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“Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests.”..Leon Trotsky, November 22, 1917
HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
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FBI Delivers Subpoenas to More Anti-War, Solidarity Activists
Friday, December 03, 2010
[StopFBI-National] More subpoenas today - make these calls NOW!
For more information on the case: www.stopfbi.net
StopFBI mailing list
StopFBI@organizerweb.com
http://www.organizerweb.com/mailman/listinfo/stopfbi
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and condemn the use of the grand jury to repress the anti-war and solidarity movements! Call Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 NOW!
2. Call US Attorney General Eric Holder - 202-353-1555 with the same demand.
3. And call President Obama: 202-456-1111
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Fifth Annual Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Summit
FIVE YEARS LATER:
THE LEGACY OF STANLEY TOOKIE WILLIAMS
Looking back at Stan's life, his work,
and the impact of his legacy on the struggles for peace and justice
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Merritt College
Huey P. Newton/Bobby Seale Student Lounge
12500 Campus Drive, Oakland
F E AT U R I N G
AUDIO RECORDINGS of Stanley Tookie Williams
MESSAGES from prisoners on the subject of Stan's life and legacy
READINGS from Stan's children's books and other writings
BARBARA BECNEL, co-author and friend of Stanley Tookie Williams
MINISTER CHRISTOPHER MUHAMMAD, Nation of Islam
DR. SIRI BROWN, Chair, African American studies department, Merrit College
FRED JACKSON, friend of Stan and community organizer
CEPHUS JOHNSON, Oscar Grant's uncle
JACK BRYSON, father of two of Oscar Grant's friends
CRYSTAL BYBEE, anti-death penalty activist
SPONSORS
African American Studies at Merritt College
Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
For directions, go to www.merritt.edu
For more information, call 510-333-7966
This event is free and open to the public
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NEXT MEETING OF THE UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9, 1:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(BETWEEN 16TH AND 15TH STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO)
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
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You need to watch this video. It made us furious, and it made us cry.
It's a powerful reminder of the real faces behind unemployment statistics. It's about three minutes and it's worth every second so I hope you'll turn up your speakers and watch the whole thing.
The same senators who are fighting to charge $700 billion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to our national credit card say extending unemployment is "too expensive" and "must be paid for." Meanwhile, more than one person a second is losing his or her lifeline.
If this video doesn't fuel your outrage and give you a sense of the human cost of delay on emergency unemployment, nothing will.
Please watch and send a strong message to your members of Congress. Tell them to restore unemployment insurance benefits for jobless workers who are being cut off right now at the rate of more than one a second.
Then, share this video with your friends and ask them to take action, too.
Let's fix this outrage.
Sincerely,
Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO
P.S. The online day of solidarity with jobless workers is coming Tuesday. Get ready to change your Facebook status and photo and to Tweet the word out. Thanks.
http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1011
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41st Native American Day Of Mourning: Thanksgiving Day- Nov. 25, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYmKess4hrc
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Road To Hope Convoy Reaches Gaza - Special Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2sO-T_AjY
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A little holiday levity:
Check this out. It's for Willie Nelson (he's actually in it). It's a video from the Colbert Report and make sure to watch the very end:
http://rutube.ru/tracks/1248708.html
I have no money in my coffer,
No gold or silver do I bring,
Nor have I precious jewels to offer,
To celebrate the newborn king.
Yet do not spurn my gift completely,
O ye three wise men please demur,
Behold a plant that smokes more sweetly,
Than neither frankincense or myrrh.
And like a child born in this manger,
This herb is mild yet it is strong,
And it brings peace to friend and stranger,
Goodwill to men lies in this bong.
And now my wonder weed is flaring, - "Are you high?"
Lit like that special star above, - "Can it be?"
Pass it around in endless sharing, - "On christmas day"
And let not mankind bogart love. - "You'd smoke my tree!"
And the wise men started toking,
And yea, the bud was kind,
It was salvation they were smoking,
And his forgiveness blew their mind.
And still that wonder weed is flaring, - "Are you high?"
Lit like that special star above, - "You're so high!"
Pass it around in endless sharing, - "Dude, man, dude"
And let not mankind bogart love. - "You're really high, I'm gonna tell your savior"
And let not mankind bogart love.
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20 November 2010 Afghanistan: Time to Go
On 20 November 2010, as the Nato leaders met in Lisbon to discuss war strategy thousands of anti-war protesters marched through London calling for all British troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan now.
The march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was led by military families who have lost loved ones in the war, or who have relatives serving there now, and by Joe Glenton, the soldier who was jailed and court martialled for refusing to fight a war that he believed to be unjustified.
These videos capture the spirit of the day on which the cry was Afghanistan: Time to Go and Cut War Not Welfare.
Watch the great video's of this demonstration at this site:
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2170/246/
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The New Normal Recovery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z87XBKNto4Q&feature=player_embedded
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Don't Touch My Junk (the TSA Hustle) song + video by Michael Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEMRSp7vaY&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Bird's Eye View: You've Got To See This
Blog - BPs Oil Drilling Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 11:22
http://healthygulf.org/201011241558/blog/bps-oil-drilling-disaster-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/birds-eye-view-you-ve-got-to-see-this
Yesterday's monitoring trip took me down to an isolated area on the eastern edge of Bay Ronquille on Louisiana's coast. Bay Ronquille is to the southeast of Barataria Bay. I went to this area after being informed by a source that there are stretches of beach near Ronquille that are "completely covered in oil "and "untouched "by any clean-up crew.
Our journey began in Myrtle Grove, LA aboard a boat with Captain Zach Mouton. On board this day was Jo Billups, GRN sponsor and member of the band Sassafrass, Randy Perez, a videographer from New Orleans, and my brother Jason Henderson, a Geography Professor visiting from San Francisco.
My source was correct in that there are miles long stretches of beach that are caked with huge mats of oil. There are enormous mats of tar that stretch from the shore to the water. In some spots, the tide covers the mats as it washes in only to reveal them as it washes back out. In other areas, the mats are so huge that they stretch from the sea bed all the way to the beach. It's impossible to tell how far out underwater they stretch. There are areas where you think you are standing on sand or mud only to realize that you are standing on huge blankets of weathered oil. There are tidal pools in the middle of the island that are filled with oil. The smell of oil is everywhere. Skulls and bones from dead birds and fish litter the sand and coyote tracks are all around. What a pity.
Whether BP has sent anyone to attempt to clean this area anytime in that last few months was hard to discern just by looking at the sand and soil. There were no usual tell-tell signs like tire tracks from four wheelers or left behind plastic bags., water bottles, and gloves. BP is aware of the area because as soon as we got onto the beach, a boat carrying BP workers saw us and sent someone to chase after us. Having been through this song and dance so many times with BP "supervisors", I decided to let my brother run interference while I foraged ahead to document the disaster. According to Jason, the BP contractor was cordial but did ask a lot of questions about who we were and what we were doing. The man explained that BP will be cleaning this area starting Monday, complete with heavy equipment and all. I am planning another trip next week to see if his claim is accurate. I've heard it all before.
By the way, on the way down to Bay Ronquille, we made a pass through Bay Jimmy. While the marsh is still covered in oil, there was not one clean up worker to be found anywhere in the Bay. That's funny considering I know of thousands of struggling out of work Gulf coast residents that would love a job cleaning up BP's mess.
Jonathan Henderson is the Coastal Resiliency Organizer for GRN
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Quantitative Easing Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&feature=player_embedded#
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Report: "Tar balls and black oily plumes" wash up in Apalachicola Bay, FL - 70 miles EAST of Panama City (VIDEO)
November 12th, 2010 at 09:02 AM Email Post
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Seattle Cop: 'I'll Beat the F--ing Mexican Piss Out of You Homey'
http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/05/seattle_cop_ill_beat_the_f---ing_mexican_piss_out_of_you_homey.html
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Burning Desperation
Self-immolation has become a common form of suicide for Afghan women. Photographer Lynsey Addario speaks with women who survived their suicide attempts.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/11/07/world/1248069290784/burning-desperation.html?ref=world
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Anonymous BP cleanup worker: The oil "really hasn't even been touched"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vegVKrg84HI&feature=player_embedded
http://allhiphop.com/stories/editorial/archive/2010/11/09/22476630.aspx
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Tag-Team Wrestling
"We have Learned who is For Real and who is Frontin'."
Glen Ford speaks in West Haven, CT just before the Oct. 2010 "One Nation Working Together" DC demo. See his scathing comments about the speakers from the main stage at the actual demo at blackagendareport.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAIuTM3cK9I
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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UAW Workers Picket The UAW Over Two-Tier
http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/uaw-workers-picket-the-uaw/
Rally To End Two-Tier & Stand in Solidarity with GM Lake Orion | UAW HQ, Detroit MI (1 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bST5aTYZa00&feature=player_embedded
Rally To End Two-Tier & Stand in Solidarity with GM Lake Orion | UAW HQ, Detroit MI (2 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHLb-KMXD9c&feature=player_embedded
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BP Contract Worker "Trenches Dug To Bury Oil On Beaches"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qop9xbGv4&feature=player_embedded
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RETHINK Afghanistan: The 10th Year: Afghanistan Veterans Speak Out
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/
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Firefighters Watch As Home Burns:
Gene Cranick's House Destroyed In Tennessee Over $75 Fee
By Adam J. Rose
The Huffington Post -- videos
10- 5-10 12:12 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/firefighters-watch-as-hom_n_750272.html
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Soldier Describes Murder of Afghan for Sport in Leaked Tape
By ROBERT MACKEY
September 27, 2010, 6:43 pm
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/soldier-describes-murder-of-afghan-for-sport-in-leaked-tape/?ref=world
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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Stephen Colbert's statement before Congress
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39343087#39343087
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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AN ATTACK AGAINST ONE IS AN ATTACK AGAINST ALL! WE ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS OUR WEAKEST LINK! UNITY AND SOLIDARITY AGAINST THESE ATTACKS IS OUR MOST POWERFUL DEFENSE!
THIS JUST IN: NEW GRAND JURY INVESTIGATIONS; AND ATTACK AGAINST JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE ACTIVISTS:
FBI Raid Victims Get New Grand Jury Subpoenas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIlMwbkIo2E
APNewsBreak: Activists called back to grand jury
By AMY FORLITI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 17, 2010; 6:10 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/17/AR2010111705560.html
MINNEAPOLIS -- Three Minnesota anti-war activists who refused to testify before a federal grand jury in Chicago after their homes were raided in a terrorism investigation have been told they'll be called again, an attorney told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
In late September, authorities searched seven homes and an office in Minneapolis and Chicago in what the FBI said was an investigation into material support of terrorism. Fourteen activists in the two states were summoned to testify, but they refused and their subpoenas were postponed.
None of the activists have been charged. Warrants suggest agents were looking for connections between them and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East.
Bruce Nestor, an attorney who represents some of the activists, said Wednesday that three of them have been told they'll be called back to the grand jury, but it's not clear when. Individual attorneys for those activists are working out details with prosecutors, Nestor said.
"They don't have a specific date, but they are being told that basically they will be called back in front of the grand jury," Nestor said. "They all have individual counsel, and those individual counsel are in the process of discussing with the U.S. attorney the details as to how proceed."
Randall Samborn, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, declined to comment about the case, saying he could neither confirm nor deny anything involving a federal grand jury because such proceedings are confidential.
Nestor said activists Anh Pham, Sarah Martin and Tracy Molm - whose homes were raided in September - have been told they'll be called again before the grand jury.
"These three are being called back, and within a matter of weeks will be facing the decision of testifying or facing contempt," Nestor said.
Pham said Wednesday she knew little about the situation and declined comment until she had a chance to talk to her attorney. Messages left for Martin were not immediately returned, and a phone number for Molm was not immediately available.
The activists said previously that they wouldn't appear before a grand jury because they felt grand juries had historically been used to harass activists and that testifying in secret would stifle free speech.
The government has not revealed the target of its investigation, but the activists have said they felt singled out because of their work in the anti-war movement.
"The government is not saying much, and they kind of hold all the cards at the moment," Nestor said.
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NOTE TO READERS:
The BAUAW Newsletter stands squarely opposed to the Grand Jury investigation of antiwar and social justice activists. An injury to one is an injury to all. We are all under attack now! We must stand united in defense of our fellow activists!
We have a right to fight injustice wherever it occurs in the world! Justice is an inalienable human right for everyone!
We are also alarmed and outraged about the recent pepper-spray attack against Jewish Voice for Peace activists at their own meeting carried out by Zionist thugs:
Right-wing Israel advocacy group San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs
Member Pepper Sprays Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) members
at Bay Area JVP Chapter Meeting. Wraps self in Israeli flag.
Group well known in Bay Area for harassing and intimidating peace activists
Contact: Jesse AT Jvp.org
[Oakland, CA November 15, 2010]
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/right-wing-israel-advocacy-group-pepper-sprays-jewish-voice-peace-jvp-members
Sunday night, November 14, 2010, up to a dozen members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs, a right-wing Israeli advocacy group with a documented track record of aggressively taunting and intimidating grassroots peace activists, attended a Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace community meeting at a South Berkeley Senior Center.
Jewish Voice for Peace is the largest U.S. Jewish peace group dedicated to a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on democracy and full equality --- the Bay Area chapter is the founding chapter of the organization. Approximately 50 to 60 people were at the meeting, and numerous witnesses are available to corroborate the events.
