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Greetings All:
This letter was written by Yuri Kochiyama who has asked us to spread this letter far and wide. Please do :).
Kiilu
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March 1, 2010
Dear Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal:
Mumia's birthday is April 24 and we would like to celebrate the whole month of April with a gigantic Freedom Birthday Remembrance for Mumia Abu Jamal.
Please join Pam and Ramona Africa and all who love and admire Mumia by avalanching him through the month of April with Freedom Birthday wishes. And, to those who can afford to, please send a few dollars through postal money orders. This would be helpful when he is released.
Mail cards to:
Mumia Abu Jamal AM 8335
SCI Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370-8090
Tell your family members, friends, fellow workers, neighbors, classmates, etc. Also, notify progressive radio stations, newspapers and organizations. Please do so immediately as April is almost upon us. Remember what Mumia has endured at the hands of the U.S. government and the Pennsylvania criminal justice system. Mumia has already done 32 years and is still on death row because of prosecutorial misconduct. Yet he is innocent! Act now before it is too late.
Don't let Mumia become another victim of a government's destructive history. Mumia's life is in peril and must be saved. He is needed to teach us how to fight for a better world for all. If ever Mumia was needed, it is now!
Join us in celebrating Mumia's birthday throughout April and let it be a celebration for Mumia's freedom!
Remember we need him more than he needs us. We need him, not only for today, but for all the tomorrows coming. Join us. Write to Mumia now.
From Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal
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[This is an excellent program....bw]
MLK: A Call to Conscience
Premiered Mar. 31, 8/7c
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/reports/episode-two.html
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From LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org/
Voting is over for the first-ever global labour video of the year competition and we have a winner:
What Have The Unions Ever Done For Us?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=184NTV2CE_c
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NOTICE: The bauaw.org website is temporarily down to technical difficulties and should be restored to normal soon. The newsletter is unaffected. For your information, there are over 380 groups and individuals on this list now.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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ALL OUT TO WASHINGTON D.C.!
MARCH AND RALLY TO DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION PRE-K THROUGH COLLEGE
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2010, NOON
U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW
Demand that Arne Duncan Stop Toying with Our Students' Lives!
End the "Race to the Top" Scheme Now
Release All Federal Education Funds to the States Based on Need
Provide Massive Federal Aid With No Strings Attached to Maintain Public Higher Education
End the Attacks against Teachers, Black, Latina/o, and Poor,
Working-Class and Middle-Class Students of All Races
No Privatization of Public Education
No Tuition/Fee Hikes - No Program Cuts in Higher Education
No Layoffs/No Furloughs
No More Separate and Unequal
Restore Dr. King's Vision for America
Our children are NOT for sale. For the last six months, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has cynically and dishonestly hidden behind the needs of poor, black and Latina/o students to receive equal, quality educational opportunities, to institute his controversial, unpopular and educationally indefensible plan to create a national network of 5,000 publicly-financed, privately-run, minimally-regulated charter schools. Precious resources have already been taken away from public schools and given to charter schools to assure that charter schools win the "competition" against resource-starved, inner-city urban public school systems. His scheme, if successful, would end public education as a right and would increase, not decrease, educational inequality based on race and class.
Duncan has exploited the economic crisis to demand that union officials, local school districts, public officials and politicians unquestioningly and uncritically sign on to his unpopular, reactionary, anti-union, anti-democratic, pro-business policies in order to even stand a chance of receiving "Race To The Top" money. The most impoverished black and Latina/o communities with the proudest history of support for civil rights, union rights and public education are being asked to undertake a set of draconian reforms and to abandon every progressive principle they have stood on and believe in to get federal money to prevent the decimation of their schools.
The mildest resistance by the unions, Latina/o, black, immigrant or poor communities, students, parents, or politicians to Duncan's plan has led to whole states being denied access to funds. Duncan has fanatically demanded that unions abandon seniority protections, free-speech rights, set pay rates, academic freedom, etc. to qualify for federal money. Black and Latina/o parents, students and communities that have opposed taking away precious public resources from public schools and giving those same resources to charters, or who object to Latina/o and black students being asked to embrace separate and unequal, segregated, stripped-down, vocational/technical education instead of traditional broad-based education with art, music, science, sports and a full array of AP classes and extra-curricular activities-that succeeds in preparing wealthier suburban students for success in college-are being punished for even questioning Duncan's advocacy of private paternalistic offerings, reminiscent of the old Booker T. Washington-Jim Crow era.
Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston and other majority minority cities in Michigan, California and Texas that are experiencing unemployment rates three times the national average and record numbers of foreclosures, bankruptcies, plant closings and job losses, are ineligible for "Race To The Top," because they resisted Duncan's attempts to scapegoat teachers, blame the students for the conditions they did not create, and replace or marginalize democratically-elected, publicly-accountable school boards and superintendents with pro-charter mayoral school-takeover administrators or state appointed "education czars," some of whom are paid in part by the charter companies themselves.
Arne Duncan Must Go
The young people in states eliminated from consideration for "Race To The Top" and those living in states still in the running for "Race To The Top" are losing ground every day. School closings, teacher lay-offs and program cuts abound. The whole application process has weakened public education everywhere and distorted all reform efforts. The mad scramble to abandon all tried-and-true reforms to get desperately needed federal funding and the insane competition of school-against-school, state-against-state, etc. consistent with Duncan's free-market maximum-competition ideology, have wreaked havoc and encouraged divisiveness everywhere. We cannot allow this to continue any longer. United we win, divided we fall. Now is the time to stand together and fight. If Arne Duncan were a Republican, every progressive force in America would be demanding his resignation or firing. We cannot allow him to destroy public education or give him a free pass because he's a Democrat. For any real pro-student educational reforms to occur, Duncan must go now.
We can win our fight to stop the privatization of public education by telling the truth and taking action. While Duncan's current efforts are focused on majority-Latina/o and -black urban districts, his plan to convert 5,000 public schools into charters means that suburban districts-increasingly resource-starved themselves-will be targeted next. No one disagrees that public education needs to be vastly improved or that the achievement gap between black and Latina/o, and poor, working-class and middle-class students of all races and more privileged students must be closed.
Proven Ways to Improve Student Achievement
It is as true now as it was in 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education was decided: the single most important factor in closing the achievement gap and improving every student's educational outcomes is school integration. Creating diverse student bodies, offering a variety of traditional and non-traditional course offerings, giving young people the right to explore and experiment with art, music, athletics, different cultures, etc., produces the greatest success rates. Giving resource-starved urban and rural schools the funds for books, supplies and smaller class sizes, supporting efforts to desegregate education through the creation of magnet school programs, and uniting urban and suburban districts to share services, prevent duplication of efforts, provide an economy of scale that allows for more experimentation with educational alternatives, and allows for the creation of more diverse student populations, are all reforms that work.
The Duncan reform plan is premised on the view that human creativity, scientific discovery and social progress are best furthered through purely individual competition for personal, individual gain. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The greatest scientific breakthroughs, creative endeavors and social progress have always been produced as collective endeavors. When we have great minds focused on our shared and common interests and working together, human societies advance more rapidly. Educational reform is not that daunting when there is the will to act.
No Tuition Hikes or Program Cuts in Higher Ed!
The attack on public education is occurring in higher education in every state of the nation. Flagship public universities are being forced to rely more and more on private funding and rich or out-of-state students to fund their basic operating costs. State universities like the California State University (CSU) system that have traditionally focused more on teaching than on research are facing massive program cuts and tuition increases. Community colleges, once the gateway to higher education for poor and working-class students, are turning away hundreds of thousands of candidates that they can no longer accommodate because of the cuts.
The only way to resolve the crisis of funding for universities and colleges is for a massive infusion of federal aid. The banks, corporations and super rich that created the economic crisis that is now devastating higher education should be made to pay for the recovery, not poor and working-class students through tuition hikes.
Duncan's educational policy begins from two false political premises: first, that we cannot tax the corporations, banks or the very rich to obtain the money needed to fund public education; and second, that we cannot reorder our social or political priorities so that education receives more funds. Both premises are wrong. Presented with the actual facts, there is no doubt that public education, which is the most popular and universally-treasured achievement of the great civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, would easily beat out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as funding priorities. Secondly, there is broadly felt and expressed frustration and anger over how little the very people who caused the economic crisis have had to pay to rectify the conditions they created. Taxing the corporations, banks and very rich might make them squeal, but it would hardly be an unpopular policy.
When We Fight, We Win
Last fall, students in California, led by University of California at Berkeley and UCLA students, gave birth to a student movement. They stood up and successfully defended public education. The student movement had the backing of the unions and California's powerful Latina/o, immigrant, black, poor, working-class and middle-class communities. The power of the movement is its independence and its understanding that it speaks for the majority. The student movement lifted all of us. The marches, sit-ins, occupations and rallies reminded us that when we stand and fight together, we can win and, maybe just as importantly, restore our own sense of collective purpose, joy, hope and optimism. To move this new movement forward and to move forward the civil rights, immigrant rights, and labor movements, we need to march on Washington. It is time for us to deliver our demands to Arne Duncan directly, massively and strongly.
