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Is it raining oil
in Metro New Orleans?
River Ridge, LA
Just south of the airport
[The question mark isn't appropriate in this title. The video clearly shows that it's raining oil in River Ridge--no question about it...bw]
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/874.html
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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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BAMN -- Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Intergration and Immigrant Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary -- E-MAIL - 06/27/2010
_
Closing Arguments in the Trial of Ex-BART Officer Mehserle for the Murder of Oscar Grant Expected Early This Week
Depending on how much the jury deliberates --- there could be a decision as early as this week! The call for a mass demonstration on the day of the verdict has gone out. Join BAMN and other community groups, organizations, and civil rights activists in downtown Oakland at 6:00pm on the day of the decision.
Mass Community Gathering in Downtown Oakland
On the Day of the Mehserle Verdict
** 6:00 pm ** 14th St. and Broadway **
For updates, as well as a recap of the trial and links to news coverage:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/10/18650423.php
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53482409244&v=wall&ref=ts
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/188135
Contact BAMN at 510-502-9072 for more info
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights,
and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
(313) 438-3748 www.bamn.com myspace.com/nationalbamn letters@bamn.com
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Thursday, July 1, 9:00am
Free theSAN FRANCISCO 8!
Come to the hearing at Superior Court to support Francisco Torres, the last of the SF8 still on charges of a frame-up of Black elders. Join the FSP and others to demand that charges be dropped.
850 Bryant St., San Francisco
For more information, call (415) 226-1120 or email: freethesf8@gmail.com
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After the historic Oakland port victory, time to intensify the struggle
Netanyahu in U.S.-Protest in the Streets!
at Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St., SF
Tuesday, July 6, 4:30-6:30pm
Bring down the blockade of Gaza and Israel's apartheid wall!
Free Palestine-End colonial occupation!
Justice for the victims of Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla!
End U.S. aid to Israel-Boycott Israeli Ships and Goods!
The 24-hour shutdown of the SSA terminal at the Port of Oakland where an Israeli Zim lines ship docked on June 20 was an historic victory. More than 1,000 people joined the morning and afternoon mass picket lines, which were honored by members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10. June 20 was the first time ever that an Israeli ship was boycotted in a U.S. port. Norwegian, Swedish and South African dock workers have called protests refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
The worldwide BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israeli apartheid is rapidly gaining momentum. Just last week, the largest British public workers union, UNISON, which has more than 1.4 million members passed a motion at it's national conference reading, in part: "Conference reaffirms the support for an economic, cultural and sporting boycott of Israel and call on Unison to join the scores of unions around the world who have endorsed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Further to that as an immediate sanction for the illegal attack on the flotilla, we call on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador."
Demonstrations are planned in Washington DC, San Francisco and other cities on July 6.
Join the protest at the Israeli consulate on July 6 and bring your friends, neighbors, fellow workers and students.
Initiated by: A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition-Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. Please reply to this email if your organization would like to be listed as a co-sponsor.
Volunteers and donations needed!
Call 415-821-6545 to volunteer or come by the ANSWER office to pick up leaflets and posters, 2489 Mission St. #24, SF. Volunteers are needed to help hand out leaflets, put up posters for the action and make alert phone calls to other activists. Click here to make a much-needed donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr004=k47yaqohk3.app202a
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
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United National
Peace Conference
July 23 - 25, 2010, Albany, NY
Unac2010@aol.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121
518-227-6947 www.nationalpeaceconference.org
Call to Action!
United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC)
Join us in Albany, New York!
July 23-25, 2010
The National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now will take place against the backdrop of major developments in the U.S. and throughout the world.
Our planet is aflame with unending wars, threats of new wars and horrendous sanctions against Iran, atrocious attacks on innocent Freedom Flotillas bringing humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza, and with an unprecedented corporate-driven environmental catastrophe.
With U.S. acquiescence, a humanitarian flotilla in international waters, carrying 10,000 tons of food, medical, construction and educational supplies and toys for children, has been brutally attacked by the Israeli military - nine killed and six others missing and/or presumed dead. The 750 peace activists aboard, including NGO members, pacifists, journalists, and members of the European Parliament, were kidnapped, then arrested - their cargo seized. As we write, Iranian and Turkish ships, also loaded with humanitarian supplies, have announced plans to head for beleaguered Gaza to challenge the illegal blockade and Israeli siege. Will the Israeli government once again attack with deadly force bringing the world closer to yet another war?
We are witness to seven years of war against Iraq, a war whose every pretext has been discredited and whose people demand U.S. withdrawal. War for oil, occupation and plunder does not sit well with Iraqis who have suffered 1.4 million dead. "Phased withdrawal" is designed to assuage the U.S. public, and Iraqi majority opposition notwithstanding, there is no end in sight.
Meanwhile, 60,000 barrels of oil daily for the past two months, barely impeded, pour into the Gulf of Mexico, wreaking death, destruction and massive loss of income in adjacent states and north to the Atlantic and beyond. Corporate greed and the absence of a semblance of serious government regulation threaten long-term destruction of the ocean's ecosystem. British Petroleum, the Transocean corporation, and subcontractor Halliburton Industries demonstrate once again that oil profits, whether in the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico, trump human life and indeed life on earth in all forms. The insatiable drive for "black gold," the very resource that with continued use threatens all life, has brought us to the brink of what Mother Earth and its inhabitants can endure.
At the same time, our movement has registered some impressive gains while the government is registering important setbacks.
• Public opposition to the Afghanistan War is on the rise!
• The "victory" in Marja has proven ephemeral!
• The economic and political crises have awakened millions to the government's twisted priorities!
• Congressional debates reflect doubts about the war's objectives and costs!
• 24 Guantanamo torture protesters have been acquitted!
History demonstrates time and again that united, democratic and principled mass movements open the door to fundamental social change. That is the lesson of the fight against the Vietnam War, the broad civil rights movements, the struggles for equal rights for women and gays, and labor's struggle to unionize and advance the well-being of tens of millions.
And that's why the Albany conference is so timely. One hundred and twenty-five plenary and workshop speakers are scheduled! They include national and international leaders in the fight against war and for social justice. Twenty-nine national organizations are equal co-sponsors. (See nationalpeaceconference.org). For the first time in many years, a broad and diverse range of U.S. antiwar forces will be in the same room. Joined by social activists across the country and from around the world, they will lay plans to mobilize the American people to Bring the Troops and War Dollars Home Now! and to Fund Human Needs Not War!
The time to act is now! All antiwar and social justice activists welcome! One person one vote! See Draft Action Program online. Related amendments and resolutions are welcome.
The need now is to find common ground in the fight for life itself. The crisis-ridden system cries out for a challenge the world over. Let us be among the first to chart a winning course for the U.S. and for all humanity.
