of Gaza!
U.S. Hands Off Iran and North Korea!
Self-determination for All Oppressed Nations and Peoples!
End War Crimes Including Torture and Prosecute the War Criminals!
The consensus of the meeting was that although we do not think that this will be a massive outpouring representing the real majority opposition to the wars by the U.S. population, it is important for the voice of opposition to these escalating wars be heard on the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
See historical images of the Vietnam Moratorium at:
http://images.google.com/images?q=vietnam+moratorium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lGaISs7pMIP-sQOr2OznAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
Image of San Francisco Vietnam Moratorium, Golden Gate Park, October 17, 1969 (I was there...bw):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rchrd.com/photo/images/pb2-12-15.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rchrd.com/photo/archives/1969/&usg=__FeHN5CAwDXv-ewwCt2Hfni6ZUn8=&h=567&w=850&sz=143&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EJH6Kzj6YI6zzM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bmoratorium%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1
We encourage antiwar activists to attend the next meeting and help plan this important event. A list of endorsers will be forthcoming.
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
https://www.natassembly.org/
Additional report:
Dear Antiwar Activists,
Thanks for attending and/or helping to organize the successful Saturday, August 15 meeting of antiwar activists.
Here's an update and summary of what we decided and progress made. I have also included in the list above the email addresses of all those present plus the addresses of participants in the conference call that initiated the meeting.
Some 32 people attended the August 15 meeting representing a diverse range of groups and organizations. For me what was most important was the collaborative spirit, respectful tone and openness to all ideas presented and the respectful manner that differences of opinion and emphasis were treated.
Organizations present or people who identified as members of organizations present included:
The Iraq Moratorium
The National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanisran Wars and Occupations
ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop Wars and End Racism)
UFPJ (United for Peace and Justice)
Workers Action
San Bruno Teachers Union
San Francisco Teachers Union
Labor for Peace and Justice
World Can't Wait
International Action Center
Workers World Party
Peace and Freedom Party
San Jose Peace and Justice Center
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
ANSWER South Bay
Bay Area United Against War
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Socialist Viewpoint magazine
Unitarian Universalists for Peace
Socialist Action
Solidarity
Workers International League
Socialist Organizer
International Action Center
Gray Panthers
BHDC
In addition, we received messages of commitment/pledges of participation and/or apologies for not being able to be present from groups including:
International Socialist Organization
Code Pink
UFPJ
USLAW
Alan Benjamin, SF Labor Council and others
After a thorough discussion two motions were approved unanimously:
1) To organize a Saturday, October 17 march and rally at San Francisco's United Nations Plaza. Since the meeting, we have successfully reserved the UN Plaza.
2) To adopt the following demands for this rally.
•Money for Human Needs Not War! (To be flushed out to include priorities like jobs, pensions, money to stop evictions/foreclosures, healthcare, education, etc.)
• Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops. military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!
• End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the siege of Gaza!
• U.S. hands off Iran and North Korea!
• Self-determination for all oppressed nations and peoples!
• End war crimes including torture; prosecute the war criminals!
It was also agreed that we could/would produce two leaflets with each emphasizing different aspects of the above demands, for example, one focusing on jobs, healthcare, etc and the other focusing on the wars. Of course, the links between the two would also be prominent.
It was further agreed that all participating groups would be free to produce their own leaflets to express their own priorities, issues, objectives, basis for endorsement, etc..
A list of some 65 organizations, national, regional and local, that have endorsed calls for coordinated local and regional October 17 actions was distributed. (See below).This broad range of organizations endorsed October 17 based on the umbrella demand, "Money for Human Needs Not War!" FOR A COMPLETE LIST: https://www.natassembly.org/
The meeting opened with a report that explained that the October 17 date was selected to mark the month that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were begun and to mark the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam Moratorium that mobilized literally millions of people to protest the Vietnam War.
Meeting participants were fully cognizant of the fact that the antiwar movement was presently at a low ebb due to many factors, including widely held illusion that the present administration would bring these wars to an end and the shock absorbed at the depth and scope of the attacks on working people that stemmed from the present economic crisis.
Meeting participants also expressed a variety of concerns focusing on the need to avoid ritual repetitions of past marches and rallies, to have fewer speakers, to develop new and creative ways to express the movement's concerns, to reach out to new constituencies, etc.
From this reporter's vantagepoint, it appeared that everyone present was attuned to these concerns and realized the need to work together in a collaborative and inclusive spirit. Staying in the stress and mobilizing as best as the times allow was seen as a preclude to the times to come when a return to truly massive mobilizations would be on the agenda.
A motion was approved that all future meetings would be wheelchair accessible.
Saturday, August 29 at 11 am was set as the next meeting, place to be determined. There was agreement that our ad hoc organizing group could be called something like the "October 17 Antiwar Coalition."
The following committees were established and met briefly with interim volunteer conveners. Most everyone stayed to sign up for a committee and set a time for a meeting.
Program/Speakers/Tom Lacey and many others
Logistics/Mark/Forrest/Bonnie.
Outreach/Bill, Mel and many others
Fundraising/Carole and Jeff
Initial Leaflet preparation/Julia/Gabe/Michaela
Publicity/Media/Rebecca/others
In solidarity,
Jeff Mackler
510-268-9429
"It will be a great day when the schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a ship!" --Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/SylviaWpg2.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
CodePINK Womyn’s Emergency
R O U N D T A B L E
GROUND THE DRONES
Sunday, August 30th
6:00pm
Redwood Gardens,
2951 Derby St, Berkeley
What are DRONES? Who’s making them? How many are there? Who’s operating them? What do they do?
As Obama DRONES on, what will we do?
How many Americans know about these murderous killing machines assassinating civilians and CIA/Pentagon/Military targeted “bad guys”, at a ‘success’ ratio of 50:1
Come to this Round Table and find out all you never really wanted to know about DRONES and DRONING; and help strategize how we will “GROUND the DRONES”!
As always: music, song, POT LUCK! Bring a Dish to share
Co-sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against War and others
SAVE the DATES: Sept 25th – 30th Encampment Creech AFB
BACK TO THE STREETS!!!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
protest on the 8th anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
5 pm
new Federal Building, 7th Street btw. Market and Mission, SF
http://www.answercoalition.org
U.S./NATO OUT--BRING TH TROOPS HOME NOW!
HEALTH CARE--NOT WARFARE!
[DON'T BE FOOLED. DON'T LET THE PUBLIC OPTION HEALTH INSURANCE SCAM DIVERT/DIVIDE. THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED. MEDICARE FOR ALL NOW!]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Eyewitness Gaza:
Breaking the Siege
ANSWER Educational Forum
San Jose:
Tuesday, September 8, 6:30 p.m.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Library
150 E. San Fernando Street (at S. 4th St.)
ANSWER South Bay
408-829-9506
ANSWERsouthbay@gmail.com
San Francisco:
Thursday, September 10, 7:00 p.m.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street (Between 16th and 15th Streets)
ANSWER Coalition, Bay Area
415-821-6545
ANSWER@answersf.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
National Call For Action And Endorsements at the
G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA
Sept. 19 - 25, 2009
Endorsers (list in formation): Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter 61, Pittsburgh; PA State Senator Jim Ferlo; Veterans for Peace Chapter 047, Pittsburgh; National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations; Thomas Merton Center Pittsburgh; Codepink Pittsburgh Women for Peace; Bail Out The People; Green Party of Allegheny County; World Can't Wait; ISO (International Socialist Organization); WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) Pittsburgh; Socialist Action; Ohio Valley Peace
Activists from Pittsburgh, the U.S., and across the globe will converge to protest the destructive policies of the G-20 - meeting in Pittsburgh this September 24-25.
The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors represents the world's economic leaders, intimately connected to the most powerful multi-national corporations that dominate the global economy. Their neo-liberal policies have squandered billions on war, plunged economies into deep recessions, worsened social, economic and political inequality, and polluted the earth.
We believe a better world is possible. We anticipate involvement and support from like-minded people and organizations across the country for projected actions from September 19-25:
People's Summit - Sept. 19, 21-22 (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday)
A partnership of educators and social justice groups is organizing a People's Summit to discuss global problems and seek solutions that are informed by the basic principles of genuine democracy and human dignity. This will bring together informed speakers and panels to discuss problems we face and possible solutions, also providing interactive workshop discussions.
Mass March on the G-20 - Friday, Sept. 25:
Money for human needs, not for war!
Gather at 12 noon, march to the City County Building downtown
A peaceful, legal march is being sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, an umbrella organization that supports a wide variety of peace and justice member projects in Pittsburgh. We will hold a mass march to demand "Money for human needs, not for war!"
WE SEEK THE BROADEST RANGE OF SUPPORT, PARTICIPATION, AND ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE MASS MARCH AND PEOPLE'S SUMMIT
To endorse, E-mail: info@pittsburghendthewar.org
Or contact: Thomas Merton Center AWC, 5125 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Several other events are being planned by a wide variety of community and social justice groups in Pittsburgh.
For more information and updates please visit:
http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/g20action.htm
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
On the 8th Anniversary of the War on Afghanistan
U.S. -- NATO OUT!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
End colonial occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti...
Healthcare, jobs, housing, education for all--Not War!
San Francisco Protest:
Wednesday, October 7, 5:00 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Streets, Near Civic Center BART
Initiated by the ANSWER Coalition--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism
Volunteers needed: 415-821-6545
answer@answersf.org
ANSWERcoalition.org
ANSWERsf.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
(TIME AND ROUTE DETAILS TO BE ANNOUNCED)
Commemorating the eighth anniversary of the war on Afghanistan and the 40th anniversary of the massive October 17, 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.
Money for Human Needs Not War!
Immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, military personnel, bases, contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia.
End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine! End the Seige of Gaza!
U.S. Hands Off Iran and North Korea!
Self-determination for All Oppressed Nations and Peoples!
End War Crimes Including Torture and Prosecute the War Criminals!