Join us in Washington on April 10-make this spring vacation one you will not forget.
Help Make the March on Washington a Success with a Financial Contribution!
Get on the Bus! www.BAMN.com; letters@bamn.com; 313 438-3748 or 313-575-9329. If you can't come yourself, send a check to sponsor a student or click here to donate online!!! (make out checks to: Defend Public Education, PO Box 24834, Detroit MI 48224)
Sponsored by:
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
Defend Public Education/Save Our Students Caucus
March & Rally endorsed by:
Detroit Federation of Teachers
Detroit Board of Education
California Teachers Association
California Federation of Teachers
West Haven Federation of Teachers
Oakland Education Association
Jim Hamilton (Member of the Executive Board of the Missouri Education Association)*
Illinois Latino Council on Higher Education (ILACHE)
Caucus of Rank and File Educators -- Chicago, IL (CORE)
Nathan Saunders (General Vice President of the Washington Teachers Union)*
Candi Peterson (Member of the Board of Trustees of the Washington Teachers Union)*
*Affiliation listed for identification purposes only.
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Picket in Support of ILWU Local 30
Friday, April 16, 11:00 A.M.
British Consulate: 1 Sansome St., S.F.
Rio Tinto, a global mining giant, will begin its annual shareholders meeting in London on April 15. It is implicated in the deaths of ten percent of the population of the northernmost Solomon Island in New Guinea. It was involved in massacres of tribal people and environmental devastation. Our brothers and sisters will picket and rally in London, Los Angeles and Seattle. Join in the international support for the 600 locked-out Rio Tinto miners. Don't handle Rio Tinto scab cargo.
Labor Donated
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SF Workers Memorial Day
Stand Up For Injured Workers
& Commemorate Workers Killed On The Job
Wed April 28, 7:00 PM
ILWU Local 34 2nd St./Embarcadero SF
Speakers:
Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition
Mike Daly, Ironworkers Local 377* delegate to San Francisco Labor Council
Leuren Moret, Geo-scientist who worked at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab
Carol Criss, SEIU-UHW Kaiser Steward Transcriptionist
Roland Sheppard, Retired BA Painters Local 4
Dina Padilla, Injured Worker Advocate
Becky McClain, Injure Pfizer Molecular Biologist by telephone
Sandy Trend, mother of injured Agraquest injured biotech worker David Bell
Workers in the bay area and nationally continue to get injured and killed on the job. In California, OSHA inspectors have been threatened and retaliated against for speaking out about the decline of the agency and the failure of the agency to do a proper job protecting injured workers and the public. Additionally all the OSHA doctors for California's 17 million workers have also been terminated thereby threatening the safety of workers and the public. There are more CA Fish and Game Inspectors than Ca-OSHA inspectors and this needs to change.
Hundreds of NUMMI injured workers who have been on disability are also now being discriminated against by the company and treated as 2nd class workers in the compensation plan. Is this fair? Many of these workers have given decades of their lives to the company yet they are now being punished for being disabled. This is cost shifting since their healthcare will now be paid for by the State and SSI when they go on permanent disability. This is yet another example of cost shifting by the corporations making the tax payer pay for their liabilities.
Workers Memorial Day is held every year to commemorate those workers killed and injured on the job. The deregulation of workers compensation has also allowed employers and the insurance industry to deny seriously injured workers prompt healthcare and also has cut the permanent disability payments by 50% as well as completely eliminating retraining.
There is a national struggle to strengthen OSHA protection called the Protecting America's Workers Act H.R. 2067 needs to be supported and also to require that all injured workers are entitled to their exposure records on the job. Health and safety must trump privacy/secrecy laws.
We also support H.R. 635 which will create a US Commission on State Workers Compensation Laws and will study the affect of deregulation for injured workers in the U.S. At the same time, OSHA plans to remove some chemical warnings on exposure limits for workers.
We need to educate and reactivate the labor movement to protect our lives and health and safety in the workplace. Please join with workers and their families at this memorial meeting and speak out and demand healthcare and justice for all workers and people in the community.
Wed April 28, 7:00 PM
ILWU Local 34 2nd St./Embarcadero SF
Injured workers, health and safety advocates and family members will participate
Speakers:
Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition
Mike Daly, Ironworkers Local 377* delegate to San Francisco Labor Council
Leuren Moret, Geo-scientist who worked at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab
Carol Criss, SEIU-UHW Kaiser Steward Transcriptionist
Roland Sheppard, Retired BA Painters Local 4
Dina Padilla, Injured Worker Advocate
Becky McClain, Injure Pfizer Molecular Biologist by telephone
Sandy Trend, mother of injured Agraquest injured biotech worker David Bell
California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day CCWMD
www.workersmemorialday.org
(415)867-0628
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Protest on International Workers' Day
Full Rights for Undocumented Workers
Legalization/Amnesty for All!
