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END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL NOW!
National Days of Action to Protest Attack on Gaza Flotilla and Israeli Blockade
Saturday, June 5, 11am
San Francisco March & Rally
Civic Center (Polk & Grove Sts.)
Now is the time to make your voice heard! Join us to say:
End the Blockade of Gaza NOW!
Justice for the Victims of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla!
Prosecute Israel for War Crimes! Cut All U.S. Aid to Israel!
End Colonial Occupation-Self-Determination for the Palestinian People!
On Friday, June 4 and Saturday, June 5, demonstrations will take place across the country and around the world to protest the murderous attack by the Israeli army on seven boats carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. At least 9 volunteer aid workers were killed and dozens seriously wounded.
Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza-an impoverished area home to 1.6 million Palestinians-for more than three years. The attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was an act of piracy and a war crime carried out in international waters. Attempting to turn reality upside-down, the Israeli military is now posing as the "victims" in this incident. Israel is only able to carry out massacres like this and the on-going oppression of the Palestinian people due to the huge military, economic and diplomatic support it receives from the U.S. government.
June 5, will mark the 43rd anniversary of the 1967 war when Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, along with Syria's Golan Heights, all areas that Israel continues to occupy to this day.
The June 5 protest in San Francisco is sponsored by many organizations, including:
Al Awda-Palestine Right to Return Coalition, ANSWER Coalition-Act Now to Stop War & End Racism, Palestine Youth Network, American Muslims for Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, International Solidarity Movement, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Arab Youth Organization, Muslim Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, General Union of Palestinian Students, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Youth and Student ANSWER, Middle East Children's Alliance, NAYI, Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area Committee to End Israeli Apartheid, Arab Community and Cultural Center (partial list)
To endorse or volunteer, call 415-821-6545 or email answer@answersf.org
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
BAY AREA UNITED AGAINST WAR newsletter fully endorses this action.
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Gulf Oil Spill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAHS5z6QKok
Dear Readers,
If you are wondering why an antiwar newsletter is giving full coverage to the oil spill, it's because:
(1) "Supplying the US army with oil is one of BP's biggest markets, and further exploration in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico is part of its long-term strategy."*
(2) "The Senate on Thursday, [May 27, 2010] approved a nearly $60 billion measure to pay for continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq..."**
The two are inextricably entwined and interdependent.
--Bonnie Weinstein
*The black hole at the bottom of the Gulf
No one seems to know the extent of the BP disaster
By David Randall and Margareta Pagano
Sunday, 23 May 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-black-hole-at-the-bottom-of-the-gulf-1980693.html
**Senate Approves Nearly $60 Billion for Wars
By CARL HULSE
May 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/politics/28cong.html?ref=us
Watch BP Live Video Webcam Camera Feed of Gulf Oil Spill Here! (Update 7)
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/05/20/live-video-feed-webcam-gulf-oil-spill/
What BP does not want you to see:
ABC News went underwater in the Gulf with Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of famous explorer Jacques Cousteau, and he described what he saw as "one of the most horrible things I've ever seen underwater."
Check out what BP does not want you to see. And please share this widely -- every American should see what's happening under the surface in the Gulf.
http://acp.repoweramerica.org/page/invite/oilspillvideo?source=sprd-fwd&utm_source=crm_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oilspillvideo20100527&utm_content=link1
Live BP Gulf Oil Spill Webcam Video Reveals 5 Leaks
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/05/24/live-bp-gulf-oil-spill-webcam-video-reveals-5-leaks/
Stop Shell Oil's Offshore Drilling Plans in the Arctic
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/308597489?z00m=19844689
Sign the Petition to Ban Offshore Drilling Now!
http://na.oceana.org/en/stopthedrill?key=31522015
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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YES ON F, GIVE RENTERS A BREAK!
Just two weeks before the June 8 election and if we are going to give renters a break from rent increases we need your help now!
Thousands of San Francisco renters are unemployed and at risk of losing their homes--Prop F will let them delay any new rent increases and give them a chance to stay housed. Here's how you can help pass Prop F:
Phonebanking, 5-7pm, Wed at SOMCAN, 1070 Howard Street
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Please forward widely
Dear Friends of Lynne Stewart,
Forgive this hasty note updating Lynne's situation. I am off to Brazil shortly and must catch a plane soon.
I just spoke with Lynne's husband Ralph Poynter last night and learned the following.
A regularly scheduled follow up test to check on whether Lynne's breast cancel had reappeared revealed that Lynne now had a spot on her liver. Lynne struggled with prison authorities to have a required biopsy and related tests conducted at her regular, that is, non-prison, Roosevelt Hospital. Her requests were denied and she was compelled to have the biopsy done in a notoriously inferior facility where the results could not be determined for a week as compared to the almost immediate lab tests available at Roosevelt.
During Lynne's prison hospital stay she was shackled and handcuffed making rest and sleep virtually impossible. A horrified doctor ordered the shackles removed but immediately following his departure they were fastened on Lynne's feet and hands once again.
She is now back in her New York City prison cell. Her attorneys have filed for a postponement of her scheduled July 15 court appearance where Federal District Court sentencing Judge John Koeltl is to review the original 28-month jail sentence that he imposed last year.
This sentence was appealed by government prosecutors, who sought to order Koelt to impose a 30-year sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, was sympathetic to the government's position and essentially stated that Koeltl's 28-month sentence exceeded the bounds of "reasonableness." Koeltl was ordered to reconsider. A relatively recent Supreme Court decision granted federal district court judges wide discretion in determining the length of internment. Koeltl's decision took into consideration many factors that the court system allows in determining Lynne's sentence. These included Lynne's character, her service to the community, her health and financial history and more. He ruled, among other things that Lynne's service to the community was indeed a "credit to her profession and to the nation."
Contrariwise, the government and prison authorities see Lynne as a convicted terrorist. Lynne was the victim of a frame-up trial held in the post-911 context. She was convicted on four counts of "aiding and abetting terrorism" stemming from a single act, Lynne's issuance of a press release on behalf of her client, the "blind" Egyptian Shreik Omar Abdel Rachman. The press release, that the government claimed violated a Special Administrative Order (SAM), was originally ignored as essentially trivial by the Clinton administration and then Attorney General Janet Reno. But the Bush administration's Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to go after Lynne with a sledge hammer.
A monstrous trial saw government attorney's pulling out all the stops to convince an intimidated jury that Lynne was associated in some way with terrorist acts across the globe, not to mention with Osama bin Laden. Both the judge and government were compelled to admit in court that there were no such "associations," but press clippings found in Lynne's office were nevertheless admitted as "hearsay" evidence even though they were given to Lynne by the government under the rules of discovery.
It is likely that Lynne's request for a postponement will be granted, assuming the government holds to the law that a prisoner has the right to partake in her/his own defense. Lynne's illness has certainly prevented her from doing so.
In the meantime, Lynne would like nothing more than to hear from her friends and associates. Down the road her defense team will also be looking for appropriate letters to the judge on Lynne's behalf. More later on the suggested content of these letters.
Please write Lynne to express your love and solidarity:
Lynne Stewart 53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, New York 10007
In Solidarity,
Jeff Mackler, West Coast Coordinator
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
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Lynne Stewart and the Guantanamo Lawyers: Same Fact Patterns, Same Opponent, Different Endings?
Lynne Stewart will be re-sentenced sometime in July, in NYC.
By Ralph Poynter
(Ralph Poynter is the Life partner of Lynne Stewart. He is presently dedicated 24/7 to her defense, as well as other causes.)
Ralph.Poynter@yahoo.com
In the Spring of 2002, Lynne Stewart was arrested by the FBI, at her home in Brooklyn, for materially aiding terrorism by virtue of making a public press release to Reuters on behalf of her client, Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman of Egypt. This was done after she had signed a Special Administrative Measure issued by the Bureau of Prisons not permitting her to communicate with the media, on his behalf.
In 2006, a number of attorneys appointed and working pro bono for detainees at Guantanamo were discovered to be acting in a manner that disobeyed a Federal Judge's protective court order. The adversary in both cases was the United States Department of Justice. The results in each case were very different.
In March of 2010, a right wing group "Keep America Safe" led by Lynne Cheney, hoping to dilute Guantanamo representation and impugn the reputations and careers of the volunteer lawyers, launched a campaign. Initially they attacked the right of the detainees to be represented at all. This was met with a massive denouncement by Press, other media, Civil rights organizations ,and rightly so, as being a threat to the Constitution and particularly the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
A second attack on the Gitmo lawyers was made in the Wall Street Journal of March 16. This has been totally ignored in the media and by civil and human rights groups. This latter revelation about the violations, by these lawyers, of the Judge's protective orders and was revealed via litigation and the Freedom of Information Act. These pro bono lawyers serving clients assigned to them at Gitmo used privileged attorney client mail to send banned materials. They carried in news report of US failures in Afghanistan and Iraq . One lawyer drew a map of the prison. Another delivered lists to his client of all the suspects held there. They placed on the internet a facsimile of the badges worn by the Guards. Some lawyers "provided news outlets with 'interviews' of their clients using questions provided in advance by the news organizations." When a partner at one of the large Wall Street law firms sent in multiple copies of an Amnesty International brochure, which her client was to distribute to other prisoners, she was relieved from her representation and barred by the Military Commander from visiting her client.
This case is significant to interpret not because of the right wing line to punish these lawyers and manipulate their corporate clients to stop patronizing such "wayward" firms. Instead it is significant because, Lynne Stewart, a left wing progressive lawyer who had dedicated her thirty year career to defending the poor, the despised, the political prisoner and those ensnared by reason of race, gender, ethnicity, religion , who was dealt with by the same Department of Justice, in such a draconian fashion, confirms our deepest suspicions that she was targeted for prosecution and punishment because of who she is and who she represented so ably and not because of any misdeed.
Let me be very clear, I am not saying that the Gitmo lawyers acted in any "criminal" manner. The great tradition of the defense bar is to be able to make crucial decisions for and with the client without interference by the adversary Government.
I believe that they were acting as zealous attorneys trying to establish rapport and trust with their clients. That said, the moment the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice tried to remove Julia Tarver Mason from her client, the playing field tilted. Ms Tarver Mason was not led out of her home in handcuffs to the full glare of publicity. There was no press conference. The Attorney General did not go on the David Letterman show to gloat about the latest strike in the War on Terror, the purge of the Gitmo lawyer...NO.
Instead an "armada" of corporate lawyers went to Court against the Government. They, in the terms of the litigation trade, papered the US District Courthouse in Washington D.C. They brought to bear the full force of their Money and Power-- derived from the corporate world--and in 2006 "settled" the case with the government, restoring their clients to Guantanamo without any punishment at all, not to say any Indictment. Lynne Stewart, without corporate connections and coming from a working class background, was tried and convicted for issuing, on behalf of her client, a public press release to Reuters. There was no injury, no harm, no attacks, no deaths.
Yet that same Department of Justice that dealt so favorably and capitulated to the Gitmo corporate lawyers, wants to sentence Lynne Stewart to thirty (30) YEARS in prison. It is the equivalent of asking for a death sentence since she is 70 years old.
This vast disparity in treatment between Lynne and the Gitmo lawyers reveals the deep contradictions of the system ---those who derive power from rich and potent corporations, those whose day to day work maintains and increases that power--are treated differently. Is it because the Corporate Power is intertwined with Government Power???
Lynne Stewart deserves Justice... equal justice under law. Her present sentence of 28 months incarceration (she is in Federal Prison) should at least be maintained, if not made equal to the punishment that was meted out to the Gitmo lawyers. The thirty year sentence, assiduously pursued by DOJ under both Bush and Obama, is an obscenity and an affront to fundamental fairness. They wanted to make her career and dedication to individual clients, a warning, to the defense bar that the Government can arrest any lawyer on any pretext. The sharp contrasts between the cases of Lynne and the Gitmo lawyers just confirm that she is getting a raw deal--one that should be protested actively, visibly and with the full force of our righteous resistance.
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INVITATION TO A NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
United National Peace Conference
July 23 - 25, 2010, Albany , NY
Unac2010@aol.com
UNAC, P.O. Box 21675
Cleveland, OH 44121
518-227-6947
www.nationalpeaceconference.org
Greetings:
Twenty co-sponsoring national organizations urge you to attend this conference scheduled for Albany , New York July 23-25, 2010. They are After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bailout the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and World Can't Wait.