Watch video of some of the disruptions and the victims and perpetrator of attacks here:
StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel Pepper-sprays peace activists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLO2xKcYDwc
Eyewitness testimonies are here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-testimony-jvp-member-about-stand-us-swu-attacks
and here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-report-stand-us-attacks-jvp-meeting
Article by a Berkeley Daily Planet reporter here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-testimony-berekeley-daily-planet-reporter-about-swu-attacks
Americans for Peace Now condemned the attack here:
http://peacenow.org/entries/post_25
and Meretz USA called it not a legitimate part of Jewish communal discourse here.
http://meretzusa.blogspot.com/2010/11/meretz-usa-violence-not-legitimate-part.html
Wrapped in an Israeli flag, San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs (SFVI/SWU) member Robin Dubner, an Oakland based attorney, pepper-sprayed two JVP members in the eyes and face after they attempted to nonviolently block her ability to aggressively videotape the faces of JVP meeting attendees against their will. The members, Alexei Folger and Glen Hauer, were careful to make no physical contact with her or her camera prior to the attack.
Folger said, "I did not see it coming and all of a sudden there was gooey stuff all over my head and hand. I have never been pepper-sprayed before, my whole head felt like it was on fire."
JVP had earlier this year filed a police report about a June SFVI/SWU protest at which JVP and (peace group) Women in Black members were intimidatingly videotaped and threatened by a StandWithUs supporter after being taunted with chants like "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi" or "Kapo,Kapo,Kapo".
Caught on a widely seen videotape was a SFVI/SWU supporter pointing his camera to the faces of silent peace vigil participants while saying "You're all being identified, every last one of you...we will find out where you live. We're going to make your lives difficult. We will disrupt your families..."
For that reason, JVP members were particularly concerned about protecting the safety of meeting attendees and preventing the videotaping.
Hauer, a retired attorney and member of San Francisco's Congregation Sha'har Zahav who was treated for pepper spray explained, "When one of the intruders [Dubner] continued standing and filming people despite the facilitator and facility manager repeatedly telling her that she could not, I first asked her politely to please put away the video camera, then several times told her to put away the camera, and then tried nonviolently to stay in front of the camera with my body, even when she shoved me. I could have taken the camera but decided instead to talk to the woman and to try to be the only person she photographed."
Hauer, who also leads groups on healing from WWII & the Holocaust, and speaks to churches about anti-Semitism as it relates to the movement for peace in the Middle East, went on:
"In my mind was the history of targeting of Jewish peace activists by the right wing of the Jewish community--the posting of our photos on internet hate sites, for example, followed by acts of vandalism at our homes and places of work. There were many in the room for whom I care deeply. I could also see that many at the meeting were new to the work we were doing, and I did not want them to be scared away."
Dubner was accompanied by up to a dozen other StandWithUs members--including Dan Spitzer, Susan Meyers, Mike Harris, Bea Lieberman, Faith Meltzer, and Ross Meltzer--who repeatedly disrupted and aggressively videotaped the JVP meeting and JVP members against their will, wielding the cameras in an intimidating and belligerent manner. Despite repeated requests from the JVP meeting facilitator and other JVP activists to desist from recording and put away their videocameras, the SFVI/SWU activists - who had spread themselves throughout the room - continued to record and launch lengthy monologues while the presenters attempted to speak.
They were explicitly invited by the JVP facilitator to stay in the meeting and participate without videotaping but they refused. They also refused offers for floor time by the presenters. The manager of the facility asked the SFVI/SWU members to abide by JVP's rules or face the police, and when SFVI/SWU refused to comply with JVP's protocol, the police were called.
At one point, JVP members and presenters worked to restore calm and de-escalate by singing the Hebrew peace song, Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu (Peace will come to us) while waiting for the police to arrive. Most meeting attendees did not know until later that 2 people had been attacked with pepper spray.
When police arrived, Dubner was temporarily placed in handcuffs while other members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs remained inside the meeting blowing loud whistles, using videocameras to intimidate meeting attendees.
Dubner refused repeated requests by JVP members or the police to identify the substance she sprayed. A police officer later identified it as pepper spray and paramedics were called to help treat the victims of the attack. One of them, Alexei Folger, looked visibly red and swollen, as though she had been burned on more than half her face.
Immediately following the attack, Ms. Folger, not knowing the nature of the substance on her face, rubbed some of it on Ms. Dubner's shirtsleeve at which point Ms.Dubner, who is a large woman, started physically shoving the petite Ms. Folger. A Jewish Voice for Peace staff member stood between them to prevent further escalation or physical contact between Ms Dubner and the shocked and injured Ms. Folger.
This deliberate confrontation is part of a pattern of escalating intimidation and attacks against peace activists in the Bay Area. Earlier this year, the home of Tikkun Magazine editor Michael Lerner was covered in threatening posters. In addition to the videotaped harassment of Women in Black and JVP members, several months ago someone placed threatening graffiti outside of the JVP offices.
###
These actions cannot be tolerated by the peace and justice movement--anywhere! We have a right to meet and protest injustice without being harassed, videotaped, pepper-sprayed, disrupted or summoned by the FBI for Grand Jury questioning!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War Newsletter. bauaw.org
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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FREE THE SCOTT SISTERS
http://mije.org/node/1343
freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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San Francisco Labor Council Resolution Adopted unanimously on Nov. 8, 2010
Resolution Condemning Police Attack on Free Speech & Assembly following Oscar Grant Rally
Whereas, on Friday November 5, former BART cop Johannes Mehserle was given a jail sentence of 2 years for the 'involuntary manslaughter' of Oscar Grant. Subtracting time served and 'good behavior', Mehserle may be back on the streets in as little as 7 months; and
Whereas, the organizers of a November 5th Rally and Gathering in Frank Ogawa Plaza to honor Oscar Grant and Respond to the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, were refused a permit for an organized march after the rally to an indoor gathering at DeFremery Park; and
Whereas, after the rally many hundreds of community members spontaneously started marching toward Fruitvale BART, the site of Oscar Grant's murder, and after the cops sealed off an entire city block, police did not allow people to disperse, called it a 'crime scene', and arrested 152 people, including San Francisco Labor Council Delegate Dave Welsh, resulting in more arrests than at any other Oscar Grant-related protest; and
Whereas, most arrestees have been cited on misdemeanor charges, held for 24 hours and have mass arraignments in the first week of December at Wiley Manuel Courthouse, 661 Washington Street in Oakland.
Therefore be It Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council condemns this assault on freedom of speech and assembly and demands that all these misdemeanor assembly charges be dropped.
Presented by Marcus Holder, delegate from ILWU Local 10, and adopted unanimously at the regular delegates meeting of the San Francisco Labor Council held Nov. 8, 2010 in San Francisco, California.
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Deafening Silence, Chuck Africa (MOVE 9)
Check out other art and poetry by prisoners at:
Shujaas!: Prisoners Resisting Through Art
...we banging hard, yes, very hard, on this system...
http://shujaas.wordpress.com/
Peace People,
This poem is from Chuck Africa, one of the MOVE 9, who is currently serving 30-100 years on trump up charges of killing a police officer. After 32 years in prison, the MOVE 9 are repeatly denied parole, after serving their minimum sentence. Chuck wanted me to share this with the people, so that we can see how our silence in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom is inherently an invitation to their death behind prison walls.
Deafening Silence
Don't ya'll hear cries of anguish?
In the climate of pain come joining voices?
But voices become unheard and strained by inactions
Of dead brains
How long will thou Philly soul remain in the pit of agonizing apathy?
Indifference seems to greet you like the morning mirror
Look closely in the mirror and realize it's a period of mourning....
My Sistas, mothers, daughters, wives and warriors
Languish in prisons obscurity like a distant star in the galaxies as does their brothers
We need to be free....
How loud can you stay silence?
Have the courage to stand up and have a say,
Choose resistance and let go of your fears.
The history of injustice to MOVE; we all know so well
But your deafening silence could be my DEATH KNELL.
Chuck Africa
Please share, inform people and get involve in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom! www.MOVE9parole.blogspot.com
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Say No to Islamophobia!
Defend Mosques and Community Centers!
The Fight for Peace and Social Justice Requires Defense of All Under Attack!
http://www.petitiononline.com/nophobia/petition.html
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Kevin Keith Update: Good News! Death sentence commuted!
Ohio may execute an innocent man unless you take action.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-kevin-keith
Ohio's Governor Spares Life of a Death Row Inmate Kevin Keith
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/us/03ohio.html?ref=us
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Please sign the petition to release Bradley Manning
http://www.petitiononline.com/manning1/petition.html (Click to sign here)
To: US Department of Defense; US Department of Justice
We, the Undersigned, call for justice for US Army PFC Bradley Manning, incarcerated without charge (as of 18 June 2010) at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.
Media accounts state that Mr. Manning was arrested in late May for leaking the video of US Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent people and seriously wounding two children in Baghdad, including those who arrived to help the wounded, as well as potentially other material. The video was released by WikiLeaks under the name "Collateral Murder".
If these allegations are untrue, we call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
If these allegations ARE true, we ALSO call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
Simultaneously, we express our support for Mr. Manning in any case, and our admiration for his courage if he is, in fact, the person who disclosed the video. Like in the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, W. Mark Felt, Frank Serpico and countless other whistleblowers before, government demands for secrecy must yield to public knowledge and justice when government crime and corruption are being kept hidden.
Justice for Bradley Manning!
Sincerely,
The Undersigned:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?manning1
--
Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com
"Yesterday I lost a country. / I was in a hurry, / and didn't notice when it fell from me / like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. / Please, if anyone passes by / and stumbles across it, / perhaps in a suitcase / open to the sky, / or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound, / ... / If anyone stumbles across it, / return it to me please. / Please return it, sir. / Please return it, madam. / It is my country . . . / I was in a hurry / when I lost it yesterday." -Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi poet
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Please forward widely...
HELP LYNNE STEWART -- SUPPORT THESE BILLS
These two bills are now in Congress and need your support. Either or both bills would drastically decrease Lynne's and other federal sentences substantially.
H.R. 1475 "Federal Prison Work Incentive Act Amended 2009," Congressman Danny Davis, Democrat, Illinois
This bill will restore and amend the former federal B.O.P. good time allowances. It will let all federal prisoners, except lifers, earn significant reductions to their sentences. Second, earn monthly good time days by working prison jobs. Third, allowances for performing outstanding services or duties in connection with institutional operations. In addition, part of this bill is to bring back parole to federal long term prisoners.
Go to: www.FedCURE.org and www.FAMM.org
At this time, federal prisoners only earn 47 days per year good time. If H.R. 1475 passes, Lynne Stewart would earn 120-180 days per year good time!
H.R. 61 "45 And Older," Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (18th Congressional District, Texas)
This bill provides early release from federal prison after serving half of a violent crime or violent conduct in prison.
Please write, call, email your Representatives and Senators. Demand their votes!
This information is brought to you by Diane E. Schindelwig, a federal prisoner #36582-177 and friend and supporter of Lynne Stewart.
Write to Lynne at:
Lynne Stewart 53504-054
MCC-NY 2-S
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
For further information call Lynne's husband, Ralph Poynter, leader of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Send contributions payable to:
Lynne Stewart Organization
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York, 11216
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Listen to Lynne Stewart event, that took place July 8, 2010 at Judson Memorial Church
Excerpts include: Mumia Abu Jamal, Ralph Poynter, Ramsey Clark, Juanita
Young, Fred Hampton Jr., Raging Grannies, Ralph Schoenman
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
And check out this article (link) too!
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2010/062210Lendman.shtml
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL GRAVELY CONCERNED THAT RULING PUTS TROY DAVIS ON TRACK FOR EXECUTION; CITES PERSISTING DOUBTS ABOUT HIS GUILT
"Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence."
Amnesty International Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Contact: Wende Gozan Brown at 212-633-4247, wgozan@aiusa.org.
(Washington, D.C.) - Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today expressed deep concern that a federal district court decision puts Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis back on track for execution, despite doubts about his guilt that were raised during a June evidentiary hearing. Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence.
"Nobody walking out of that hearing could view this as an open-and-shut case," said Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA. "The testimony that came to light demonstrates that doubt still exists, but the legal bar for proving innocence was set so high it was virtually insurmountable. It would be utterly unconscionable to proceed with this execution, plain and simple."
Amnesty International representatives, including Cox, attended the hearing in Savannah, Ga. The organization noted that evidence continues to cast doubt over the case:
· Four witnesses admitted in court that they lied at trial when they implicated Troy Davis and that they did not know who shot Officer Mark MacPhail.
· Four witnesses implicated another man as the one who killed the officer - including a man who says he saw the shooting and could clearly identify the alternative suspect, who is a family member.
· Three original state witnesses described police coercion during questioning, including one man who was 16 years old at the time of the murder and was questioned by several police officers without his parents or other adults present.
"The Troy Davis case is emblematic of everything that is wrong with capital punishment," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "In a system rife with error, mistakes can be made. There are no do-overs when it comes to death. Lawmakers across the country should scrutinize this case carefully, not only because of its unprecedented nature, but because it clearly indicates the need to abolish the death penalty in the United States."