See historical images of the Vietnam Moratorium at:
http://images.google.com/images?q=vietnam+moratorium&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lGaISs7pMIP-sQOr2OznAg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
Image of San Francisco Vietnam Moratorium, Golden Gate Park, October 17, 1969 (I was there...bw):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rchrd.com/photo/images/pb2-12-15.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rchrd.com/photo/archives/1969/&usg=__FeHN5CAwDXv-ewwCt2Hfni6ZUn8=&h=567&w=850&sz=143&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=EJH6Kzj6YI6zzM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvietnam%2Bmoratorium%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1
This is an initial announcement. Contact information, endorsers and further details to be announced.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
From: Labor Cmte. for Peace & Justice
To: bay_area_lc4pj@lists.riseup.net
Sent: Fri, Aug 21, 2009 2:46 am
Subject: [BayArea LC4PJ] Why boycott Whole Foods?
Does John Mackey live in this country, or even on this planet? Reading his recent op-ed article on health-care reform in the Wall Street Journal raises that question. And it's prompted quite a few people to swear off shopping at Whole Foods, of which he is co-founder and CEO.
He wrote in part: "With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.
"While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead , we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment."
He touts his company's own coverage model, notwithstanding that, by his own admission, it carries a high deductible and leaves 11 percent of its employees uncovered.
What prompt my question about his place of residence are the "reform" proposals he makes in the article. You can read it (and weep, or scream, or tear your hair out, or whatever) at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
Richard Knee
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Scraping By
Opinion | Op-Ed
In the first of a series by the filmmaker Stewart Thorndike on life during the economic crisis, a tent city in Redmond, Wash., is filling up with the newly homeless who are forming a makeshift community.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/08/06/opinion/1247463860996/op-ed-scraping-by.html
06/26/1787 James Madison Statement: "The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, - when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."
As quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/yates.asp
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
END THE DEATH PENALTY NOW! END "LIFE WITHOUT POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE"!
This video is a very compelling story of a man who spent 14 years on Death Row for murders he did not commit. He was finally released upon evidence of his innocence and of racial prejudice at his trial. The whole criminal "In-Justice" system in this country is racist to the core and corrupt. That's why the death penalty and life w/o possibility of parole must be overturned and all inmates should be awarded new chances for exoneration...Bonnie Weinstein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCZK7AxUCQ
Death Penalty Focus
870 Market St. Ste. 859 San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel. 415.243.0143 - Fax 415.243.0994 - www.deathpenalty.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Urgent: Ahmad Sa'adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners' and detainees' rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa'adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Sa'adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.
Ahmad Sa'adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners' rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners' rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa'adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa'adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+mission/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+ Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem..jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa'adat!
Ahmad Sa'adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners' movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org
info@freeahmadsaadat.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) U.S. to Resume Training Georgian Troops
By THOM SHANKER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/europe/14military.html?ref=world
2) U.S. Army Reduces Soldiers’ Murder Sentences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/14/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world
3) Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising [RE: Kevin Cooper...bw]
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/us/14dissent.html?ref=us
4) On 11th Try, Man Convicted in ’91 Killing Gets Hearing
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/nyregion/14retrial.html?ref=nyregion
5) Jobless Claims Post Increase [At the rate of over 500,000 per week!...bw]
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14econ.html?ref=business
6) Britain Responds to Criticism of Its Universal Health System
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/world/europe/15britain.html?ref=world
7) U.S. Weighs Action Over Citi’s $100 Million Man
By STEPHEN LABATON and ERIC DASH
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/business/15pay.html?ref=us
8) The Expense of Eating With Celiac Disease
[Why we need free, universal healthcare for all NOW!...bw]
Patient Money
By LESLEY ALDERMAN
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/15patient.html?ref=business
9) The View From the Bottom
Editorial
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17mon1.html
10) Memos Show Nixon’s Bid to Enlist Brazil in a Coup
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/world/americas/17chile.html?ref=world
11) Supreme Court Orders Hearing for Georgia Man [Troy Davis...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/17/us/AP-US-Georgia-Execution.html?ref=us
12) DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
By ANDREW POLLACK
August 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html
13) Clinton Says No U.S. Bases in Colombia
By REUTERS
World Briefing | The Americas
August 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/world/americas/19briefs-Colombrf.html?ref=world
14) Under Agreement, UBS to Give Up Over 4,000 Names
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/global/20ubs.html?ref=business
15) Monsanto and DuPont Heat Up Rivalry Over Seeds
By REUTERS
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/global/20seeds.html?ref=business
16) This Is Reform?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
August 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/opinion/18herbert.html
17) Debit Card Trap
Editorial
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20thu1.html
18) C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists
By MARK MAZZETTI
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html?ref=world
19) Mercury Found in Every Fish Tested, Scientists Say
By CORNELIA DEAN
National Briefing | Science and Health
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/science/earth/20brfs-MERCURYFOUND_BRF.html?ref=us
20) Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html?scp=1&sq=mexico%20decriminalizes%20pot&st=cse
21) C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html?ref=world
22) U.S. Military to Stay in Philippines
By THOM SHANKER
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21military.html?ref=world
23) U.S. and Cuba Work Together on Storms
By MARC LACEY
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?ref=world
24) Michigan: Prisoners’ Lawsuit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21brfs-PRISONERSLAW_BRF.html?ref=us
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) U.S. to Resume Training Georgian Troops [U.S. gathering cannon fodder world wide...bw]
By THOM SHANKER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/europe/14military.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — The United States is resuming a combat training mission in the former Soviet republic of Georgia to prepare its army for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, despite the risks of angering Russia, senior Defense Department officials said Thursday.
The training effort is intended to prepare Georgian troops to fight at NATO standards alongside American and allied forces in Afghanistan, the Pentagon officials said.
Russian officials have been informed, American officials said. The training should not worry the Kremlin, they said, because it would not involve skills that would be useful against a large conventional force like Russia’s.
“This training mission is not about internal defenses or any capabilities that the Georgians would use at home,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “This is about the United States supporting Georgia’s contribution to the war in Afghanistan, which everybody can recognize is needed and valued and appreciated.”
At the same time, officials in Washington said, the Georgians should not see the new training mission as a military counterweight to Russian influence along Georgia’s borders and within the separatist regions they fought over.
A year ago, the republic’s brief, disastrous war with Russia froze a similar American training operation that prepared Georgian troops for deployments to Iraq.
The new training mission is scheduled to begin Sept. 1. The first members of a Marine Corps training and advising team are to arrive in Georgia on Sunday or Monday, and the number of trainers will fluctuate between 10 and 69 over the next six months.
Georgia has pledged an army battalion — about 750 troops — to Afghanistan, and it should be ready to deploy next spring, perhaps by March.
It is unlikely that Kremlin officials could offer a convincing argument that training a single Georgian Army battalion amounted to a threat to Russian security. But the new training could be seen as a launching pad for increased military relations among Washington, NATO members and a former Soviet republic that aspires to NATO membership.
The Kremlin vehemently opposes any extension of NATO’s defensive umbrella over former Soviet republics, in particular Georgia and Ukraine. At the same time, some NATO officials view Georgia’s behavior before the war last year as needlessly provocative, and have said it harmed the country’s chances for alliance membership.
Shortly after taking office, President Obama ordered the doubling of American forces in Afghanistan, to about 68,000, and the administration has sought, with little success, to persuade NATO allies to add to their combat forces.
In contrast to some NATO allies that impose restrictions on where their forces can go and what they can do in Afghanistan, the Georgian military will send its troops with none of these so-called caveats, a decision viewed by American officials as intended to indicate Georgia’s worthiness for potential alliance membership.
Officials said Georgia’s troops would probably be assigned to operations in areas of Afghanistan under Marine command, so the training mission begins that partnership.
The United States has so far rebuffed requests from Georgia to rearm its military after its humiliating defeat by Russia. When the war began, Georgia recalled an army brigade serving in Iraq and never sent it back, and the Americans training the Georgians returned home.
Georgian troops that join the Afghan mission will bring their own small-caliber weapons, but the United States and other allies will supply vehicles, including armored transports, as well as logistical support and daily supplies, according to senior Defense Department officials.
Any weapons provided to the Georgians would stay in Afghanistan, the officials said.
Some military ties between the United States and Georgia resumed after the war with Russia, but they focused on officer development, improvement of command-and-control systems, and other such areas, officials said. There have been visits by senior American military officers and government leaders — most recently Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and NATO has conducted some military exchanges.
Administration officials familiar with discussions with Russia said American officials emphasized that Russia had endorsed the international security assistance mission in Afghanistan. For example, Russia allows overflight rights and land access for the coalition supply mission for Afghanistan.
A senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the diplomatic communications with Russia, acknowledged that “this is delicate for us — because while we want to be supportive of the Georgians, and look forward to their contribution in Afghanistan, we don’t want to be perceived incorrectly as supplying lethal capabilities that would elicit a Russian response.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) U.S. Army Reduces Soldiers’ Murder Sentences
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/14/world/AP-EU-Germany-US-Iraq-Deaths.html?ref=world
Filed at 8:29 a.m. ET
FRANKFURT (AP) -- The U.S. Army said Friday it had reduced the sentences of three soldiers convicted of murder in the execution-style slayings of four bound and blindfolded Iraqi detainees.
Master Sgt. John Hatley, sentenced to life in prison in April, will instead receive 40 years, the military told the Associated Press.
He will still receive a dishonorable discharge and be reduced to the rank of private.
Sgt. Michael Leahy and Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Mayo -- sentenced respectively to life in prison in February and 35 years in March -- had their sentences reduced to 20 years, the military said. They will also receive bad conduct discharges instead of dishonorable discharges.
The sentence reductions came after a standard review of the cases, the Army said.
The soldiers were all with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division while in Iraq. The unit is now part of the Germany-based 172nd Infantry Brigade.
According to court proceedings over the last year, the four Iraqis were taken into custody in spring 2007 after an exchange of fire with Hatley's unit.
The Iraqis were taken to the unit's base although there wasn't enough evidence to hold them for attacking the unit. Later that night patrol members took the Iraqis to a remote area and shot them, dumping the bodies in a canal.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising [RE: Kevin Cooper...bw]
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/us/14dissent.html?ref=us
It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper’s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper’s life.