Money for Jobs and Education, Not War and Occupation
Jobs for All!
No Budget Cuts or Fee Hikes
Tax the Rich and Corporations!
March and Rally
Saturday May 1, 12noon
March Assembles: 24th and Mission Sts., SF
Sponsored by the May Day 2010 Coalition, of which the ANSWER Coalition is a member.
Proteste durante el Día Internacional del Trabajador
¡Derechos Incondicionales para Trabajadores Indocumentados
Legalización/Amnistía para todos!
¡Dinero Para Trabajos y Educación, No para Guerra y Ocupación
Trabajos para todos!
¡No Recortes o Aumentos-Cobren a los Ricos y Corporaciones!
Marcha y Mitin
Sab. 1º de Mayo, 12pm
Uniéndose sobre la calle 24 y Misión, SF
Patrocinado por la Coalición Día de Mayo 2010, la cual la Coalición ANSWER es un participante.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org
http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
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CIRCLE THESE DATES!!
Announcing...
A National Conference
To Bring the Troops Home Now!
JULY 23, 24, 25, 2010
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, New York
www.nationalpeaceconference.org
AN INVITATION FROM: After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, Peace of the Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Progressive Democrats of America, U.S. Labor Against the War, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom [list in formation]
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting. Attend and voice your opinion on where the antiwar movement is today and where we go from here.
In these deeply troubled times, Washington's two wars and occupations rage on, resulting in an ever increasing number of dead and wounded; more and more civilians killed in drone bombing attacks; misery, deprivation, dislocation and shattered lives for millions; and a suicide rate for U.S. service members soaring to unprecedented heights. At the same time, trillions are spent on these seemingly endless Pentagon conflicts waged in pursuit of profits and global domination while trillions more are lost by working people in the value of their homes, in the loss of their jobs, pensions and health care, and in cuts for public services and vitally needed social programs.
We are witness to the massive bailout of banks and corporations while union contracts are shredded, work is outsourced, jobs are shipped off-shore, workers are evicted from their homes, and our youth and students face a bleak future of rising tuition costs, an ever-declining quality of education, and diminishing employment opportunities. They are offered instead the opportunity to become cannon fodder as the military serves as the employer of last resort while prison awaits many others.
The poor and working people in the U.S. suffer the horrors of unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, untreated illnesses and unavailable health insurance, crumbling infrastructure, and temporary and part time work at starvation wages. These multiple crises impact communities of color with disproportionate severity. Meanwhile people in a growing number of countries around the world are subjected to death and destruction by the world's most powerful military machine.
There is another dimension to this tragedy. The U.S. is at war to control and plunder the very fossil fuel resources whose continued use threatens the future of the human race.
We demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, we recognize that the Middle East cauldron today also encompasses Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine and Israel, while Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and other countries in Latin America are targeted for intervention, subversion, occupation and control as a consequence of a militarized U.S. foreign policy. Our challenge is not only to end wars and occupations, but to fundamentally change the aggressive policies that inevitably lead our country to militarism and war.
The fight for better times, for a world of peace, justice and freedom, requires that we join together to make it happen, that we fight for the broad unity within the antiwar movement and across all the movements for social justice that has to date escaped us and that we collaborate to engage the American people in massive and united mobilizations against the warmakers and for the justice we deserve.
We have not forgotten the lessons of the civil rights movement, the struggle against the Vietnam War, the feminist and gay rights movements, and the monumental struggles that paved the way to the organization of American trade unions. History has demonstrated time and again that all critical social change is a product of the direct and massive intervention of the people.
We seek an inclusive conference where antiwar individuals and organizations come together to democratically discuss, debate and approve a plan of action aimed at winning the support and allegiance of the majority who have the power to compel a fundamental re-ordering of priorities.
We announce in advance that our goal is to develop strategies that unite us in action - for mass mobilizations and a variety of other tactics that suit the agendas of the constituent groups and individuals who participate in the conference proceedings. Our method is democracy. One person, one vote! Our goal is unity in action while respecting our diversity and differences in political program and orientation.
Join us in Albany, New York, July 23-25, 2010!