We say, "Massive funds for jobs, education, housing, pensions, the environment and health care! Bring the Troops, Mercenaries, War Profiteers and War Dollars Home Now! Close the 860 Military Bases! Bail Out the People, Not the Banks!"
United we can change the world!
JOIN US IN ALBANY, NEW YORK, JULY 23-25, 2010!
For more information: www.nationalpeaceconference.org or call 518-227-6947. A registration form is attached. Brochures announcing the conference can be ordered by writing UNAC2010@aol.com
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Education 4 the People!
October 7 Day of Action in Defense of Public Education - California
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/
MORE THAN 100 activists from across California gathered in Los Angeles April 24 to debate next steps for the fight against the devastating cutbacks facing public education.
The main achievements of the conference were to set a date and location for the next statewide mass action-October 7-and for the next anti-cuts conference, which will happen October 16 at San Francisco State University. The other key outcome was the first steps toward the formation of an ad hoc volunteer coordinating committee to plan for the fall conference.
These decisions were a crucial step toward deepening and broadening the movement. For example, the fall conference will be the key venue for uniting activists from all sectors of public education, and especially from those schools and campuses which saw action on March 4, but which have yet to plug into the broader movement.
This will be crucial for extending the scope and increasing the strength of our movement, as well as for helping us strategize and prepare for what is certain to be a tough year ahead. Similarly, the fall mass action will be crucial to re-igniting the movement following the summer months.
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/
Organizing for the next Statewide Public Education Mobilization Conference at SFSU on OCT 16th
Posted on May 24, 2010 by ooofireballooo
Organizing for the next Statewide Public Education Mobilization Conference
@ San Francisco State University on October 16th
MORE THAN 100 activists from across California gathered in Los Angeles April 24 to debate next steps for the fight against the devastating cutbacks facing public education.
The main achievements of the conference were to set a date and location for the next statewide mass action-October 7-and for the next anti-cuts conference, which will happen October 16 at San Francisco State University. The other key outcome was the first steps toward the formation of an ad hoc volunteer coordinating committee to plan for the fall conference.
These decisions were a crucial step toward deepening and broadening the movement. For example, the fall conference will be the key venue for uniting activists from all sectors of public education, and especially from those schools and campuses which saw action on March 4, but which have yet to plug into the broader movement.
This will be crucial for extending the scope and increasing the strength of our movement, as well as for helping us strategize and prepare for what is certain to be a tough year ahead. Similarly, the fall mass action will be crucial to re-igniting the movement following the summer months.
Proposal: Form a conference organizing listserve immediately!
Please join the google group today.
* Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/fallconferencesfsu
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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SOME GOOD NEWS FOR TROY ANTHONY DAVIS - INNOCENT MAN ON DEATH ROW:
http://www.troyanthonydavis.org/call-to-action.html
Georgia: Witnesses in Murder Case Recant
By SHAILA DEWAN
June 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/24brfs-WITNESSESINM_BRF.html?ref=us
In an unusual hearing ordered by the Supreme Court that began in Savannah on Wednesday, several witnesses said they had concocted testimony that Troy Anthony Davis killed a police officer, Mark MacPhail, in 1989. Last August, the Supreme Court ordered a federal district court to determine if new evidence "clearly establishes" Mr. Davis's innocence, its first order in an "actual innocence" petition from a state prisoner in nearly 50 years, according to Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented. Seven of the witnesses who testified against Mr. Davis at his trial have recanted, and some have implicated the chief informer in the case. Mr. Davis's execution has been stayed three times.
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Troy Davis Hearing Week of Action Schedule of Activities Hour of Prayer:
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 12 noon Call Number: (712) 432-1000 Access Code: 481005918# Join NAACP leaders for an hour of prayer. Community Mass Meeting - Tuesday, June 22 at 6:30pm New Life Apostolic Temple, 2120 West Bay Street, Savannah, GA 31415 Join National leaders of Amnesty International, Larry Cox, the NAACP, Benjamin Todd Jealous, Martina Correia (sister of Troy Davis), death row exonerees and other dynamic leaders. Wednesday & Thursday, June 23 & 24 Wright Square Vigil for Restorative Justice, 9am - 5pm Show your support by joining with others in Wright Square, across from the courthouse during the hearing. Drop by all day, or at the beginning, middle or end for prayer and meditation, opportunity for artistic expression, learning about restorative justice, stories from former death row prisoners who were innocent and exonerated, and more information about human rights. Evidentiary Hearing - Wednesday, June 23 at 10am Tomochichi Federal Courthouse (125 Bull St. in Savannah) Open to the public on a first come-first served basis. Please follow the courthouse rules and dress formally. Note: the hearing could last one or more days. During your weekly prayer and Bible study, please keep the Davis and MacPhail families in your prayers. JOIN US ON THE EVE OF HIS HISTORIC HEARING TO PRAY THAT JUSTICE IS FINALLY SERVED
For more info: www.iamtroy.com | www.justicefortroy.org | troy@aiusa.org Savannah Branch NAACP: 912-233-4161
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Two Pensacola Beach Scenes: Dying Baby Dolphin and Ocean "Water Bubbling "...Like It's Got Acid In It. God Help Us All"
opednews.com
For OpEdNews: theWeb - Writer
Two scenes from Pensacola--one of a dying baby dolphin, the other of water bubbling like there's acid in it.
A dying, oil-covered baby dolphin is taken from Pensacola waters. It died shortly after being discovered.
http://www.youtube.com/user/pcolagregg
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Video-Pensacola-Ocean-Wa-by-the-web-100624-933.html
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THE SHORT FILM BP DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE ABOUT WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING TO THE PEOPLE IN THE GULF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRl6-o8CpXA
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ROV films oil leak coming from rock cracks on seafloor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2RxIQP0IBU
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Oil Spill Threatens Native American "Water" Village
The town of Grand Bayou, Louisiana, has no streets and no cars, just water and boats. And now the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens the very existence of the Atakapa-Ishak Indians who live there. "We're facing the potential for cultural genocide," says one tribe member.
(c) 2010 National Geographic; videographer and field producer: Fritz Faerber
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100608-us-oil-gulf-indians-video/
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Mumia Abu-Jamal - Legal Update
June 9, 2010
Robert R. Bryan, Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
www.MumiaLegalDefense.org
Dear All:
There are significant developments on various fronts in the coordinated legal campaign to save & free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The complex court proceedings are moving forward at a fast pace. Mumia's life is on the line.
Court Developments: We are engaged in pivotal litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. At stake is whether Mumia will be executed or granted a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Two years ago we won on that issue, with the federal court finding that the trial judge misled the jury thereby rendering the proceedings constitutionally unfair. Then in January 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that ruling based upon its decision in another case, & ordered that the case be again reviewed by the Court of Appeals.