“The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,” it began.
The judge who wrote the dissent, William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, argued that the police and prosecutors had withheld and tampered with evidence in the case for decades; Judge Fletcher even accused the district court of having sabotaged the case.
Compared with the dry, mannerly prose found in many opinions, Judge Fletcher’s passion in Cooper v. Brown is startling. But these kinds of fervent, lonely dissents, urging that a prisoner’s life be spared, have noticeably increased in the last decade, compared with previous years, according to a review of death penalty opinions by The New York Times, as confirmed by experts in the field.
In dozens of capital cases in recent years, appeals court judges, some of whom have ruled in favor of the death penalty many times, have complained that Congress and the Supreme Court have raised daunting barriers for death row prisoners to appeal their convictions, and in many cases the judges have taken on their colleagues.
“There is an increasing frustration among federal judges throughout the system,” said Eric M. Freedman, a critic of the death penalty who teaches on the subject at Hofstra Law School.
Mr. Freedman predicted that the level of dissatisfaction would increase. “Judges are likely to have less and less patience for being hogtied by legalistic mumbo-jumbo,” he said, “which prevents them from reaching fair results.”
The law that generates much of the judges’ ire is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Since its passage, the act has been cited in a half-dozen to two dozen dissents a year, often in language forceful enough to rival Judge Fletcher’s. The law, championed by legislators who believed prisoners were abusing the federal appeals process, restricts federal court review of state court decisions in death penalty cases and puts strong limits on the ability of condemned prisoners to file habeas corpus petitions to get their cases reconsidered.
In April, Judge Rosemary Barkett of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, complained of the law’s “thicket of procedural brambles.” Dissenting from a decision by her colleagues, Judge Barkett noted that seven of the nine witnesses in the murder trial of Troy Davis, a death row inmate in Georgia, had recanted their testimony. To execute Mr. Davis without fully considering that evidence would be “unconscionable and unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Barkett, who has voted in more than 200 other cases to uphold the death penalty.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, a critic of capital punishment, took on the constitutionality of the 1996 death penalty act itself in a dissent in the case of Andrew C. Crater, who had been convicted of taking part in a robbery and shooting spree that killed a Sacramento musician, James Pantages. Judge Reinhardt, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, wrote in 2007 that the act made “a mockery of the careful boundaries between Congress and the courts that our Constitution’s framers believed so essential to the prevention of tyranny.”
The dissents rarely have any practical effect in changing the outcome of the cases they address. But Howard J. Bashman, an appellate lawyer in Philadelphia, said such dissents were often directed toward audiences to come: the next appeals court, lawmakers and academics.
“You have to think that these judges do have some valid reason for putting all this effort into the exercise than just feeling better about it after they’re done,” Mr. Bashman said.
Judge Barkett, whom President Bill Clinton appointed, declined to discuss individual cases but agreed that a dissent tried to persuade many audiences — the first, in her case, being the other judges of her court, who circulate dissents among themselves as they are coming to a decision.
Judge Barkett said she did not see her opinions as “emotive,” adding that dissents were about policy, not feelings. But the feeling that motivates her to write them, she said, is “mostly frustration that I cannot make people see what I see.”
Judge Fletcher’s frustration was on display in the case of Mr. Cooper, who he concluded was “probably innocent” of the 1983 murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and an 11-year-old houseguest, Christopher Hughes, who were hacked to death in the Ryens’ home.
Judge Fletcher argued that the evidence had been tainted by bumbling and misconduct and suggested that blood linking Mr. Cooper to the crime had been planted by overzealous investigators. And while the Ninth Circuit in 2004 ordered new DNA tests, Judge Fletcher wrote that the lower court had set conditions rendering the results useless. “There is no way to say this politely,” he wrote. “The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and flouted our direction to perform the two tests.”
Judge Fletcher, who declined to be interviewed, was appointed by Mr. Clinton.
Jesse H. Choper, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the judge was hardly a fierce opponent of capital punishment. “I don’t see him as someone who is unexceptionally opposed,” Mr. Choper said.
In the Cooper case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, was among 11 of the circuit’s 27 judges who joined dissents.
Elisabeth A. Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Berkeley, which trains lawyers to defend people facing the death penalty, said many jurists had been shaken by the rise of exonerations due to DNA evidence. “I think it’s been shattering to judges who had a fair amount of confidence in the system,” she said.
The next step in the Cooper case is a long-shot appeal to the Supreme Court, which Mr. Cooper’s lead lawyer, Norman C. Hile, said was likely to be filed this year.
Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group in Sacramento that favors the death penalty, said substantial claims of innocence in such appeals remained rare.
In Mr. Cooper’s case, Mr. Scheidegger said, the defendant has been given ample opportunity to exonerate himself. “It is high time to bring this case to a close,” Mr. Scheidegger said.
Judge Fletcher argued otherwise. “If he is innocent, the real killers have escaped,” he wrote. “They may kill again. They may already have done so.
“We owe it to the victims of this horrible crime, to Kevin Cooper, and to ourselves, to get this one right.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) On 11th Try, Man Convicted in ’91 Killing Gets Hearing
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/nyregion/14retrial.html?ref=nyregion
After 11 legal attempts to overturn a 1992 Manhattan murder conviction that was based on testimony since recanted or found to be false, Fernando Bermudez will have a day in court next month that his defenders say could free him from an upstate prison.
A state judge has ordered a hearing on Sept. 1 to determine, in effect, whether Mr. Bermudez deserves a new trial on charges that he fatally shot a man on a Greenwich Village street corner nearly two decades ago.
Last week, Justice John Cataldo of State Supreme Court in Manhattan indicated his concern that witnesses who placed Mr. Bermudez at the scene of the shooting may have conferred before identifying him and, further, that the prosecution’s only witness to the actual shooting lied in parts of his testimony.
“The People’s only trial witness who testified to having known the shooter prior to the night of the crime, is now conceded by the People to have committed perjury throughout his trial testimony,” Justice Cataldo wrote in an Aug. 5 decision.
Mr. Bermudez, now 40, was a young man living with his parents in Upper Manhattan when he was convicted in 1992 in the murder of Raymond Blount on the corner of University Place and 13th Street. Several of Mr. Blount’s friends picked Mr. Bermudez’s photo from an array of suspects after the police improperly allowed them to openly discuss his resemblance to the man they saw pull the trigger, a federal magistrate later found. But that magistrate found in 2004 that the impropriety was not sufficient to overturn the conviction.
Mark Dwyer, the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, said in an interview that if Justice Cataldo ordered a new trial, his office would vigorously appeal the order. Mr. Bermudez has always maintained that he did not know Mr. Blount and had never met the witnesses who picked out his photo. He and his friends who were with him that night said they had not been at the crime scene at any time on the night of the killing.
Since his conviction, he has married, become a father and earned two associate’s degrees through correspondence programs at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. This month, he began his 19th year as New York State Prisoner No. 92A8325. His lawyers have spent most of that time pressing 11 appeals or motions to set aside his conviction. None have led a judge to question the conviction, until last week.
In ordering a hearing, Justice Cataldo said in his 13-page decision that the 2004 magistrate’s finding that witnesses had conferred before collectively picking Mr. Bermudez’s mug shot “cannot be ignored.” If he comes to the same conclusion as the magistrate, Justice Cataldo wrote, state law would require a reversal of the conviction and a new trial.
Mr. Dwyer said prosecutors would present Justice Cataldo with “additional evidence” not seen by the federal magistrate in 2004, to argue that witnesses did not discuss and collectively pick Mr. Bermudez’s photo.
“We will continue to represent the evidence that has persuaded triers of fact in the past that there is no merit to defendant’s claim,” Mr. Dwyer said. But Justice Cataldo said evidence presented to him by Mr. Bermudez’s lawyers raised “a viable claim of actual innocence” that would be explored at the Sept. 1 hearing. Justice Cataldo also ordered an inquiry into whether prosecutors should have known before Mr. Bermudez’s sentencing that the prosecution’s only witness to Mr. Blount’s killing had lied on the stand.
That witness, Efraim Lopez, identified Mr. Bermudez at trial as someone he had known for years, a familiar figure who sold drugs in the neighborhood around West 92nd Street. Mr. Lopez told the court that he knew Mr. Bermudez by his street name, Wool Lou, because he said Mr. Bermudez sold “wools,” slang for crack cocaine.
None of those assertions were true, prosecutors have since acknowledged. In fact, Mr. Lopez was describing another man, Luis Munoz — the real Wool Lou. In 1993, Mr. Lopez signed a sworn affidavit recanting his testimony and saying that before the trial, he had been coerced by police detectives to identify Mr. Bermudez as the killer.
In late 2007, after The New York Times published an examination of the Bermudez case, investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office interviewed Mr. Munoz for the first time. In court papers, they described him as “quite cooperative” and having no knowledge of the 1991 killing.
The Sept. 1 hearing could signify an extraordinary turning point in a 18-year effort among numerous criminal defense lawyers to clear Mr. Bermudez’s name and overturn his conviction, said one of his lawyers, Barry J. Pollack.
“The facts keep getting stronger and stronger,” Mr. Pollack said in an interview Tuesday, “and the conviction keeps getting weaker and weaker.”
Prosecutors have acknowledged in court that given the recantations and false testimony, there is virtually no evidence to prosecute Mr. Bermudez again.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Jobless Claims Post Increase [At the rate of over 500,000 per week!...bw]
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
August 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/business/14econ.html?ref=business
More Americans than forecast filed claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, underscoring the threat to spending from the continued deterioration in the job market.
The Labor Department said 558,000 people filed first-time claims for jobless benefits last week, up from 554,000 the week before.
“Until we start seeing job growth, consumers are still going to be very cautious,” said Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto. “It’s premature to talk about the sustainability of a recovery,” he said, until there’s “follow-through on the demand side.”
Other reports showed companies trimmed inventories in June for a 10th consecutive month, and prices of imported goods dropped in July for the first time in six months as the cost of commodities such as petroleum and chemicals decreased.