Issued by the United National Antiwar Conference (UNAC) Planning Committee
For more information, write UNAC2010@aol.com, or UNAC at P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121 or call 518-227-6947 or visit our website at www.nationalpeaceconference.org
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Collateral Murder
[COLD-BLOODED, OUTRIGHT MURDER OF UNARMED CIVILIANS--AND THEY LAUGH ABOUT IT AS THEY SHOOT! THIS IS A BLOOD-CURTLING, VIOLENT AND BRUTAL VIDEO THAT SHOULD BE VIEWED BY EVERYONE! IT EXPOSES, AS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID, "THE BIGGEST PURVEYORS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD," THE U.S. BI-PARTISAN GOVERNMENT AND THE MILITARY THEY COMMAND. --BW]
Overview
5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
http://www.collateralmurder.com/
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Dispatches - Children Of Gaza (2010)
[Out of the mouths of babes comes a real expose of the practices of the U.S. propped-up and funded Zionist regime of Israel against the children of Gaza and all Palestinians, both inside Israel and outside its ever-increasing borders. These are crimes bought and paid for by the U.S. government with our tax dollars to maintain the U.S. puppet nuclear stronghold--Israel--in the Middle East. The world must say no to this murderous regime of Israel. We, here in the U.S., must demand:
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL! NOT ONE MORE DIME! NOT ONE MORE WEAPON! NOT ONE MORE LIE IN DEFENSE OF ISRAELI MURDER AND MAYHEM AGAINST THE PEOPLE--AND THE CHILDREN--OF PALESTINE...BW]
On Monday 15th March Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Children of Gaza". It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children's literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel's illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars, which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed.
http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2010/03/dispatches-children-of-gaza-2010.html
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San Francisco City and County Tramples on Civil Liberties
A Letter to Antiwar Activists
Dear Activists:
On Saturday, March 20, the San Francisco City and County Recreation and Parks Department's Park Rangers patrolled a large public antiwar demonstration, shutting down the distribution of Socialist Viewpoint magazine. The rally in Civic Center Plaza was held in protest of the illegal and immoral U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Park Rangers went table-to-table examining each one. They photographed the Socialist Viewpoint table and the person attending it-me. My sister, Debbie and I, had set up the table. We had a sign on the table that asked for a donation of $1.25 for the magazine. The Park Rangers demanded that I "pack it up" and go, because selling or even asking for donations for newspapers or magazines is no longer permitted without the purchase of a new and expensive "vendors license." Their rationale for this denial of free speech is that the distribution of newspapers, magazines, T-shirts-and even food-would make the political protest a "festival" and not a political protest demonstration!
This City's action is clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution-the right to free speech and freedom of the press-and can't be tolerated.
While they are firing teachers and other San Francisco workers, closing schools, cutting back healthcare access, cutting services to the disabled and elderly, it is outrageous that the Mayor and City Government chose to spend thousands of dollars to police tables at an antiwar rally-a protest demonstration by the people!
We can't let this become the norm. It is so fundamentally anti-democratic. The costs of the permits for the rally, the march, the amplified sound, is already prohibitive. Protest is not a privilege we should have to pay for. It's a basic right in this country and we should reclaim it!
Personally, I experienced a deep feeling of alienation as the crisply-uniformed Park Ranger told me I had to "pack it up"-especially when I knew that they were being paid by the City to do this at this demonstration!
I hope you will join this protest of the violation of the right to distribute and, therefore, the right to read Socialist Viewpoint, by writing or emailing the City officials who are listed below.1
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Editorial Board Member, Socialist Viewpoint
www.socialistviewpoint.org
60 - 29th Street, #429
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-8730
1 Mayor Gavin Newsom
City Hall, Room 200
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244
San Francisco, Ca 94102-4689
Board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department Park Rangers
McLaren Lodge & Annex
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
Park.patrol@sfgov.org
San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission
501 Stanyan Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
recpark.commission@sfgov.org
Chief of Police George Gascón
850 Bryant Street, #525
San Francisco, CA 94103
(I could not find an email address for him.).
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Video:
Cuba's Medical System: A Public Health Paradox?