The purpose of the conference is to plan united actions in the months ahead in support of demands for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq , and money for human needs, not for wars, occupations, and bail-outs. The peace movement is strongest and most effective when plans for united actions are made by the whole range of antiwar and social justice organizations meeting together and deciding together dates and places for national mobilizations.
Each person attending the conference will have voice and vote. Attendees will have the opportunity to amend the action proposal submitted by conference co-sponsors, add demands, and submit resolutions for consideration by the conference.
Keynoters will be NOAM CHOMSKY, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics; and DONNA DEWITT, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations.
The conference's website is www.nationalpeaceconference.org and you will find there details regarding other speakers, workshops, registration, hotel and travel information, and how to submit amendments, demands, and resolutions. The action proposal has also been published on the website.
Please write us at UNAC2010@aol.com for further information or call 518-227-6947. We can fill orders for copies of the conference brochure. Tables for display and sale of materials can be reserved.
We look forward to seeing you in Albany on July 23-25.
In peace,
Jerry Gordon
Secretary, National Peace Conference
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program) and the Murder of Black Panther Leaders
http://www.averdade.org.br/modules/news/article.php?storyid=451
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This is just inspiring! You have to watch it! ...bw
Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79pX1IOqPU
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SEIZE BP!
[While this is a good beginning to a fight to put safety first--for workers and the planet--we must recognize that the whole thrust of capitalism is to get the job done quicker and cheaper, workers and the world be damned!
It is workers who are intimately aware of the dangers of production and the ways those dangers could be eliminated. And, if, say, a particular mine, factory, industry can't be made to be safe, then it should be abandoned. Those workers effected should simply be "retired" with full pay and benefits. They have already been subjected to the toxins, dangers, etc., on the job.
Basically, safety must be under worker's control. Workers must have first dibs on profits to insure safety first.
It not only means nationalizing industry--but internationalizing industry--and placing it under the control and operation of the workers themselves. Governmental controls of safety regulations are notoriously ineffectual because the politicians themselves are the corporation's paid defenders. It only makes sense that corporate profits should be utilized--under the worker's control--to put safety first or stop production altogether. Safety first has to be interpreted as "safety before profits and profits for safety first!" We can only hope it is not too late! ...bw]
SEIZE BP!
The government of the United States must seize BP and freeze its assets, and place those funds in trust to begin providing immediate relief to the working people throughout the Gulf states whose jobs, communities, homes and businesses are being harmed or destroyed by the criminally negligent actions of the CEO, Board of Directors and senior management of BP.
Take action now! Sign the Seize BP petition to demand the seizure of BP!
200,000 gallons of oil a day, or more, are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico with the flow of oil growing. The poisonous devastation to human beings, wildlife, natural habitat and fragile ecosystems will go on for decades. It constitutes an act of environmental violence, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.
BP's Unmitigated Greed
This was a manufactured disaster. It was neither an "Act of God" nor Nature that caused this devastation, but rather the unmitigated greed of Big Oil's most powerful executives in their reckless search for ever-greater profits.
Under BP's CEO Tony Hayward's aggressive leadership, BP made a record $5.6 billion in pure profits just in the first three months of 2010. BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-09. It has a long history of safety violations and slap-on-the-wrist fines.
BP's Materially False and Misleading Statements
BP filed a 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, which repeatedly assured the government that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities." In the filing, BP stated over and over that it was unlikely for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill causing serious damage to beaches, mammals and fisheries and that as such it did not require a response plan for such an event.
BP's executives are thus either guilty of making materially false statements to the government to obtain the license, of consciously misleading a government that was all too ready to be misled, and/or they are guilty of criminal negligence. At a bare minimum, their representations constitute gross negligence. Whichever the case, BP must be held accountable for its criminal actions that have harmed so many.
Protecting BP's Super-Profits
BP executives are banking that they can ride out the storm of bad publicity and still come out far ahead in terms of the billions in profit that BP will pocket. In 1990, in response to the Exxon Valdez disaster, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Oil Pollution Act, which immunizes oil companies for the damages they cause beyond immediate cleanup costs.
Under the Oil Pollution Act, oil companies are responsible for oil removal and cleanup costs for massive spills, and their liability for all other forms of damages is capped at $75 million-a pittance for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits in just the last three months, and is expected to make $23 billion in pure profit this year. Some in Congress suggest the cap should be set at $10 billion, still less than the potential cost of this devastation-but why should the oil companies have any immunity from responsibility for the damage they cause?
The Oil Pollution Act is an outrage, and it will be used by BP to keep on doing business as usual.
People are up in arms because thousands of workers who have lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of BP's actions have to wait in line to compete for lower wage and hazardous clean-up jobs from BP. BP's multi-millionaire executives are not asked to sacrifice one penny while working people have to plead for clean-up jobs.
Take Action Now
It is imperative that the government seize BP's assets now for their criminal negligence and begin providing immediate relief for the immense suffering and harm they have caused.
Seize BP Petition button*: http://www.seizebp.org/
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Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0rAwk4lFE&feature=player_embedded#
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Rachel Carson's Warnings in "The Sea Around Us":
"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself. . ." http://www.savethesea.org/quotes
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Operation Small Axe - Trailer
http://www.blockreportradio.com/news-mainmenu-26/820-us-school-district-to-begin-microchipping-students.html
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Shame on Arizona
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer just signed a law that will authorize officers to pull over, question, and detain anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" to believe is in this country without proper documentation. It's legalized racial profiling, and it's an affront on all of our civil rights, especially Latinos. It's completely unacceptable.
Join us in letting Arizona's leaders know how we feel, and that there will be consequences. A state that dehumanizes its own people does not deserve our economic support
"As long as racial profiling is legal in Arizona, I will do what I can to not visit the state and to avoid spending dollars there."
Sign Petition Here:
http://presente.org/campaigns/shame?populate=1
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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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 501c)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
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Collateral Murder
[COLD-BLOODED, OUTRIGHT MURDER OF UNARMED CIVILIANS--AND THEY LAUGH ABOUT IT AS THEY SHOOT! THIS IS A BLOOD-CURTLING, VIOLENT AND BRUTAL VIDEO THAT SHOULD BE VIEWED BY EVERYONE! IT EXPOSES, AS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID, "THE BIGGEST PURVEYORS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD," THE U.S. BI-PARTISAN GOVERNMENT AND THE MILITARY THEY COMMAND. --BW]
Overview
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
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San Francisco City and County Tramples on Civil Liberties
A Letter to Antiwar Activists
Dear Activists:
On Saturday, March 20, the San Francisco City and County Recreation and Parks Department's Park Rangers patrolled a large public antiwar demonstration, shutting down the distribution of Socialist Viewpoint magazine. The rally in Civic Center Plaza was held in protest of the illegal and immoral U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Park Rangers went table-to-table examining each one. They photographed the Socialist Viewpoint table and the person attending it-me. My sister, Debbie and I, had set up the table. We had a sign on the table that asked for a donation of $1.25 for the magazine. The Park Rangers demanded that I "pack it up" and go, because selling or even asking for donations for newspapers or magazines is no longer permitted without the purchase of a new and expensive "vendors license." Their rationale for this denial of free speech is that the distribution of newspapers, magazines, T-shirts-and even food-would make the political protest a "festival" and not a political protest demonstration!
This City's action is clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution-the right to free speech and freedom of the press-and can't be tolerated.
While they are firing teachers and other San Francisco workers, closing schools, cutting back healthcare access, cutting services to the disabled and elderly, it is outrageous that the Mayor and City Government chose to spend thousands of dollars to police tables at an antiwar rally-a protest demonstration by the people!
We can't let this become the norm. It is so fundamentally anti-democratic. The costs of the permits for the rally, the march, the amplified sound, is already prohibitive. Protest is not a privilege we should have to pay for. It's a basic right in this country and we should reclaim it!
Personally, I experienced a deep feeling of alienation as the crisply-uniformed Park Ranger told me I had to "pack it up"-especially when I knew that they were being paid by the City to do this at this demonstration!
I hope you will join this protest of the violation of the right to distribute and, therefore, the right to read Socialist Viewpoint, by writing or emailing the City officials who are listed below.1
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Editorial Board Member, Socialist Viewpoint
www.socialistviewpoint.org
60 - 29th Street, #429
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
1 Mayor Gavin Newsom
City Hall, Room 200
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244
San Francisco, Ca 94102-4689
Board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department Park Rangers
McLaren Lodge & Annex
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Park.patrol@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
recpark.commission@sfgov.org
Chief of Police George Gascón
850 Bryant Street, #525
San Francisco, CA 94103
(I could not find an email address for him.).
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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On June 30, an innocent man will be given a second chance.
In 1991, Troy Davis was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and seven out of nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their testimony.
He was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. But it's not too late to change Troy's fate.
We just learned today that Troy has been granted an evidentiary hearing -- an opportunity to right this wrong. Help give him a second chance by telling your friends to pledge their support for Troy:
http://www.iamtroy.com/
Troy Davis may just be one man, but his situation represents an injustice experienced by thousands. And suffering this kind of injustice, by even one man, is one person too many.
Thanks to you and 35,000 other NAACP members and supporters who spoke out last August, the U.S. Supreme Court is granting Troy Davis his day in court--and a chance to make his case after 19 years on death row.
This hearing is the first step.
We appreciate your continued support of Troy. If you have not yet done so, please visit our website, sign the petition, then tell your friends to do the same.
http://www.iamtroy.com
I will be in touch soon to let you know how else you can help.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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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
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Mere Silence Doesn't Invoke Miranda, Justices Rule
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 1, 2010
Filed at 10:59 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/01/us/politics/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Miranda-Rights.html?_r=1&hp
2) Job Outlook for Teenagers Worsens
By MICKEY MEECE
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01jobs.html
3) Louisianan Becomes Face of Anger on Spill
"To hear Mr. Nungesser tell it, the big boys - BP, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers - have all been better at pointing fingers than solving problems."
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/us/01parish.html?ref=us
4) Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, and Stop Fretting
By DAVID STREITFELD
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01nopay.html?ref=business
5) Not in My Jewish Name
By Rob Kall
June 1, 2010
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Not-in-My-Jewish-Name-by-Rob-Kall-100601-960.html
6) Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades
By John Vidal, environment editor
The Observer
Sunday 30 May 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
7) Veterans For Peace Responds to Armed Attack on Aid Flotilla
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Organized locally. Recognized nationally. Exposing the true costs of war since 1985.
Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-725-6005
www.veteransforpeace.org
8) U.N. Security Council Condemns 'Acts' in Israeli Raid
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ALAN COWELL
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02nations.html?hp
9) Latest Effort to Stop Oil Flow Hits a Snag
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and JOSEPH BERGER
[BP's bottom line remains the same: "The London-based oil giant will be trying to reassure investors that the cost of cleaning up the oil spill is manageable and will not have an impact on dividends, British media reported. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive is expected to tell investors that the cost, estimated at $1 billion, can be absorbed by cash generated from its operation around the world. 'If our current efforts were to fail and we have to wait for the relief wells to be drilled and had six months of clean-up, we estimate the cost at $3 billion,' Mr. Hayward told the Daily Mail. He noted that cost would be offset by the company's strong performance which should generate cash flows of $7.5 to $8 billion."
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03spill.html?hp
10) Israel Starts to Expel Activists It Seized on Flotilla to Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER and SABRINA TAVERNISE
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/middleeast/03flotilla.html?hp
11) Pressure Mounts on Israel as Activists Vow to Test Blockade Again
By ISABEL KERSHNER and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?ref=world
12) On the Alabama Coast, a New Sense of Urgency
"At the training session for volunteer field observers, Jon DeJean said she felt helpless, in part because she felt BP and government agencies were not telling the whole truth about the spill. 'I was angry from the start,' Ms. DeJean said, 'but the frustration is growing. For weeks I've been feeling powerless and helpless. I feel coming here is at least a step in the right direction. It gives me the feeling of doing something.' But Tim Helland, a kayak fisherman, acknowledged that there was not much the observers - or anyone - could do. 'We're going to patrol the beaches, and we'll know exactly when it comes,' he said. 'But it's still coming. I'm 62. I may not be fishing where I fish ever again.'"