Since the launch of its February 2007 report, Where Is the Justice for Me? The Case of Troy Davis, Facing Execution in Georgia, Amnesty International has campaigned intensively for a new evidentiary hearing or trial and clemency for Davis, collecting hundreds of thousands of clemency petition signatures and letters from across the United States and around the world. To date, internationally known figures such as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have all joined the call for clemency, as well as lawmakers from within and outside of Georgia.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters, activists and volunteers who campaign for universal human rights from more than 150 countries. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
# # #
For more information visit www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis.
Wende Gozan Brown
Media Relations Director
Amnesty International USA
212/633-4247 (o)
347/526-5520 (c)
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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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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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D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Counts in Haiti of Cholera Cases and Victims Could Be Doubled
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/world/americas/04briefs-Haiti.html?ref=world
2) Lebanon: Hezbollah Reports Finding Israeli Device Spying on Network
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/world/middleeast/04briefs-Lebanon.html?ref=world
3) BP Is Planning to Challenge Estimates of Oil Spill
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/science/earth/04bp.html?ref=us
4) Nigeria: Village Raid Shows Dangers in Oil Delta
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/04/business/AP-AF-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.html?src=busln
5) Publishing State Secrets
By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
6) RE: Shooting incident of Sister Saja
From: Amer Jubran
VIA EMAIL
7) Mounting State Debts Stoke Fears of a Looming Crisis
By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/politics/05states.html?hp
8) Europe Wary of U.S. Bank Monitors
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/middleeast/06wikileaks-swift.html?ref=world
9) Government Workers Ordered Not to Read Cables
"Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks"
By ERIC LIPTON
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?ref=world
10) Budget-Cutting Colleges Bid Some Languages Adieu
"After a generation of expansion, academic officials are being forced to lop entire majors. More often than not, foreign languages - European ones in particular - are on the chopping block." [The further dumbing-down of U.S. students. Every cut in education results in poorer educational opportunity for all students...bw]
By LISA W. FODERARO
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/education/05languages.html?ref=education
11) Lawyer: Nigerian Soldiers Killed Civilians
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/05/business/AP-AF-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.html?src=busln
12) After Police Shots, Grief and Conflicting Stories
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and TRYMAINE LEE
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/nyregion/06pace.html?hp
13) Hundreds of WikiLeaks Mirror Sites Appear
By RAVI SOMAIYA
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06wiki.html?ref=world
14) Plan to Lift University Tuition Galvanizes British Students
"Pointing out that university education in Britain was free until 1998, he said 'The fear is that we're heading for a completely privatized education system. And the politicians who are taking us there all had their educations completely funded by the public.'"
By D. D. GUTTENPLAN
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06iht-educLede06.html?ref=world
15)
Extreme Makeover: Criminal Court Edition
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06tattoo.html?ref=us
16) G.E. and JPMorgan Got Lots of Fed Help in '08
"Newly disclosed records show that during the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve essentially lent $16.1 billion to General Electric.... And on Sept. 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, JPMorgan Chase received a $3 billion loan from the Fed." [Alms for the rich....bw]
By SEWELL CHAN and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/economy/06fed.html?ref=us
18) Tax Fear May Move Bonuses Earlier
"If Congress does not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a typical worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year, depending on base salary."
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/06bonus.html?ref=business
19) Gay Teens Face Harsher Punishments
By TARA PARKER-POPE
December 6, 2010, 9:43 am
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/gay-teens-face-harsher-punishments/
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1) Counts in Haiti of Cholera Cases and Victims Could Be Doubled
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/world/americas/04briefs-Haiti.html?ref=world
United Nations teams in Haiti believe that the cholera epidemic's official numbers of 1,800 deaths and nearly 81,000 people infected could be double that because of difficulties in reporting, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly on Friday. Mr. Ban also said there was an urgent need for more cholera treatment centers, and an additional 350 doctors, 2,000 nurses and 2,200 support staff members to run them. He called on countries to contribute more to the organization's appeal for $164 million to contain the outbreak, saying it was still only 20 percent financed.
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2) Lebanon: Hezbollah Reports Finding Israeli Device Spying on Network
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/world/middleeast/04briefs-Lebanon.html?ref=world
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, said Friday that it had discovered an Israeli device spying on its private telecommunications network. The device exploded, apparently detonated remotely by the Israelis, when it was found near the village of Majdel Silim, about five miles from the border with Israel, Hezbollah said in a statement. A spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon had no comment, and Israeli officials could not immediately be reached. Also on Friday, Lebanese judicial officials said a military court convicted a man, Ziad Homsi, of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison and hard labor.
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3) BP Is Planning to Challenge Estimates of Oil Spill
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/science/earth/04bp.html?ref=us
BP intends to challenge official government estimates of how much oil leaked from its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that could reduce its legal liability by billions of dollars, according to documents the company filed with the presidential commission investigating the spill.
In August, federal scientists estimated that 4.9 million barrels of oil had leaked from the well before it was capped on July 15, a figure that BP now argues is 20 to 50 percent too high. Under the Clean Water Act, BP faces fines of up to $21 billion, or $4,300 per barrel, if courts determine that it acted with gross negligence before the accident.
BP has not offered its own estimates of how much oil spilled, but in the documents filed with the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, it questioned the accuracy of the government's figures, Priya Aiyar, the panel's deputy chief counsel, said at its final hearing on Friday.
In a letter to the commission in October, BP argued that official estimates by the United States Geological Survey and the Energy Department were "flawed."
"They rely on incomplete or inaccurate information, rest in large part on assumptions that have not been validated, and are subject to far greater uncertainties than have been acknowledged," the company wrote.
In a statement on Friday, the Energy Department said it stood by its estimates.
"The government's estimates about the flow rate were based on the best available data and rigorous analysis by world-leading scientists from inside and outside of government and the full resources of our national laboratories," said Stephanie Mueller, an agency spokeswoman.
Representative Edward J. Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, said it was no surprise that BP would argue that the spill estimates were too high. In hearings, subcommittee members questioned early estimates made by BP and federal officials that were later shown to vastly underestimate the flow rate of oil from the well.
"During the disaster, BP did whatever it could to avoid revealing the true flow rate of the spill," Mr. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
Preliminary estimates by BP and federal officials put the flow of oil from the well at 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day, but detailed analysis by government and independent scientists later determined it had probably reached as high as 60,000 barrels a day.
In a statement on Friday, BP called the later estimates "highly unreliable." Mr. Markey officially asked BP to turn over all documents related to its efforts to calculate the flow from the well.
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4) Nigeria: Village Raid Shows Dangers in Oil Delta
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/04/business/AP-AF-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.html?src=busln
Filed at 11:51 a.m. EST
OKWAGBE, Nigeria (AP) - As the heavily armed Nigerian soldiers slipped closer to a suspected militant camp in the country's oil-rich southern delta, they were ready for a fight after suffering casualties only days earlier.
They launched a massive attack including aerial bombings that was aimed at finding a wanted militant. Civilians caught in the middle tried to escape with their lives, human rights activists say.
As many as 150 people died in the fighting Wednesday and subsequent raids around Ayakoromor, a village lacking mobile phone reception and only accessible via the Niger Delta's maze of winding creeks, activists say. However, the military says it fired only after being fired upon.
Still, the violence represents yet another example of how those toiling in poverty in a region that makes billions for Nigeria find themselves caught between a military seeking revenge and power-hungry militants.
"In this country, we have only two classes of being," said Casely Omon-Irabor, a lawyer representing the hunted militant John Togo. "The oppressed and the oppressor."
The attack around Ayakoromor, a small village in Delta state, included heavy machine gun blasts from Navy vessels and bombing runs by military aircraft. However, the region's main military commander in the fight against militants denied Saturday that any civilian died in the recent assaults, while acknowledging soldiers opened fire on the shoreline of the civilian village after reportedly being shot at.
"We were taken aback by the volume of fire that was brought to bear on the troops when we approached Ayakoromor on the way to John Togo's camp," Gen. Charles Omoregie told journalists at a news conference. "Soldiers had to fight their way into the camp."
Omoregie said homes in the village burned after ricocheting rifle rounds exploded gasoline and kerosene canisters.
Those with family in the village, like engineer Yeigagha Henry, offered a different account. Residents able to escape the village told him his 76-year-old father died at the hands of the soldiers.
"They set the house ablaze," Henry calmly recounted Saturday in the nearby city of Okwagbe. "He died inside."
A list compiled by Oghebejabor Ikim, national coordinator for the Warri-based Forum of Justice and Human Rights Defense, identified 18 of the dead. Ikim said residents told him that soldiers burned down the local customary court and a maternity ward, as well as many homes in the area.
Access to Ayakoromor remained tightly controlled by the military Saturday. Officials with the Nigerian Red Cross made it inside, but a military commander blocked two journalists working for The Associated Press from entering the village, citing a security risk.
Violence in the area also may be continuing. Soldiers manning a boat landing in Okwagbe speaking in the Hausa language said someone suffered injuries Saturday. A commander ordered guards to avoid bringing the injured person past waiting journalists.
Militant and military attacks are nothing new to the Niger Delta, a region of creeks and mangroves about the size of South Carolina. The attacks from an insurgency that began in 2006 cut drastically into crude production in Nigeria, an OPEC-member nation that is one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the U.S.
Production has risen back to 2.2 million barrels of oil a day, in part because many militant leaders and fighters accepted a government-sponsored amnesty deal last year.
But as militants over the years profit from kidnapping and oil theft, the military has launched several reprisal massacres against villages. Often, civilians find themselves caught in the middle of a war over oil they never profit from.
Instead, they eek out a living in petty trading, fishing and subsidence farming as their children attend classes in rundown schools with rusting corrugated roofs and clinic cabinets remain barren of needed anti-malaria drugs.
"What they get as the dividends of democracy, what they get as part of oil revenue is human slaughter," said Anyakwee Nsirimovu, the executive director of the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt. "It's unacceptable and I think children and young people who watch their parents die and their houses get burned down will find a way of fighting back."
Meanwhile, both militants and the military find it lucrative for violence to continue - especially when it comes to the large-scale oil theft that plagues the foreign oil firms working in the region. That stolen crude, easily refined, fetches top dollar on the black market. But in order for the oil to leave the country, security agencies patrolling the delta must let it container ships slip away unstopped.
Between oil theft, amnesty program cash payouts and additional combat pay offered to soldiers in the region, Nsirimovu said only the civilians get left out - until the violence comes.
"People who profit from the violence in the Niger Delta would not want that violence to end," he said.
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5) Publishing State Secrets
By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
In publishing the secret diplomatic documents from the foreign policy archives of Tsarism and of the bourgeois coalition Governments of the first seven months of the revolution, we are carrying out the undertaking, which we made when our party was in opposition. Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against imperialism, which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe, is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day. The Russian people, and the peoples of Europe and the whole world, should learn the documentary truth about the plans forged in secret by the financiers and industrialists together with their parliamentary and diplomatic agents. The peoples of Europe have paid for the right to this truth with countless sacrifices and universal economic desolation.
The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy. The Soviet Government regards it as its duty to carry out such a policy in practice. That is precisely why, while openly proposing an immediate armistice to all the belligerent peoples and their Governments, we are at the same time publishing these treaties and agreements, which have lost all binding force for the Russian workers, soldiers, and peasants who have taken power into their own hands.
The bourgeois politicians and journalists of Germany and Austria-Hungary1 may try to make use of the documents published in order to present the diplomacy of the Central Empires in a more advantageous light. But any such attempt would be doomed to pitiful failure, and that for two reasons. In the first place, we intend quickly to place before the tribunal of public opinion secret documents, which treat sufficiently clearly of the diplomacy of the Central Empires. Secondly, and more important, the methods of secret diplomacy are as universal as imperialist robbery. When the German proletariat enters the revolutionary path leading to the secrets of their chancelleries, they will extract documents no whit inferior to those, which we are about to publish. It only remains to hope that this will take place quickly.
The workers' and peasants' Government abolishes secret diplomacy and its intrigues, codes, and lies. We have nothing to hide. Our program, expresses the ardent wishes of millions of workers, soldiers, and peasants. We want the rule of capital to be overthrown as possible. In exposing to the entire world the work of the ruling classes, as expressed in the secret diplomatic documents, we address the workers with the call which forms the unchangeable foundation of our foreign policy: "Proletarians of all countries, unite."
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6) RE: Shooting incident of Sister Saja
From: Amer Jubran
VIA EMAIL
Dear friends,
Earlier tonight as I parked my car in the lot adjacent to my apartment, and before I turned off the engine, I heard 3 shots. Someone had shot at my car while I was in it. Fortunately I was not harmed. At least one shot hit my side mirror and shattered it.
I caught a glimpse of a man in the nearby woods running away. From the way his arms were, he looked like he was carrying something large (the weapon, I imagine) but I didn't see it because it faced the other side and it was dark. His shirt color and his approximate height and build were the only things I could ascertain.
It could've been a hate crime committed by an islamophobe who is hostile towards hijab; or someone targeting me for my politics; or a random hooligan with apolitical criminal intent.
I'd had plans to watch a movie. I reported the incident, filed a claim with my insurance company then went to watch the movie as planned. If the intent of this shooting was to intimidate me for my politics, ethnicity or religion, the bastards will need to try much harder; people throw shoes at world leaders where I come from. If it was apolitical crime, this was only the second time the police get called to my neighborhood in a decade as per the cop to whom I reported the incident.