Posted by Alexis Turner in Fellows, Global Health, Healthcare Quality
February 1st, 2007
http://oninformatics.com/?p=37
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A bit of San Francisco History:
James Baldwin in San Francisco, 1963
http://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/187041
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We Are NOT Your Soldiers National Tour 2010
wearenotyoursoldiers.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F2phA-BIGM&feature=player_embedded#
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YouTube - M4 Day of Action-On The March For Public Education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78GcKtgFOqU
M4 Day of Action-On The March For Public Education On March 4, 2010, tens of thousands of education workers and students and supporters of public education joined together in rallies and marches throughout California and around the country. This video is about some of the participants in the San Francisco and the East Bay. Production of Labor Video Project P.O. Box 720027, SF, CA 94172 www.laborvideo.org laborvideo.blip.tv (414)282-1908
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Fault Lines - Haiti: The politics of rebuilding
[Very enlightening video. The people of Haiti are thinking clearly. They are just not allowed to govern themselves. They are under US/UN corporate-sponsored military occupation to prevent them from running their own country cooperatively....bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuUt12usDVs&feature=player_embedded
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Mine - Story of a Sacred Mountain
[This is a stunningly beautiful film. It is the story of Avatar in real life today...bw]
http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi888603161/
India's Supreme Court recently approved the project, and mining could begin in a matter of months.
The Dongria remain united in their determination to stop Vedanta from turning their sacred mountain into an industrial wasteland.
One of the Court's conditions is that some of the mine's profits are put towards "tribal development."
But no "development" or "compensation" package could cure the problems that mining Niyamgiri will cause: the destruction of a unique environment and culture.
The Dongria have accused Vedanta of "trying to flood us out with money" and have made it clear that:
"Mining only makes profit for the rich. We will become beggars if the company destroys our mountain and our forest so that they can make money. We don't want the mine or any help at all from the company."
Vedanta was founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who owns more than half the shares.
Under Siege
Vedanta is still waiting to clear the final red tape before they are able to begin mining. Meanwhile, the Dongria are being held siege in their hill range.
Non-tribal villagers, who do not farm the land but rely on wage labor to survive, have blocked the routes into the Niyamgiri hills.
Young men, sometimes armed with axes, are refusing to allow any outsiders, including journalists, to enter Niyamgiri and visit Dongria Kondh villages.
The reason is simple: they do not want the world to hear the Dongria's voice.
Act now to help the Dongria Kondh
Your support is vital if the Dongria Kondh are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
--Write to India's Minister of Environment and Forests asking him to safeguard the Dongria Kondh's rights:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/actnow/writealetter/dongria
--Donate to the Dongria Kondh campaign (and other Survival campaigns):
http://www.survivalinternational.org/donations
--Write to your MP or MEP (UK):
http://www.writetothem.com/
or Senators and members of Congress (US):
http://www.congress.org/
--Write to your local Indian high commission or embassy:
http://www.embassiesabroad.com/
--If you want to get more involved, contact Survival:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/info/contact
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Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
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Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
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Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
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Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
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Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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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).]
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Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
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The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
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The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
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Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
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ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
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FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
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With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
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FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
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The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
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The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
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HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
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This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
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Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 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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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) W.Va. mine owner accused of putting safety second
By TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer
Tue Apr 6, 7:54 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mine_explosion_massey_energy
2) Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/asia/08bishkek.html?hp
3) No Signs of Life From 4 Missing in Mine
By IAN URBINA and MICHAEL COOPER
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/us/08westvirginia.html?hp
4) U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
By SCOTT SHANE
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?ref=world
5) Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 6, 2010, 11:49 am
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-defends-release-of-video-showing-killing-of-journalists-in-iraq/
6) For 2 Grieving Families, Video Reveals Grim Truth
By TIM ARANGO and ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07baghdad.html?ref=world
7) Mines Fight Strict Laws by Filing More Appeals
By GARDINER HARRIS and ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07company.html?ref=us
8) Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site
By NOAM COHEN and BRIAN STELTER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/07wikileaks.html?ref=us
9) Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.html?ref=education
10) Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video
By BENEDICT CAREY
[The fact that the young men and women coerced into joining the military-most because of economic necessity-have been turned into "lean, mean, killing machines," a favorite chant of Bootcamp, is a "no duh" understatement that doesn't take a bunch of psychiatrists to figure out. Every kid in JROTC should be forced to watch this documented demonstration of U.S. mass murder. In fact, everyone should watch it-then join together to fight like hell against it! ...bw]
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html?ref=world
11) Landslide Buries Scores of Houses Built on Garbage
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/americas/09brazil.html?ref=world
12) After Warning, Mine Escaped Extra Oversight
By MICHAEL COOPER, IAN URBINA and BERNIE BECKER
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?hp
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1) W.Va. mine owner accused of putting safety second
By TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer
Tue Apr 6, 7:54 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mine_explosion_massey_energy
JULIAN, W.Va. - The coal mine rocked by an explosion that killed at least 25 workers in the nation's deadliest mining disaster since 1984 had been cited for 600 violations in less than a year and a half, some of them for not properly ventilating methane - the highly combustible gas suspected in the blast.