By JOHN LELAND
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03mobile.html?ref=us
13) Deep Underwater, Oil Threatens Reefs
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02coral.html?ref=us
14) Study Finds Blacks Blocked From Southern Juries
By SHAILA DEWAN
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02jury.html?ref=us
15) Medical Marijuana Workers in California Join Union Local
By JESSE McKINLEY
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29pot.html
16) U.N. Report Highly Critical of U.S. Drone Attacks
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html?ref=world
17) Fishermen Wait on Docks as Oil Gushes
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03seafood.html?ref=us
18) Oil Companies Weigh Strategies to Fend Off Tougher Regulations
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAD MOUAWAD
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03lobby.html?ref=us
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1) Mere Silence Doesn't Invoke Miranda, Justices Rule
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 1, 2010
Filed at 10:59 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/01/us/politics/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Miranda-Rights.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights ''upside down.''
A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
The ruling comes in a case where a suspect, Van Chester Thompkins, remained mostly silent for a three-hour police interrogation before implicating himself in a Jan. 10, 2000, murder in Southfield, Mich. He appealed his conviction, saying that he invoked his Miranda right to remain silent by remaining silent.
But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the decision for the court's conservatives, said that wasn't enough.
''Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police,'' Kennedy said. ''Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.''
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's newest member, wrote a strongly worded dissent for the court's liberals, saying the majority's decision ''turns Miranda upside down.''
''Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent -- which counterintuitively, requires them to speak,'' she said. ''At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.''
Van Chester Thompkins was arrested for murder in 2001 and interrogated by police for three hours. At the beginning, Thompkins was read his Miranda rights and said he understood.
The officers in the room said Thompkins said little during the interrogation, occasionally answering ''yes,'' ''no,'' ''I don't know,'' nodding his head and making eye contact as his responses. But when one of the officers asked him if he prayed for forgiveness for ''shooting that boy down,'' Thompkins said, ''Yes.''
He was convicted, but on appeal he wanted that statement thrown out because he said he invoked his Miranda rights by being uncommunicative with the interrogating officers.
The Cincinnati-based appeals court agreed and threw out his confession and conviction. The high court reversed that decision.
The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins, 08-1470.
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2) Job Outlook for Teenagers Worsens
By MICKEY MEECE
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01jobs.html
This year is shaping up to be even worse than last for the millions of high school and college students looking for summer jobs.
State and local governments, traditionally among the biggest seasonal employers, are knee-deep in budget woes, and the stimulus money that helped cushion some government job programs last summer is running out. Private employers are also reluctant to hire until the economy shows more solid signs of recovery.
So expect fewer lifeguards on duty at public beaches this summer in California, fewer workers at some Massachusetts state parks and camping grounds and taller grass outside state buildings in Kentucky.
Students seeking summer jobs, generally 16 to 24 years old, are at the end of the job line, behind the jobless baby boomers who are competing with new college graduates who, in turn, are trying to elbow out undergraduates and high school students.
With so many people competing for so few jobs, unemployed youth "are the silent victims of the economy," said Adele McKeon, a career specialist with the Boston Private Industry Council who counsels students on matters like workplace etiquette, professionalism and résumé writing.
Getting that first job "is an accomplishment, and it's independence," Ms. McKeon said. "If you don't have it, where are you going to learn that stuff?"
The unemployment rate for the 16-to-24 age group reached a record 19.6 percent in April, double the national average. For those job seekers, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, "This is the worst year, definitely since the early '80s recession and very likely since the Great Depression."
Or as researchers at Northeastern University, who issued a report in April on youth unemployment, put it, "The summer job outlook does not appear to be very bright in the absence of a massive new summer jobs intervention."
Still, the poor numbers this year are not solely a symptom of the continued weak economy. For generations, government data shows, at least half of all teenagers were in the labor force in June, July and August. Starting this decade, though, the number of employed teenagers began to drop, and by 2009, less than a third of teenagers had jobs. This year, the number could fall below 30 percent.
That is a stark contrast to the job market for recent college graduates seeking full-time employment - a market where this is actually a slight increase from this time last year.
There is no simple explanation for the large drop-off in summer jobs this decade, though experts say that more high school students are choosing to volunteer and do internships to burnish their college applications. But the Northeastern researchers said a large number of youths had been left out of the work force and wanted to get back in.
The forecast for this summer is so dire that high school students took to the streets this year in Washington, Boston and New York to push lawmakers to come up with money for summer youth jobs programs as Congress did last year, allocating $1.2 billion for a program for low-income youths.
On Friday, the House passed a measure that included the summer jobs provision, though its future in the Senate this week is uncertain.
The Northeastern researchers estimated that an additional $1 billion federal infusion would create some 300,000 job slots this summer, barely putting a dent in the demand for jobs.
Still, those types of positions are desperately needed, said Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, which works with private and public employers to place students.
For students like Anthony Roberts, 18, and Deandre Briber, 18, at the Prologue Early College High School in Chicago, the federal money offers some hope. Both are applying to the alternative school's summer jobs program.
Last summer, with the aid of stimulus money, the school hired dozens of students, according to its principal, Pa Joof. This summer, without the money, the school can afford just 10.
"It was great last summer," he said. "We had 80 to 90 kids kept off of the street seven or eight weeks. They were able to come right back to school without any problem" in the fall, he added. "What's happening right now in Chicago, you let these kids out there for four or five weeks, we are going to lose some of them. That's just the nature of the streets."
Mr. Briber, who graduates next January, said he had applied at T.J. Maxx, Target, Kmart, and at a local docking company, with no luck. Having an income will help ease the burden on his mother, he said. Also, he said, "I feel like I do need to get a job because I'm kind of a handful. I want things, clothes, and to take care of myself. I just want to be on my own, to help out with bills."
Mr. Roberts, who graduates in June and plans to attend college, said he had been searching for a job for a year and a half. Everywhere he goes, Mr. Roberts says, there are other teenagers ahead of him. "It bothers me, but at the same time," he said, "I try not to let it bother me."
In Boston, at the Charlestown High School, Jamila Hussein, 19, said she had been running into the same problem in looking for a part-time job in retail or restaurants. "It's harder than it sounds," said Ms. Hussein, who has a summer internship lined up in July to clerk for a judge. "Right now, some of the things, even if they are available, you have adults looking."
Last week, Ms. Hussein was at the office of Ms. McKeon, the career specialist with the Boston Private Industry Council. The partnership with the private industry council and public schools is well entrenched, about 30 years old, Ms. McKeon said. Even so, she said, "we've never seen it like it is now."
Jada Bonner, 15, another student at Charlestown High, was at Ms. McKeon's office applying for a summer job through a community program. "I just want a job, independence. I don't want to ask my mom 24/7 for pocket money, and she might not even have it," she said.
While cities like Boston and New York have had to cut summer youth jobs programs, Cincinnati has maintained a $1 million budget for its youth initiative the last few years because of the mayor's commitment to the program, according to Jason Barron of the mayor's office.
About 700 high school and college-age youths will be hired to create murals, landscape, work in the parks department, serve as junior counselors and intern at neighborhood recreation centers, he said.
Elsewhere, the Interior Department has committed to hiring at least 12,000 youth in 2010 - a 50 percent increase over the 8,000 in 2009 as part of its Youth in the Great Outdoors initiative.
But for the second consecutive year, CareerBuilder.com found in its summer hiring forecast that a vast majority of employers did not intend to hire seasonal help. "Summer hiring plans clearly show that they are still waiting to see what the future brings before they move forward with recruitment," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president for human resources.
Still, Ms. Haefner said, there have been some positive signs, like an increase in job postings.
Retailers like American Eagle Outfitters are hiring at various locations, including its flagship stores in New York City, where it plans job fairs in June. In tourist spots like Atlantic City, businesses are expecting a rebound in seasonal hires, according to the Convention and Visitors Authority.
Indeed, career specialists say job seekers who persevere can find work. "It's still going to be a tough summer for teens," said Renée Ward, who runs the job help site, teens4hire.org.
To which Mr. Sullivan of the Boston Private Industry Council, said, "Everyone has fond memories of their summer jobs as they grew up."
"For almost half of this generation," he said, "that has been lost."
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3) Louisianan Becomes Face of Anger on Spill
"To hear Mr. Nungesser tell it, the big boys - BP, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers - have all been better at pointing fingers than solving problems."
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/us/01parish.html?ref=us
BELLE CHASSE, La. - The Plaquemines Parish emergency operations center, which looks like a suitable place to plan an invasion of Europe, sits on the third floor of a nondescript government building off the highway.
At 8 a.m. every day, a collection of officials from the parish, the state, the National Guard, the Coast Guard and BP gather for a staff meeting. On a recent morning, the group sat, waiting, surrounded by television screens, a buffet counter of walkie-talkies and placards emblazoned with serious-looking acronyms that hang from the ceiling over a long conference table.
They were waiting for Billy Nungesser. When he marched in, he had already been up for hours, as usual, appearing on the morning TV news shows. He sat down and yanked an eyedropper out of a paper bag - a bug had flown into his eye during an interview with Anderson Cooper of CNN. He squeezed out some drops, then got down to business.
Mr. Nungesser, a native Louisianan, is president of Plaquemines Parish, an elongated rural jurisdiction that runs southeast from New Orleans and escorts the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico.
Within hours of the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Mr. Nungesser, 51, became a go-to guy for the news media. In the ensuing weeks, he has turned into the angry everyman of the oil spill, whether delivering a broadside against the government and BP's response efforts on CNN or standing in the gymnasium of Boothville-Venice Elementary School (Home of the Oilers!) before an anxious crowd of shrimpers and fishermen.
"I know it's going to be rough," he said to the crowd in a speech that sounded at times like a locker room pep talk. "I know everything's not going to go our way. But they're not going to beat us."
"Go get 'em, Billy," someone shouted from the bleachers.
To hear Mr. Nungesser tell it, the big boys - BP, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers - have all been better at pointing fingers than solving problems.
Along with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Mr. Nungesser has been a dogged advocate for a plan to build barrier islands out of dredged material to keep the oil off the shores.
There are a number of experts, including the Army Corps of Engineers, who think this is a bad idea, citing cost, time and environmental impact. In Mr. Nungesser's gospel, that kind of response, even if it turns out to be true, is only half an answer. Come up with a better idea, he tells critics, or keep your reservations to yourself.
"These guys have no clue and no ability to think outside the box," he said at the morning staff meeting.
Despite an affinity for the spotlight, Mr. Nungesser is a hard man to pin down. Between a cellphone that buzzes like an angry wasp, an unending string of interview requests, a visit by the president and the actual work of managing the parish, it is nearly impossible to slow him down long enough to confirm some basic biographical facts.
For example: How did Mr. Nungesser come to own an elk ranch in the parish?
The elk, he said late Thursday night over a 10-minute dinner of Sun Chips and soda, were bought from a man in Nebraska with the money he got from selling his house to his sister when he went to live in a shipping container.
Mr. Nungesser throws out sentences like that, and before one has a chance to ask him to elaborate, he is back on the phone, talking to a state trooper or a parish official or his fiancée, who needs to know that a television camera crew was following him home that night.
Back to the shipping container.
"I had a Jacuzzi," he clarified. "It was nice."
In his 20s and early 30s, Mr. Nungesser worked for his father's business, a catering company that served offshore drilling rigs. In 1991, before he got involved with the elk (he sells the velvet off the antlers for arthritis medicine), Mr. Nungesser realized that metal shipping containers could be modified and used as living quarters for workers on offshore rigs.
He had a hard time at first selling the idea to investors, mainly friends and friends of friends, and so he moved into a container himself. The company, General Marine Leasing, eventually reached $20 million in sales, and now, instead of a shipping container, he lives on a palatial estate built on a man-made hill in front of an artificial lake.
Mr. Nungesser rode out Hurricane Katrina on this estate and decided to run for parish president as a Republican in 2006, he said, out of frustration over the local response to the recovery.
It was a big decision. A run for state representative in his early 20s had left him cynical about politics, despite his pedigree: his father was the chairman of the State Republican Party when there was not much of one to speak of, and he was the chief of staff for Gov. David C. Treen, the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction, in the early 1980s.
Mr. Nungesser's preparations for public office had come from running a business, an experience that made him good at laying into uncooperative oil companies but not always agile when it came to the give and take of a democracy.
"In private business, Billy was, in essence, the chief cook and bottle washer," said Anthony Buras, a member of the parish council. "In the private business mentality, you move forward the minute you make a decision. Sometimes in government that isn't always doable. There have been some times where there's been some conflict with that."
Mr. Nungesser's impatience with the parish council is not something he takes pains to hide, railing against "the egos and the jealousy" of his political opponents with the same irritation he displays when criticizing the response to the oil spill.