The prosecution continues its obsession to kill my client, regardless of the truth as to what happened at the time of the 1981 police shooting. Its opening brief was filed April 26. Our initial brief will be submitted on July 28. At issue is the death penalty.
In separate litigation, we are awaiting a decision in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on prosecutorial abuses, having completed all briefing in April. The focus is on ballistics.
Petition for President Barack Obama: It is crucial for people to sign the petition for President Barack Obama, Mumia Abu-Jamal & the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty, which was initially in 10 languages (Swahili & Turkish have since been added). This is the only petition approved by Mumia & me, & is a vital part of the legal effort to save his life. Please sign the petition & circulate its link:
www.MumiaLegalDefense.org
Nearly 22,000 people from around the globe have signed. These include: Bishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa (Nobel Peace Prize); Günter Grass, Germany (Nobel Prize in Literature); Danielle Mitterrand, Paris (former First Lady of France); Fatima Bhutto, Pakistan (writer); Colin Firth (Academy Award Best-Actor nominee), Noam Chomsky, MIT (philosopher & author); Ed Asner (actor); Mike Farrell (actor); & Michael Radford (director of the Oscar winning film Il Postino); Robert Meeropol (son of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953); Fatima Bhutto, Pakistan (writer); Noam Chomsky, MIT (philosopher & author); Ed Asner (actor); Mike Farrell (actor); Michael Radford (director of the Oscar winning film Il Postino); members of the European Parliament; members of the German Bundestag; European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights; Reporters Without Borders, Paris.
European Parliament; Rosa Luxemburg Conference; World Congress Against the Death Penalty; Geneva Human Rights Film Festival: We began the year with a major address to the annual Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin, Germany, sponsored by the newspaper junge Welt. The large auditorium was filled with a standing-room audience. Mumia joined me by telephone. We announced the launching of the online petition, Mumia Abu-Jamal & the Global Abolition of the Death Penalty.
A large audience on the concluding night of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Geneva, Switzerland, February 25, heard Mumia by telephone. He spoke as a symbolic representative of the over 20,000 men, women & children on death rows around the world. The call came as a surprise, since we thought it had been canceled. Mumia's comments from inside his death-row cell brought to reality the horror of daily life in which death is a common denominator. During an earlier panel discussion I spoke of racism in capital cases around the globe with the case of Mumia as a prime example. A day before the Congress on February 23, I talked at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival on the power of films in fighting the death penalty & saving Mumia.
On March 2 in the European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium, members Søren Søndergaard (Denmark) & Sabine Lösing (Germany) announced the beginning of a campaign to save Mumia & end executions. They were joined by Sabine Kebir, the noted German author & PEN member, Nicole Bryan, & me. We discussed the online petition which helps not only Mumia, but all the condemned around the globe.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense & Online Petition: The complex litigation & investigation that is being pursued on behalf of Mumia is enormously expensive. We are in both the federal & state courts on the issue of the death penalty, prosecutorial wrongdoing, etc. Mumia's life is on the line.
How to Help: For information on how to help, both through donations & signing the Obama petition, please go to Mumia's legal defense website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org .
Conclusion: Mumia remains on death row under a death judgment. He is in greater danger than at any time since his arrest 28 years ago. The prosecution is pursuing his execution. I win cases, & will not let them kill my client. He must be free.
Yours very truly,
Robert
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Robert R. Bryan
Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.MumiaLegalDefense.org
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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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Roger Waters - "We Shall Overcome" for Gaza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMMHepfYVc
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Bernadette McAliskey Quote on Zionists:
"The root cause of conflict in the Middle East is the very nature of the state of Israel. It is a facist state. It is a international bully, which exists not to protect the rights of the Jewish people but to perpetuate a belief of Zionist supremacy. It debases the victims of the holocaust by its own strategy for extermination of Palestine and Palestinians and has become the image and likeness of its own worst enemy, the Third Reich.
"Anyone challenging their position, their crazed self-image is entitled, in the fascist construction of their thinking, to be wiped out. Every humanitarian becomes a terrorist? How long is the reality of the danger Israel poses to world peace going to be denied by the Western powers who created this monster?"
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Rachel Maddow: Disgraceful response to the oil itself
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#37563648
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It Ain't My Fault by Mos Def & Lenny Kravitz | stupidDOPE.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnR1BrGgRVM
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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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POEM ON WHAT ISRAEL DOES NOT ALLOW INTO GAZA - FROM THE IRISH TIMES / CARDOMAN AS A BIOLOGICAL WARFARE WEAPON
[ The poem does not mention that the popular herb cardamom is banned from importation into Gaza. Israel probably fears that cardamom can be used as a biological weapon. Rockets with cardamom filled projectiles landing in Israel could cause Israeli soldiers 'guarding' the border to succumb to pangs of hunger, leave their posts to go get something eat, and leave Israel defenseless. - Howard Keylor]
Richard Tillinghast is an American poet who lives in Co Tipperary. He is the author of eight books of poetry, the latest of which is Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2010 ), as well as several works of non-fiction
*
No tinned meat is allowed, no tomato paste,
no clothing, no shoes, no notebooks.
These will be stored in our warehouses at Kerem Shalom
until further notice.
Bananas, apples, and persimmons are allowed into Gaza,
peaches and dates, and now macaroni
(after the American Senator's visit).
These are vital for daily sustenance.
But no apricots, no plums, no grapes, no avocados, no jam.
These are luxuries and are not allowed.
Paper for textbooks is not allowed.
The terrorists could use it to print seditious material.
And why do you need textbooks
now that your schools are rubble?
No steel is allowed, no building supplies, no plastic pipe.
These the terrorists could use to launch rockets
against us.
Pumpkins and carrots you may have, but no delicacies,
no cherries, no pomegranates, no watermelon, no onions,
no chocolate.
We have a list of three dozen items that are allowed,
but we are not obliged to disclose its contents.
This is the decision arrived at
by Colonel Levi, Colonel Rosenzweig, and Colonel Segal.
Our motto:
'No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.'
You may fish in the Mediterranean,
but only as far as three km from shore.
Beyond that and we open fire.
It is a great pity the waters are polluted
twenty million gallons of raw sewage dumped into the sea every day
is the figure given.
Our rockets struck the sewage treatments plants,
and at this point spare parts to repair them are not allowed.
As long as Hamas threatens us,
no cement is allowed, no glass, no medical equipment.
We are watching you from our pilotless drones
as you cook your sparse meals over open fires
and bed down
in the ruins of houses destroyed by tank shells.