The economy has lost about 6.7 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007, the worst of any downturn since World War II.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Britain Responds to Criticism of Its Universal Health System
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/world/europe/15britain.html?ref=world
LONDON (AP) — The British love to mock their National Health Service, but they have been incensed by its being used as a punching bag in the fight over President Obama’s proposed reforms.
Conservatives in the United States have relied on horror stories from Britain’s system to warn Americans of the dangers of the socialized health care system that they say President Obama is trying to impose.
In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the British health system, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, told a local radio station last week that “countries that have government-run health care” would not have given Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the United States because they would rather “spend money on people who can contribute more to the economy.”
An editorial in an American newspaper, Investor’s Business Daily, stated that the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who is almost entirely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, “wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K.” Dr. Hawking, who is British, dismissed the assertion as absurd, and the newspaper has run a correction. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the N.H.S.,” Mr. Hawking said.
Britons say the country’s universal health care system, which provides free medical care, is much fairer than the current American system. Behind the criticism is a popular British view that American society represents unbridled capitalism run amok, with catastrophic results for people left behind.
The business minister, Lord Mandelson, who is usually pro-American, strongly criticized the United States’ system on Friday, suggesting that it was fine for the wealthy but failed the poor. “If you can’t pay, you have a very, very second-rate service or you can’t get health service at all,” he said.
Britain’s Labour government has responded to criticism by offering selected statistics that show Britain outperforming the United States in a number of categories, including health spending per capita and life expectancy. The United States has long lagged behind other advanced nations in vital health care categories, like life expectancy and infant mortality.
Newspapers here have jumped into the debate, with The Daily Mirror calling the United States “the land of the fee,” because of the steep costs patients are forced to pay.
The National Health Service, one of the world’s largest publicly financed health services, was set up in 1949 with the intention of providing everyone with access to health care regardless of their ability to pay. Despite the widespread show of support for the British system recently, the N.H.S. has been struggling to cope with rising medical costs, and there are fears it could be overwhelmed if swine flu cases surge this winter.
Doctors and nurses warn that the organization faces a $24 billion deficit, and hospitals are often overcrowded, dirty and understaffed. Many people have to wait weeks or months for medical care despite government promises to shorten waiting lists. But even those who complain say they want it to be improved, not dismantled or transformed into an American-style, profit-oriented system.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) U.S. Weighs Action Over Citi’s $100 Million Man
By STEPHEN LABATON and ERIC DASH
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/business/15pay.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON — Senior Obama administration officials were wrestling on Friday with how to handle an explosive executive pay issue involving two traders’ compensation package of nearly $130 million that Citigroup says is exempt from government review.
Citigroup’s decision leaves top White House and Treasury Department officials unable to do much about some of the highest-paid employees at the deeply troubled bank just two months after the administration announced, with great fanfare, the appointment of an official to crack down on lucrative payouts at companies that have become wards of the state.
On Friday, Citigroup, which is facing a government deadline, submitted the pay packages for its 25 senior executives and highest-paid employees. People involved in that process said Citi advised the Treasury that an energy trader named Andrew J. Hall, due $98 million, was exempt from federal review, and so was a second unidentified trader who received more than $30 million.
Mr. Hall, 58, and the other trader were paid under an employment contract signed last October, said a person briefed on the contract who was granted anonymity because of not being authorized to disclose the information. That was before a law went into effect instructing the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to examine the pay packages of top executives at companies that received exceptional bailout assistance from the government.
In recent weeks, Treasury officials had warned top Citigroup executives that the administration would reject the contract, hoping to persuade the bank to rewrite it. Now the bank’s decision presents the administration with an awkward political choice between doing little or doing nothing about the contract.
Treasury officials could issue a nonbinding advisory opinion critical of the pay package that that would carry no legal weight but could ameliorate some of the expected political fallout. Or it could do nothing and face the wrath of the public and Congress, which will consider legislation to limit executive pay after its August recess.
The government’s special compensation master, Kenneth R. Feinberg, has two months to decide how to proceed. On the touchiest contracts, he is expected to take his cue from top Treasury and White House officials when they decide whether to criticize those deals. Mr. Geithner and two top aides to the president — Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, and David Axelrod, a senior political adviser, were calculating the political options.
Contract information was also filed this week by Bank of America, American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing companies of the two automakers.
People with knowledge of those contracts, granted anonymity because privacy laws prohibit them from disclosing detailed information, said they generally posed none of the political problems of the Citi pay packages. Executives at A.I.G. have been given the informal impression that Mr. Feinberg will not have a problem with the contract, although the company has not received any official word, a person briefed on those discussions said. This person was granted anonymity because the packages are supposed to remain private.
Mr. Hall’s contract highlights the government’s uncomfortable position now that it owns — but cannot control — some of the nation’s largest companies.
Citi has received $45 billion in taxpayer assistance to avert a collapse, and in exchange, the government now holds a 34 percent ownership interest in the bank. But Congress has given the administration limited legal authority to change a corporate culture that promoted outsize compensation that many people believe encouraged unacceptably risky business decisions.
Moreover, Treasury officials are wary of doing anything that could cause an exodus of executives and cause more damage to the fragile companies — and ultimately could lead to higher costs to taxpayers.
Senior company executives have justified Mr. Hall’s contract by noting that his trading resulted in earnings for the bank that were many multiples of his pay.
A Citigroup executive who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company, said that Mr. Hall’s pay was based on a percentage of the pretax profit at the Phibro trading unit he leads and that the payouts were adjusted for risk so that the more leverage taken by the firm, the lower the potential bonus. Phibro is in Westport, Conn.
Nothing prevents Mr. Hall from bolting to a less regulated company on Wall Street, although he has apparently sought to understand what the administration might do about reworking any future employment contracts he signs with Citi, the executive said.
An aide to Mr. Hall said on Friday that he was unavailable for comment.
Citigroup is in a delicate political position, with a wide array of requests and issues involving its operations now pending before regulators and Congress.
“We recognize there is a political problem, even though we have the rule of law on our side,” said a senior Citigroup official who has direct knowledge of the situation but was granted anonymity because the person was also unauthorized to speak for the company. “It may not be the smartest thing for shareholders, but you sometimes have to do things,” given the government’s large ownership stake and the highly charged political climate, the person said.
Citigroup officials said they want to honor Mr. Hall’s current contract, and are hoping to convince the Treasury Department that the steps they are taking to sell or reorganize the Phibro trading unit where Mr. Hall works would address pay concerns. Bank officials have considered turning Phibro into a partnership in which they would hold a minority stake, and have reached out to a handful of potential buyers.
Eric Dash reported from New York. Edmund L. Andrews contributed from Washington.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) The Expense of Eating With Celiac Disease
[Why we need free, universal healthcare for all NOW!...bw]
Patient Money
By LESLEY ALDERMAN
August 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/15patient.html?ref=business
YOU would think that after Kelly Oram broke more than 10 bones and experienced chronic stomach problems for most of his life, someone (a nurse? a doctor?) might have wondered if something fundamental was wrong with his health. But it wasn’t until Mr. Oram was in his early 40s that a doctor who was treating him for a neck injury became suspicious and ordered tests, including a bone scan.
It turned out that Mr. Oram, a music teacher who lives in White Plains, had celiac disease, an underdiagnosed immune disorder set off by eating foods containing gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.
Celiac disease damages the lining of the small intestine, making it difficult for the body to absorb nutrients. Victims may suffer from mild to serious malnutrition and a host of health problems, including anemia, low bone density and infertility. Celiac affects one out of 100 people in the United States, but a majority of those don’t know they have the disease, said Dr. Joseph A. Murray, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who has been studying the disease for two decades. The disease can be detected by a simple blood test, followed by an endoscopy to check for damage to the small intestine.
Seven years after receiving his diagnosis, Mr. Oram, who is married and has one daughter, is symptom-free, but the cost of staying that way is high. That’s because the treatment for celiac does not come in the form of a pill that will be reimbursed or subsidized by an insurer. The treatment is to avoid eating products containing gluten. And gluten-free versions of products like bread, pizza and crackers are nearly three times as expensive as regular products, according to a study conducted by the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University.
Unfortunately for celiac patients, the extra cost of a special diet is not reimbursed by health care plans. Nor do most policies pay for trips to a dietitian to receive nutritional guidance.
In Britain, by contrast, patients found to have celiac disease are prescribed gluten-free products. In Italy, sufferers are given a stipend to spend on gluten-free food.
Some doctors blame drug makers, in part, for the lack of awareness and the lack of support. “The drug makers have not been interested in celiac because, until very recently, there have been no medications to treat it,” said Dr. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University. “And since drug makers are responsible for so much of the education that doctors receive, the medical community is largely unaware of the disease.”
As awareness grows and the market expands, perhaps the prices of gluten-free products will come down. Meanwhile, if you suffer from the disease, here are some ways to keep your costs down.
When people first learn they have celiac disease, they tend to stock up on gluten-free versions of breads, crackers and pizza made from grains other than wheat, like rice, corn and buckwheat. But that can be expensive and might not even be that healthy, since most gluten-free products are not fortified with vitamins.
“The most important thing to do after being diagnosed is to get a dietary consultation,” Dr. Murray said. With planning, you can learn to base your diet on fruits, vegetables, rice and potatoes. “I have some patients who rarely use those special gluten-free products,” he said.
Get in the habit of reading labels, advises Elaine Monarch, executive director of the Celiac Disease Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Studio City, Calif. Soy sauce, for instance, often has wheat protein as a filler. But Ms. Monarch found a brand of light soy sauce at her local grocery with no wheat that cost much less than one specifically marked as gluten-free. “There are often alternatives to specialty products, but you have to look,” she said.
Gluten-free bread is more expensive than traditional bread and often less palatable. And that holds for many gluten-free items. Some people, including Mr. Oram, end up buying a bread machine and making their own loaves. Nicole Hunn, who cooks gluten-free meals for her family of five and just started the Web site glutenfreeonashoestring.com, avoids mixes, which she says are expensive and not that tasty, and instead bakes with an all-purpose gluten-free flour from a company called Bob’s Red Mill, which can be used in place of wheat flour in standard recipes.