That is the mode he seems to enjoy most, and one he was fully engaged in late Thursday night on the front porch of the Myrtle Grove Marina.
He had just taken a regiment of journalists out in boats to see oiled pelicans, and now, his clothes drenched from a sudden downpour, he was balancing a flurry of phone calls with the demands of the news media.
Standing in white shrimp boots that he called his Cajun Reeboks, he kept up the phone conversation while hooking up his microphone for a CNN interview like a seasoned correspondent.
Then there was a moment of quiet as the cameraman counted down to the broadcast, a calmness that was striking. Mr. Nungesser was still for a full minute.
Then he heard something in his earpiece, and he began telling Mr. Cooper why things just were not working right.
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4) Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, and Stop Fretting
By DAVID STREITFELD
May 31, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01nopay.html?ref=business
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - For Alex Pemberton and Susan Reboyras, foreclosure is becoming a way of life - something they did not want but are in no hurry to get out of.
Foreclosure has allowed them to stabilize the family business. Go to Outback occasionally for a steak. Take their gas-guzzling airboat out for the weekend. Visit the Hard Rock Casino.
"Instead of the house dragging us down, it's become a life raft," said Mr. Pemberton, who stopped paying the mortgage on their house here last summer. "It's really been a blessing."
A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.
This type of modification does not beg for a lender's permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.
"I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn't help," said Mr. Pemberton's mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son's. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. "They're all crooks."
Foreclosure procedures have been initiated against 1.7 million of the nation's households. The pace of resolving these problem loans is slow and getting slower because of legal challenges, foreclosure moratoriums, government pressure to offer modifications and the inability of the lenders to cope with so many souring mortgages.
The average borrower in foreclosure has been delinquent for 438 days before actually being evicted, up from 251 days in January 2008, according to LPS Applied Analytics.
While there are no firm figures on how many households are following the Pemberton-Reboyras path of passive resistance, real estate agents and other experts say the number of overextended borrowers taking the "free rent" approach is on the rise.
There is no question, though, that for some borrowers in default, foreclosure is only a theoretical threat for a long time.
More than 650,000 households had not paid in 18 months, LPS calculated earlier this year. With 19 percent of those homes, the lender had not even begun to take action to repossess the property - double the rate of a year earlier.
In some states, including California and Texas, lenders can pursue foreclosures outside of the courts. With the lender in control, the pace can be brisk. But in Florida, New York and 19 other states, judicial foreclosure is the rule, which slows the process substantially.
In Pinellas and Pasco counties, which include St. Petersburg and the suburbs to the north, there are 34,000 open foreclosure cases, said J. Thomas McGrady, chief judge of the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit. Ten years ago, the average was about 4,000. "The volume is killing us," Judge McGrady said.
Mr. Pemberton and Ms. Reboyras decided to stop paying because their business, which restores attics that have been invaded by pests, was on the verge of failing. Scrambling to get by, their credit already shot, they had little to lose.
"We could pay the mortgage company way more than the house is worth and starve to death," said Mr. Pemberton, 43. "Or we could pay ourselves so our business could sustain us and people who work for us over a long period of time. It may sound very horrible, but it comes down to a self-preservation thing."
They used the $1,837 a month that they were not paying their lender to publicize A Plus Restorations, first with print ads, then local television. Word apparently got around, because the business is recovering.
The couple owe $280,000 on the house, where they live with Ms. Reboyras's two daughters, their two dogs and a very round pet raccoon named Roxanne. The house is worth less than half that amount - which they say would be their starting point in future negotiations with their lender.
"If they took the house from us, that's all they would end up getting for it anyway," said Ms. Reboyras, 46.
One reason the house is worth so much less than the debt is because of the real estate crash. But the couple also refinanced at the height of the market, taking out cash to buy a truck they used as a contest prize for their hired animal trappers.
It was a stupid move by their lender, according to Mr. Pemberton. "They went outside their own guidelines on debt to income," he said. "And when they did, they put themselves in jeopardy."
His mother, Wendy Pemberton, who has been cutting hair at the same barber shop for 30 years, has been in default since spring 2008. Mrs. Pemberton, 68, refinanced several times during the boom but says she benefited only once, when she got enough money for a new roof. The other times, she said, unscrupulous salesmen promised her lower rates but simply charged her high fees.
Even without the burden of paying $938 a month for her decaying house, Mrs. Pemberton is having a tough time. Most of her customers are senior citizens who pay only $8 for a cut, and they are spacing out their visits.
"The longer I'm in foreclosure, the better," she said.
In Florida, the average property spends 518 days in foreclosure, second only to New York's 561 days. Defense attorneys stress they can keep this number high.
Both generations of Pembertons have hired a local lawyer, Mark P. Stopa. He sends out letters - 1,700 in a recent week - to Floridians who have had a foreclosure suit filed against them by a lender.
Even if you have "no defenses," the form letter says, "you may be able to keep living in your home for weeks, months or even years without paying your mortgage."
About 10 new clients a week sign up, according to Mr. Stopa, who says he now has 350 clients in foreclosure, each of whom pays $1,500 a year for a maximum of six hours of attorney time. "I just do as much as needs to be done to force the bank to prove its case," Mr. Stopa said.
Many mortgages were sold by the original lender, a circumstance that homeowners' lawyers try to exploit by asking them to prove they own the loan. In Mrs. Pemberton's case, Mr. Stopa filed a motion to dismiss on March 17, 2009, and the case has not moved since then. He filed a similar motion in her son's case last December.
From the lenders' standpoint, people who stay in their homes without paying the mortgage or actively trying to work out some other solution, like selling it, are "milking the process," said Kyle Lundstedt, managing director of Lender Processing Service's analytics group. LPS provides technology, services and data to the mortgage industry.
These "free riders" are "the unintended and unfortunate consequence" of lenders struggling to work out a solution, Mr. Lundstedt said. "These people are playing a dangerous game. There are processes in many states to go after folks who have substantial assets postforeclosure."
But for borrowers like Jim Tsiogas, the benefits of not paying now outweigh any worries about the future.
"I stopped paying in August 2008," said Mr. Tsiogas, who is in foreclosure on his house and two rental properties. "I told the lady at the bank, 'I can't afford $2,500. I can only afford $1,300.' "
Mr. Tsiogas, who lives on the coast south of St. Petersburg, blames his lenders for being unwilling to help when the crash began and his properties needed shoring up.
Their attitude seems to have changed since he went into foreclosure. Now their letters say things like "we're willing to work with you." But Mr. Tsiogas feels little urge to respond.
"I need another year," he said, "and I'm going to be pretty comfortable."
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5) Not in My Jewish Name
By Rob Kall
June 1, 2010
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Not-in-My-Jewish-Name-by-Rob-Kall-100601-960.html
I am a Jew and I am outraged and ashamed by the acts Israel has perpetrated. I am not a self hating Jew, not an anti-semite, as some religious extremist Jews have accused me and other Jews who criticize Israel.
I am a Jew who knows right from wrong, who can see that the band of evil idiots in Israel who are making decisions are doing the wrong thing, doing things that are bad for the Jewish people. I stand up now declaring that Israel does not act in my name. AIPAC, the lobbying group for Israel does not act in my name.
I was ashamed and outraged when Israel attacked Gaza, killing over 1000 innocents. I told my son it would be like him throwing a balled up peice of paper at me and me coming back with a hammer smashing him in the head and face repeatedly.
There's no other way to explain it. The Israeli leadership have become psychopaths, without conscience. I know that there are Jews who are bigots, who see the Palestinians as less than human. These are usually the same racist haters who listen to Rush Limbaugh like the Christian racist haters who treat all Muslims and blacks the same way. It's not a Jewish or Zionist thing. People who like to hate Jews tend to think that way. Sorry, It's not the case.
Israel is now controlled by a small minority of extreme, ultra-orthodox Jews. They have the power because they have small minority power bases in the Knesset that they use to help larger groups to gain power-- as long as these fringe groups get specific things they want. These ultra-orthodox are extremist fundamentalists, just like the crazy, rabid right wingers we have here in the USA.
It is time for the US to deal with Israel, facing the reality that these extremists are controlling too much. The US should tell AIPAC that the curtain has been lifted, it no longer will be paid attention to and it should go away.
There are a few million Jews in the US. They're a powerful voting bloc and they tend to vote liberal-- about 75-80 percent. An awful lot of them are very unhappy today. If you know any, talk to them. If you are one, speak out, as a Jew, that you refuse to allow Israel to act as though it represents the Jewish people. Demand it. NOT IN MY NAME!! Tell them.
The members of congress are terrified of Israel's main lobbying arm, AIPAC, and jump like frightened puppies when AIPAC barks. I've written about this before, thatAIPAC IS Bad for Israel, but it is also bad for the Jewish people. Israel's crimes against humanity have done more to increase anti-Semitism in recent years than any other cause.
AIPAC's reign of fear over congress must stop. It will only end if constituents show that they care. Whether you are Jewish or not, tell your representatives that Israel's actions against the Palestinians and Humanitarians aiding the Palestinians must not stand. I wrote some ideas on how to fight back against AIPAC here. One thing that is still true, attacking Jews and going into anti-zionist rants will only help AIPAC. This is about Israel, not Zionism. Attacking Zionists or Israeli Jews in general does smack of anti-Semitism and serves the Israeli propagandists, even if it may make some who hate Israel feel good. If you want to help the people of Gaza talk Israeli crimes. If you want to vent your spleen and help Israel and AIPAC, talk Zionists and Zionism.
We are facing terrible times, with the possibility that Gulf could become a dead zone and a president who does not have what it takes to call what the Israelis did wrong.
That must change. We need to go to the local offices of the members of the House of Representatives and show them, with big numbers, that Israel does not have a blank check. It is time to pull the plug on the bottomless money we've been sending to Israel. Force them to change their policies by voting out the insane leaders who believe that they can commit the CRIMES they've committed and the US will do nothing.
It is time. It is past time.
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6) Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades
By John Vidal, environment editor
The Observer
Sunday 30 May 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it - the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.
Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.
On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.
"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
"The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different."
"We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The Gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
"This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper," he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two major independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil - 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska - has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents - one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98% of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure. "We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation," said a spokesman.
"We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur."
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's national oil spill detection and response agency (Nosdra) says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4m barrels contaminated the environment. "Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime," said a spokesman for Nosdra.
The sense of outrage is widespread. "There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year," said Bassey. "It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm."
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: "The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world."
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Activist Ben Amunwa, of the London-based oil watch group Platform, said: "Deepwater Horizon may have exceed Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret."
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: "Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond."
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: "Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care."
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: "What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.
"It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the international court of justice."
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7) Veterans For Peace Responds to Armed Attack on Aid Flotilla
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Organized locally. Recognized nationally. Exposing the true costs of war since 1985.
Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-725-6005
www.veteransforpeace.org
The world is reacting in righteous outrage at this moment to Israel's high seas attack on an international aid flotilla, reportedly killing up to 20 people escorting tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza in an effort to break Israel's three-year blockade. "Made in the U.S.A." is stamped on the weapons commandos used to kill and wound the international peace activists. Reports from the first eyewitnesses interviewed are that Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the flotilla.
We are saddened and we are angry. At least one of our own members, retired Army Col., Ann Wright, is among the 700 people aboard the boats attacked in the middle of the night. But we cannot say we are very surprised. Palestinians die quietly and unnoticed every day in Gaza, the world's largest open air prison, as a result of Israel's blockade and violent repression.
Veterans For Peace Board Member, Cherie Eichholz, traveled to Gaza in May and had this to say about the situation in Gaza, "Surrounded by a massive wall and a naval blockade, Gazans are imprisoned, suffering without the most basic of necessities, including enough food and safe drinking water. The situation on the ground is grave."
Another Board Member, Elliott Adams, also traveled to Gaza in May said, "On our Memorial Day we veterans are presented with the ugly specter of US citizens having their lives threatened and being held captive in an act of piracy. Making it more painful, this is being done with US weapons. While the people of Gaza cry out for basic humanitarian needs, a neighboring nation is willing to kill to deny them basic life support."
Many of our 7,000 members in over 100 chapters are already organizing or will soon join the protests being organized across the U.S. We urge our members to use every nonviolent tactic available in the streets and in local Congressional offices to protest this attack. At the same time we demand Congress cut off U.S. military aid to Israel which has totaled over 32 billion dollars since 1997.