And if your children can't sleep,
missing the ones who were killed in our incursion,
or cry out in the night, or wet their beds
in your makeshift refugee tents,
or scream, feeling pain in their amputated limbs -
that's the price you pay for harbouring terrorists.
God gave us this land.
A land without a people for a people without a land.
--
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder
+357 99 18 72 75
witnessgaza.com
www.freegaza.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza
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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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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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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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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) Alex to Become Hurricane, Delay Oil Spill Efforts
By REUTERS
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/06/28/news/news-us-storm-alex.html?hp
2) Police in Toronto Criticized for Treatment of Protesters, Many Peaceful
By IAN AUSTEN
June 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/world/americas/28security.html?ref=world
3) Save a Whale, Save a Soul, Goes the Cry
By NATALIE ANGIER
June 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/weekinreview/27angier.html?ref=world
4) Sticking the public with the bill for the bankers' crisis
By Naomi Klein
June 28, 2010
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sticking-the-public-with-t-by-Naomi-Klein-100628-367.html
5) Shell: deep-water oil drilling will go on
"It appears BP will be given the go-ahead to drill in deep-water sites off the coast of north Africa. The head of Libya's National Oil Company said today that the 'accident' in the Gulf of Mexico would not mean that BP lost its contract to drill for oil in the Mediterranean Sea...'Accidents happen all the time. If an air crash takes place, we don't stop air traffic,' said Shokri Ghanem. 'So we have to continue but we take this step to learn more lessons.'"
BY Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 27 June 2010 19.09 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/27/shell-deepwater-drilling-will-go-on
6) BP accused of killing endangered sea turtles in cleanup operation
Environmentalists press Obama administration to put a halt to BP's 'burn fields' to dispose of oil from the Gulf spill
BY Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Friday 25 June 2010 23.16 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/25/bp-accused-of-killing-turtles
7) Wrong Track Distress
By BOB HERBERT
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29herbert.html?hp
8) BP Discussing a Backup Strategy to Contain Oil
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29wells.html?ref=us
9) Recovery Effort in Gulf Expected to Continue Despite Storm
By JOSEPH BERGER
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29spill.html?ref=us
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1) Alex to Become Hurricane, Delay Oil Spill Efforts
By REUTERS
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/06/28/news/news-us-storm-alex.html?hp
Filed at 11:58 a.m. ET
CAMPECHE, Mexico (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Alex was likely to become a hurricane on Tuesday, delaying BP Plc's efforts to increase siphoning capacity at the gushing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters said Alex was moving slowly away from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The storm, however, is not expected to hurt current oil-capture systems at the BP oil spill or the company's plans to drill of a pair of relief wells intended to plug the leak by August, a BP executive told reporters in Houston.
Protectively, Shell Oil Co, Exxon Mobil Corp and Apache Corp evacuated nonessential workers from platforms near the forecast path of Alex. Shell also shut subsea production at the Auger and Brutus platforms during the weekend.
Oil prices fell toward $78 per barrel on Monday as most forecasters predicted the storm would pass southwest of major U.S. offshore oil and gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico.
A hurricane watch has been issued for the coast of Texas south of Baffin bay to La Cruz in Mexico.
The ports of Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas, which handle 80 percent of all Mexico's oil export shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, have been closed since on Sunday due to strong surf in the area.
State-run oil giant Pemex said its platforms in the Campeche Sound were working normally on Sunday and that there was no evacuation plan yet due to Alex. Pemex officials were expecting updated reports from their facilities in the Gulf on Monday morning.
The storm is due to make landfall again between Brownsville, Texas, and Ciudad Madero in Mexico at mid-week, mostly sparing BP oil collection efforts south of Louisiana.
Alex, the first named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, had sustained winds of about 60 mph with higher gusts and was located about 85 miles west-northwest of Campeche, Mexico. The system was moving north-northwest at 7 mph.
"Some strengthening is forecast during the next couple of days and Alex is expected to become a hurricane on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on its latest update.
DEATHS IN CENTRAL AMERICA
At least nine people were killed in Central America in accidents related to Alex, local authorities reported.
Two people died in El Salvador from flooding, two others were killed in a landslide in Guatemala and five people were swept away by swelling rivers in Nicaragua, emergency officials told Reuters.
Alex was expected to bring 3 to 6 inches of rain to the Yucatan Peninsula, southern Mexico and parts of Guatemala through Tuesday. Isolated amounts of up to 10 inches were possible over mountainous areas. Forecasters warned the rain could cause flash floods and mudslides.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 and meteorologists predict this year will be a very active one. Hurricanes feed on warm water and the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are higher than usual this year.
(Additional reporting by Jose Cortazar in Cancun, Nelson Renteria in El Salvador, Sarah Grainger in Guatemala, Ivan Castro in Nicaragua and Mica Rosenberg in Mexico City; Editing by Vicki Allen)
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2) Police in Toronto Criticized for Treatment of Protesters, Many Peaceful
By IAN AUSTEN
June 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/world/americas/28security.html?ref=world
TORONTO - An escalation of aggressive police tactics toward even apparently peaceful protests at the Group of 20 summit meeting led to calls for a review of security activities.
After allowing a small group of people to burn police cars and smash windows unimpeded on Saturday afternoon, many of the 20,000 police officers deployed in Toronto changed tactics that evening and during the last day of the gathering.
There was a notable increase in both the numbers of police officers who surrounded demonstrations as well as more use of tear gas and rubber or plastic bullets. At the same time, there was a visible drop in the number of demonstrators in the city streets.
As a result, the violence by some demonstrators that marred the opening of the Group of 20 meeting did not reappear on Sunday, and more than 600 people were arrested Saturday and Sunday.
"Civil liberties are in rough shape today," said Nathalie Des Rosiers, the general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which had two of its observers arrested and detained. "We will have to have some accountability for what is going on."
In a statement, the Canadian branch of Amnesty International called on governments to review the security measures made for the meeting, including a temporary suspension of various civil liberties in the portion of this city's downtown near the meeting site.
"The amount of money, reported to be in excess of $1 billion, that has been spent on security measures in Toronto over the past several days has been unprecedented," the rights group said. "Yet on one hand extensive acts of vandalism and other violence were carried out and on the other hand thousands of individuals felt nervous and uneasy about exercising their right to engage in peaceful protest."
The violence was not exceptional compared with problems at previous international meetings, like the World Trade Organization's gathering in Seattle in 1999. Toronto's shopping district sustained the greatest damage but quickly became something of a tourist attraction.
But it was nevertheless extraordinary for Toronto, a city with little history of violent protests. David Miller, the city's mayor, was among the many who swiftly condemned it. "Does today send signals about Toronto that I wish weren't sent?" he said on Saturday evening. "Absolutely."