If you’re too busy to cook, look for well-priced gluten-free food at large chains like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s. “Trader Joe’s now carries fantastic brown rice pasta that is reasonably priced and brown rice flour tortillas that can sub for bread with a variety of things,” says Kelly Courson, co-founder of the advice site CeliacChicks.com. Ms. Courson put out a Twitter message to her followers and learned that many were fans of DeBoles gluten-free pastas, which can be bought in bulk on Amazon, and puffed brown rice cereal by Alf’s Natural Nutrition, just $1 a bag at Wal-Mart.
Finally, it may be worthwhile to join a celiac support group. You can swap cost-cutting tips, share recipes and learn about new products. Many groups invite vendors to bring gluten-free products to meetings for members to sample — members can buy items they like at a discount and skip the shipping charges. Support groups typically have meetings, as well as newsletters and Web sites where you can post questions. Groups to check out include the Celiac Disease Foundation and the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America.
Finally, if you itemize your tax return and your total medical expenses for the year exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income, you can write off certain expenses associated with celiac disease. You can deduct the excess cost of a gluten-free product over a comparable gluten-containing product.
Let’s say you spend $6.50 on a loaf of gluten-free bread, and a regular loaf costs $4; you can deduct $2.50. In addition, you can deduct the cost of products necessary to maintain a gluten-free diet, like xanthan gum for baking. If you mail order gluten-free products, the shipping costs may be deductible, too. If you have to travel extra miles to buy gluten-free goods, the mileage is also deductible. You’ll need a doctor’s letter to confirm your diagnosis and your need for a gluten-free diet, and you should save receipts in case of a tax audit.
Do you have a flexible spending account at work? Ask the plan administrator if you can use those flex spending dollars on the excess cost of gluten-free goods — many plans let you do this. For more on tax deductions, go to the tax section of the Celiac Disease Foundation’s Web site.
Yes, managing the disease is a hassle. But untreated celiac disease can wreak havoc with your health. A study published in the July issue of the journal Gastroenterology found that subjects who had undiagnosed celiac were nearly four times as likely to have died over a 45-year period than subjects who were celiac-free.
“Sometimes I resent how time-consuming it is to cook from scratch,” Ms. Courson of CeliacChicks.com said. “But I remind myself that my restrictions actually help keep me in line, more than the next person with unhealthy foods readily available.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) The View From the Bottom
Editorial
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17mon1.html
Federal Reserve policy makers said last Wednesday that the recession appeared to be hitting bottom. Among the end-is-near indicators was consumer spending, which they said had begun to stabilize.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales fell in July, after rising in May and June. It turns out that the earlier boosts had come mainly from higher prices for necessities like energy, not from more spending on more items. And while the government’s cash-for-clunkers program increased car sales last month, retail sales on everything else fell by 0.6 percent, a much worse showing than economists had expected. The downbeat news was reinforced on Friday, when the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index also fell unexpectedly.
Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of economic activity. So the latest data could be a warning that the recession is not bottoming out, as the Fed believes. Or — almost as grim — the data may be evidence that hitting the bottom will not be followed by a rebound, but by a long spell of very weak growth.
The good news is that over the next several months, stimulus spending is likely to lift economic growth considerably. But the headwinds are also considerable.
Policy makers, eager to declare the recession over, need to pay close attention and be ready to do more to rescue the economy. Otherwise there is a high risk that once the stimulus begins to fade, the economy will too.
Consumer spending will not truly recover until employment revives. Unfortunately, job growth is not expected to resume before next year. From there, it could take another two years or so to recoup the devastating job losses of this recession. Spending will also be restrained as households work off their heavy debt loads and try to rebuild the trillions of dollars of wealth they have lost in the housing and stock markets.
At the same time, families will face more pressure from higher state taxes and from cuts in public services. The 2010 fiscal year for most states began on July 1, but new budget shortfalls have already opened up in 13 states and the District of Columbia, totaling $26 billion.
The financial system is also not out of the woods. Commercial property loans — there are $3.5 trillion worth outstanding— are increasingly prone to default. Midsized and smaller banks, heavy lenders to developers, are especially in harm’s way. Many will fail, and as they do, credit will become even harder to come by for businesses and consumers. And the residential foreclosure crisis continues. There were more than 360,000 foreclosure filings in July, yet another record, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed homes. Foreclosures usually mean financial ruin for the defaulters. They also mean reduced property values for everyone else.
Joblessness, weak spending and state fiscal distress will all require more federal spending — on unemployment benefits and aid to states. That will help to replace the demand that is lost as consumers retrench. Bank weakness will require federal regulators to efficiently shut down insolvent institutions, so that losses do not deepen and make eventual failures even more damaging. Mounting home foreclosures will require the Obama administration and Congress to come up with alternatives to current — inadequate — relief efforts.
It is already clear that policy makers need to do more to ensure that whenever the bottom comes, the economy does not stay mired there.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Memos Show Nixon’s Bid to Enlist Brazil in a Coup
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/world/americas/17chile.html?ref=world
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — President Richard M. Nixon discussed with Brazil’s president a cooperative effort to overthrow the government of Salvador Allende of Chile, according to recently declassified documents that reveal deep collaboration between the United States and Brazil in trying to root out leftists in Latin America during the cold war.
The formerly secret memos, published Sunday by the National Security Archive in Washington, show that Brazil and the United States discussed plans to overthrow or destabilize not only Mr. Allende but Fidel Castro of Cuba and others.
Mr. Nixon, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 9, 1971, said he was willing to offer Brazil the assistance, monetary or otherwise, it might need to rid South America of leftist governments, the White House memorandum of the meeting shows.
Mr. Nixon saw Brazil’s military government as a critical partner in the region. “There were many things that Brazil as a South American country could do that the U.S. could not,” Mr. Nixon told the Brazilian president, Gen. Emilio Médici, according to the memo.
“Even by the standards of what is already known about the extensive contacts between the United States and Latin American allies in the context of the cold war, these documents reveal a higher level of collaboration than was believed to be the case,” said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Latin American policy research group in Washington. “They indicate that Washington resorted to extreme lengths in this period to combat what was viewed as the spreading Communist menace in its backyard.”
The Nixon administration was openly hostile to Mr. Allende, and previously released documents have shown that his administration financed efforts to destabilize Mr. Allende’s government and backed the coup that overthrew him in 1973.
The newly disclosed memos shed no light on whether Brazil ultimately did play a role in the coup.
At the Oval Office meeting, Mr. Nixon asked General Médici whether the Chilean military was capable of overthrowing Mr. Allende. “President Médici replied that they were, adding that Brazil was exchanging many officers with the Chileans, and made clear that Brazil was working toward this end,” the memo said.
Mr. Nixon offered his support for Brazil’s efforts, saying that if “money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available.”
Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive’s Chile and Brazil projects, said the documents revealed “a hidden chapter of collaborative intervention.” He called on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil to make public his nation’s military archives.
“The full history of intervention in South America in the 1970s cannot be told without Brazil coming clean about a dark past that is not previously acknowledged,” Mr. Kornbluh said.
The 1971 memo showed that the two leaders also discussed intervention in Cuba. General Médici asked if the United States should support Cuban exiles who “could overthrow Castro’s regime.” The American president said yes, “as long as we did not push them into doing something that we could not support, and as long as our hand did not appear,” it said.
Another document, a 1972 C.I.A. National Intelligence Estimate, predicted a growing role for Brazil in Latin America. “It is unlikely that Brazil will intervene openly in its neighbors’ internal affairs,” the report said, “but the regime will not be above using the threat of intervention or tools of diplomacy and covert action to oppose leftist regimes.”
But after word of the conversation between Mr. Nixon and General Médici found its way to the Brazilian military, a C.I.A. memo suggests that not all military officers were happy with the arrangement.
Gen. Vicente Coutinho, commander of Brazil’s Fourth Army, said the United States wanted Brazil “to do the dirty work.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Supreme Court Orders Hearing for Georgia Man
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/17/us/AP-US-Georgia-Execution.html?ref=us
Filed at 11:16 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a new hearing for death row inmate Troy Davis, whose supporters say is innocent and should be spared from execution for killing a police officer 20 years ago.
Davis has spent 18 years on death row for the 1989 slaying of Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail. Davis' attorneys insist that he is innocent and deserves a new trial because several witnesses at his trial have recanted their testimony.
The high court ordered a federal judge in Georgia to determine whether there is evidence ''that could not have been obtained at the time of trial (that) clearly establishes petitioner's innocence.''
Defense lawyers had appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal court denied a new trial request in April.
''The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing,'' said Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer concurred with Stevens.
MacPhail was slain 20 years ago while working off-duty as a security guard at a bus station. He had rushed to help a homeless man who had been pistol-whipped at a nearby parking lot, and was shot twice when he approached Davis and two other men. Witnesses identified Davis as the shooter at his 1991 trial.
But Davis' lawyers say new evidence proves their client was a victim of mistaken identity. They say three people who did not testify at Davis' trial have said another man confessed to the killing.
The case has attracted worldwide attention, with calls to stop Davis' execution from former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu.
But state and federal courts have rejected Davis' request for a new trial, and state officials have rejected calls for clemency.
Davis was scheduled to be executed on Sept. 23, but it was postponed after the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether he should get a new trial.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision to order an evidentiary hearing, with Scalia saying that ''every judicial and executive body that has examined petitioner's claim has been unpersuaded.''
Davis' ''claim is a sure loser,'' Scalia said. ''Transferring his petition to the District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state's execution of its lawful criminal judgment.''
Scalia said the Supreme Court was sending the District Court for the Southern District of Georgia ''on a fool's errand.''
''That court is directed to consider evidence of actual innocence which has been reviewed and rejected at least three times,'' he said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was just confirmed as a new justice earlier this month, did not take part in the consideration of Davis' motion, the court said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
By ANDREW POLLACK
August 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.
The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.
Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone’s DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear “genetic paparazzi,” said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome.
“DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” she said. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.”
John M. Butler, leader of the human identity testing project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said he was “impressed at how well they were able to fabricate the fake DNA profiles.” However, he added, “I think your average criminal wouldn’t be able to do something like that.”
The scientists fabricated DNA samples two ways. One required a real, if tiny, DNA sample, perhaps from a strand of hair or drinking cup. They amplified the tiny sample into a large quantity of DNA using a standard technique called whole genome amplification.
Of course, a drinking cup or piece of hair might itself be left at a crime scene to frame someone, but blood or saliva may be more believable.
The authors of the paper took blood from a woman and centrifuged it to remove the white cells, which contain DNA. To the remaining red cells they added DNA that had been amplified from a man’s hair.
Since red cells do not contain DNA, all of the genetic material in the blood sample was from the man. The authors sent it to a leading American forensics laboratory, which analyzed it as if it were a normal sample of a man’s blood.
The other technique relied on DNA profiles, stored in law enforcement databases as a series of numbers and letters corresponding to variations at 13 spots in a person’s genome.
From a pooled sample of many people’s DNA, the scientists cloned tiny DNA snippets representing the common variants at each spot, creating a library of such snippets. To prepare a DNA sample matching any profile, they just mixed the proper snippets together. They said that a library of 425 different DNA snippets would be enough to cover every conceivable profile.
Nucleix’s test to tell if a sample has been fabricated relies on the fact that amplified DNA — which would be used in either deception — is not methylated, meaning it lacks certain molecules that are attached to the DNA at specific points, usually to inactivate genes.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Clinton Says No U.S. Bases in Colombia
By REUTERS
World Briefing | The Americas
August 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/world/americas/19briefs-Colombrf.html?ref=world
A new American security pact with Colombia that has angered some South American nations is aimed at fighting drug trafficking and terrorism and will not create American bases in Colombia, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington on Tuesday. The proposal to allow American forces to use up to seven Colombian military installations has fueled tensions, but Mrs. Clinton said there would be no “significant” permanent increase in the American military presence in Colombia.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Under Agreement, UBS to Give Up Over 4,000 Names
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/global/20ubs.html?ref=business
The Swiss banking giant UBS on Wednesday reached a final deal with the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service in which it will ultimately disclose names and account details for more than 4,450 wealthy Americans suspected of tax evasion.
Details of the settlement were unveiled Wednesday by the I.R.S. commissioner, Douglas Shulman.
The agreement, he said, also allows the Swiss government to work with other Swiss financial institutions to disclose the identities of other Americans who have hidden money offshore.
UBS will notify the clients whose names are to be disclosed in coming weeks, Mr. Shulman said. Clients still have time to reveal themselves before a voluntary disclosure program ends Sept. 23 to potentially avoid prosecution and steeper penalties and fines, he said.
Scores of Americans have come forward in recent months to disclose their secret accounts to the I.R.S. That group of people, along with the “thousands” of names Mr. Shulman said that UBS would disclose, brings the total of UBS-related names to be disclosed to the I.R.S. to more than 5,000. The accounts at one point held over $18 billion, he said.
“These are the accounts we most wanted,” Mr. Shulman said. But he said the United States government retained the right to resume its legal efforts to force banks to turn over names.
The settlement marks a turning point in a closely watched battle between UBS, the world’s largest private bank, and federal prosecutors and tax investigators who suspect it of selling tax evasion services to tens of thousands of wealthy Americans.
The landmark settlement peels back layers of Swiss banking secrecy, and is expected to provide a road map for the authorities as they try to crack down on tax evasion by Americans who, through private banks and other Swiss-based financial intermediaries, use offshore accounts that go undeclared to the I.R.S.
The agreement “will result in us receiving what we wanted all along,” Mr. Shulman said. He said the I.R.S. would receive “a unprecedented amount of information on taxpayers” who evade taxes by hiding money offshore through UBS.
“There is no mere keyhole into the world of bank secrecy,” he said, but instead represents “a major step forward in piercing the veil of bank secrecy.”
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the head of the Swiss federal justice department and police, said at a press conference in Bern on Wednesday that Switzerland was “happy” and “relieved” about the outcome of the two months of negotiations. The agreement avoids a conflict between the sovereignty of Switzerland and that of the United States, and ends a threat to the existence of UBS and any consequences for Switzerland as a financial center, she said.
“We are convinced that the agreement is a good solution and the only solution,” Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf said. The settlement does not rule out any possible lawsuits against individual UBS employees, she said.
Switzerland has 370 days to examine the accounts of the 4,450 clients and plans to allocate about 70 lawyers and accountants to the task. The effort will cost the government about 40 million Swiss francs, or $37 million, said Hans-Rudolf Merz, the Swiss president and finance minister. Mr. Merz called on other Swiss banks to stick to the law and regulations in light of the UBS case.
The settlement brings to a close a civil case filed by the Justice Department, on behalf of the I.R.S., in February against UBS that sought to force the bank to turn over the names and account details of 52,000 American clients. UBS fiercely resisted that effort, arguing that it violated Swiss financial secrecy laws, as it lobbied senior Washington officials.
That month, UBS paid $780 million to settle criminal charges that it helped American clients evade taxes on nearly $20 billion stashed in offshore accounts. UBS turned over approximately 250 client names as part of that deal, and will turn over more in coming months. Some 150 Americans are under criminal investigation for tax evasion as part of the investigation.
Julia Werdigier contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Monsanto and DuPont Heat Up Rivalry Over Seeds
By REUTERS
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/business/global/20seeds.html?ref=business
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI — It’s getting dirty down on the farm.
As U.S. farmers prepare to harvest billions of bushels of corn and soybeans — main ingredients in food, livestock feed and transportation fuel around the world — the two titans of seed technology, Monsanto and DuPont, are ramping up their rivalry to new heights.
DuPont is accusing Monsanto of illegal anti-competitive practices, while Monsanto counters that DuPont is engaging in a covert smear campaign that borders on fraud.
The chief executive of Monsanto, Hugh Grant, this week sent a letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, to the DuPont chairman, Charles O. Holliday Jr., accusing the company of a “serious breach of business ethics” and requesting that a special committee of DuPont’s independent directors investigate what Mr. Grant called an “attack” on Monsanto’s seed business.
Monsanto executives claim that DuPont has supported forged documents and secretly financed Monsanto critics.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg of dirty tricks. I have never seen corporate conduct of this nature,” said a lawyer at Monsanto, Scott Partridge.
DuPont counters that it is trying to expose what it calls Monsanto’s “illegal monopoly” and the harm it says Monsanto is doing to farmers and others up and down the food chain.
“This is not just a DuPont problem. This is a competition problem,” said a lawyer for DuPont, Donald L. Flexner. “They’ve gained illegal monopoly power.”
The stakes have risen as both the U.S. Agriculture and Justice Departments said this month that they would start an examination of competition and antitrust concerns in the seed industry.
“We understand that there are concerns regarding the levels of concentration in the seed industry, particularly for corn and soybeans,” said Philip J. Weiser, deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division at the Justice Department.
Both companies have strong positions in the U.S. seed industry and have been racing each other and other competitors to develop higher-yielding crops through genetic modifications and other means.
This spring, the competition spilled into the courts as Monsanto and DuPont sued each other over a soured licensing arrangement. Monsanto claimed DuPont was using the herbicide-tolerant technology of its Roundup Ready seeds outside the scope of the agreement. DuPont countersued, seeking relief under antitrust laws to end what it called “Monsanto’s multifaceted, anti-competitive scheme to unlawfully restrict competition.”
Monsanto claims, and DuPont does not dispute, that DuPont has been aligning itself with, and in some cases financing, groups critical of Monsanto.
Monsanto in turn has started an effort to discredit DuPont, working with a Washington law firm to circulate documents that lay out a series of scathing accusations. The documents accuse DuPont of misleading investors about certain product capabilities, as well as involvement in what Monsanto has said were several falsified letters to lawmakers and others who criticize Monsanto.
A Monsanto spokesman, Lee Quarles, said the company wanted to protect itself against DuPont’s “smear campaigns” designed to “compete through deceit.”
A DuPont spokesman, Anthony Farina, said Monsanto was engaging in a “campaign of diversion” and that DuPont was cooperating with a group of attorneys general from states including Iowa, the top U.S. corn grower, investigating Monsanto’s business practices.
The biotechnology companies are battling while farmers, agricultural academics and consumer groups are growing increasingly concerned about climbing seed prices and industry concentration, which they say restricts the supply of seeds that have not been genetically modified.
“We’re hearing lots of complaints from farmers about huge price increases and that non-G.M.O. seed availability no longer exists,” said Bill Wenzel, national director of the Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering, which has been studying the sharp price increases in soy and corn seed in recent years. G.M.O. stands for genetically modified organisms.
A decade ago, DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred seed unit, based in Johnston, Iowa, controlled more than 40 percent of the lucrative U.S. corn seed market. But that had fallen to about 30 percent in 2008, according to DuPont, which gets about a quarter of its $30 billion in revenue from its agricultural and nutrition unit.
Monsanto’s rapid rise in power over the past decade has come through a series of seed company acquisitions, broad licensing deals and tightly protected patents for its proprietary seed technology.
Monsanto, based in St. Louis, Missouri, pegs its market share for its branded corn seed at about 36 percent, and says its branded soy seed has a 29 percent share and cotton a 41 percent share in the United States.
But DuPont, based in Wilmington Delaware, and other critics say that through licensing deals with about 200 other companies, Monsanto’s genetic traits are spread through nearly all of the U.S. corn, soy and cotton planted each year. They say Monsanto’s power translates into steep price increases for farmers and increasingly fewer seed choices.
“That level of concentration is scary,” said Neil E. Harl, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. “The Department of Justice antitrust division is right on target in my view.”
Monsanto recently announced, for instance, that its new Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans would cost farmers about $74 an acre in 2010, or $10.90 a hectare, on average, while the current version of its Roundup Ready soybeans cost $52 an acre.
Monsanto said the price increases were valid because farmers received added value with technological improvements to the seeds, higher yields and greater efficiencies. It also argued that there was no shortage of seed varieties.