Call (202) 224-3121 to speak to your Congressional Representative and Senator!!
LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Democracy Now! - At Least 10 Activists Killed in Israeli Attack on Gaza-Bound Aid Ship:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/1/headlines#1
The Guardian - Israelis Opened Fire Before Boarding Gaza Flotilla, Say Released Activists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/01/gaza-flotilla-eyewitness-accounts-gunfire
Al Jazeera - Israel Attacks Gaza Aid Flotilla:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/201053133047995359.html
YouTube - Ann Wright taken into custody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td8WsdsY0FY&feature=youtu.be
The Hindu - Nobel Elders Deplore Gaza Flotilla Attack:
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/international/article442925.ece
Organized locally. Recognized nationally. Exposing the true costs of war since 1985.
Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-725-6005
www.veteransforpeace.org
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8) U.N. Security Council Condemns 'Acts' in Israeli Raid
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ALAN COWELL
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02nations.html?hp
UNITED NATIONS - After hours of negotiations, the United Nations Security Council early on Tuesday condemned "acts" resulting in the deaths of nine civilians in Israel's attack on an aid flotilla trying to breach the Gaza blockade.
In a formal statement that seemed less forceful than what had been demanded by the Palestinians, Arab nations and Turkey, the council also demanded an impartial investigation into the confrontation.
The statement urged that aid ships seized in the raid on Monday be released along with civilians held by Israel.
"The Security Council deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza," the statement said, adding that the 15-member body "in this context, condemns those acts which resulted in the loss" of lives.
The wording seemed designed to dilute demands for condemnation exclusively of Israel, which argues that its soldiers acted in self-defense in response to violent resistance to their interception of the vessels from passengers on board. After the raid, Israel seized hundreds of activists as well as the ships.
"The Security Council requests the immediate release of the ships as well as the civilians held by Israel," the United Nations statement said, calling for "a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards."
It also said the situation in Gaza, under blockade by Israel, was "not sustainable" and called for a "sustained and regular flow of goods and people to Gaza, as well as unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza."
On the broader Palestinian-Israeli confrontation, the Security Council renewed calls for a two-state solution and voiced concern that the raid on the flotilla took place while United States-sponsored so-called "proximity talks" were under way.
Earlier, Turkey - the unofficial sponsor of the convoy - had proposed a statement that would have condemned Israel for violating international law and demanded a United Nations investigation, the prosecution of those responsible for the raid and compensation for the victims. It also called for the end of the blockade.
But the Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, and it proposed a broader condemnation of the violence that would include the assault by passengers of the Israeli commandos as they landed on the deck of the ship.
As the wrangling continued late Monday night and in the early hours Tuesday, the two countries were trying to work out their differences on the wording, including whether to specify that the investigation should be conducted by outsiders, diplomats said.
While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session called by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation into the decision to fire on civilians in what they described as a humanitarian mission.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, whose country's once close relations with Israel have deteriorated markedly since Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2009, called the attack "tantamount to banditry and piracy; it is murder conducted by a state."
Noting that the ships were carrying items such as a playground equipment, cancer medicine and milk powder, he said that given the history of the Jews the Israelis should be more conscious than others of "the dangers and inhumanity of ghettoes as the one we currently witness in occupied Gaza."
Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, said the death toll indicated "there was disproportionate use of force and a level of violence which nothing justifies and which we condemn."
Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese ambassador, said even the laws of war require the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Several envoys said Israel was in violation of international law, not least because Security Council resolution 1860, passed in January 2009 during the Gaza war, had called for ending the blockade and opening unfettered access to humanitarian assistance throughout the strip. The diplomats also demanded immediate access to their citizens, with some 32 different nationalities among the estimated 600 to 700 people on the flotilla. Israel seized all six ships and forced them into port.
The United States, which habitually defends Israel in the council, said that the attempt to run the blockade by sea was ill advised.
"Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances," said Alejandro Wolff, the deputy permanent representative of the United States. But he also described the situation in Gaza as "unsustainable" and called on Israel to undertake a credible investigation.
Daniel Carmon, the deputy Israeli ambassador, scoffed at the idea that the ships were a humanitarian convoy - Israel had offered to bring the goods into Gaza over land - and said Israeli commandos acted in self-defense after being attacked with "life threatening means; live ammunition, knives, clubs, deck furniture and others types of weaponry."
He described the organizers as linked to a variety of Islamic terrorist organizations, which the Turkish foreign minister called a lie.
The International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization which seeks to end conflicts, issued a statement condemning the attack but noted that it was an outcome of the failed policy of many countries, not just Israel, in trying to isolate the Hamas government which controls the Gaza strip and thus turn the population against it.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from the United Nations, and Alan Cowell from London.
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9) Latest Effort to Stop Oil Flow Hits a Snag
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and JOSEPH BERGER
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03spill.html?hp
HOUMA, La. - The latest attempt to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-tipped saw operated by an underwater robot got stuck in the riser pipe it was intended to slice off, federal officials said.
The snared saw set back efforts to seal the stricken well that, since a drilling rig explosion on April 20, has been spewing thousands of gallons of oil into the gulf and fouling beaches, shellfish and birds on the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. But Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is commanding the federal response to the oil spill, said the necessary cut will be made, either by the temporarily snared saw or by another saw brought in to replace it. Once the cut is made, a containment dome can be lowered into place to capture most of the oil flow and send it up to a tanker on the surface.
"I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut," Admiral Allen said at a press conference here. "It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it."
He cautioned again, however, that this so-called cut-and-cap effort could increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent until the containment dome is snugly in place.
The attempt to stem the flow of oil was proceeding as the Obama administration began a civil and criminal investigation into the spill, a deepening crisis that threatens to define President Obama's second year in office. President Obama is expected to address the latest developments Wednesday afternoon in remarks at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In excerpts of a draft of those remarks released by the White House, the president said "the time has come, once and for all, for this nation to embrace a clean energy future," that includes more energy efficient cars and homes, more nuclear power plants, and roll backs of tax breaks to oil companies. The Gulf disaster, he said, "may prove to be the result of human error -- or corporations taking dangerous short cuts that compromised safety," but the nation "must acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes."
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans Tuesday that he planned to "prosecute to the fullest extent of the law" any person or entity that the Justice Department determines has broken the law in connection with the oil spill. The London-based oil giant will be trying to reassure investors that the cost of cleaning up the oil spill is manageable and will not have an impact on dividends, British media reported. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive is expected to tell investors that the cost, estimated at $1 billion, can be absorbed by cash generated from its operation around the world.
"If our current efforts were to fail and we have to wait for the relief wells to be drilled and had six months of clean-up, we estimate the cost at $3 billion," Mr. Hayward told the Daily Mail. He noted that cost would be offset by the company's strong performance which should generate cash flows of $7.5 to $8 billion.
On Wall Street Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 120 points shortly after Mr. Holder's announcement, as energy stocks tumbled; BP lost 15 percent of its market value during the day's trading. But on Wednesday, BP and the broader index both traded higher in the morning.
BP and government officials said flatly for the first time on Tuesday that they had abandoned any further plans to try to plug the well, and would instead try to siphon the leaking oil and gas to the surface until relief wells can stop the flow, which probably could not be achieved before late August.
The current strategy is to fit a containment cap over the leak and funnel oil up through a riser pipe to a ship on the surface. For this procedure to work, the original riser, the pipe that once ran from the wellhead up to the drilling rig and now lies broken and snaking along the sea floor, must be sheared off.
One cut has already been made in the riser, farther from the wellhead, to alleviate pressure. But another cut needs to be made at the point where the riser leaves the blowout preventer, the stack of valves sitting on the wellhead whose failure created what is now regarded by federal officials as the largest environmental disaster in modern America history.
The effectiveness of the procedure depends on how closely that cut can be made. The more water that mixes with the oil as it flows out of the cut pipe, the more likely it will be that ice crystals will form, blocking the flow. A closer cut would allow a cap to fit snugly over the leak, keeping the influx of frigid water to a minimum.
Campbell Robertson reported from Houma and Joseph Berger from New York.
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10) Israel Starts to Expel Activists It Seized on Flotilla to Gaza
By ISABEL KERSHNER and SABRINA TAVERNISE
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/middleeast/03flotilla.html?hp
JERUSALEM - Israel moved Wednesday to expel hundreds of activists seized in a deadly raid on a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza - including those accused of attacking Israeli commandos.
But the deportation of about 410 activists to Turkey hit a snag as officials waited for Israel's high court to rule on whether the detainees could be released without facing any criminal charges. Turkey, which harshly condemned Israel for Monday's botched raid on the convoy of ships, threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Israel if Israel failed to release all of the Turkish passengers by the end of the day.
"The ships and people on board should be released immediately," said Egemen Bagis, Turkish minister for European Union affairs.
Several individuals submitted petitions to the Supreme Court in a move against the mass deportation of the foreign activists, including those suspected by Israel of having taken part in attacks on soldiers.
By then, hundreds of Turkish citizens and other detainees had already been transferred to Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and were awaiting flights out of Israel. It was not immediately clear whether the court, which was due to convene on Wednesday afternoon, would hold up the deportations pending a ruling on the petitions, or when such a ruling would be made.
An airplane sent by Turkey was sitting at Ben-Gurion airport with 280 Turks and 50 other foreigners on board, according to the Turkish broadcaster NTV, which had a reporter on the Turkish ship that was raided by Israeli commandos, resulting in the deaths of nine activists.
It was unclear whether the plane would leave with the passengers on board, or wait for all Turkish citizens to be released. Israeli officials said hundreds of people from the six ships were taken from a detention center to the airport in Tel Aviv and to the land border with Jordan. More than 600 people were detained after the confrontation at sea, an episode that ignited international outrage and intensified pressure on Israel to ease restrictions on Gaza, a coastal enclave run by the militant Hamas movement.
Arthur Lenk, a lawyer at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that Israel believed it had legal grounds to prosecute some of the protesters who clashed with Israeli soldiers during the raid on the flotilla, but that Israel had also weighed the likely diplomatic and political consequences. On balance, he said, the authorities concluded it was in the country's best interests to deport them.
And in a letter submitted to the court earlier Wednesday, Yehuda Weinstein, Israel's attorney general, said that Israel's senior political echelon had recommended allowing the immediate expulsion "of all the foreigners who had arrived on the flotilla suspected of having carried out criminal acts."
The decision, he wrote, was based on "clear diplomatic interests touching on the state of Israel's foreign relations and national security."
Scores of the more than 600 people detained after Monday's raid crossed by bus into Jordan, where they provided fresh accounts of the confrontation aboard the Turkish vessel in international waters that touched off a diplomatic maelstrom for Israel with the nine civilians' deaths.
Activists said the Israeli commandos threw tear-gas canisters onto the deck of the ship, the Mavi Marmara, before descending from a helicopter. The Israeli government has said that its troops were attacked by passengers wielding knives and clubs, and that the commandos had fired only in self-defense.
After the Israeli military secured the ship, activists said, they were searched several times and put in restraints for eight to 12 hours as the ship was taken to the southern Israeli port city of Ashdod. One passenger, Basheer El-Zameely, said that people who were detained went hours without food or water and were treated "in a humiliating way," but added that some had refused to drink water once it was offered because the bottles' labels were in Hebrew.
Thirty Jordanians were among the 126 deportees from a dozen Muslim countries who crossed into Jordan; many of the nations have no diplomatic relations with Israel. Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, said that 325 people had been taken to Ben-Gurion airport to await flights to Turkey and that an additional 76 were on their way there. Israel hoped to complete the expulsions on Wednesday of all those captured, she said.
The expulsions coincided with continued international pressure on Israel to ease its blockade one day after the United Nations Security Council said restriction on access to Gaza was "not sustainable." In Britain, home to around 40 of the captured activists, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Wednesday that the Gaza blockade was "unjustifiable and untenable" and called for it to be lifted.
The United Nations Human Rights Council said it would send a fact-finding mission to investigate the attack.
The confrontation prompted Egypt to open a border checkpoint with Gaza on Tuesday to allow humanitarian aid. By Wednesday, about 250 people had entered Egypt from Gaza, and about 320 had crossed in the other direction. On Wednesday, dozens of Palestinians sat in an entry hall at the Rafah crossing, waiting for two hours or more to learn whether they would be issued entry stamps to Egypt or be turned back.