Makes one think of occupied peoples who experience infinitely worse than this everyday and every night.
In solidarity,
Saja
Greetings
The "incident" of shooting sister and comrade Saja is not by chance a random act. It is( no doubts ) a serious attempt to heavily assault, ,threaten and intimidate sister Saja. This is a direct result of here brave and frank critique of US foreign policies against Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Also, for being active against the racist war inside the US lead by the US government against the Arab \ Muslim communities living in the US.
I remember the first time , nine years ago, the first time I got to know Saja during the case of brother Jawdat AbuAzza who was kidnapped by the FBI and was subjected to harassment, imprisonment, and both physical and psychological abuse. She stood very bravely as a lawyer, and an activist facing the injustice which occurred with Jawdat.
Sister Saja has established a very strong position against the Arab and muslim moppets from the Arabic \ Muslim community in the US, who have accepted to be instrumental tool in hands of uncle Sam political, military, and intelligence networks in Iraq. Worthy to say: Sister Saja managed to win the hatred of both the zionists and christine zionists in the US.
This coward attempt to assassinate sister Saja is a medal of honor and pride over her chest. It is testimonial that in the darkest of nights, Saja stood an inflamed torch of freedom and pride. We stand strong by the side of this heroic Iraqi wishing her victory over her enemies and their collaborators..
Amer Jubran
New England Committee to Defend Palestine
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7) Mounting State Debts Stoke Fears of a Looming Crisis
By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/politics/05states.html?hp
The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more to cut expenses than to reward good behavior. And in Newark, the city laid off 13 percent of its police officers last week.
While next year could be even worse, there are bigger, longer-term risks, financial analysts say. Their fear is that even when the economy recovers, the shortfalls will not disappear, because many state and local governments have so much debt - several trillion dollars' worth, with much of it off the books and largely hidden from view - that it could overwhelm them in the next few years.
"It seems to me that crying wolf is probably a good thing to do at this point," said Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s.
Some of the same people who warned of the looming subprime crisis two years ago are ringing alarm bells again. Their message: Not just small towns or dying Rust Belt cities, but also large states like Illinois and California are increasingly at risk.
Municipal bankruptcies or defaults have been extremely rare - no state has defaulted since the Great Depression, and only a handful of cities have declared bankruptcy or are considering doing so.
But the finances of some state and local governments are so distressed that some analysts say they are reminded of the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown or of the debt crisis hitting nations in Europe.
Analysts fear that at some point - no one knows when - investors could balk at lending to the weakest states, setting off a crisis that could spread to the stronger ones, much as the turmoil in Europe has spread from country to country.
Mr. Rohatyn warned that while municipal bankruptcies were rare, they appeared increasingly possible. And the imbalances are so large in some places that the federal government will probably have to step in at some point, he said, even if that seems unlikely in the current political climate.
"I don't like to play the scared rabbit, but I just don't see where the end of this is," he added.
Resorting to Fiscal Tricks
As the downturn has ground on, some of the worst-hit cities and states have resorted to fiscal sleight of hand to stay afloat, helping them close yawning budget gaps each year, but often at great future cost.
Few workers with neglected 401(k) retirement accounts would risk taking out second mortgages to invest in stocks, gambling that the investment gains would be enough to build bigger nest eggs and repay the loans.
But that is just what Illinois, which has been failing to make the required annual payments to its pension funds for years, is doing. It borrowed $10 billion in 2003 and used the money to invest in its pension funds. The recession sent their investment returns below their target, but the state must repay the bonds, with interest. The solution? Illinois sold an additional $3.5 billion worth of pension bonds this year and is planning to borrow $3.7 billion more for its pension funds.
It is the long-term problems of a handful of states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, that financial analysts worry about most, fearing that their problems might precipitate a crisis that could hurt other states by driving up their borrowing costs.
But it is the short-term budget woes that nearly all states are facing that are preoccupying elected officials.
Illinois is not the only state behind on its bills. Many states, including New York, have delayed payments to vendors and local governments because they had too little cash on hand to make them. California paid vendors with i.o.u.'s last year. A handful of other states, worried about their cash flow, delayed paying tax refunds last spring.
Now, just as the downturn has driven up demand for state assistance, many states are cutting back.
The demand for food stamps has been rising significantly in Idaho, but tight budgets led the state to close nearly a third of the field offices of the state's Department of Health and Welfare, which take applications for them. As states have cut aid to cities, many have resorted to previously unthinkable cuts, laying off police officers and closing firehouses.
Those cuts in aid to cities and counties, which are expected to continue, are one reason some analysts say cities are at greater risk of bankruptcy or are being placed under outside oversight.
Next year is unlikely to bring better news. States and cities typically face their biggest deficits after recessions officially end, as rainy-day funds are depleted and easy measures are exhausted.
This time is expected to be no different. The federal stimulus money increased the federal share of state budgets to over a third last year, from just over a quarter in 2008, according to a report issued last week by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. That money is set to run out next summer. Tax collections, meanwhile, are not expected to return to their pre-recession levels for another year or two, given that the housing market and broader economy remain weak and that unemployment remains high.
Scott D. Pattison, the budget association's director, said that for states, next year could be "the worst year of this four- or five-year downturn period."
And few expect the federal government to offer more direct aid to states, at least in the short term. Many members of the new Republican majority in the House campaigned against the stimulus, and Washington is debating the recommendations of a debt-reduction commission.
So some states are essentially borrowing to pay their operating costs, adding new debts that are not always clearly disclosed.
Arizona, hobbled by the bursting housing bubble, turned to a real estate deal for relief, essentially selling off several state buildings - including the tower where the governor has her office - for a $735 million upfront payment. But leasing back the buildings over the next 20 years will ultimately cost taxpayers an extra $400 million in interest.
Many governments are delaying payments to their pension funds, which will eventually need to be made, along with the high interest - usually around 8 percent - that the funds are expected to earn each year.
New York balanced its budget this year by shortchanging its pension fund. And in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie deferred paying the $3.1 billion that was due to the pension funds this year.
It is these growing hidden debts that make many analysts nervous. States and municipalities currently have around $2.8 trillion worth of outstanding bonds, but that number is dwarfed by the debts that many are carrying off their books.
State and local pensions - another form of promised debt, guaranteed in some states by their constitutions - face hidden shortfalls of as much as $3.5 trillion by some calculations. And the health benefits that state and large local governments have promised their retirees going forward could cost more than $530 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.
"Most financial crises happen in unpredictable ways, and they hit you when you're not looking," said Jerome H. Powell, a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center who was an under secretary of the Treasury for finance during the bailout of the savings and loan industry in the early 1990s. "This one isn't like that. You can see it coming. It would be sinful not to do something about this while there's a chance."
So far, investors have bought states' bonds eagerly, on the widespread understanding that states and cities almost never default. But in recent weeks the demand has diminished sharply. Last month, mutual funds that invest in municipal bonds reported a big sell-off - a bigger one-week sell-off, in fact, than they had when the financial markets melted down in 2008. And hedge funds are already seeking out ways to place bets against the debts of some states, with the help of their investment banks.
Of course, not all states are in as dire straits as Illinois or California. And the credit-rating agencies say that the risk of default is small. States and cities typically make a priority of repaying their bond holders, even before paying for essential services. Standard & Poor's issued a report this month saying that the crises that states and municipalities were facing were "more about tough decisions than potential defaults."
Change in Ratings
The credit ratings of a number of local governments have improved this year, not because their finances have strengthened somewhat, but because the ratings agencies have changed the way they analyze governments.
The new higher ratings, which lower the cost of borrowing, emphasize the fact that municipal defaults have been much rarer than corporate defaults.
This October, Moody's issued a report explaining why it now rates all 50 states, even Illinois, as better credit risks than a vast majority of American non-financial companies.
One reason: the belief that the federal government is more likely to bail out a teetering state than a bankrupt company.
"The federal government has broadly channeled cash to all state governments during recent recessions and provided support to individual states following natural disasters," Moody's explained, adding that there was no way of being sure how Washington would respond to a bond default by a state, since it had not happened since the 1930s.
But some analysts fear the ratings are too sanguine, recalling that the ratings agencies also dismissed the possibility that a subprime crisis was brewing. While most agree that defaults are unlikely, they fear that as states struggle with their growing debts, investors could decide not to buy the debt of the weakest state or local governments.
That would force a crisis, since states cannot operate if they cannot borrow. Such a crisis could then spread to healthier states, making it more expensive for them to borrow, if Europe is an example.
Meredith Whitney, a bank analyst who was among the first to warn of the impact the subprime mortgage meltdown would have on banks, is warning that she sees similar problems with state and local government finances.
"The state situation reminded me so much of the banks, pre-crisis," she said this fall on CNBC.
There are eerie similarities between the subprime debt crisis and the looming municipal debt woes. Among them:
¶Just as housing was once considered a sure bet - prices would never fall all across the country at the same time, conventional wisdom suggested - municipal bonds have long been considered an investment safe enough for grandmothers, because states could always raise taxes to pay their bondholders. Now that proposition is being tested. Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, considered bankruptcy this year because it faced $68 million in debt payments related to a failed incinerator, which is more than the city's entire annual budget. But officials there have resisted raising taxes.
¶Much of the debt of states and cities is hidden, since it is off the books, just as the amount of mortgage-related debt turned out to be underestimated. States and municipalities often understate their pension liabilities, in part by using accounting methods that would not be allowed in the private sector. Joshua D. Rauh, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern University, and Robert Novy-Marx, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Rochester, calculated that the true unfunded liability for state and local pension plans is roughly $3.5 trillion.
¶The states and many cities still carry good ratings, and those issuing warnings are dismissed as alarmists, reminding some analysts of the lead up to the subprime crisis.
Now states are bracing for more painful cuts, more layoffs, more tax increases, more battles with public employee unions, more requests to bail out cities. And in the long term, as cities and states try to keep up on their debts, the very nature of government could change as they have less money left over to pay for the services they have long provided.
Richard Ravitch, the lieutenant governor of New York, is among those warning that states are on an unsustainable path, and that their disclosures of pension and health care obligations are often misleading. And he worries how long it can last.
"They didn't do it with bad motives," he said. "Ninety-five percent of them didn't understand what they were doing. They did it because it was easier than taxing people or cutting benefits. We're getting closer and closer to the point where we can't do that anymore. I don't know where that is, but I know we're close."
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8) Europe Wary of U.S. Bank Monitors
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/middleeast/06wikileaks-swift.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - When the European Parliament ordered a halt in February to an American government program to monitor international banking transactions for terrorist activity, the Obama administration was blindsided by the rebuke.
"Paranoia runs deep especially about US intelligence agencies," a secret cable from the American Embassy in Berlin said. "We were astonished to learn how quickly rumors about alleged U.S. economic espionage" had taken root among German politicians who opposed the bank-monitoring program, it said.
The memo was among dozens of State Department cables that revealed the deep distrust of some traditional European allies toward what they considered American intrusion into their citizens' affairs without stringent oversight.
The program, created in secrecy by the Bush administration after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has allowed American counterterrorism officials to examine reams of banking transactions routed through a vast database run by a Brussels consortium known as Swift. When the program was disclosed in 2006 by The New York Times, just months after the newspaper reported the existence of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, it set off protests in Europe and forced the United States to accept new restrictions.
But by early 2010, new leaders were in charge at the European Parliament and harbored what one State Department memo called "a fixation" on privacy issues. On Feb. 10, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly - 378 to 196 - to halt the Swift program.
Obama administration officials considered the program a valuable counterterrorism tool because it allowed them to trace the transactions of suspected terrorist financiers while including "robust" privacy protections, according to the cables.
But many Europeans were skeptical. Some allies not only were concerned that program might be used for economic espionage against European companies, but also considered it of "dubious" value and said that it "flouted" their privacy laws and was an attempt by the United States to put its counterterrorism priorities ahead of Europe's civil liberties, the cables show.
In Austria, for example, "the Nazi legacy and familiarity with communist regimes" have fueled "a widespread presumption against government data collection and in favor of stringent privacy protections," officials at the United States Embassy wrote in discussing obstacles Swift faced.
Many Germans, meanwhile, remember "how the Stasi," the former East German secret police, "abused information to destroy people's lives," according to a dispatch from the American Embassy in Berlin.
Opposition in Germany was particularly damaging because the country was among a handful of allies that, according to a 2006 cable, made up a "coalition of the constructive" organized to ensure that the Swift operation was not "ruined by privacy experts."
The German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, in particular, "surely finds this whole experience regrettable, as it put him in exactly the position he did not want to be in: seemingly siding with the U.S. over German interests," a cable last December warned. After German representatives voted against the program, a German official reported to American diplomats that Chancellor Angela Merkel - a strong supporter of the program - was "angrier than he had ever seen her."
After mobilizing top administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the administration was able to reverse course. The European Parliament voted 484 to 109 in July to restart the program after the United States made modest concessions that promised greater European oversight.
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9) Government Workers Ordered Not to Read Cables
"Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks"
By ERIC LIPTON
December 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.
"Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority," said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.
The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have "accidentially" already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their "information security offices."
The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and contractors, says that simply viewing these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.
"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.
The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.
"It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole," Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. "This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world."The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that "unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents."
The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: "Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks".