Monsanto’s prowess in the seed industry has made it a darling of Wall Street. The company posted record net sales of $11.4 billion for the 2008 financial year, a 36 percent jump from 2007.
Monsanto officials said they welcomed the added antitrust scrutiny.
“This is a very competitive industry,” said Mr. Partridge, the Monsanto lawyer. “We welcome the opportunity to participate and to be involved in these discussions so people can learn more about Monsanto and how we compete.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) This Is Reform?
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
August 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/opinion/18herbert.html
It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.
Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.
The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)
Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.
This additional business — a gold mine — will more than offset the cost of important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on benefits. Poor people will either be funneled into Medicaid, which will have its eligibility ceiling raised, or will receive a government subsidy to help with the purchase of private insurance.
If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan — well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.
And then there are the drug companies. A couple of months ago the Obama administration made a secret and extremely troubling deal with the drug industry’s lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The lobby agreed to contribute $80 billion in savings over 10 years and to sponsor a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in support of health care reform.
The White House, for its part, agreed not to seek additional savings from the drug companies over those 10 years. This resulted in big grins and high fives at the drug lobby. The White House was rolled. The deal meant that the government’s ability to use its enormous purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices was off the table.
The $80 billion in savings (in the form of discounts) would apply only to a certain category of Medicare recipients — those who fall into a gap in their drug coverage known as the doughnut hole — and only to brand-name drugs. (Drug industry lobbyists probably chuckled, knowing that some patients would switch from generic drugs to the more expensive brand names in order to get the industry-sponsored discounts.)
To get a sense of how sweet a deal this is for the drug industry, compare its offer of $8 billion in savings a year over 10 years with its annual profits of $300 billion a year. Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration, wrote that the deal struck by the Obama White House was very similar to the “deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry.”
The bonanza to come would be even larger, he said, “given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade.”
While it is undoubtedly important to bring as many people as possible under the umbrella of health coverage, the way it is being done now does not address what President Obama and so many other advocates have said is a crucial component of reform — bringing the ever-spiraling costs of health care under control. Those costs, we’re told, are hamstringing the U.S. economy, making us less competitive globally and driving up the budget deficit.
Giving consumers the choice of an efficient, nonprofit, government-run insurance plan would have moved us toward real cost control, but that option has gone a-glimmering. The public deserves better. The drug companies, the insurance industry and the rest of the corporate high-rollers have their tentacles all over this so-called reform effort, squeezing it for all it’s worth.
Meanwhile, the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind.
David Brooks is off today.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Debit Card Trap
Editorial
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20thu1.html
Not many people would knowingly pay more than $35 for a cup of coffee. But far too many people are getting saddled — with no warning — with outsized bills for minor purchases, under a euphemistically labeled “overdraft protection program” that most major banks have adopted over the last 10 years.
Before that, most banks would simply have rejected debit transactions, without a fee, when the card holder’s account was empty. Now, they approve the purchase and tack on a hefty penalty for each transaction.
Moebs Services, a research company that has conducted studies for the government as well as some banks, reported recently that banks will earn more than $38 billion this year from overdraft and bounced-check fees. Moebs also estimates that 90 percent of that amount will be paid by the poorest 10 percent of the customer base.
Federal regulators who stood idly by while this system evolved are considering new overdraft rules that could provide more transparency. If they do not move quickly and aggressively to protect consumers, Congress should step in.
Banks have historically covered bad checks for valued clients, who were invited to opt in to overdraft protection or to link their checking accounts to savings accounts or to lines of credit. But as more people began to use debit cards, the banks started to view overdraft fees as a major profit center and started to automatically enroll debit card holders into an overdraft program. Some banks instituted a tiered penalty system, charging customers steadily higher fees as the overdrafts mount.
A study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research and policy group, describes what it calls the “overdraft domino effect.” One college student whose bank records were analyzed by the center made seven small purchases including coffee and school supplies that totaled $16.55 and was hit with overdraft fees that totaled $245.
Some bankers claim the system benefits debit card users, allowing them to keep spending when they are out of money. But interest rate calculations tell a different story. Credit card companies, for example, were rightly criticized when some drove up interest rates to 30 percent or more. According to a 2008 study by the F.D.I.C., overdraft fees for debit cards can carry an annualized interest rate that exceeds 3,500 percent.
The banks, which have grown addicted to overdraft fees, will almost certainly resist new regulation in this area. But there are several things that federal regulators must do to protect the public.
First, banks must be barred from automatically enrolling customers in overdraft programs. This must be a service that customers opt in to — and only after they are provided full information about the fees and the penalties they will incur. These disclosure statements must meet the same rules laid out in truth-in-lending laws, since overdraft charges are essentially short-term loans.
Banks must also be required to warn customers in real time when a debit card charge will overdraw their accounts — and what fees they will incur if they still decide to proceed with the purchase.
This will require new technology. But there is almost no chance that the banks will invest in it unless they are legally required to do so. Until that happens, buyers beware. That cup of coffee may be even more expensive than you realize.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists
By MARK MAZZETTI
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/20intel.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.
It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.
Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”
“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress. “It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.
The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.
The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.
One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.
“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”
Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.
Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.
An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.
The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.
But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.
Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.
But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.
“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.
Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Mercury Found in Every Fish Tested, Scientists Say
By CORNELIA DEAN
National Briefing | Science and Health
August 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/science/earth/20brfs-MERCURYFOUND_BRF.html?ref=us
When government scientists went looking for mercury contamination in fish in 291 streams around the nation, they found it in every fish they tested, the Interior Department said, even in isolated rural waterways. In a statement, the department said that some of the streams tested were affected by mining operations, which can be a source of mercury pollution, so the findings, by scientists at the United States Geological Survey, do not necessarily reflect contamination levels nationwide. But Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the findings underlined the need to act against mercury pollution. Emissions from coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury contamination in the United States. A quarter of the fish studied had mercury levels above safety levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for people who eat the fish regularly, the Interior Department said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Troy Davis and the Meaning of ‘Actual Innocence’
by Amy Goodman
August 19, 2009
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/19-2
Sitting on death row in Georgia, Troy Davis has won a key victory against his own execution. On Aug. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed a federal court in Georgia to consider, for the first time in a formal court proceeding, significant evidence of Davis' innocence that surfaced after his conviction. This is the first such order from the U.S. Supreme Court in almost 50 years. Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
The order read, in part, "The District Court should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner's innocence." Behind the order lay a stunning array of recantations from those who originally testified as eyewitnesses to the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail on Aug. 19, 1989. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses who originally identified Davis as the murderer of MacPhail have since recanted, some alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. Of the remaining two witnesses, one, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, is accused by others as the shooter and identified Davis as the perpetrator probably to save himself from arrest.
On the night of the murder, MacPhail was off duty, working as a security guard at a Burger King. A homeless man was being beaten in the parking lot. The altercation drew Davis and others to the scene, along with MacPhail. MacPhail intervened, and was shot fatally with a .38-caliber gun. Later, Coles arrived at the police station, accompanied by a lawyer, and identified Davis as the shooter. The police engaged in a high-profile manhunt, with Davis' picture splayed across the newspapers and television stations. Davis turned himself in. With no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Davis was convicted and sentenced to death.
Jeffrey Sapp is typical of those in the case who recanted their eyewitness testimony. He said in an affidavit:
"The police ... put a lot of pressure on me to say ‘Troy said this' or ‘Troy said that.' They wanted me to tell them that Troy confessed to me about killing that officer ... they made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear."
Despite the seven recantations, Georgia's parole commission has refused to commute Davis' sentence. Courts have refused to hear the evidence, mostly on procedural grounds. Conservatives like former Georgia Congressman and prosecutor Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions have called for justice in his case, along with Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, the NAACP and Amnesty International.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, "The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing." Yet conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented (with Justice Clarence Thomas), writing that Davis' case "is a sure loser," and "[t]his Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually' innocent."
Davis has had three execution dates, and in one instance was within two hours of lethal injection. Now he will finally have his day in court. With the courageous support of his sister, Martina Correia (who has been fighting for his life as well as her own--she has stage 4 breast cancer), and his nephew, Antone De'Jaun Correia, who at 15 is a budding human rights activist, Davis may yet defy death. That could lead to a long-overdue precedent in U.S. law: It is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html?scp=1&sq=mexico%20decriminalizes%20pot&st=cse
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.
The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.
Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although no penalties for noncompliance are specified.
Mexican authorities said the change only recognized the longstanding practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs.
The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four marijuana cigarettes. Other limits are half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams of LSD.
President Felipe Calderón waited months before approving the law.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the agency hired Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top Qaeda operatives.
In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”
Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said. The agency’s current director, Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.
The extent of Blackwater’s business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.
The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved in shootings in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work.
Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted in federal court on charges related to the 2007 episode.
A spokeswoman for Xe did not respond to a request for comment.
For its intelligence work, the company’s sprawling headquarters in North Carolina has a special division, known as Blackwater Select. The company’s first major arrangement with the C.I.A. was signed in 2002, with a contract to provide security for the agency’s new station in Kabul, Afghanistan. Blackwater employees assigned to the Predator bases receive training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to learn how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, according to current and former employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of upsetting the company.
The C.I.A. has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan, but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, several current and former government and company officials said. The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported.
Officials said the C.I.A. now conducted most of its Predator missile and bomb strikes on targets in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region from the Jalalabad base, with drones landing or taking off almost hourly. The base in Pakistan is still in use. But officials said that the United States decided to open the Afghanistan operation in part because of the possibility that the Pakistani government, facing growing anti-American sentiment at home, might force the C.I.A. to close the one in Pakistan.
Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets or actual strikes. The targets are selected by the C.I.A., and employees at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., pull the trigger remotely. Only a handful of the agency’s employees actually work at the Predator bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the current and former employees said.
They said that Blackwater’s direct role in these operations had sometimes led to disputes with the C.I.A. Sometimes when a Predator misses a target, agency employees accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they said. In one instance last year recounted by the employees, a 500-pound bomb dropped off a Predator before it hit the target, leading to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region. It was eventually found about 100 yards from the original target.