Egypt has largely sealed its border with Gaza since Hamas took power in the area three years ago, making it an important partner for Israel in keeping tight control over the flow of goods into the territory. Across Gaza, thousands of Palestinians waited, hoping to seize the limited opportunity to get out, but only dozens made it onto buses, which arrived at the Egyptian border every few hours, two at a time.
"I swear I'm not a terrorist, I just want to get out," Nevine Jarour said to one of the officers in the arrival hall, saying that her husband lived in Egypt and that she was alone with her children in Gaza.
"Don't worry," the officer replied. "No one said you are a terrorist."
Israel had issued multiple warnings to the pro-Palestinian flotilla, which was carrying thousands of tons of aid intended for Gaza despite an Israeli ban on direct shipments to the territory. Seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation. Israel said its commandos had acted in self-defense in response to violent resistance to their interception.
In coming days Israel will face a fresh test of its policy of intercepting sea shipments, which it tightened after the 2008-9 Gaza war. The pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement is planning to send a 1,200-ton cargo ship, the Rachel Corrie, to challenge the naval blockade as early as next week.
Israeli officials vowed that it, too, would be stopped.
"There will be lessons learned" at the tactical level, one government official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. "But the policy is the policy. We are talking about another interception at sea."
Israel began transferring to Gaza the cargo it had unloaded from the flotilla at a naval base in Ashdod. The military said it included toys, used clothes and some wheelchairs.
Col. Moshe Levi, commander of the Israeli military's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, said there was "no need for this cargo." Tons of supplies, including medical equipment, have been going into Gaza all year through the Israeli-controlled land crossings, he said.
While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session called by Turkey and Lebanon early this week was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation.
Gérard Araud, the French ambassador, said the death toll indicated that "there was disproportionate use of force and a level of violence which nothing justifies and which we condemn."
The United States, which habitually defends Israel in the council, said the attempt to run the blockade by sea had been ill advised.
"Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances," said Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy permanent representative of the United States. But he also described the situation in Gaza as "unsustainable" and called on Israel to undertake a credible investigation.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Sabrina Tavernise from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed Alan Cowell from London; Fares Akram from Gaza; Mona El-Naggar from Cairo; Dina Kraft from Tel Aviv; Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
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11) Pressure Mounts on Israel as Activists Vow to Test Blockade Again
By ISABEL KERSHNER and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - Israel faced rising international pressure on Tuesday to ease its blockade of Gaza, as the United Nations Security Council called its approach to isolating the coastal strip "not sustainable" and pro-Palestinian groups planned fresh attempts to test the closing of sea lanes around the Hamas-controlled territory.
A day after an Israel military raid on an international flotilla trying to breach the blockade left nine foreign activists dead, Egypt, an important partner for Israel in keeping tight control over the flow of goods into the territory, said it would open the land border with Gaza for humanitarian purposes.
Israel's relations with Turkey, once relatively close, also came under heavy strain. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey called the raid on the Turkish ship, which killed at least four Turkish citizens, a "bloody massacre" and said Israel should immediately end "the inhumane embargo on Gaza."
At the same time, the volatile Israel-Gaza border seemed to be heating up. Israeli soldiers killed two gunmen from the Islamic Jihad who had infiltrated Israel early Tuesday. Later in the day, the Israeli air force struck a group of militants in northern Gaza who were preparing to fire rockets at Israel, killing three.
While a growing number of countries view the Israeli blockade as counterproductive, causing more harm to the population of 1.5 million Palestinians than it does to Hamas, Israeli officials insisted Tuesday that it was a vital Israeli security interest and even a matter of life and death.
"We know the meaning of allowing these boats to reach Gaza," Silvan Shalom, an Israeli minister, told Army Radio, warning that they could bring "missiles, mortars and Iranians who will help them arm and train."
The Obama administration backed the Security Council resolution that condemned "acts" resulting in the nine deaths on the large Turkish boat, the Mavi Marmara. But American officials said relatively little about the matter and diluted demands for condemnation exclusively of Israel. The statement called for an impartial investigation into the confrontation.
"The Security Council deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza," the statement said, adding that the 15-member body "in this context, condemns those acts which resulted in the loss" of lives.
Israel had issued multiple warnings to the pro-Palestinian flotilla, which was carrying thousands of tons of aid intended for Gaza despite an Israel ban on direct shipments to the territory. Israeli naval commandos intercepted the ships early Monday, setting off a violent confrontation that left the nine activists dead and many other injured, including seven Israeli soldiers.
Israel said its soldiers had acted in self-defense in response to violent resistance to their interception. After the raid, Israel seized hundreds of activists, as well as the ships.
Many of those activists remained in custody in southern Israel on Tuesday, awaiting deportation; at least 48 who had agreed to identify themselves to the Israeli authorities, including a former American diplomat, Edward Peck, and the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, were on their way back home. The government said late Tuesday that it intended to deport all the activists within 48 hours.
Israel did not provide journalists with access to those detained. But some European activists on board the flotilla, who were deported and returned home, disputed Israeli accounts of the confrontation.
Norman Paech, a former member of the Left Party in Germany who was aboard the Marmara, said he had seen only three activists resisting the naval commandos, and called the Israeli response a violent overreaction.
"They had no knives, no axes, only sticks that they used to defend themselves," Mr. Paech said at a news conference in Berlin after returning from Tel Aviv. He said, however, that he could not rule out that others on the boat had used weapons against the soldiers.
Egypt's decision to temporarily open its border with Gaza was a victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that holds sway in the Palestinian enclave and has sought to raise pressure on Egypt to stop cooperating with the Israeli embargo. The opening of the border caused thousands of Gazans to stream toward the crossing at Rafah.
Israel also will face a fresh test in coming days of its policy of intercepting sea shipments, which it tightened after the 2008-2009 Gaza war. The pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement is planning to send a 1,200-ton cargo ship, the Rachel Corrie, to challenge the naval blockade as early as next week.
Israeli officials vowed that it, too, would be stopped.
"There will be lessons learned" at the tactical level, one government official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. "But the policy is the policy. We are talking about another interception at sea."
Israel began transferring to Gaza the cargo it had unloaded from the six-boat flotilla at a naval base in the Israeli port of Ashdod. The military said it included toys, some wheelchairs and a lot of used clothes.
Col. Moshe Levi, commander of the Israeli military's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, said there was "no need for this cargo." Tons of supplies, including medical equipment, have been going into Gaza all year through the Israeli-controlled land crossings, he said.
While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session called by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation.
Gérard Araud, the French ambassador, said the death toll indicated that "there was disproportionate use of force and a level of violence which nothing justifies and which we condemn."
Several envoys said Israel was in violation of international law, not least because Security Council Resolution 1860, passed in January 2009 during the Gaza war, called for ending the blockade and opening unfettered access to humanitarian assistance throughout the strip.
The United States, which habitually defends Israel in the council, said the attempt to run the blockade by sea had been ill-advised.
"Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances," said Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy permanent representative of the United States. But he also described the situation in Gaza as "unsustainable" and called on Israel to undertake a credible investigation.
Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Mona El-Naggar from Cairo, Dina Kraft from Tel Aviv, Rina Castelnuovo from Ashdod, Israel, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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12) On the Alabama Coast, a New Sense of Urgency
"At the training session for volunteer field observers, Jon DeJean said she felt helpless, in part because she felt BP and government agencies were not telling the whole truth about the spill. 'I was angry from the start,' Ms. DeJean said, 'but the frustration is growing. For weeks I've been feeling powerless and helpless. I feel coming here is at least a step in the right direction. It gives me the feeling of doing something.' But Tim Helland, a kayak fisherman, acknowledged that there was not much the observers - or anyone - could do. 'We're going to patrol the beaches, and we'll know exactly when it comes,' he said. 'But it's still coming. I'm 62. I may not be fishing where I fish ever again.'"
By JOHN LELAND
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03mobile.html?ref=us
MOBILE, Ala. - The beaches were still open; the restaurants were still serving shrimp. Fishermen were still casting for whiting off the white sandy shores. And ads on television still proclaimed the region open for business.
But as the oil slick made its way inexorably here toward the barrier islands at the mouth of Mobile Bay, with forecasts for a swath from Mississippi to the beaches of Pensacola, Fla., sometime this week, the mood was of the last days.
"You guys are our first line of defense," Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper , a preservation group, told about 50 volunteers gathered in a room filled to capacity. "Your job is to document what we have here that's beautiful. BP will have to make it right."
They had come to train as volunteer field observers, taking photographs and notes on the conditions of the shoreline before the oil arrived. Now, suddenly there was an urgency to their preparations. Over the weekend, isolated tar balls had washed ashore on nearby Dauphin Island, interrupting a busy beach holiday. "It's starting," Ms. Callaway said. "The first groups today took beautiful pictures of the western shore of Mobile Bay. But there are fish kills everywhere. One of our friends was on Dauphin Island when the tar ball washed up. Her 12-year-old daughter just started crying."
Until a few days ago, some people here had hoped, perhaps unrealistically, that the winds and currents would move the oil away from Alabama's coastal islands, where fishing and tourism dominate the local economy.
"I had townspeople calling me and saying it's not coming here," said Grace Tyson, who runs Tyson Realty on Dauphin Island, shaking her head. "It's like with the hurricanes. They're predicted but then they don't arrive. People said, 'Take my condo off the market.' "
Business is down by more than 75 percent, she said. And with the latest forecast, she added, "I'd say closer to one hundred."
The area had gotten a few tar balls in early May but no steady flow. Beaches filled for the Memorial Day weekend.
On the coastal island of Gulf Shores, some residents who had seen tar balls near their property said that their neighbors had told them not to talk about it. Ms. Callaway said that after she had appeared on television to talk about the tar balls on Dauphin Island, she, too, had received angry responses from locals. "I had people telling me, thanks a lot, you killed our tourist season."
Then, on the eve of the opening of red snapper season, a major event here, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded the boundaries of federal waters closed to fishing and the state department of public health closed the oyster beds.
"We have teams in place to clean up all that's coming in," said Jeff Collier, the mayor of Dauphin Island. "But this is foreign to us. I worry about our ability to keep on keeping on. I like to think that we will get less than New Orleans, but who knows? It could get that bad."
Fishermen and businesses have already put in claims with BP and the state for lost revenue, though the big losses are still to come, said Jeanine Stewart, an owner of Burris' Farmers Market in Loxley, where sales "bottomed out" almost immediately after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, but had crept back up since.
"The big thing businesses want to talk about is government supplements or BP claims," Ms. Stewart said. "They've advised all of us to file claims."
At the market, the television is turned to news, and Ms. Stewart calls people in to watch whenever there is an update on the spill. "It's that much on our minds," she said. "We're still lying in wait. We still have that hope."
But for Betty Edwards, that hope was dwindling. Mrs. Edwards and her husband have owned homes on Dauphin Island since 1978, and returned even after two were destroyed by Hurricane Frederick and Hurricane Katrina. She said she was still eating local seafood five days a week. "Everyone's really scared," she said.
"My mother is sick and I should be with her," she said. "I said, 'I'm going to stay here until it's all closed.' It could a couple days. But it's when, not if."
At the training session for volunteer field observers, Jon DeJean said she felt helpless, in part because she felt BP and government agencies were not telling the whole truth about the spill. "I was angry from the start," Ms. DeJean said, "but the frustration is growing. For weeks I've been feeling powerless and helpless. I feel coming here is at least a step in the right direction. It gives me the feeling of doing something."
But Tim Helland, a kayak fisherman, acknowledged that there was not much the observers - or anyone - could do.
"We're going to patrol the beaches, and we'll know exactly when it comes," he said. "But it's still coming. I'm 62. I may not be fishing where I fish ever again."
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13) Deep Underwater, Oil Threatens Reefs
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02coral.html?ref=us
Last September, marine scientists studying deep-sea biology in the northern Gulf of Mexico lowered a submersible robot off the side of a government research vessel and piloted it 1,300 feet to the ocean floor.
There, in complete darkness and near-freezing temperatures, the robot's lights revealed a thriving colony of corals, anemones, fish, crustaceans and other sea life rivaling that of any shallow-water reef in the world. Researchers onboard were elated.
"We flipped on the lights, and there was one of the largest coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico sitting right in front of us," said Erik Cordes, a marine biologist at Temple University and chief scientist on the vessel, the Ronald H. Brown.
Nine months later, the warm thrill of discovery has cooled into dread. The reef lies just 20 miles northeast of BP's blown-out well, making it one of at least three extensive deepwater reefs lying directly beneath the oil slick in the gulf.