Wesley K. Wark, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in intelligence and national security, was critical of the actions of the police. He said Toronto's experience should be a warning against holding future meetings in large urban centers.
"Whatever good comes out of the G-8/G-20 will be forever overshadowed by the violence," he said.
William Blair, the city's police chief, did not respond directly to the widespread criticism over the lack of police response during the period of violence. But at a news conference, he suggested that officers were deliberately held back.
The protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom were peaceful, promoted a variety of causes. Many were challenging the legitimacy of the Group of 20 and proposing that governments work through the United Nations. Others championed specific issues, particularly in relation to human rights and the environment.
As the police escalated their tactics, reporters were often kept at bay. Steve Paikin, a prominent Toronto journalist, said that he was escorted away by two police officers who saw his media credentials just before they moved to arrest a large number of demonstrators who were protesting the city's temporary restrictions on civil liberties.
Mr. Paikin said he saw another journalist, Jesse Rosenfeld, a contributor to Web site of The Guardian, the British newspaper, being held by two police officers while a third punched the reporter in the stomach. After Mr. Rosenfeld fell to the ground, the third officer jabbed an elbow into his back, Mr. Paikin said. Mr. Rosenfeld was released later on Sunday, his family said.The heavily protected meeting area in the city's downtown core attracted relatively few protesters on Sunday. The largest crowds gathered outside a film studio being used a base for security operations as well as a temporary jail where several people said that they were held in what they described as large cages.
The police conducted several raids on Sunday, arresting about 70 people at the University of Toronto in the morning and 80 people at a legal services clinic.
To avoid breaking Canadian laws about detention, five special courtrooms in suburban Toronto began processing arrested protesters on Sunday afternoon.
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3) Save a Whale, Save a Soul, Goes the Cry
By NATALIE ANGIER
June 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/weekinreview/27angier.html?ref=world
WHEN the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission ended on Friday with the 24-year ban on commercial whaling still intact, however tenuous its hold and leviathan its loopholes, sighs of relief issued from many quarters - along with, no doubt, a volley of whistles, clicks and proudly parochial squeals.
After two years of transcontinental haggling, the commission had been expected to replace today's hunting ban with limited hunting quotas. Supporters of the policy change had argued that by specifying how many whales of a given species could be sustainably harvested over a 10-year period, and by tightening or eliminating current loopholes through which whaling nations like Japan and Norway kill the marine mammals for "scientific" purposes, the new measure would effectively reduce the number of whales slaughtered each year.
Yet many biologists who study whales and dolphins view such a compromise as deeply flawed, and instead urge that negotiators redouble efforts to abolish commercial whaling and dolphin hunting entirely. As these scientists see it, the evidence is high and mounting that the cetacean order includes species second only to humans in mental, social and behavioral complexity, and that maybe we shouldn't talk about what we're harvesting or harpooning, but whom.
"At the very least, you could put it in line with hunting chimps," said Hal Whitehead, who studies sperm whales at Dalhousie University in Halifax. "When you compare relative brain size, or levels of self-awareness, sociality, the importance of culture, cetaceans come out on most of these measures in the gap between chimps and humans. They fit the philosophical definition of personhood."
How much more personable can you get than to wave the flag for tribe or team? Among sperm and killer whales, Dr. Whitehead said, "there's a feeling of what one might call ethnicity or cultural identity, of saying, 'This is my clan, and it's different from the others.' " One way whales express their ethnicity is through dialect. Every clan has its signature call, and in regions of the ocean where two clans overlap, the differences between calls become exaggerated. "It's like if you're Irish and you run across someone who is Scottish or Welsh," said Dr. Whitehead. "You'll speak with an even stronger Irish accent to make it really clear whose group you belong to."
When Richard C. Connor of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth began studying bottlenose dolphins in the 1980s, he had no idea what to expect. "What I discovered was way beyond anything I might have imagined," Dr. Connor said. "Bottlenose dolphins have incredibly complex social lives mediated by emotions and feelings very much like our own." They are so sweet! "Dolphins pet and stroke each other a lot, and rub against each other in a gentle way," Dr. Connor said. And so mean! "It can be easy to tell when they're upset with each other," he said. "They have quite a few different vocalizations to express their displeasure."
Whatever they say, they say it with that unwavering, inviting, inscrutable dolphin smile. "They give no external cues when making their calls," said Janet Mann, a dolphin researcher at Georgetown University. "They don't open their mouths. The sound comes out of their forehead." The perceptual landscape of whales and dolphins is radically different from our own, she said, dominated by sonic narratives conveyed over miles and sung in ranges often far beyond the scope of our ears or devices. "The Navy salivates when it thinks about dolphin echolocation," she said.
If cetaceans seem, as Dr. Mann put it, "like intelligent aliens living among us," well, their terrestrial ancestors parted ways with ours more than 95 million years ago, and took to the seas 40 million years later. The cetacean brain has been evolving to its own mariner rhythms ever since. Its neocortex, the uppermost layer of neural tissue associated with learning, memory and other cognitive feats, is notably thinner than that of a primate brain, yet at the same time more deeply convoluted than even our own; and the more corrugated the cortex, the greater the surface area, or potential work space, of the brain. "It looks like a giant general-information-processing organ," said Dr. Mann.
Whale brains are indeed giant. At roughly 18 pounds to our 3, the sperm whale brain is the largest of any animal on earth. More significantly, the ratio of brain size to body mass in the sperm whale and other toothed whales and dolphins is impressively high, bested only by ours.
What to do with all that intellectual firepower? Primp in the mirror, of course. Dolphins have passed the famed mirror self-recognition test, which bespeaks possession of an inner life and a concomitant concern with its packaging. When presented with a mirror, dolphins take the opportunity to check their teeth and body parts they can't normally see, like their anal slit.
Or why not become a slave to fashion? One day, a killer whale in Puget Sound started pushing a dead salmon around in the water. The other whales in her community thought that was "really cool," Dr. Whitehead said, "and within a few weeks, everybody had a dead salmon they were pushing around." By summer's end, the fad was over, and the behavior was never seen again.
Yes, brainy cetaceans love to play copycat. When a wild bottlenose dolphin was injured in Australia and taken into an aquarium for rehabilitation, the mammal learned from its captive tank mates the trick of using its tail to walk on the surface of the water. On being released back into the ocean, the dolphin continued to tail-walk, said Dr. Whitehead, "and soon the other wild dolphins started doing it, too." Cetaceans are master mimics. "One prominent chimp scientist admitted that dolphins ape humans better than apes do," said Dr. Whitehead.