The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine has focused attention on the business and safety practices of the owner, Massey Energy, a powerful and politically connected company in Appalachia known for producing big profits, as well as big piles of safety and environmental violations and big damage awards for grieving widows.
"There are mines in this country who have operated safely for 20 years," said J. Davitt McAteer, head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton administration. "There are mines who take precautions ahead of time. There are mines who spend the money and manpower to do it."
He added: "Those mines haven't been blown up."
Four other miners were missing and feared dead underground in Monday's blast, believed to have been caused by a buildup of methane, a naturally occurring gas that is odorless and colorless.
Last year alone, MSHA cited Upper Big Branch for 495 violations and proposed $911,802 in fines. Production more than tripled during that period, according to federal records. So far this year, the agency has found 105 violations at the mine.
Upper Big Branch is one of Massey's biggest underground mines, with more than 200 employees, and it is not uncommon for big coal mines to amass hundreds of violations a year - and to contest many of them, as Massey does. But most big mines don't have as many serious infractions as Upper Big Branch, industry experts said.
At least 50 citations charge the company with "unwarrantable failure" to comply with safety standards such as following an approved ventilation plan, controlling combustible materials or designating escape routes.
"I've never seen that many for one mine in a year," said Ellen Smith, editor of Mine Safety & Health News. "If you look at other mines that are the same size or bigger, they do not have the sheer number of `unwarrantable' citations that this mine has."
Massey has had problems elsewhere, too. In 2006, two miners were killed in a fire at Massey's Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine. Massey settled a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed sum, and its subsidiary Aracoma Coal Co. paid $4.2 million in civil and criminal penalties.
Testimony showed Massey CEO Don Blankenship suggested firing two supervisors for raising concerns about conveyer belt problems just before the belt caught fire.
"Massey has a history of emphasizing production," said Pittsburgh lawyer Bruce Stanley, who represented the miners' widows. "I'm concerned that they may not have learned the lessons of Aracoma."
In an interview less than 24 hours after the disaster at Upper Big Branch, Blankenship insisted the mine is no more dangerous than others of comparable size, and he defended the company's track record in a perilous business.
"It's natural that the enemies of coal would view Massey as the primary enemy," he said.
He pointed out Massey's many innovations, such as installing steps in place of ladders and putting protective cages on underground vehicles even though the government doesn't require them.
"I think that I've proven that we run safer coal mines - you know, most of the time - and accidents sometimes happen. We've got to figure out what happened here," he said.
Kevin Stricklin, an MSHA administrator, said that the number of citations at the mine appeared high, and that he was concerned about the more serious violations. "It means the operator was aware of some of these conditions," he said.
Massey is contesting 36 percent of all violations at Upper Big Branch since 2007, The Associated Press found. Overall, U.S. mine operators contest 27 percent. Challenging violations can enable a mine owner to stave off the heavier punishment that the government can impose on companies that have been deemed repeat offenders.
Massey became a political and industrial powerhouse under the guidance of Blankenship, who rose from poverty to become one of corporate America's highest-paid and least apologetic executives, a guy who proudly displays in his office a TV set with a bullet hole from a striking union miner's rifle.
He freely spent millions of dollars from his personal fortune to help install a West Virginia Supreme Court justice, a maneuver that led to an important conflict-of-interest ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, and on a failed bid to elect a Republican majority in the state Legislature.
Under Blankenship, Massey clawed to the top of the Appalachian coal industry, shrewdly buying up coal deposits to amass more than 2 billion tons of reserves. It is a major economic force regionally, with more than 6,000 high-paid miners in some of the poorest counties in America.
Operating nonunion mines across southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, Massey more than doubled its profit to $104.4 million in 2009 from the year before, despite slumping demand for coal amid the recession. The company expects to be shipping 2 million tons of coal a year to India by next year.
Massey has managed to push the United Mine Workers union out of all of its operations except for a single processing plant.
Blankenship's hard-driving approach was illustrated in a 2005 memo in which he told mine workers that if their bosses ask them to build roof supports or perform similar tasks, "ignore them and run coal."
"This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills," he wrote.
Few workers are willing to openly criticize Massey because of its powerful hold on people's livelihoods in Appalachia.
But Terry Holstein, who worked at Upper Big Branch, said it took him 10 years to decide he didn't like the way Massey ran the mine. He left in 2006.
"It was like they wanted production more than they wanted safety, myself, you know what I mean?" he said. "They speak safety first, but production's really first for them."
Associated Press writers Sam Hananel and Lee Powell in Washington, Allen G. Breed in Dry Creek, W.Va., and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.