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10) Budget-Cutting Colleges Bid Some Languages Adieu
"After a generation of expansion, academic officials are being forced to lop entire majors. More often than not, foreign languages - European ones in particular - are on the chopping block." [The further dumbing-down of U.S. students. Every cut in education results in poorer educational opportunity for all students...bw]
By LISA W. FODERARO
December 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/education/05languages.html?ref=education
Albany
THE bad news was not unexpected: sweeping cutbacks at the State University of New York at Albany, prompted by sweeping cutbacks in state aid. The reactions, too, had a whiff of the familiar: student rallies, faculty resolutions, an online petition.
But then came an op-ed article in the French newspaper Le Monde, calling the cuts Orwellian. And an open letter from the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, sarcastically suggesting that universities give up teaching the humanities altogether.
If the cuts have struck a nerve far from this upstate campus and in more than one language, it is in large part because they involve language itself, and some cherished staples of the curriculum. The university announced this fall that it would stop letting new students major in French, Italian, Russian and the classics.
The move mirrors similar prunings around the country at other public colleges and universities that are reeling from steep drops in state aid. After a generation of expansion, academic officials are being forced to lop entire majors. More often than not, foreign languages - European ones in particular - are on the chopping block.
The reasons for their plight are many. Some languages may seem less vital in a world increasingly dominated by English. Web sites and new technologies offer instant translations. The small, interactive classes typical of foreign language instruction are costly for universities.
But the paradox, some experts in higher education say, is that many schools are eliminating language degrees and graduate programs just as they begin to embrace an international mission: opening campuses abroad, recruiting students from overseas and talking about graduating citizens of the world. The University at Albany's motto is "The World Within Reach."
"There's no way on earth we should be cutting these languages," said John M. Hamilton, executive vice chancellor and provost at Louisiana State University, where officials this year decided to phase out majors in German and Latin, as well as basic instruction in Portuguese, Russian, Swahili and Japanese, after losing $42 million in public financing over the last two years.
"We should be adding languages and urging more students to take them," Dr. Hamilton added. "I'm being asked to prepare students for the global economy, but this is almost like asking them to use the abacus instead of computers."
Most public colleges still teach languages, but fewer are allowing students to make them a specialty. The University of Maine's president, Robert A. Kennedy, has recommended suspending undergraduate degree programs in German and Latin. This fall at the University of Nevada, Reno, students can no longer declare majors in German Studies or minors in Italian. At Winona State University in Minnesota, officials have placed a moratorium on new majors in French and German while it challenges the faculty to make those disciplines more relevant to the contemporary world.
Other schools, public and private, have recently eliminated or diluted the foreign-language component of their core curriculums. Starting next fall at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at the George Washington University, students will no longer have to take a foreign language to graduate, although they may use language courses to help fulfill a broader humanities requirement.
Bob Peckham, a professor of French at the University of Tennessee at Martin whose own program came under threat, has made it his mission to fight the retrenchments nationwide. As chairman of the Commission on Advocacy of the American Association of Teachers of French, he monitors cutback proposals and provides research that helps campuses tailor their protests.
"There are at least 54 foreign-language majors that have been either threatened or eliminated," Dr. Peckham said. "People don't realize that this is happening in a lot of places."
Still, languages are holding their own on campus. A report due Wednesday from the Modern Language Association, which advocates for language programs nationwide, will show that overall enrollments in college language classes are actually up over 2006, when the last survey was conducted, and are at their highest level since 1960.
One reason is a surge of interest in languages like Arabic and Spanish, which is thriving on campus in response to the nation's growing Latino population. China's rising importance has prompted more college programs in Mandarin, and the Chinese government has been generous in financing them.
Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, caused a stir with a speech last month to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in which he questioned the prominence of European language instruction, given the shift of power centers and political hot spots from Europe to Asia and the Middle East.
"My argument wasn't so much against this or that language," Dr. Haass, a former State Department official, said in an interview. "But if we're going to remain economically competitive and provide the skill and manpower for government, I think we need more Americans to learn Chinese or Hindi or Farsi or Portuguese or Korean or Arabic. In an ideal world, that wouldn't mean fewer people would know Spanish, French, German and Italian. But in a real world, it might."
Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, rejected the notion of languages as "a zero-sum game," and said the field had become too responsive to fads.
"We always do these things in fits and starts," said Dr. Feal, who is a Spanish professor at the University at Buffalo. "We pick targets of opportunity as the geopolitical circumstances change, and we don't create a steady infrastructure so that language learning at a deep level is possible."
She said the program cuts also revealed an "Anglocentric perspective" that fluency in English was enough to understand the world.
"How can you be a comprehensive university center," Dr. Feal said, "and not offer students even the chance to take advanced courses in French, German, Russian and Italian, to read Goethe in the original?"
It is a tough choice, but a necessary one as publicly funded universities can no longer rely on piecemeal, one-time cuts to balance budgets, said Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president of the American Council on Education. Across the country, he said, foreign language programs "are being looked at carefully with an eye toward measuring student demand versus expenses."
At SUNY Albany, which has lost tens of millions of dollars in state aid in the past few years and faces another $13 million loss this year, the situation has "reached a breaking point," said its provost, Susan D. Phillips.
The French department has seven full-time faculty members and 40 majors, while 15 doctoral students do "a great deal of the undergraduate instruction," Dr. Phillips said. In Russian, there are three full-time faculty members for 19 majors. By contrast, the communications department employs six full-time faculty members for 520 majors.
The university, which has also stopped accepting new majors in theater, has suspended degree programs in French, Italian and Russian. Making the change permanent would require State Department of Education approval.
Dr. Phillips said she hoped some instruction would continue in those languages. Currently, classes are offered in 13 languages, including Arabic, Dutch, Hebrew and Korean; students can earn undergraduate degrees in Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, and in East Asian Studies.
Meanwhile, those who have declared French, Russian or Italian as a major or minor say they worry that their diplomas could lose value if the degree programs vanish.
Jessica Stapf, a freshman, arrived on campus planning to pursue a double major in French and political science, followed by a master's in French, the only language in which the university offered advanced degrees. She hopes to land a job someday with the United Nations in Africa, where French is widely spoken.
Though the university made an exception and allowed her to declare a French major anyway, she was advised that she would need to cram 11 upper-level courses into the next three semesters. The master's, she said, appears to be out of the question.
"It's extraordinarily inconvenient for me," Ms. Stapf said. "If the university wants to provide that 'world within reach' they've been sloganeering about, then they have to provide the languages that bring the world within reach."
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11) Lawyer: Nigerian Soldiers Killed Civilians
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/05/business/AP-AF-Nigeria-Oil-Unrest.html?src=busln
Filed at 11:36 a.m. EST
WARRI, Nigeria (AP) - Nigerian soldiers who launched a raid on militants hiding in the nation's oil-rich southern delta killed civilians and purposely destroyed homes, a human rights lawyer who visited the attacked region said Sunday.
Preye Onduku told The Associated Press he saw the site of one grave containing six civilians allegedly killed by the military during a brief visit Saturday to the village of Ayakoromor. While soldiers blocked journalists from the AP from seeing the Niger Delta village, they allowed Onduku to visit as his father owns a home there.
The fresh grave sits near the ruins of a local court in Ayakoromor, with many other homes destroyed by what appears to be fire and heavy weapons fire, the lawyer said. Onduku said local people told him that soldiers made them bury other bodies in graves around the village and others are feared dead.
The Nigerian military has denied civilians died during the attack to capture a wanted militant leader called John Togo. The general in charge of the military's operations in the delta has said soldiers only opened fire when someone fired upon them as they neared Ayakoromor's shoreline at the start of the raid Wednesday.
However, human rights activists say as many as 150 people died as the military used heavy machine gun fire and aerial bombing on the village. Onduku said he saw five people suffering from gunshot wounds during his brief visit.
The military raid came after an unknown number of soldiers died days ago in an effort to apprehend Togo.
"They were angry that (the militants) had gone and killed their officers and they went to bomb the community. That is the simple reason," the lawyer said. "I don't know whether it is anger or how to put it, but it is cowardice."
The military has yet to capture Togo. The militant's lawyer has said his client is "on the high seas" far away from Ayakoromor.
Mamadou Sow, a leader in the Niger Delta with the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the attack displaced more than 200 people, who are now living inside a local schoolhouse.
"When the fighting started, they rushed into the forest," Sow said. "When they got back, their homes were destroyed."
Sow said the Red Cross is providing food and medical treatment to villagers, as is the Nigerian military.
Militant and military attacks are nothing new to the Niger Delta, a region of creeks and mangroves about the size of South Carolina. The attacks from an insurgency that began in 2006 cut drastically into crude production in Nigeria, an OPEC-member nation that is one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the U.S.
Production has risen back to 2.2 million barrels of oil a day, in part because many militant leaders and fighters accepted a government-sponsored amnesty deal last year.
But as militants over the years profit from kidnapping and oil theft, the military has launched several reprisal massacres against villages. Often, civilians find themselves caught in the middle of a war over oil they never profit from.
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12) After Police Shots, Grief and Conflicting Stories
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and TRYMAINE LEE
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/nyregion/06pace.html?hp
The 33-year-old police officer, Aaron Hess, was a former Marine who for seven years had served on the tiny police force in Pleasantville, N.Y., the village where he had grown up. He had never fired his gun at anyone in the line of duty.
Brandon Cox, 20, was a college running back sitting next to his best friend from Easton, Mass., Danroy Henry Jr., in a car outside a Westchester County bar. Mr. Henry, known as D. J., was a football player, too, with no record of trouble, whose arms, which held the car's steering wheel, were tattooed with the words "Family First."
During 15 or so seconds early on the morning of Oct. 17, Officer Hess fired four rounds, his lawyer said, into the Nissan Altima with Mr. Cox and Mr. Henry inside, killing Mr. Henry, wounding Mr. Cox and igniting a mix of confusion and anger.
Officer Hess has told his lawyer that the shooting was justified and that the events began when he heard another officer yell for Mr. Henry to stop his car as he abruptly drove off from near the bar, Finnegan's Grill in Thornwood.
Mr. Cox, who had not spoken publicly about the specifics of the shooting, said in a recent interview that he did not hear or see anyone instruct Mr. Henry to stop his car. He said that Officer Hess had suddenly stepped out from between two parked police cruisers with his firearm already drawn and grasped in both hands.
"In the end, I was in utter disbelief," Mr. Cox said. "I couldn't believe that my best friend was gone."
For the last seven weeks, the office of the Westchester district attorney - working with the State Police and the Mount Pleasant Police Department - has been overseeing the investigation of the deadly shooting. About 250 witnesses have been interviewed, an autopsy report has been filed and ballistics tests have been conducted. But the investigators have declined to release their findings, and Officer Hess has chosen not to submit to questioning by them. A grand jury is expected to hear evidence in the case next month.
Accounts provided by Officer Hess's lawyer, Mr. Cox, a third person who was in Mr. Henry's car at the time of the shooting and more than a dozen other witnesses, lawyers and law enforcement officials have produced the first detailed conflicting narratives of what took place that morning during homecoming weekend for Pace University's Westchester campus.
An autopsy report from the medical examiner's office released last week by Mr. Henry's family showed that Mr. Henry was legally drunk at the time of the shooting and that he was struck by two bullets. His cause of death was listed as bullet wounds "involving heart and lungs."
But the case's central consideration remains unresolved:
Was Officer Hess struck by the car before he opened fire, and did he have reason to believe his life was in danger? If so, the shooting - the first in about 30 years for any officer in the Pleasantville Police Department - may have fallen within state law and departmental guidelines covering the use of deadly force.
If not, why did the officer choose not to get out of the car's way and instead fire at the vehicle, which carried three college students who were of no demonstrated threat to anyone?
Mr. Henry, 20, and his two friends in the Nissan that morning were black. Officer Hess and another officer who later fired his gun are white. The Henry family has asked the Justice Department for a federal investigation into the shooting, saying that though it is unclear whether race was an issue, the possibility needs to be explored and resolved. The family has also contended that the investigation has been compromised by inherent conflicts and the disclosure of confidential information. For its part, the Justice Department said it would monitor the local investigation.
Dancing, Then Commotion
It was late Saturday night of homecoming weekend, and Finnegan's, about two miles from the university's Pleasantville campus, was crowded. Members of Pace University's football team were also inside, trying to shake off a 27-0 loss to Stonehill College of Easton, Mass.
Mr. Henry was a cornerback for Pace; Mr. Cox was a running back for Stonehill. A year apart in school, they had grown up together in Massachusetts.
"We were so close that at the end of my senior year in high school, we went and both got baptized together," Mr. Cox said.
At Finnegan's, the two had been mingling and dancing with others for more than 90 minutes when the lights went on and the music fell silent. There was an announcement that everybody had to leave and that the police were on the way, several patrons recalled.
Chief Louis Alagno of the Mount Pleasant Police Department said that at 1:19 a.m. that Sunday, the owner of Finnegan's called to report a disturbance. By the time a half-dozen officers responded, an agitated and larger-than-normal crowd of more than 100 people stirred outside the bar.
One of those officers, Ronald Gagnon of the Mount Pleasant Police Department, noticed a Nissan Altima in the fire lane not far from the commotion. Seated inside the car were Mr. Henry, Mr. Cox and Desmond Hinds, 21, a wide receiver on the Pace football team. They were waiting for two others riding with them.