The role of contractors in intelligence work expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks, as spy agencies were forced to fill gaps created when their work forces were reduced during the 1990s, after the end of the cold war.
More than a quarter of the intelligence community’s current work force is made up of contractors, carrying out missions like intelligence collection and analysis and, until recently, interrogation of terrorist suspects.
“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,” Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the C.I.A. from 2006 until early this year, said during a panel discussion on Thursday on the privatization of intelligence.
General Hayden, who succeeded Mr. Goss at the agency, acknowledged that the C.I.A. program continued under his watch, though it was not a priority. He said the program was never prominent during his time at the C.I.A., which was one reason he did not believe that he had to notify Congress. He said it did not involve outside contractors by the time he came in.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who presides over the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the agency should have notified Congress in any event. “Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress,” she said. “If they are not, that is a violation of the law.”
Mark Landler contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) U.S. Military to Stay in Philippines
By THOM SHANKER
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21military.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has decided to keep an elite 600-troop counterinsurgency operation deployed in the Philippines despite pressure to reassign its members to fulfill urgent needs elsewhere, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.
The high-level attention given to the future of the force, known as the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, illustrates the Pentagon’s difficulty in finding enough of these highly trained units for assignments to two wars — as well as for the wider effort to combat insurgencies and militancy in other parts of the world deemed to be threats to American interests.
Senior officials said the decision also acknowledged a cautionary lesson from Afghanistan: that battlefield success should be rewarded with sustained commitment, while prematurely turning the military’s attention elsewhere — as when the Bush administration shifted focus to Iraq — provides insurgents and terrorists the opportunity to rush back in.
In the seven years that the Philippines-based American force has been operating, its members have trained local security units and provided logistical and intelligence support to Filipino forces fighting insurgents.
Senior officials say the American force and partners in the Central Intelligence Agency were instrumental in successes by the Filipino armed forces in killing and capturing leaders of the militant group Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, antigovernment organizations operating in the south.
In a simultaneous counterinsurgency effort in the Philippines, members of the American force have completed hundreds of infrastructure projects, including roads, schools, health clinics and firehouses, conducted medical examinations and administered vaccines.
Adm. Timothy J. Keating, commander of American forces in the Pacific, said the force’s work was not yet done. “The successes we enjoy, and the gains, can tend to anesthetize us a little bit,” he said. “When the options were presented to our leadership, the decision was made to continue the Philippines mission.”
Before making his decision, Mr. Gates visited the Philippines in June. Then, Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, followed with an unannounced visit in July — underscoring the tight link between the military and intelligence efforts.
“Based on his briefings heading into Manila and his meetings on the ground there, Secretary Gates just felt this is not the right time to begin scaling back our support,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “While we have made real progress against international terrorist groups there, everyone believes they would ramp back up their attacks if we were to draw down.”
Even independent, nongovernmental organizations that normally look skeptically on American military efforts have praised the Philippines operation.
“In general, the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines has been regarded as a success story, especially in terms of winning hearts and minds through civic action and medical assistance projects,” said Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group.
He noted, however, that the insurgency in the Philippines “is a political problem first and foremost” and that no military effort alone can bring success against antigovernment forces.
Special Operations Forces are the most highly skilled in the military at capture-and-kill missions against insurgent and terrorist leaders. Within their ranks, Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, have for decades been training allied troops on their home soil and conducting counterinsurgency missions.
The American ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie A. Kenney, said that measuring the impact of the military mission there was difficult, but she emphasized that the task force’s efforts were multiplied by being closely coordinated with the Filipino government and American development assistance.
Col. Bill Coultrup, the task force commander, said that when he arrived in 2007, his goal was simple: “Help the Philippines security forces. It’s their fight. We don’t want to take over.”
His service includes deployments with Special Operations units in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Bosnia, where the mission focused on capturing or killing adversaries. But in the Philippines, Colonel Coultrup’s work has been only 20 percent combat-related. That portion of the military mission is designed to “help the armed forces of the Philippines neutralize high-value targets — individuals who will never change their minds,” he said.
Eighty percent of the effort, though, has been “civil-military operations to change the conditions that allow those high-value targets to have a safe haven,” Colonel Coultrup added. “We do that through helping give a better life to the citizens: good governance, better health care, a higher standard of living.”
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) U.S. and Cuba Work Together on Storms
By MARC LACEY
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21storm.html?ref=world
MEXICO CITY — The first tropical storms of the season have begun raging across the Atlantic, bringing with them all manner of panic and potential destruction — and, behind the scenes, a little boost in United States-Cuba relations.
The gusty winds, heavy rains and ocean swells that hurricanes produce do not know the difference between Guantánamo and Galveston, which has made the weather one of the few topics on which the United States and Cuban governments regularly engage.
“We’ve had a close working relationship in regard to tropical cyclones that goes back to the ’70s and ’80s,” said Max Mayfield, who retired in 2007 after seven years as director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. “Any storm that goes toward Florida goes over Cuba, so we need their observations. And they need our data from the aircraft.”
With coastal communities in both countries vulnerable, meteorology could bring the longtime adversaries closer together, especially with the policy of increased engagement pushed by President Obama, experts argue. Wayne Smith, a former American diplomat in Havana who is now a fellow at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, has brought an array of American officials to Cuba in recent years to look at how Cuban disaster preparedness programs manage to keep the number of hurricane deaths on the island so low.
Among those who made the trip last month were Russel Honoré, a retired lieutenant general who was the commander of the military’s Hurricane Katrina task force; Robert Turner, regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East; and Stewart Simonson, assistant secretary for emergency preparedness in the Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush administration.
Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane expert at Louisiana State University who visited Cuba last year, contends that American policies should be loosened to allow a transfer of technology to Cuba to help bolster its oceanographic and weather data collection. The United States could learn from Cuba’s evacuation plans, post-disaster medical support and citizen disaster education programs, he said.
“No matter how much our government may decry the Cuban regime, it is a fact that they are very successful in orchestrating evacuations and meeting the public health and medical needs of their population during disasters,” Mr. van Heerden wrote in a paper several months ago for the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based group that wants to normalize relations with Cuba.
Cubans are taught about hurricanes in elementary school, and every block has a captain whose job it is to help evacuate people and relocate their possessions to safe locations. Evacuations are compulsory in Cuba, which keeps casualties low but also highlights the government’s control over most aspects of people’s lives. Those same captains also keep tabs on neighbors’ loyalty to the government.
“We have a different form of government in the United States,” Lyda Ann Thomas, the mayor of Galveston, Tex., told reporters during a visit to Cuba in April to examine Cuba’s preparedness plans. “When we call for a mandatory evacuation and citizens are warned they may be left without water and resources, they still have the right to tell their government they do not wish to leave their homes.”
For years, the Cubans have allowed American government “hurricane hunter” planes to enter their airspace to measure storms from the air. Even during Mr. Bush’s presidency, when the trade embargo between the countries was tightened, American and Cuban government meteorologists were cooperating when it came to storms.
While one part of the United States Commerce Department was in charge of enforcing the embargo — fining those who visited Cuba illegally or purchased outlawed Cuban cigars — another part of it was trading information and engaging in training exercises with the Cubans on storms.
Tensions do still arise. The two governments have turned down hurricane aid from each other, and when advocacy groups held a United States-Cuba hurricane summit meeting in Mexico in 2007, an American government meteorologist said he received a call from the State Department as he was heading there ordering him not to attend.
“The State Department called me at the airport and said, ‘You’re not allowed to go to the meeting,’ ” said Lixion Avila, a Cuban-born hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. “I told them that we meet Cuban meteorologists regularly.”
Still, Cuban hurricane experts participate in the annual training exercises at the hurricane center in Miami. “It’s not as simple as with Jamaica when it comes to visas, but we work together,” Mr. Avila said.
Mr. Mayfield, who is now a hurricane specialist for a Miami television station, said he understood those who were pushing for greater engagement with Cuba and those who considered the government so abhorrent that isolation was the only acceptable approach. “I have a lot of Cuban friends whose parents were taken off to prison by the military,” he said. “I understand their views, but it seems there are some areas where it makes sense to talk.”
Mr. Mayfield said his counterpart at Cuba’s Institute of Meteorology, José Rubiera, had the advantage of having his own government television station to reach the population in advance of approaching storms. “It’s easier if you have a government-run television station,” Mr. Mayfield said. “He could get the message out anytime he wanted to. There were times I would have liked to have had that platform.”
Mr. Avila, whose mother lives in Cuba, sees his work with Cuban meteorologists as apolitical. “I’m trained to save lives and it doesn’t matter if they are Cuban, Chinese or American lives I’m saving by forecasting storms,” he said.
But he said the evacuation approach used in his birthplace would not necessarily work for his adopted home.
“There, they put everyone in a truck and move them,” Mr. Avila said. “You can’t do that in the U.S.”
But some things are more transferable. Mr. Turner, the Louisiana flood official who visited Cuba last month, said he was impressed with the islandwide disaster drills and the regular inspections of homes to determine their ability to withstand strong winds.
“There are probably lessons that can be learned on both sides,” he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) Michigan: Prisoners’ Lawsuit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Midwest
August 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21brfs-PRISONERSLAW_BRF.html?ref=us
Four hundred more current or former female inmates have filed claims for part of a $100 million settlement in the month since the state resolved accusations that prisoners had been raped, groped and peeked at by male members of the corrections staff, a lawyer said. All told, more than 900 women are seeking money for alleged sexual misconduct inside state prisons from March 1993 to July 2009. The development was disclosed as a Washtenaw County circuit judge, Timothy Connors, gave final approval to the class-action settlement, despite complaints from some former inmates who won at trial, but will get less under the settlement. Ten lawyers who worked on the case will get $28.7 million for their work and for administering the settlement. The remaining $71.3 will be given to victims based on the severity of abuse. Deborah Labelle, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the settlement was fair. “A hundred million dollars recognizes the kind of human rights violations that went on by the state,” Ms. Labelle said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