Yet it is not the slick that troubles scientists. They fear a more insidious threat: vast plumes of partly dissolved oil apparently spreading in the deep ocean.
The latest research team in the gulf to detect these plumes observed one extending roughly 22 miles northeast of the well site, in the vicinity of at least two major deepwater reefs, including the one discovered last fall. Preliminary images of the plume show layers of it touching the sea floor. Marine scientists have no firm grasp yet on what the impact on the corals will be, but they are bracing for catastrophe.
"The worst-case scenario is that there's oil coating some of the corals," Dr. Cordes said. "It would basically suffocate them."
The composition and distribution of these plumes remain a mystery, and several government research vessels are aggressively pursuing them in the gulf. Scientists believe that the plumes are not pure oil, but most likely a haze of oil droplets, natural gas and the dispersant chemical Corexit, 210,000 gallons of which has been mixed into the jet of oil streaming from the seafloor.
This oily haze could prove highly toxic to coral reefs. Both oil and dispersants, which chemically resemble dishwashing detergent, hamper the ability of corals to colonize and reproduce. And these effects are amplified when the two are mixed.
Studies on the effects of oil and chemicals on coral are limited to the shallow-water variety, however. Essentially no research has been conducted on their slow-growing deepwater cousins. So BP's spill has prompted scientists to embark on a sudden crash course on the interaction of deep-sea biology with these toxins.
"Everybody's scrambling," said Steve W. Ross, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and an expert on deepwater corals. "There's a lot of evaluation that has to be done."
But some believe that studies on the impact of oil and dispersants should have been done long ago, given the proliferation of drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Some of these studies were proposed years ago, and the agencies decided not to fund them," Dr. Ross said. "We're paying the price for it now."
The BP spill coincides nonetheless with a fertile period of deep-ocean exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past decade, the Minerals Management Service - the federal agency criticized by lawmakers for its oversight of the offshore drilling industry - has financed extensive research into mapping the life of the deep ocean.
On numerous voyages, researchers have scanned the sea floor for anomalies and deployed submersible robots to search for life in the icy depths. The result has been a string of discoveries across the northern gulf, among them prolific deepwater reefs the size of football fields or larger. The identification of new species has become commonplace.
Yet even as such discoveries have multiplied, little has been done to protect the sea life. An environmental impact statementprepared by the Minerals Management Service in 2007 that covered a vast area of the gulf being opened up to oil and gas drilling, including the lease area where the BP well is located, concluded that drilling posed no serious risk to deepwater reefs. Deep-sea rigs were required to avoid damaging coral sites directly with anchors or pipelines, but few other restrictions on drilling were deemed necessary.
The nearly 1,000-page document mentions only in passing the potential of oil released under high pressure to form undersea plumes, despite previous studies showing the distinct likelihood of such an event.
The study also failed to explore the application of dispersants deep underwater. This use of the chemicals, approved by federal authorities, is essentially unprecedented. It appears to have reduced the extent of the slick, limiting its impact on wetlands, beaches and surface life. But officials know little about its potential impact on life underwater.
"The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown," Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said at a news conference in May on the use of dispersants.
The application of dispersants is already highly discouraged in areas like the Florida Keys because of their known toxic effects to coral, said Billy D. Causey, Southeast regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries program.
"We consider the dispersed oil more harmful than a sheen passing over the reef," said Dr. Causey, who served as superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Deepwater reefs have their own distinct biology - they do not rely on photosynthesis for energy, for instance, but scavenge food from the water column - so their sensitivity to such pollutants is deeply uncertain.
If enveloped by toxic plumes, one consequence for reefs could be a sudden lack of oxygen, as bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons rapidly multiply. This would kill off the algae and micro-organisms corals need for food.
"It might be locally catastrophic, particularly if there's an oxygen-depleted mass that develops," said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana, a conservation group, and a former research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration specializing in oil pollution.
At least a hundred deepwater coral sites have been charted between the Texas and Florida coasts. More remain undiscovered. "We know 1 percent of what's out there in deep waters - perhaps 1 percent," Dr. Causey said.
There is reason to hope that deepwater corals far from the blowout will escape serious harm. Deep-sea currents are slower than surface currents, limiting the ability of the deeper plumes to spread extensively. And oil and chemicals will disperse as they migrate away from the site of the blowout.
The existence of large natural oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico - estimated as high as one million barrels per year - also suggests that deepwater corals may have adapted to the presence of low-level concentrations of oil.
Still, as more and more oil enters the ocean each day, the likelihood that at least some reefs will be overwhelmed only grows. Anxiety thus runs high among deepwater biologists.
Dr. Cordes, for one, is itching to return to the gulf to examine the reef he discovered last year.
"We're in the process of getting down there sooner rather than later," he said. "I hope for the best and fear for the worst."
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14) Study Finds Blacks Blocked From Southern Juries
By SHAILA DEWAN
June 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02jury.html?ref=us
In late April in a courthouse in Madison County, Ala., a prosecutor was asked to explain why he had struck 11 of 14 black potential jurors in a capital murder case.
The district attorney, Robert Broussard, said one had seemed "arrogant" and "pretty vocal." In another woman, he said he "detected hostility."
Mr. Broussard also questioned the "sophistication" of a former Army sergeant, a forklift operator with three years of college, a cafeteria manager, an assembly-line worker and a retired Department of Defense program analyst.
The analyst, he said, "did not appear to be sophisticated to us in her questionnaire, in that she spelled Wal-Mart, as one of her previous employers, as Wal-marts."
Arguments like these were used for years to keep blacks off juries in the segregationist South, systematically denying justice to black defendants and victims. But today, the practice of excluding blacks and other minorities from Southern juries remains widespread and, according to defense lawyers and a new study by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit human rights and legal services organization in Montgomery, Ala., largely unchecked.
In the Madison County case, the defendant, Jason M. Sharp, a white man, was sentenced to death after a trial by a jury of 11 whites and one black. The April hearing was the result of a challenge by defense lawyers who argued that jury selection was tainted by racial discrimination - a claim that is difficult to prove because prosecutors can claim any race-neutral reason, no matter how implausible, for dismissing a juror.
While jury makeup varies widely by jurisdiction, the organization, which studied eight Southern states - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee - found areas in all of them where significant problems persist. In Alabama, courts have found racially discriminatory jury selection in 25 death penalty cases since 1987, and there are counties where more than 75 percent of black jury pool members have been struck in death penalty cases.
An analysis of Jefferson Parish, La., by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center found that from 1999 to 2007, blacks were struck from juries at more than three times the rate of whites.
In North Carolina, at least 26 current death row defendants were sentenced by all-white juries. In South Carolina, a prosecutor said he struck a black potential juror because he "shucked and jived" when he walked.
Studies have shown that racially diverse juries deliberate longer, consider a wider variety of perspectives and make fewer factual errors than all-white juries, and that predominantly black juries are less likely to impose the death penalty.
Excluding jurors based on race has been illegal since 1875, but after Reconstruction, all-white juries remained the norm in the South.
"It really made lynching and the Ku Klux Klan possible," said Christopher Waldrep, a historian at San Francisco State University and the author of a forthcoming book about a lawyer who was able, in a rare case, to prove jury discrimination in Mississippi in 1906. "If you'd had a lot of black grand jurors investigating crimes, it would have made lynching impossible."
Back then, judges and prosecutors often argued that blacks lacked the intelligence or education to serve. That such claims persist is evidence, said Bryan A. Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, that jury selection remains largely unscrutinized.
"There's just this tolerance, there's indifference to excluding people on the basis of race, and prosecutors are doing it with impunity," Mr. Stevenson said. "Unless you're in the courtroom, unless you're a lawyer working on these issues, you're not going to know whether your local prosecutor consistently bars people of color."
In jury selection, potential jurors are first dismissed for cause - reasons like scheduling conflicts or opposition to the death penalty. Then, both sides can ask questions and take turns dismissing jurors using what are called peremptory strikes (the number of strikes varies by state, but it is often enough for one side to eliminate all qualified minorities).
In a 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court ruled that if a pattern of discrimination emerged during peremptory strikes, lawyers must provide nonracial reasons for their strikes. The reason does not have to be "persuasive, or even plausible," the Supreme Court ruled in a later case in which a prosecutor said he dismissed one black juror because he had long hair, and another because he had a goatee, saying, "I don't like the way they looked." It is up to the judge to decide if there was deliberate discrimination.
That is a high bar, defense lawyers say - so high that in Tennessee and North Carolina, there has never been a successful reversal based on Batson.
"Anybody with any sense at all can think up any race-neutral reason and get away with it," said Stephen B. Bright, a capital defense lawyer in Atlanta.
Prosecutors have claimed to strike jurors because they live in high-crime neighborhoods, are unemployed or are single parents. In one Louisiana case, a judge allowed a black juror to be dismissed because the prosecutor said he "looked like a drug dealer."
Often, a defense lawyer's challenge is based on showing that white jurors who answered questions the same way or had the same characteristics were not struck. For example, in the Sharp case, Mr. Broussard said that because one juror was studying to be a minister, she "was not the kind of juror we were looking for." But a white man who was a minister was allowed to serve.
Mr. Broussard did not respond to requests for comment, but Stephen Wimberly, the first assistant district attorney in Jefferson Parish, said that of more than 2,000 jury trials since 1997, only two had been reversed because of discrimination. "The legal standard is not representation of any race or gender, but the fairness and impartiality of each respective juror," Mr. Wimberly said.
In one Mississippi case, a black man, Curtis Flowers, was sentenced to death in 2004 for killing four furniture store employees. The jury was made up of 11 whites and one black after prosecutors used all 15 of their peremptory strikes on black jurors. Montgomery County, where the crime occurred, is 45 percent black. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the case, noting that "racially motivated jury selection is still prevalent 20 years after Batson."
At a retrial, in which prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, the jury of seven whites and five blacks was split along racial lines, resulting in a hung jury. At the second retrial, prosecutors sought the death penalty, which eliminated more blacks from the pool of qualified jurors. The jury, nine whites and three blacks, hung again when one black member declined to convict, said Andre De Gruy, the director of the state's Office of Capital Defense Counsel.
The Equal Justice Initiative study argues that jury diversity "is especially critical because the other decision-making roles in the criminal justice system are held mostly by people who are white." In the eight Southern states the study examined, more than 93 percent of the district attorneys are white. In Arkansas and Tennessee, all of them are white.
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15) Medical Marijuana Workers in California Join Union Local
By JESSE McKINLEY
May 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/us/29pot.html
OAKLAND, Calif. - Jimmy Hoffa would be stoked.
In what cannabis fans were calling a high-water mark for their movement to legitimize the drug, about 100 employees of medical marijuana-related businesses in Oakland were welcomed to the ranks of unionized workers on Friday after voting to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 5.
The move - which union officials said was the first time medical marijuana employees had been so represented - was hailed by the local's leadership, who called their new members 'great workers."
"This is a natural for us," said Ron Lind, the president of Local 5, whose 26,000 other members work primarily in groceries and the meat industry. "Our union's primary jurisdiction is retail."
The move was also welcomed by Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University, the medical marijuana trade school whose Oakland campus employs some 60 newly unionized members in its dispensary, gift shop and nursery. (For plants, not children.) Mr. Lee that said his employees were already offered health benefits and paid vacation, but that the union imprimatur was an important milestone in the battle to bring marijuana more into the mainstream.
"It's one more step towards ending federal restrictions," said Mr. Lee, a leading proponent of a November ballot measure which would legalize, regulate and tax the drug in California. Marijuana, legal for medical use in California and more than a dozen other states, is still prohibited by federal law.
Officials in Oakland, which has an unemployment rate of more than 17 percent, also cheered the move - and the movement - as a potential boon for the city.
For the workers themselves, however, their new status as union members was somewhat of a personal triumph.
"Now I can go home to my parents and they can see it's a good thing and a normal thing," said Cassie Leone, a tattooed 24-year-old who works at a local marijuana dispensary. It made her feel like a "hardworking human being," she said. "Which is what I am."
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16) U.N. Report Highly Critical of U.S. Drone Attacks
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread.
In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report - the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones - also proposed a summit meeting of "key military powers" to clarify legal limits on such killings.
In an interview, Mr. Alston said the United States appeared to think that it was "facing a unique threat from transnational terrorist networks" that justified its effort to put forward legal justifications that would make the rules "as flexible as possible."