But mostly, whales and dolphins apply their minds to weighty matters, like learning what to eat and how to forage - and where to find the tastiest fish, and what your personal whistle will sound like, and where your mother, sisters, aunts, grandmother and great-aunts and your second cousin once removed can be found, and who your fast friends and half-friends may be, and which male ally deserted you when you needed a posse to help herd a fertile but recalcitrant female around. Whaling not only kills individual whales, scientists said. It can disrupt social networks an ocean wide and tens of thousands of Moby and Mabel Dicks strong.
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4) Sticking the public with the bill for the bankers' crisis
By Naomi Klein
June 28, 2010
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sticking-the-public-with-t-by-Naomi-Klein-100628-367.html
My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I'm not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.
I'm talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world's wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.
How else can we interpret the G20's final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.
They are happening for a simple reason. When the G20 met in London in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the leaders failed to band together to regulate the financial sector so that this type of crisis would never happen again. All we got was empty rhetoric, and an agreement to put trillions of dollars in public monies on the table to shore up the banks around the world. Meanwhile the U.S. government did little to keep people in their homes and jobs, so in addition to hemorrhaging public money to save the banks, the tax base collapsed, creating an entirely predictable debt and deficit crisis.
At this weekend's summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper convinced his fellow leaders that it simply wouldn't be fair to punish those banks that behaved well and did not create the crisis (despite the fact that Canada's highly protected banks are consistently profitable and could easily absorb a tax). Yet somehow these leaders had no such concerns about fairness when they decided to punish blameless individuals for a crisis created by derivative traders and absentee regulators.
Last week, The Globe and Mail published a fascinating article about the origins of the G20. It turns out the entire concept was conceived in a meeting back in 1999 between then finance minister Paul Martin and his U.S. counterpart Lawrence Summers (itself interesting since Mr. Summers was at that time playing a central role in creating the conditions for this financial crisis allowing a wave of bank consolidation and refusing to regulate derivatives).
The two men wanted to expand the G7, but only to countries they considered strategic and safe. They needed to make a list but apparently they didn't have paper handy. So, according to reporters John Ibbitson and Tara Perkins, "the two men grabbed a brown manila envelope, put it on the table between them, and began sketching the framework of a new world order." Thus was born the G20.
The story is a good reminder that history is shaped by human decisions, not natural laws. Mr. Summers and Mr. Martin changed the world with the decisions they scrawled on the back of that envelope. But there is nothing to say that citizens of G20 countries need to take orders from this hand-picked club.
Already, workers, pensioners and students have taken to the streets against austerity measures in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Greece, often marching under the slogan: "We won't pay for your crisis." And they have plenty of suggestions for how to raise revenues to meet their respective budget shortfalls.
Many are calling for a financial transaction tax that would slow down hot money and raise new money for social programs and climate change. Others are calling for steep taxes on polluters that would underwrite the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change and moving away from fossil fuels. And ending losing wars is always a good cost-saver.
The G20 is an ad hoc institution with none of the legitimacy of the United Nations. Since it just tried to stick us with a huge bill for a crisis most of us had no hand in creating, I say we take a cue from Mr. Martin and Mr. Summers. Flip it over, and write on the back of the envelope: Return to sender.
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5) Shell: deep-water oil drilling will go on
"It appears BP will be given the go-ahead to drill in deep-water sites off the coast of north Africa. The head of Libya's National Oil Company said today that the 'accident' in the Gulf of Mexico would not mean that BP lost its contract to drill for oil in the Mediterranean Sea...'Accidents happen all the time. If an air crash takes place, we don't stop air traffic,' said Shokri Ghanem. 'So we have to continue but we take this step to learn more lessons.'"
BY Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 27 June 2010 19.09 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/27/shell-deepwater-drilling-will-go-on
Royal Dutch Shell's boss, Peter Voser, insisted that today it was not possible to satisfy the world's growing energy demands without drilling for oil in deep-water reserves, despite the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
At a conference in South Africa, Voser defended the oil industry's push into deeper oil reserves and said Shell would continue to play its part, even as a tropical storm threatened to disrupt BP's efforts to clean up oil off the coast of Louisiana.
"Given the rise in the population and the rise in the developing world of energy needs, we will have to develop those resources in deep waters, so my expectation is that we will go forward with it, but it will need some changes," Voser told the Fortune Global Forum in Cape Town.
It is now 68 days since the Deep-water Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, triggering a devastating leak on the seabed in which 100,000 barrels of oil have spewed into the water. BP's failure to cap the leak has put the oil industry's safety record under fierce scrutiny, with environmental campaigners demanding that deep-water drilling is banned until safety measures have been improved.
Voser, though, implied that the Macondo well would not have erupted with such devastating consequences if Shell, rather than BP, had been in charge.
"We would not have drilled the well in the same way. We have got other safety procedures across the globe. But I think for some companies there will be some learning from this as well," Voser said.
The future of deep-water drilling remains uncertain, after a US judge overturned a six-month ban imposed by President Barack Obama. The US is appealing against the ruling but may have to rewrite the moratorium if it is to prevent new wells being drilled in the Gulf this year.
It appears BP will be given the go-ahead to drill in deep-water sites off the coast of north Africa. The head of Libya's National Oil Company said today that the "accident" in the Gulf of Mexico would not mean that BP lost its contract to drill for oil in the Mediterranean Sea.
"Accidents happen all the time. If an air crash takes place, we don't stop air traffic," said Shokri Ghanem. "So we have to continue but we take this step to learn more lessons."
BP's shares plunged 6.5% to a new 14-year low of 298p last Friday, meaning that more than £60bn has been wiped off its market capitalisation since 20 April.
Weather experts warned today that Tropical Storm Alex could hamper the clean-up operation in the Gulf. Although Alex is not expected to cross over the area of the spill directly, it could generate high waves that would make it harder to collect some of the leaking oil or prevent the spill reaching land.
The UK continues to argue that BP should not be forced to pay excessive levels of compensation that would endanger its future as a company. Speaking at the G20 summit, chancellor George Osborne said David Cameron had reminded Obama that BP was an international company.
"We have stressed that BP is an important global business. It has many investors in the US, it is the largest oil company in the US and it is both in the US interest and the UK interest that BP has a strong future," said Osborne.
BP has put $20bn (£13bn) into a compensation fund, but faces the prospect of claims from tens of thousands of people indirectly affected by the spill. Last Friday, a top New Orleans chef, Susan Spicer, sued the company over the loss of valuable local seafood.
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6) BP accused of killing endangered sea turtles in cleanup operation
Environmentalists press Obama administration to put a halt to BP's 'burn fields' to dispose of oil from the Gulf spill
BY Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Friday 25 June 2010 23.16 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/25/bp-accused-of-killing-turtles
Endangered sea turtles and other marine creatures are being corralled into 500 square-mile "burn fields" and burnt alive in operations intended to contain oil from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration confirmed today.