Chief Alagno said the officer pulled up behind the Nissan in his car and sounded an electronic air horn twice to get Mr. Henry to move his car. The vehicle did not budge. So, Officer Gagnon got out and knocked on Mr. Henry's window, presumably to talk with him and to tell him to park in a legal spot, Chief Alagno said.
But Mr. Henry's car, which has tinted windows, suddenly started to pull away, prompting Officer Gagnon to call out for it to stop, Chief Alagno said.
Standing roughly 50 feet ahead of Mr. Henry's parked car was Officer Hess, an officer with the Pleasantville Police Department who had arrived at Finnegan's minutes earlier with his police dog, a German shepherd named Roxx. Officer Hess had lowered one of his car windows so that some in the crowd would have noticed the dog and calmed down.
Before working for his hometown police force as one of its 21 officers, Officer Hess had been a patrolman with the New York Police Department, working in northern Manhattan.
But the tug of serving the community where he had been raised brought him back to Pleasantville.
He had fond memories of the village, where he was captain of the high school football team.
After graduating from high school in 1995, Mr. Hess joined the Marines. During his four years of service, he was a crew chief of an amphibious assault unit in the Middle East.
As he was assessing the situation outside Finnegan's, Officer Hess heard the officer yelling out for Mr. Henry's car to stop, according to an account given by his lawyer, John K. Grant. Officer Hess, who had been holding a flashlight, then stepped into the road and raised his left hand to signal to the driver to halt. But instead of slowing down, Mr. Grant said, the car was gaining speed.
For whatever reason, Officer Hess felt he could not get out of the way in time and reached for his Glock .40-caliber firearm.
"Either right before or right at the point of impact, he draws the gun and lands on the hood with it out as the car accelerates again and swerves," Mr. Grant said. "He then starts firing."
Mr. Grant said the officer was not firing indiscriminately, but at the driver.
"Officer Hess was holding on with one hand around the window wipers and fearing for his life," he said. "His knee cap was already five inches up into his thigh from the impact."
Officer Carl Castagna of the Mount Pleasant Police Department, who had been standing near Officer Hess, has told investigators that he saw Officer Hess step out and try to motion for the car to stop. He added that Officer Hess had not drawn his gun at that point and had been holding a flashlight in his left hand. Officer Castagna said he had not seen what Officer Hess did once he was on the hood.
Standing farther down the road, another Mount Pleasant officer, Ronald Beckley, 54, was startled by the gunfire and drew his weapon, according to a person who had been told of his account. Officer Beckley, a 30-year veteran of the force, had never shot at anyone in the line of duty.
Officer Beckley said that he had seen that the Nissan had been veering to the left and heading for him and a cruiser he was standing next to.
Officer Beckley jumped out of the way as Mr. Henry's car crashed into the cruiser. Officer Beckley's gun discharged, apparently putting a bullet into the hood of the Nissan, the person, who requested anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said. The round did not strike Officer Hess, who was thrown from the hood on impact.
'Family First'
Danroy Henry Jr. grew up in Massachusetts. For the last 10 years, his family has lived in Easton, a bedroom community outside Boston.
Danroy Henry Sr. is chief human resources officer at Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which provides employer-sponsored child care and early education programs for corporations, hospitals, universities and government agencies. Angella Henry, D. J.'s mother, works in speech pathology.
The Henry home was the hub of activity for D. J. and his friends.
D. J. had dreamed of perhaps playing for the New England Patriots, but he had become more realistic. He was a business major at Pace and was thinking about a career in sports management.
After Stonehill's victory that Saturday, the Henry and Cox families had dinner together at Lucio's Pizzeria in Pleasantville before Mr. Henry and Mr. Cox headed back to the campus town house where Mr. Henry lived to shower and dress for a night out.
Someone bought a bottle of vodka. Some modest drinks were had, recalled Mr. Cox, who said that he does not consume alcohol. Eventually, they were off to Finnegan's.
Mr. Cox said that he was with Mr. Henry all night, and that he did not see him drink anything more than the one vodka drink at the town house - a cup filled a quarter of the way with vodka and mixed with orange soda. At Finnegan's, a female Pace student kept offering Mr. Henry a sip of her drink, but he refused, telling her that he had to drive, Mr. Cox said.
The Westchester medical examiner's office, however, found that Mr. Henry's blood-alcohol level was 0.13, according to the autopsy report. Typically, that would mean a person of his size would have had about half a dozen drinks and been in some way impaired. Mr. Cox, though, insisted that Mr. Henry had seemed fine and alert.
Once the lights went on at the bar, Mr. Henry and Mr. Cox walked to Mr. Henry's car, and Mr. Henry drove it around to the fire lane in front of a store next to Finnegan's.
After Mr. Hinds joined them, the three spent 10 minutes or so messaging on their phones and waiting for two others. A CD was playing on the car stereo, but the volume was turned down so low that the music was barely audible, Mr. Cox recalled.
"The next thing we hear is a loud knock on the driver's window, and it sounded like metal against glass, like a flashlight," Mr. Cox said. "We were startled by it because it was loud and unexpected. And then he knocks again a few seconds later. We look up and we see the officer."
Mr. Cox added that he never saw a police cruiser behind Mr. Henry's car and did not hear an air horn go off. Mr. Cox said that the officer seemed to be signaling with his hand for them to move forward.
Mr. Henry shifted the car into gear and pulled out of the fire lane, moving at "regular parking lot speed," Mr. Cox said. There were three police cars parked in a row to their left.
"As we come out of the curve and head to the straightaway, an officer came out from in between two cruisers with his gun drawn and pointed at us," he recalled.
Mr. Cox said that as the car slowed slightly, he heard a gunshot and the sound of breaking glass. He said that the officer never signaled for the car to stop before firing. Mr. Cox said he put his head down and leaned into his door to try to avoid being hit.
"After the first shot sounds, I feel the car hit something, but I couldn't see what it had struck at that moment," he said. "But then, out of my left eye, I could see him on the hood, and he was firing. I saw the gun up to the windshield."
At one point, Mr. Cox, who is being represented by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., said he felt a bullet strike him in his left arm.
Mr. Hinds, who was in the back seat, said on Friday that from his vantage point, he had seen the officer jump "in front of the car at the last minute." Once the officer was on the hood, Mr. Hinds recalled, three bullets came through the windshield.
George Prepis, 20, a former Pace student who had attended homecoming and said that he had witnessed the shooting, said in an interview that it had appeared Officer Hess already had his gun in hand and then had thrown himself onto the hood.
Mr. Prepis said that as the Nissan moved out of the fire lane, he had seen the officer standing near the middle of the road, to the side of the car's path, with a gun in his right hand down by his leg. He said that the officer was signaling with his left arm for Mr. Henry to stop.
"He then stepped in front of the car and jumped on the hood and started shooting," Mr. Prepis said. "It was not like he got hit."
After the Nissan stopped, Mr. Cox remembered, Mr. Henry had said: "They shot me. They shot me. I can't believe they shot me."
Mr. Cox stumbled out of the car and saw police officers on Mr. Henry's side of the car. Mr. Cox then noticed a police officer walking toward him with a gun in his hand.
"He asked me if I was all right and had I been hit. I said, 'In my arm,' " he recalled. "As soon as I said I had been in the car, the officer pointed at me with his gun and said, 'Get down,' and I did so. And then he cuffed me."
The officer then put Mr. Cox in a police car in front of Mr. Henry, who was lying face-down in handcuffs and taking short breaths.
"In the ambulance, the police handcuffed me again," Mr. Cox said. "Nobody ever said that I was under arrest, and nobody ever read me my rights."
Mr. Cox said that he eventually rode in the ambulance with Officer Gagnon, the officer who had knocked on the window of Mr. Henry's car. Officer Gagnon said he had tapped on the window in an effort to tell Mr. Henry to get the car to move.
Mr. Prepis said that when the police handcuffed Mr. Henry, one officer had his knee on Mr. Henry's neck and a gun in hand while yelling at onlookers to stand back. Another officer, he said, was pressing his knee into Mr. Henry's back.
Some witnesses have said that the police had not tried to save Mr. Henry's life quickly enough.
"There was a slight delay because I don't think that the officers realized Mr. Henry's condition right away," Chief Alagno acknowledged. "I believe that there was not a lot of blood."
Alain Delaquérière, Nate Schweber and Jack Styczynski contributed reporting.
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13) Hundreds of WikiLeaks Mirror Sites Appear
By RAVI SOMAIYA
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06wiki.html?ref=world
LONDON - The battle lines between supporters of the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks and its detractors began to form on Sunday, as supporters erected numerous copies of the site on the Internet and the United States put pressure on Switzerland not to offer a haven to the site's founder, Julian Assange.
Since several major Internet companies cut off services to WikiLeaks in recent days, activists have created hundreds of mirror sites, Web sites that host exact copies of another site's content, making censorship difficult.
The collective Anonymous, an informal but notorious group of hackers and activists, also declared war on Sunday against enemies of Mr. Assange, calling on supporters to attack sites companies that do not support WikiLeaks and to spread the leaked material online.
Meanwhile, the American ambassador to Switzerland, Donald S. Beyer Jr., responded to signs that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks might seek refuge in that country, warning in the weekly magazine NZZ am Sonntag that the Swiss "should very carefully consider whether to provide shelter to someone who is on the run from the law."
Since the release of classified diplomatic cables a week ago, from a batch of more than 250,000 obtained by WikiLeaks, the Web site has been bombarded by cyberattacks and abandoned by Internet companies like PayPal, an online payment service that had accepted donations for the site, and Amazon, which had rented it server space.
WikiLeaks said that PayPal had "surrendered to U.S. government pressure," but the government has not acknowledged involvement in efforts to try to disable the site.
On Friday, WikiLeaks sought refuge in a diffuse web of financial and Internet infrastructure spread across Europe, particularly in Switzerland. It moved to wikileaks.ch, a domain registered to the Swiss Pirate Party, a political organization that shares many of Mr. Assange's aims.
A Swiss-Icelandic company, Datacell, will process donations instead of PayPal, and the WikiLeaks site shows that Mr. Assange is accepting direct donations into a Swiss bank account held with the financial arm of the Swiss postal service.
But that solace may be short lived: a spokesman for the financial arm of Swiss Post, Marc Andrey, also told NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that it was "reviewing" its relationship with Mr. Assange subject to proof that he has Swiss residency, owns property or does business in the country. A message seeking comment from Mr. Assange's British lawyer was not immediately returned.
The Internet group Anonymous, which in the past has taken on targets as diverse as the Church of Scientology and Iran, disseminated a seven-point manifesto via Twitter and other social networking sites pledging to "kick back for Julian."
Gregg Housh, who has previously worked on such campaigns with Anonymous, said by telephone from Boston that he had noticed an orchestrated effort under way to attack companies that have refused to support WikiLeaks and to post multiple copies of the leaked material.
The Anonymous manifesto singled out PayPal, which cut off ties with WikiLeaks for "a violation" of its policy on promoting illegal activities, a company statement said.
"The reason is amazingly simple," Mr. Housh said of the campaign. "We all believe that information should be free, and the Internet should be free."
By late Sunday, there were at least 208 WikiLeaks mirror sites up and running.
"Cut us down," said a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed on Sunday, "and the stronger we become."
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14) Plan to Lift University Tuition Galvanizes British Students
"Pointing out that university education in Britain was free until 1998, he said 'The fear is that we're heading for a completely privatized education system. And the politicians who are taking us there all had their educations completely funded by the public.'"
By D. D. GUTTENPLAN
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06iht-educLede06.html?ref=world
LONDON - According to the French writer Agnès Poirier, "It is not in the British DNA to demonstrate. The British simply don't believe in it." Early last month, when Ms. Poirier, who lives in London, made her comparison between the revolutionary tradition of her native country and the stiff-upper-lip stoicism that seemed to characterize the British response to the financial crisis, there appeared little reason to argue.
But on Nov. 10 tens of thousands of students took to the streets to protest government plans to cut the education budget while sharply increasing tuition fees. Two weeks later, the students were out again, this time in even greater numbers, though the police - stung by criticism for allowing a few demonstrators to vandalize Conservative Party headquarters - responded by herding many protesters into improvised enclosures where they were kept for several hours, a tactic known as "kettling."
Last Tuesday saw yet another twist, as students, anxious to avoid kettling, played a cat-and-mouse game with police all through central London. Instead of marching from Trafalgar Square to Westminster as planned - and where massed ranks of police, some on horseback, were prepared to turn protesters away from Parliament, which was debating a Labour Party motion opposing the government's proposals - groups of chanting students ran through Whitehall and around Buckingham Palace while helmet-clad riot police gave chase. Smaller groups of students marched down Oxford Street and Regent Street shouting slogans at bemused Christmas shoppers.
There were simultaneous demonstrations in Brighton, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Manchester, Newcastle and Oxford. Although the police in London arrested 146 people who refused to leave Trafalgar Square, for the most part this third wave of protests ended peacefully. The British protests are expected to continue at least until Parliament votes Thursday on the proposed changes.
"Nonviolence is essential - once we resort to violence it's the only thing the media picks up," said Milaad Rajai, co-president of the Student Union at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where protesters have been peacefully occupying the Brunei Gallery since Nov. 21. Students have also taken over buildings at University College London, Manchester Metropolitan University, Bristol and Cambridge.