But that example, he said, could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out "competing drone attacks" outside their borders against people "labeled as terrorists by one group or another."
"I'm particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe," Mr. Alston said in an accompanying statement. "But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions."
Mr. Alston is scheduled to present his findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. While not legally binding, his report escalates the volume of international concerns over a tactic that has become the Obama administration's weapon of choice against Al Qaeda and its allies.
The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Alston's report would call on the United States to stop using Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones and limit the technology to regular military forces because they are open and publicly accountable for their conduct - for example, by investigating missile strikes that kill civilians.
Days later, news emerged that a C.I.A. drone strike in Pakistan's tribal areas was believed to have killed Al Qaeda's third-ranking leader, apparently a major success. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Alston acknowledged that the United States could make "a reasonable legal argument" that a strike against such a figure in those circumstances was lawful and appropriate, but he argued that the escalating number of drone strikes in Pakistan still raised concerns.
The recent strike "is a very convenient one because there you have got a very clearly acceptable target, but we're not told who the other strikes are against and what efforts are being made to comply with the rules," he said.
The report calls on nations like Pakistan to publicly disclose the scope and limits of any permission granted for drone strikes on their territories. It also calls on drone operators like the United States to disclose the legal justification for such killings, the criteria and safeguards used when selecting targets, and the process for investigating attacks that kill civilians.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the report, but pointed to a speech in March by the State Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, that partly outlined the Obama administration's legal rationale. Mr. Koh said the United States obeyed legal limits on the use of force when selecting targets, and he defended drone killings as lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and because of the nation's right to self-defense.
"A state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force," he said. "Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise."
The United Nations report agrees that drone killings can be lawful in battlefield combat. But it says that the United States is stretching the limits of who can be lawful targets.
For example, it criticized the United States for singling out drug lords in Afghanistan suspected of giving money to the Taliban, a policy it said was contrary to the traditional understanding of the laws of war. Similarly, it said, terrorism financiers, propagandists and others who are not fighters should face criminal prosecution, not summary killing.
It also said that a targeted killing outside of an armed conflict "is almost never likely to be legal." In particular, it rejected "pre-emptive self-defense" as a justification for killing terrorism suspects far from combat zones.
"This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter," Mr. Alston said. "If invoked by other states, in pursuit of those they deem to be terrorists and to have attacked them, it would cause chaos."
But a United States official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, said drone attacks had been an "effective, exact and essential" tactic for reaching militants in inaccessible areas of Pakistan, whose government does not want the United States military fighting in its territory.
"The United States has an inherent right to protect itself and will not refrain from doing so based on someone else's exceptionally narrow - if not faulty - definition of self-defense," the official said. The report noted that Russia and Israel had also claimed a right in recent years to single out people they deemed terrorism suspects, and Mr. Alston said 40 other countries already had drone technology - with several already seeking armed versions.
Warning that the technology is making targeted killings much easier and more frequent, the report urged major military nations to meet with human rights specialists to work out agreements on murky legal issues, such as when a farmer who sets roadside bombs at night may be a target.
The report also raised concerns that drone operators might not have the same respect for the laws of war as soldiers in the field who have "been subjected to the risks and rigors of battle."
"Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing," it said.
Last week, the military released a report faulting military drone operators for "inaccurate and unprofessional" reporting that led to an airstrike in February that killed 23 Afghan civilians, including women and children.
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17) Fishermen Wait on Docks as Oil Gushes
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03seafood.html?ref=us
DULAC, La. - This time of year, Eric Authement would normally be buying about 70,000 pounds of shrimp a day from the boats that line the Grand Caillou Bayou and spread their winglike nets in the bays, marshes, coastal waters and inlets along the coast.
But in the last month, the shrimp processing plant his family has run for generations has been much quieter. Some days, he has bought next to nothing.
"We can fly to the moon and back how many times?" he asked as he watched a video feed of oil spewing from the underwater leak. "And we cannot stop up a damn well."
As vast sections of the sea and coast have been closed off to fishing because of the gushing oil leak, the normal haul of oysters, blue crab and finned fish has been halved, and shrimp production is about a quarter of what is usually is. The exceptions are tuna and red snapper, which are caught far out at sea.
Americans have yet to see major shortages or price increases at restaurants and markets because about 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group. Louisiana provides only about 2 percent, the group says.
But the oil slick is wreaking havoc on the fishing industry here, which brings about $2.4 billion a year to the state, the state's seafood marketing board says. At least 27,000 jobs depend directly on the fisheries.
So far, Louisiana's official biologists have found no evidence that the oil has contaminated any seafood. But the precautionary closing of oyster beds, shrimping grounds and crab habitats where oil has been spotted has idled most of the fishermen.
And BP has hired so many fishing boats to help with the cleanup effort that the areas that remain open are not being fished intensively.
The images of oil slicks at sea and goopy oil in stands of cane along the state's 7,700 miles of tidal coastline has presented the Louisiana fishing industry with a public relations nightmare.
Some buyers assume the catch is polluted; others simply would rather not buy a product now with the name Louisiana or gulf attached to it, seafood wholesalers say.
"The brand itself has been damaged," said Ewell Smith, the executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "Every time they show the image on TV of the spill, people are thinking we don't have safe seafood and that we are out of seafood."
Some seafood processors say the biggest hindrance right now is not oil, but a lack of fishermen to haul in the catch in the areas still open to fishing.
Mike Voisin, the owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, has been an oyster farmer and processor in Terrebonne Parish his entire life. He said the state had found no evidence the oysters have been contaminated, yet he cannot find harvesters to dredge up the crustaceans from their beds because the oil companies have hired so many boats.
"We are down to 10 or 20 percent of our harvesting ability," he said.
In the meantime, the oil slick and chemical dispersants are getting closer to the oyster beds, and many in the business fear the pollution will be driven inshore by tropical storms and will kill the larvae on which the next year's crop depends. Since nearly 4 of 10 oysters eaten in the United States come from Louisiana, shortages are inevitable if the closures persist, oyster farmers say.
One bright spot for seafood producers is that scarcity has driven up prices. Small brown shrimp, for instance, have tripled in price over this time last year. The price of oysters has also risen on spot markets in recent weeks, jumping more than 20 percent in some places.
Still, with the constantly changing plans to close certain fishing areas, some say it is not worth gambling the price of labor and fuel to go after shrimp that may have fled from the area or oysters that may have been contaminated.
Instead, many fishermen have taken the $5,000 check from BP - a down-payment on future damages the oil company has voluntarily paid to fishing operations - and are waiting on the docks to see what will happen.
Fishermen who concentrate on tuna and red snapper are still hauling in large catches far out beyond the oil slicks, but they are having a hard time convincing buyers their catch is clean.
David Maginnis, the owner of Jensen Tuna in Houma, said most of his tuna fleet was working around undersea canyons in the southwestern part of the gulf, a good 150 miles from Louisiana. He supplies high-end sushi bars across the country with fresh blue-fin and yellow-fin tuna. Some buyers have canceled orders, he said.
Only 6 of 10 tuna boats are going out now, he said, but "the ones that are going are banging them up," Mr. Maginnis said, using slang for a large catch.
Despite the plentiful fish, many boat captains cannot find enough deckhands. "They are getting paid by BP to not go to work," he noted.
The biggest impact of the spill has been felt by shrimpers and shrimp processors. Bo Thibodeaux, 43, a shrimp boat captain in Dulac, took a small boat out recently with his son Evan, 17. He said he had tried to go out twice in his 43-foot boat, the Bull's Prize, since the spill started, but could not catch enough shrimp to pay for the gas.
"We are going to try to get what little is left," he said, as he readied the boat and his son pulled on white rubber boots. He said that in past years, when the brown shrimp were out around this time of year, he could pull in 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of shrimp from the water.
Now his nets have been catching mostly water because the areas he shrimps have been closed.
"May is our time to make our money," he said. "I don't know what I'm going to do. Go find a job, I guess."
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18) Oil Companies Weigh Strategies to Fend Off Tougher Regulations
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAD MOUAWAD
June 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03lobby.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - When the Obama administration imposed new restrictions last week on offshore drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill, officials carved out an exemption that received little public attention: Companies working in shallow waters, unlike deep-sea operators like BP, could again begin drilling for oil and gas.
The decision, which followed a furious appeal from lawmakers allied with the oil industry, represented a surprising victory for the shallow-water drillers in the midst of what could prove the biggest environmental disaster in United States history. And it reflected the intense lobbying efforts at work from all sides, as Congress and the administration consider ways to prevent another drilling disaster off the nation's coasts.
Environmentalists and their supporters in Congress, hoping to seize the political momentum, are working to push through measures to extend bans on new offshore drilling, strengthen safety and environmental safeguards and raise to $10 billion or more the cap on civil liability for an oil producer in a spill.
"You don't want to let a good crisis get away," said Athan Manuel, the director of lands protection for the Sierra Club's legislative office, which is pushing for a permanent moratorium on new offshore drilling.
Oil industry executives acknowledge the stiff political resistance that they face. Despite the success of shallow-water drillers in avoiding a continued ban on their end of the industry, executives and industry analysts say the daily images of oil wafting onto the coastline will make it tougher for them to fend off calls for tougher regulations that extend far beyond BP and the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Bruce Vincent, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents both deep-sea and shallow-water drillers, said Wednesday that he was concerned about a "domino effect" sweeping through Washington, with new regulations now under discussion threatening to cut oil production, jobs and industry profits.
"It's amazing to see the impact that one company can have for all sorts of other people," he said. "When a plane crashes, you don't just shut down every airline in the fleet until you find out what happened."
The oil and gas industry is a formidable presence in Washington. It spent more on federal lobbying last year than all but two other industries, with $174.8 million in lobbying expenditures, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.
Political action committees set up by the oil and gas producers contributed an additional $9 million last election cycle to Congressional candidates, with Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Valero Energy and Chevron leading the way, the data showed. (BP ranked 19th, with $75,500 in contributions, most to Republicans.)
For decades, the oil industry had showcased and developed its latest technology in the Gulf of Mexico. But the spill now casts a pall over offshore oil and gas operations, just as the industry thought it had snatched a major victory from the administration, which agreed to expand oil and gas drilling earlier this year.
Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, admitted last week that the industry faced a huge challenge.
"The most difficult challenge confronting the whole industry at this point is regaining the confidence and trust of the public, the American people, and regaining the confidence and trust of the government regulators and the people who oversee our activities out there," he said in response to questions from reporters after a shareholder meeting.
The industry was already grappling with the prospect of tighter scrutiny over some of its drilling practices even before the gulf spill. Congress has been looking at the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, where water is pumped at high pressure to break rocks and free natural gas, a technique that some environmental groups believe can pollute underground water sources.
Now the industry is facing a much graver threat as it seeks to determine how long the administration's deepwater drilling ban will last. The Interior Department said last weekend that all drilling activity in the waters deeper than 500 feet was to stop for six months. But some analysts fear the ban could be prolonged until a commission appointed by the president provides its conclusions.
That could extend the ban for a year, and the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's main trade group, forecasts that a longer delay could crimp future production by as much as 400,000 barrels a day by 2015.
As well as imposing a drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration also halted new drilling off Alaska and Virginia for the time being. The announcement stalled plans by Shell to drill three exploration wells in the Beaufort Sea this summer. It also put off a long-awaited sale of new leases off Virginia for the first time since the administration lifted a longstanding moratorium on drilling in the Atlantic.
With the environmental damage growing from the BP disaster, the industry's most persuasive argument in trying to fend off tougher regulations may prove to be jobs. That was one of the crucial elements used by the shallow-water operators - mostly smaller companies that produce about 20 percent of the gulf's daily oil production of 1.7 million barrels - to earn an exemption from the new restrictions at the Interior Department. A spokesman for the agency declined to explain why the agency had reversed course.
Representative Gene Green, a Texas Democrat who led about 50 lawmakers in appealing to the administration to lift the ban on shallow-water drillers, said he did not want to see 6,000 employees working in shallow waters risk being put out of work.
But the political pressure on the entire industry will keep growing as long as the spill lasts, bringing with it daily images of soiled coastlines.
"The oil companies know that if this is not resolved quickly, the well has been poisoned for everybody," said Lawrence Goldstein, a veteran energy economist. "They are going to be painted with a broad brush. They are on the hook here."
Eric Lichtblau reported from Washington, and Jad Mouawad from New York.
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