The killing of the turtles - which once teetered on the brink of extinction - has outraged environmentalists and could put BP into even deeper legal jeopardy.
Environmental organisations are demanding that the oil company stop blocking rescue of the turtles, and are pressing the US administration to halt the burning and look at prosecuting BP and its contractors for killing endangered species during the cleanup operation. Harming or killing a sea turtle carries fines of up to $50,000 (£33,000).
"It is criminal and cruel and they need to be held accountable," said Carole Allen, Gulf office director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project. "There should not be another lighting of a fire of any kind till people have gone in there and looked for turtles."
The Obama administration, confirming the kills, said BP was under orders to avoid the turtles. "My understanding is that protocols include looking for wildlife prior to igniting of oil," a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said. "We take these things very seriously."
The agency this week posted a single turtle spotter on the burn vessels, but government scientists are pressing for more wildlife experts to try to rescue the animals before the oil is lit - or at the very least to give them access to the burn fields.
"One can't just ride through an area where they are burning and expect to be safe while looking for turtles. We don't expect that, but we would like to access those areas where we suspect there may be turtles," said Blair Witherington, a sea turtle research scientist at Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
More than 425 turtles are known to have died in the spill zone since 30 April, Noaa said.
Conservationists say the losses could imperil the long-term survival of the creatures. All five species of turtles found in the Gulf are endangered or threatened: the Kemp's Ridley most of all.
But in a video posted on YouTube, Mike Ellis, a skipper from Venice, Louisiana, accuses BP of chasing away a boat of conservationists trying to rescue turtles caught in the oil and weed a few miles away from the leak.
"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down," said Ellis.
On days when the weather is fine and there is relatively no wind, BP conducts up to a dozen "controlled burns", torching vast expanses of the ocean surface within a corral of fireproof booms.
Biologists say such burns are deadly for young turtles because oil and sargassum - the seaweed mats that provide nutrients to jellyfish and a range of other creatures - - congregate in the same locations. The sargassum is also a perfect hunting ground for young sea turtles, who are not developed enough to dive to the ocean floor to forage for food.
Once BP moves in, the turtles are doomed. "They drag a boom between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can't get out," Ellis said.
The heartbreak for conservationists is that the convergence of sargassum and oil offers the best chance of finding young turtles before they suffocate on the crude. But it can also be deadly.
"When they breathe and come to the surface, they get a mouthful and a bellyful of toxic substance that is very much like wallpaper paste," said John Hewitt, the director of husbandry at the New Orleans aquarium. "If we don't remove them and clean them up, in three or four days that probably spells the end of the turtle."
Since the spill, the aquarium has taken in 90 sea turtles, scrubbing the oil off their shells with toothbrushes and washing-up liquid.
Even before the fires, the two-month gusher in the Gulf of Mexico was threatening the long-term survival of sea turtles.
"This is the worst calamity that I have ever seen for sea turtles," said David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy. "This is really the cradle of sea turtle reproduction for the western hemisphere."The threat to the turtles could continue well after the gusher is capped. The oil spill is turning vast expanses of the Gulf into a dead zone, killing off the jellyfish, crabs and conches that are the staples of an adult diet.
Conservationists are also worried about the survival of the next generation of loggerhead turtles, which are about to climb up on to badly oiled shorelines to begin their nesting season. "They are doomed" said Godfrey.
Godfrey said his organisation was working on plans to dig up about 1,000 nests, or 100,000 eggs, from nesting grounds in the Florida Panhandle and transfer them to hatcheries for safekeeping. "It is a last gasp measure to save 100,000 young sea turtles," he said. "We need every one of these turtles to survive."
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7) Wrong Track Distress
By BOB HERBERT
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/opinion/29herbert.html?hp
It's getting harder and harder for most Americans, looking honestly at the state of the nation, to see the glass as half full. And that's why the public opinion polls contain nothing but bad news for Barack Obama and the Democrats.
The oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the war in Afghanistan and, above all, the continuing epidemic of joblessness have pushed the nation into a funk. All the crowing in the world about the administration's legislative accomplishments - last year's stimulus package, this year's health care reform, etc. - is not enough to lift the gloom.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats have wasted the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity handed to them in the 2008 election. They did not focus on jobs, jobs, jobs as their primary mission, and they did not call on Americans to join in a bold national effort (which would have required a great deal of shared sacrifice) to solve a wide range of very serious problems, from our over-reliance on fossil fuels to the sorry state of public education to the need to rebuild the nation's rotting infrastructure.
All of that could have been pulled together under the umbrella of job creation - short-term and long-term. In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Obama's historic victory, and with the trauma of the economic collapse still upon us, it would have been very difficult for Republicans on Capitol Hill to stand in the way of a rebuild-America campaign aimed at putting millions of men and women back to work.
Mr. Obama had campaigned on the mantra of change, and that would have been the kind of change that working people could have gotten behind. But it never happened. Job creation was the trump card in the hand held by Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but they never played it. And now we're paying a fearful price.
Fifteen million Americans are unemployed, according to the official count, which wildly understates the reality. Assuming no future economic setbacks and job creation at a rate of 200,000 or so a month, it would take more than a decade to get us back to where we were when the Great Recession began in December 2007. But we're nowhere near that kind of sustained job growth. Last month, a measly 41,000 private-sector jobs were created.
We are in deep, deep gumbo.
The Obama administration feels it should get a great deal of credit for its economic stimulus efforts, its health care initiative, its financial reform legislation, its vastly increased aid to education and so forth. And maybe if we were grading papers, there would be a fair number of decent marks to be handed out.
But Americans struggling in a down economy are worried about the survival of their families. Destitution is beckoning for those whose unemployment benefits are running out, and that crowd of long-term jobless men and women is expanding rapidly.
There is a widespread feeling that only the rich and well-placed can count on Washington's help, and that toxic sentiment is spreading like the oil stain in the gulf, with ominous implications for President Obama and his party. It's in this atmosphere that support for the president and his agenda is sinking like a stone.
Employment is the No. 1 issue for most ordinary Americans. Their anxiety on this front only grows as they watch teachers, firefighters and police officers lining up to walk the unemployment plank as state and local governments wrestle with horrendous budget deficits.
And what do these worried Americans see the Obama administration doing? It's doubling down on the war in Afghanistan, trying somehow to build a nation from scratch in the chaos of a combat zone.
By nearly 2 to 1, respondents to the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll believed the United States is on the wrong track. Despite the yelping and destructive machinations of the deficit hawks, employment and the economy are by far the public's biggest concern. Mr. Obama is paying dearly for his tin ear on this topic. Fifty-four percent of respondents believed he does not have a clear plan for creating jobs. Only 45 percent approved of his overall handling of the economy, compared with 48 percent who disapproved.