Mr. Rajai, who is studying for a master's degree in Middle Eastern politics, said students at his school were in constant contact with other universities across Britain. "We want to know why the government doesn't seem to value social science or the arts and humanities," he said. "People here are anxious not just about their own future - after all, higher tuition fees won't take effect until after we graduate - but about the continuing existence of small, specialist research institutions like S.O.A.S."
The publication in October of the Browne Review into higher education funding (named after the inquiry's chairman, John Browne, the former head of BP), followed by the coalition government's Comprehensive Spending Review that same month, heralded enormous changes in how - and how much - the British pay for university education.
Under the latest proposals tuition fees, now capped at £3,290, or $5,150, a year, would be allowed to rise as high as £9,000. Universities, which currently have their teaching budgets financed largely by the government, would see 80 percent of that subsidy removed - the only exceptions being courses in science, technology, medicine, nursing and "strategically important languages."
Meanwhile the education minister, Michael Gove, has already announced the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance - payments of up to £30 a week to encourage students aged 16 to 18 to stay in school, which can be used towards the cost of books, travel or equipment.
"The E.M.A. kept me going," said Kasia, a protester who is going to Aberystwyth University next year and refused to give her surname. The weekly subsidy, though not large, "motivated me to keep on going to all my classes. I felt like there was a reward for me in the end," she said.
The Browne report suggested that, by letting "funding follow the student," the market will stimulate universities to compete on quality as well as price, but students see themselves being asked to pay for a financial crisis they did nothing to cause.
"The major concern we have is actually the cuts rather than the fee rise," said Lucy Vaughan, a 25-year-old anthropology student at Goldsmiths' College in London. "A lot of subjects will basically die without government funding for teaching."
Many British academics agree. The Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, writing in support of students occupying the university's Senate House, said that "Arts and Humanities in particular, which can't possibly operate successfully on a supply and demand model," would be brought "close to death" if the government overhaul was implemented.
Claire Callender, professor of Higher Education Policy at Birkbeck, a division of the University of London, said that "withdrawal of government funding from teaching a whole range of subjects is an ideological assault which suggests that those subjects are not a public good and don't warrant public finding."
The government denies any such intention. And the Browne Review notes that universities are free to continue to offer any subjects they wish - as long as they can attract students willing to pay the fees. Ms. Callender says, however, that the Australian practice of setting different prices for different subjects is unlikely to be adopted in Britain. She also doubts there will be much competition on price - at least among universities.
"In 2006, when the fee cap rose from £1,000 to £3,000, there were eight universities that charged less than the maximum," she said. "Today there are none."
Jeremy Buck, a graduate student in physics at the University of Manchester, said, "The government hopes that the increase in contributions from students will plug the gap caused by their cuts."
Pointing out that university education in Britain was free until 1998, he said "The fear is that we're heading for a completely privatized education system. And the politicians who are taking us there all had their educations completely funded by the public."
The president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter, condemned "the miserable vision for our future in which post-16 education is not recognized as a public good. We would be out of step and out of touch with countries around the world who are investing in higher education to deliver the skills they need for the future."
Many of the London protesters were still in high school. Sarah, who also asked that her surname not be used to avoid trouble at school, and her friends from Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Technical College came wearing their school uniforms.
"By law we have to stay in school," she said. "But when you see what the government is doing you wonder what's the point of studying."
Ms. Callender said that while such attitudes may not be entirely rational - any higher fees would be covered by government loans that would not have to be repaid until a student graduated and was earning more than £21,000 a year - they are widely held, and may well discourage poorer students.
One recent poll found that raising fees to £5,000 a year would deter half the students surveyed who came from deprived backgrounds from applying to university. The poll by the Ipsos Mori market research company found that fees of £9,000 a year would cut the number by two-thirds.
The question was not abstract for John Hughes, who attended the Tuesday demonstration with his two sons.
"I'm a dad who's going to have to pay 18 grand a year," said Mr. Hughes, who works as a counselor.
His son Atesh, 16, who hopes to go to the University of Wolverhampton to study sound engineering, said even at current levels "I can barely afford to go to university, and if fees go up - what's the point?"
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15) Extreme Makeover: Criminal Court Edition
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06tattoo.html?ref=us
CLEARWATER, Fla. - When John Ditullio goes on trial on Monday, jurors will not see the large swastika tattooed on his neck. Or the crude insult tattooed on the other side of his neck. Or any of the other markings he has acquired since being jailed on charges related to a double stabbing that wounded a woman and killed a teenager in 2006.
Mr. Ditullio's lawyer successfully argued that the tattoos could be distracting or prejudicial to the jurors, who under the law are supposed to consider only the facts presented to them. The case shows some of the challenges lawyers face when trying to get clients ready for trial - whether that means hitting the consignment shop for decent clothes for an impoverished client or telling wealthy clients to leave the bling at home.
"It's easier to give someone who looks like you a fair shake," said Bjorn E. Brunvand, Mr. Ditullio's lawyer.
The court approved the judicial equivalent of an extreme makeover, paying $125 a day for the services of a cosmetologist to cover up the tattoos that Mr. Ditullio has gotten since his arrest. This is Mr. Ditullio's second trial for the murder; the first, which also involved the services of a cosmetologist, ended last year in a mistrial. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
"There's no doubt in my mind - without the makeup being used, there's no way a jury could look at John and judge him fairly," Mr. Brunvand said in an interview in his office here. "It's too frightening when you see him with the tattoos. It's a scary picture."
Hence the cosmetologist. Chele, the owner of the company performing the work, said the process takes about 45 minutes
The first stage is a reddish layer to obscure the greenish tinge of the ink - "You cover a color with a color," she explained. Then comes Dermablend, a cosmetic aid that smoothes and obscures and is used to cover scars and pigmentation disorders like vitiligo. A flesh-toned layer is then sprayed on with an air gun, and finally, to avoid the porcelain-doll look that comes from an even-hued coat, a final color touchup intended to, as theatrical makeup artists say, "put blood back in."
The cosmetologist asked that she not be identified by her full name out of fear of reprisal and lost business. "We mostly do weddings," she said.
Colleen Quinn-Adams, a private investigator working on the case with Mr. Brunvand, said she had had to call 10 cosmetologists before finding one willing to take on this particular client. "I would either get a long pause, and have to say, 'Are you still there?' or, 'I don't think we could handle that job.' "
While the move to pretty up a man accused of murder might seem bizarre, defense lawyers like Mr. Brunvand say they fight an uphill battle every day in court: though the law requires that juries see every defendant as innocent until proved guilty, they say, jurors are generally more likely to see someone who has been arrested as guilty.
Appearance is a big part of setting the right balance, said Anna M. Durbin, a lawyer in Ardmore, Pa., who has often run to used-clothing stores to find an alternative to the jail jumpsuit for clients without money or family. "You don't have a clean slate if you look like a perpetrator," she said.
Douglas Keene, a trial consultant in Austin, Tex., noted that making defendants look more like someone who is "kind of like me" does not come into play just in cases involving violence or poverty. "I counseled defendants during the Enron trial to remove $10,000 watches," he said.
The decision to cover Mr. Ditullio's tattoos could be more of a judgment call, Mr. Keene said. "People are wearing tattoos as a public statement of what's important to them," he said.
He recalled that Charles Manson carved a swastika on his forehead during his murder trial. "At what point does someone's decision to put a billboard on their forehead become something from which we have to protect them?" he asked.
Mr. Brunvand, who was appointed by the court, said inmates might tattoo themselves for many reasons: some may do so to project a more menacing appearance and to show affiliation with groups that might protect them.
Charlene Bricken, the mother of the young man Mr. Ditullio is accused of killing, Kristofer King, said she was outraged that the defendant would receive a court-approved makeover. "Did somebody tie him down while he was in jail and put these tattoos on him?" she asked angrily.
Ms. Bricken said that she had "no doubt" Mr. Ditullio was guilty - he sent a taunting Christmas card to the family from prison - and that the judge was "bending over backwards for the criminal."
Mr. Brunvand said the card Mr. Ditullio sent Ms. Bricken was "a terrible thing," but attributed it to "acting out in frustration" because of feelings that he had been falsely arrested and that "everybody had, in their minds, already convicted him."
He said he hoped to show that another member of a neo-Nazi group Mr. Ditullio had joined more closely resembled the initial description by the surviving victim of the attack and was the likely perpetrator. That person has left the state.
Mike Halkitis, the division director for the state attorney's office in New Port Richey, where the trial will be held, said that he fought the "absurd" request for a cosmetic cover-up last year, and that taxpayers should not have to pay for it.
While a richer defendant could pay for cosmetics or even tattoo removal, "the indigent defendant isn't entitled to the same defense an affluent defendant can get," he said. "That's case law."
Instead, Mr. Halkitis said, the judge could just as easily instruct the jury to ignore the tattoos in their consideration of the case. "We believe the jurors listen to judges' instructions," he said.
Mr. Halkitis suggested that the judge had ruled to allow the cosmetic assistance with an eye to higher courts in the event that Mr. Ditullio receives the ultimate penalty - "that there can't be a judge that overturns the death penalty on the basis that they should have whited the tattoos."
For Chele, the cosmetologist, the case has been a lesson in the justice system. "It's not about payment," she said. "It's about doing what's right to do this - to give this man a chance at a fair trial. We're not just doing this for John. We're doing this for justice, and our country."
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16) G.E. and JPMorgan Got Lots of Fed Help in '08
"Newly disclosed records show that during the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve essentially lent $16.1 billion to General Electric.... And on Sept. 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, JPMorgan Chase received a $3 billion loan from the Fed." [Alms for the rich....bw]
By SEWELL CHAN and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/economy/06fed.html?ref=us
Newly disclosed records show that during the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve essentially lent $16.1 billion to General Electric by buying short-term corporate i.o.u.'s from the company at a time when the public market for such debt had nearly frozen.
And on Sept. 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, JPMorgan Chase received a $3 billion loan from the Fed. The loan was extended under one of several Fed programs tapped by the Wall Street bank, one of the more robust financial institutions to weather the crisis.
The two companies received help even as their chief executives, Jeffrey R. Immelt of G.E. and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan, sat on the nine-member board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Neither executive was involved in creating the emergency programs, which were approved by the Fed's board of governors in Washington. Both companies also disclosed that they were among scores of institutions that received support from the Fed. Nevertheless, some policy experts expressed discomfort with the situation.
"In my view, it is an obvious conflict of interest for C.E.O.'s of banks and large corporations who serve on the Fed's board of directors to have received cheap loans from the Fed," Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent who wrote the legal provision requiring the Fed to make the disclosures, said in a statement on Sunday.
"While they got a huge amount of government support, small businesses are going bankrupt because they can't receive affordable credit, workers are losing their homes to foreclosure, and consumers are being charged 25 percent to 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards by the very same banks that were bailed out," he added.
The details of the emergency loan program were disclosed last week when the Fed reluctantly released records of 21,000 crisis-related transactions under orders from Congress. The disclosures are likely to renew questions about the influence of bank officers and corporate executives in the operations of the Fed.
"It's ugly," said Allan H. Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University and a historian of the Fed. "It has the appearance of impropriety."
The Dodd-Frank Act, which President Obama signed in July, bars representatives of banks that are members of the Fed system, like Mr. Dimon, from having a vote in selecting the presidents of the Fed's 12 district banks, altering a system that went back to the creation of the Fed in 1913.
Mr. Sanders also wrote a provision requiring the Government Accountability Office to investigate potential conflicts of interest at the Fed. The results of that audit are expected in July.
The New York Fed is the most powerful of the Federal Reserve's 12 branches and was charged with carrying out various emergency programs that supported financial markets during the crisis.
In a statement, the New York Fed said that its "board of directors was not involved in the creation of the emergency lending facilities authorized by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve." The Fed says it has been, or will be, repaid on all of its loans.
While Mr. Immelt and Mr. Dimon were not involved in setting up the programs, the records show their companies still received substantial support.
G.E. was one of the largest beneficiaries of the Fed program to buy commercial paper, or short-term i.o.u.'s. A few institutions - among them Bank of America, UBS, Barclays and Citigroup - sold even more to the Fed.
In contrast, JPMorgan got far less help under the program for investment banks than some of its Wall Street rivals, like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which each tapped the program on more than 100 occasions.
On 12 occasions in October and November 2008, G.E. issued short-term i.o.u.'s - which all corporations use for everyday transactions like paying their employees and suppliers; the Fed purchased a total of $16.1 billion of them.
"Our participation was not affected by Jeff's status as a New York Fed board member," said Russell Wilkerson, a spokesman for GE Capital, the company's finance arm. "We have been proactive in disclosing our participation in the funding programs."
The records indicate JPMorgan and its subsidiaries participated in seven Fed programs, including two related to its purchase of Bear Stearns in March 2008, a prelude to the deepening of the financial crisis later that year.
JPMorgan Chase borrowed seven times from a program designed to make it easier for sound institutions to borrow as the financial strains in the market first became apparent. It received 23 loans under a program designed to stabilize the market for Treasury securities. And it got 570 loans for purchases of asset-backed commercial paper.
Under a program the Fed created in March 2008 to lend directly to investment banks for the first time in its history, JPMorgan received three loans, including the $3 billion loan on the day that Lehman collapsed. (The other two loans were made the next month, for $10 million each.)