It's not too late for the president to turn things around, but there is no indication that he has any plan or strategy for doing it. And the political environment right now, with confidence in the administration waning and budgetary fears unnecessarily heightened by the deficit hawks, is not good.
It would take an extraordinary exercise in leadership to rally the country behind a full-bore jobs-creation campaign - nothing short of large-scale nation-building on the home front. Maybe that's impossible in the current environment. But that's what the country needs.
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8) BP Discussing a Backup Strategy to Contain Oil
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29wells.html?ref=us
Since shortly after oil began spewing into the Gulf of Mexico two months ago, relief wells have been discussed as the ultimate solution, their success in permanently plugging the runaway well deemed a foregone conclusion.
But BP and government officials are now talking about a long-term containment plan to pump the oil to an existing platform should the relief well effort fail. While such a failure is considered highly unlikely, the contingency plan is the latest sign that with this most vexing of engineering challenges - snuffing a gusher 5,000 feet down in the gulf - nothing is a sure thing.
Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president in charge of subsea containment and capping efforts, said Monday that the first relief well was "progressing very well" and on target to intercept the runaway well more than three miles below the surface of the gulf.
"It's not a matter so much of if, as when," Mr. Wells said of the effort, which will involve pumping heavy mud and cement through the relief well into the damaged well to plug the damaged well permanently.
"But we always said we wanted to have backups for backups," he added about the contingency plan, which was first revealed by Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the national incident commander for the spill.
Experts said it was conceivable that the "kill" procedure would not be effective, particularly if only a single relief well was used and the bottom of the well bore was damaged in the initial blowout. Pumping large quantities of erosive mud into the well could even end up damaging the well further, hindering later efforts to seal it.
"I won't say there haven't been relief wells that haven't worked," said a technician involved in the effort.
There are questions about the damaged well's condition, particularly near the point where the interception would take place, and whether it could affect the kill procedure.
"No human being alive can know the answers," said the technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work.
The backup plan would involve continuing to collect the oil through several systems at the wellhead and pumping it through a subsea pipeline to an existing production platform at least several miles away. Mr. Wells said several platforms had been identified as possibilities, although no decisions had been made.
BP is currently drilling two relief wells from rigs that are each about a half-mile from the site of the blown-out well. The first well is about a thousand feet vertically from the interception point and more than 17,000 feet below sea level. The second well, which was started about two weeks later than the first, is not as far along, and Mr. Wells said Monday that if the first well succeeded in plugging the gusher, drilling of the second would be halted.
"We feel very good about the progress we've made," he said.
The company was still holding to a timetable of early August for completion of the first relief well, Mr. Wells added, barring delays due to bad weather. Tropical Storm Alex, which is expected to become a hurricane and is on track to hit Texas, is not expected to delay the drilling effort.
Mr. Wells said that the first well had closed within about 20 feet horizontally of the damaged well, and that crews would be conducting 8 to 12 more magnetic ranging tests - each of which takes about half a day - to determine the precise location of the metal casing pipe in the damaged well bore. The goal is to continue to drill the relief well in parallel with the damaged well to within about 200 feet vertically of the interception point, and within five feet horizontally. Then the remaining 200 feet will be drilled, and a milling device will be used to cut into the casing pipe of the runaway well.
Once the two wells are connected, heavy drilling mud will be pumped down the relief well and into the damaged well's bore, building up a column of mud that would eventually exert enough downward force to overcome the pressure of the rising oil. Mr. Wells said there were roughly 44,000 barrels of mud available at the site.
The advantage of such a "bottom kill" is that it immediately starts to reduce pressure in the damaged well bore as the column of mud builds up, Mr. Wells said. This is in contrast to the "top kill" procedure, which was tried unsuccessfully last month, in which pressure builds as mud is pumped into the top of the well. BP officials said one reason the top-kill effort was abandoned was out of concern that a pressure buildup might damage the well.
The technician, who has knowledge of the effort, said he was optimistic that the relief-well procedure would succeed, in part because the frictional pressure of the mud in the well bore would contribute to its ability to overcome the pressure of the oil. But he said BP would improve its chances for success if it waited for the second relief well to be completed, so that it could pump twice as much mud into "a well that's this powerful, this productive and this problematic."
He said that too little was known about the condition of the well bore near the bottom - whether, for instance, it had been enlarged by the high-pressure flow of oil over the past two months.
"The engineering suggests that one relief well is enough," he said. "But there are just all these unknowns."
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9) Recovery Effort in Gulf Expected to Continue Despite Storm
By JOSEPH BERGER
June 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29spill.html?ref=us
A tropical storm moving across the western Gulf of Mexico that is likely to strengthen into a hurricane is not expected to seriously disrupt efforts to capture oil gushing from the stricken BP well, officials of the Coast Guard and BP said Monday.
Adm. Thad W. Allen, of the Coast Guard, who is commanding the federal response to the disaster, said at an afternoon press conference that high seas produced by Tropical Storm Alex should not force the evacuation of rigs and other equipment from the blowout site, which is 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Should an evacuation take place, he said, it could halt the work of collecting oil and drill relief wells for about 14 days.
"As it stands right now, absent the intervention of a hurricane, we're still looking at mid-August," to have relief wells shut off the gusher entirely, Admiral Allen said.
However, BP officials said that what could be delayed, even by current wave heights, is an effort to prepare what is known as a "floating riser system" that will help raise the daily total of collected oil from, about 25,000 barrels to as much as 50,000 barrels. At a briefing Monday morning, Kent Wells, a senior vice president of BP who is overseeing BP's efforts, said the storm is expected to follow a track that will take it well west of the blowout site, but it may produce waves of 10 to 12 feet, which Mr. Wells said was too high for the "very precise work" on the surface needed to prepare the floating riser system.
Mr. Wells said the containment cap and a second system that are collecting 25,000 barrels of oil a day would not need to be disconnected and the drilling of two relief wells should continue on schedule. The first relief well is supposed to pump in heavy mud and shut off the gusher sometime in August.
Tropical Storm Alex is on a course heading for northeastern Mexico and a stretch of Texas. Meteorologists at Accuweather.com said they are anticipating a landfall between Tampico, Mexico and Brownsville, Tex. Wednesday night or early Thursday.
Meanwhile Associated Press reported that BP had filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission that indicate the cost of capping and cleaning the spill have reached $2.65 billion. BP has lost more than $100 billion in market value since the drilling platform the company was operating blew up April 20. The costs include spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs, but not a $20 billion fund for damages the company created this month.
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