Jennifer R. Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, said the bank "is proud to have been a source of stability for the markets" and, in fact, was asked to take part in some of the programs as the Fed tried to calm the markets.
"Our fortress balance sheet allowed us to help the federal government avoid a bankruptcy of Bear Stearns and to acquire Washington Mutual, providing essential credit and minimizing market disruptions that could have been disastrous," she said in a statement. "In addition to these actions, the government encouraged us to use its lending facilities during times of market turmoil to help reduce any stigma and to improve market liquidity for our clients."
The Fed, as the nation's central bank, has responsibility for guiding monetary policy and is an independent arm of the government. The New York Fed, like the other Fed banks, is overseen by a nine-member board.
Three members are bankers, chosen by fellow bankers; another three are chosen by bankers to represent the public; and the final three are chosen by the Federal Reserve's seven-member board of governors in Washington. The chairman of each Fed bank must come from the last group.
The new disclosures do not represent the first time the New York Fed's relationship with the banks it assisted has come under scrutiny.
Goldman, previously an investment bank, became a Fed-regulated bank holding company during the crisis. It tapped the Fed program to help investment banks 52 times, owing $18 billion to the Fed at one point - receiving far greater support than JPMorgan.
The chairman of the New York Fed at the time, Stephen Friedman, was a Goldman director and former chairman of Goldman. The Fed granted Mr. Friedman a waiver so he could continue serving as chairman of the New York Fed.
While awaiting the waiver, Mr. Friedman bought shares of Goldman around the time the bank received Fed support. After The Wall Street Journal reported on the purchases, Mr. Friedman stepped down, saying the Fed "does not need this distraction." The New York Fed's top lawyer said at the time that Mr. Friedman "did not violate any Federal Reserve statute, rule or policy."
Mr. Friedman's successor as chairman of the New York Fed was Denis M. Hughes, president of the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O. Fed observers say it is unlikely that a former banker will serve as the agency's chairman any time soon.
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17) Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Wal-Mart Bias Case Appeal
By ADAM LIPTAK
December 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/07bizcourt.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal in the biggest employment discrimination case in the nation's history, one claiming that Wal-Mart discriminated against hundreds of thousands of women in pay and promotion. The lawsuit seeks back pay that could amount to billions of dollars.
The question before the court is not whether there was discrimination but rather whether the claims by the individual employees may be combined as a class action. The court's decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of class-action suits, including ones asserting antitrust, securities and product liability, as well as other claims.
If nothing else, many pending class actions will slow or stop while litigants and courts await the decision in the case.
"We are pleased that the Supreme Court has granted review in this important case," Wal-Mart said in a brief statement. "The current confusion in class-action law is harmful for everyone - employers, employees, businesses of all types and sizes and the civil justice system. These are exceedingly important issues that reach far beyond this particular case."
Brad Seligman, the main lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a telephone interview after the court decision: "Wal-Mart has thrown up an extraordinarily broad number of issues, many of which, if the court seriously entertained, could very severely undermine many civil rights class actions. We welcome the court's review of this limited issue, and we're confident that the core of our action will go forward."
In their brief urging the justices to deny review, the plaintiffs had said Wal-Mart's objection to class-action treatment boiled down to the enormous size of the class.
"Petitioner returns repeatedly to the refrain that the certified class is very large, a fact that is indisputably true but legally irrelevant," the brief said. "The class is large because Wal-Mart is the nation's largest employer and manages its operations and employment practices in a highly uniform and centralized manner."
Wal-Mart, which says its policies expressly bar discrimination and promote diversity, said the plaintiffs, who worked in 3,400 different stores in 170 job classifications, cannot possibly have enough in common to make class-action treatment appropriate.
In April, an 11-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled by a 6-to-5 vote that the class action could go forward.
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, writing for the majority, said the company's policies and treatment of women were similar enough that a single lawsuit was both efficient and appropriate. He added that the six women who represent the class, four of whom had left Wal-Mart, had claims typical of the other plaintiffs.
The size of the proposed class was not an obstacle, Judge Susan P. Graber wrote in a concurrence.
"If the employer had 500 female employees, I doubt that any of my colleagues would question the certification of such a class," Judge Graber wrote. "Certification does not become an abuse of discretion merely because the class has 500,000 members."
That drew a sharp dissent from Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. "Maybe there'd be no difference between 500 employees and 500,000 employees if they all had similar jobs, worked at the same half-billion square foot store and were supervised by the same managers," he wrote. "But the half-million members of the majority's approved class held a multitude of jobs, at different levels of Wal-Mart's hierarchy, for variable lengths of time, in 3,400 stores, sprinkled across 50 states, with a kaleidoscope of supervisors (male and female)."
"They have little in common but their sex and this lawsuit," Judge Kozinski concluded.
In a second dissent, Judge Sandra S. Ikuta said that allowing the case to go forward as a class action would prevent Wal-Mart from presenting tailored defenses to individual claims.
In their briefs in the case, Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, No. 10-277, the two sides cited the work of the court's newest justices to the court. Wal-Mart twice relied on an influential unsigned law review note that Justice Elena Kagan wrote as a student at Harvard Law School on class certification in employment discrimination suits.
The plaintiffs responded by noting that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had voted to certify an even larger class action in an antitrust case involving eight million merchants when she was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York. Wal-Mart was a plaintiff in that class action.
Judge Sotomayor acknowledged that the very fact of class certification provided the plaintiffs with "leverage in settlement negotiations."
"While the sheer size of the class in this case may enhance this effect," she added, "this alone cannot defeat an otherwise proper certification."
Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York.
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18) Tax Fear May Move Bonuses Earlier
"If Congress does not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a typical worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year, depending on base salary."
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
December 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/06bonus.html?ref=business
Congress is debating tax rates, and that has Wall Street nervously eyeing the calendar.
Worried that lawmakers will allow taxes to rise for the wealthiest Americans beginning next year, financial firms are discussing whether to move up their bonus payouts from next year to this month.
At stake is a portion of the hefty annual payouts that are a familiar part of the compensation culture on Wall Street, as well as a juicy target of popular anger. If Congress does not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a typical worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year, depending on base salary.
Goldman Sachs is one of the companies discussing how to time bonus season, according to three people who have been briefed on the discussions. Pay consultants who work with major Wall Street companies say that just about every other large bank has also considered such a move in recent weeks.
With tax politics in Washington unpredictable, bank executives have spent months sketching out several options for their bonus plans, including the possibility of an earlier payout. Lawmakers have been trading accusations across a partisan divide, but after this weekend, it appears likely that a compromise will extend the tax cuts for all income levels.
Even so, the banks' discussions about bonus timing underscore how focused the industry is on protecting every dollar of pay.
A spokesman for Goldman declined to comment. Bonus payouts are traditionally shrouded in secrecy; companies are required to disclose their top executives' pay, but they do not disclose the size of their total bonus pools in their public filings or internally.
Goldman, not surprisingly, is the canary in the coal mine. It often announces its top executives' bonuses before other firms, and the richness of its payouts sets the tone across the industry.
This year the tax debate has imposed a new wrinkle, and executives at two large banks said their companies tentatively decided not to speed payouts, unless Goldman did. Then, these two executives said, they would consider paying early as a competitive measure, so that their workers were not upset.
These executives and the people briefed on the Goldman discussions spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
Bonus timing is also being discussed at scores of public companies, beyond banks, for top executives who receive multimillion-dollar payouts around the turn of the year. At most companies outside the financial sector, an early bonus would help only a handful of executives, while on Wall Street, the benefit would apply to many more workers.
"This has been a topic of conversation among those of us who are involved in designing and administrating compensation plans," said Brian Foley, a pay consultant in White Plains, N.Y. "But I really would be surprised if anyone went down this path. This is a bounce-back year in terms of bonuses going up and probably not the time to draw attention to yourself."
Wall Street firms pay out billions of dollars in bonuses each year. In good years top executives can receive bonuses worth tens of millions of dollars. Even midlevel financial workers often earn above $250,000 a year, and they receive most of their compensation as bonuses paid early in the new year.
Extending the tax cuts for all Americans with taxable income over $250,000 for joint filers ($200,000 for single filers) would cost the country about $40 billion next year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, and it would cost $700 billion over the next decade.
Currently the highest rate for taxable income is 35 percent; that would increase to 39.6 percent if the Bush tax cuts expire this year.
The top five Wall Street firms have put aside nearly $90 billion for total pay this year, and they are expected to raise that amount using their end of year earnings. That would make this year one of the best ever for bank pay.
As Mr. Foley said, much of the focus within banks is on the appearance of the payouts. Several senior banking executives received either no bonuses or modest ones in recent years, and with the taxpayer-financed bailouts receding, top executives are pushing to be paid well again.
Some compensation consultants have been helping their clients devise new labels for the pay that are less likely to inflame the public. For instance, some banks are considering reducing the amount of their payouts that are labeled as bonuses, and instead shifting some to other categories like "long-term incentives."
Depending on how banks structure this part of the payout package, it might not represent much of a change for bankers, since it has long been standard practice to tie up some pay for a few years for retention purposes. But, some bankers said, the goal was to make the dollar amounts appear less offensive.
Bankers are also discussing speeding up the way they award company stock. Many banks pay a substantial portion of bonuses in stock, rather than cash, and companies often have a multiyear delay between when those shares are awarded and when the employees can sell them. The tax bill does not come due until employees sell the shares, or own them outright.
Robert J. Jackson Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School who helped oversee the Treasury Department's rules on compensation at bailed-out companies, said he would look carefully at footnotes in company filings to see if they accelerated executives' stock awards. "Even companies who pay in stock instead of cash can structure it to be taxed at this year's rates," Mr. Jackson said. "If it does happen, it may be a little tricky to see."
It is not uncommon for Wall Street to consider the tax consequences of its pay practices. Private firms like hedge funds often let workers choose when they're paid. And until about a decade ago, Goldman allowed its partners to decide whether they received their bonuses in December or January. Back then, Goldman was an investment bank, and like other former investment banks, it closed its books at the end of November, making it easier to pay earlier.
One of the challenges for the banks in paying bonuses early would be coming out with exact amounts before the year is over and before they determine their final earnings - a lengthy process. Banks have in the past found ways to get around rules, or make their workers' pay look lower than it actually was. For instance, a year ago Goldman capped the pay of all of its London workers at £1 million each. But last summer, Goldman made it up to its partners in Britain, albeit quietly. The bank made dozens of multimillion-dollar stock grants to its partners there, according to a person briefed on their pay. Credit Suisse, in similar form, paid its British bankers summer cash bonuses to make up for their lower pay last year.
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19) Gay Teens Face Harsher Punishments
By TARA PARKER-POPE
December 6, 2010, 9:43 am
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/gay-teens-face-harsher-punishments/
Gay teens in the United States are far more likely to be harshly punished by schools and courts than their straight peers, according to a new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics.
The findings, based on a national sample of more than 15,000 middle and high school students, come at a time of heightened attention to the plight of gay teens. While several high-profile bullying and suicide cases around the country have revealed the harassment of gay teens by their peers, the new data suggest gay teens also suffer a hidden bias when judged by school and legal authorities.
"Gay, lesbian and bisexual kids are being punished by police, courts and by school officials, and it's not because they're misbehaving more,'' said Kathyrn Himmelstein, the study's lead author, who initiated the research while an undergraduate student at Yale University.
Ms. Himmelstein, now a high school math teacher in New York City, began the research after spending time working in the juvenile justice system during a leave of absence from college. She noticed a disproportionate number of gay and lesbian teens in juvenile court. After co-workers confirmed the trend, Ms. Himmelstein searched the scientific literature but didn't find any studies evaluating whether gay teens were more likely to be involved in criminal activity or more severely punished.
As a result, she began conducting her own study for her senior thesis at Yale University. She used data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which followed middle and high school students for seven years beginning in 1994. The study is a broad overview of adolescent health but contained information on teen sexuality and both minor and serious misconduct. The study asked teens about nonviolent misdeeds like alcohol use, lying to parents, shoplifting and vandalism, as well as more serious crimes like using a weapon, burglary or selling drugs.
Notably, teens who identified themselves as lesbian or gay or who experienced feelings of same-sex attraction were less likely to engage in violence than their peers. However, they were far more likely to be expelled from school, stopped by police, arrested or convicted of a crime.
Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual appeared to be at highest risk for punishment, experiencing 50 more police stops and about twice the risk of arrest and conviction as other girls who reported similar levels of misconduct.
The study wasn't designed to determine the reasons that behavior by gay and lesbian teens is more likely to be punished or criminalized. However, the authors speculated that the more severe punishments meted out to gay teens may reflect a bias by school and court officials. It may be that gay teens encounter homophobia in educational and child welfare systems and are less likely to receive support services than their straight peers. Or educators and court officials may be less likely to consider mitigating factors, like self defense against bullying, when dispensing punishment against a gay teen.
Ms. Himmelstein said that instead of protecting gay teens from bullying and abuse by their peers, authority figures may actually be contributing to their victimization.
"Our data show that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are being excessively punished, but the data don't say why,'' says Ms. Himmelstein. "We weren't able to figure out the circumstances of the punishment, but that's something that should be investigated more in light of recent events involving bullying and harassment of gay teens by peers.''
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