(This version corrects the total fines and penalties paid by Aracoma to $4.2 million.)
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2) Emergency in Kyrgyzstan as Police Fire on Protesters
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/asia/08bishkek.html?hp
MOSCOW - The authorities in Kyrgyzstan declared a national state of emergency on Wednesday after large-scale antigovernment protests broke out around the country and riot police officers fired on crowds in the capital, killing at least 17 people.
The country's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was said to have fled the capital, Bishkek, on the presidential plane, and it increasingly seemed that the opposition was gaining the upper hand.
The police used bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against a crowd of thousands massing in front of the presidential office in Bishkek, according to witness accounts. At least 17 people were killed and others were wounded, officials.
Opposition leaders said the toll was as high as 100 people, but that figure could not be confirmed.
The upheaval threatened an American ally, since Kyrgyzstan is home to an important American air base that operates in support of the NATO mission in nearby Afghanistan. American officials said that as of Wednesday evening the base was functioning normally.
The Obama administration has sought to cultivate ties with Mr. Bakiyev after he vowed to close the American base on the outskirts of Bishkek last year, then reversed his decision after the American side agreed to concessions, including higher rent.
Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what human rights groups contend are the increasingly repressive policies of President Bakiyev.
Mr. Bakiyev made no public comment on Wednesday, and an official at the airport in Bishkek said in a telephone interview that Mr. Bakiyev took off from the airport on the presidential plane in the early evening. The airport official said Mr. Bakiyev was flying to Osh, a major city in the southern part of the country, but that could not be confirmed.
On Wednesday afternoon, fighting continued in the streets of Bishkek and other provincial centers. Video shot by protesters and uploaded to the Internet showed scenes of people clashing with and in some cases pushing back heavily armed riot police.
Reports from Bishkek said crowds of opposition members tried to enter the presidential offices as well as those of the national television channels.
Dmitri Kabak, director of a local human rights group in Bishkek, said in a telephone interview that he was monitoring the protest on the central square when riot police officers started shooting. He said he had the sense that the officers had panicked and were not being supervised.
"When people started marching toward the presidential office, snipers on the roof of the office started to open fire, with live bullets," Mr. Kabak said. "I saw several people who were killed right there on the square."
The United States Embassy in Bishkek issued a statement saying that it was "deeply concerned about reports of civil disturbances."
By late evening in Bishkek, it appeared that the opposition had succeeded in taking over the national television channels. In a speech to the nation, an opposition leader, Omurbek Tekebaev, a former speaker of Parliament, demanded the Mr. Bakiyev and the rest of his government resign.
Mr. Tekebaev was arrested earlier in the day along with some other opposition leaders, but later released.
Kyrgyzstan, with five million people in the mountains of Central Asia, is one of the poorest countries of the former Soviet Union, and has long been troubled by political conflict and corruption.
The opposition has complained about what is asserts are Mr. Bakiyev's autocratic policies, but it appears that the immediate catalyst for the violence was anger over a sharp increase in prices for utilities.
On Wednesday, the Kyrgyz government accused the opposition of provoking violence. "Their goal is to create instability and confrontation in society," the Kyrgyz Parliament said in a statement.
The government said it would deal severely with the protesters, but they did not appear to be deterred. The first unrest occurred on Tuesday in the provincial center of Talas, when opposition members stormed government offices.
Russia, which also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and a close relationship with the government, appealed for calm.
"We believe that it is important that under the circumstances, all current issues should be resolved in a lawful manner," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Mr. Bakiyev easily won another term as president as president last year over Mr. Atambaev in an election that independent monitors said was tainted by massive fraud.
Mr. Bakiyev first took office in 2005 after the Tulip Revolution, the third in what was seen at the time as a series of so-called color revolutions that offered hope of more democratic governments in former Soviet republics.
But since then, he has consolidated power, cracking down on the opposition and independent news outlets.
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3) No Signs of Life From 4 Missing in Mine
By IAN URBINA and MICHAEL COOPER
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/us/08westvirginia.html?hp
MONTCOAL, W.Va. - Rescue workers continued the precarious task early Wednesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where at least 25 miners died two days before, but they had not received any signs of life from the four people still missing.
The mine owner's dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday's explosion might have been preventable.
In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat whose district includes the mine, said he had received similar reports from miners about recent evacuations at the mine, which as recently as last month was fined at least three times for ventilation problems, according to federal records.
The Massey Energy Company, the biggest coal mining business in central Appalachia and the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, has drawn sharp scrutiny and fines from regulators over its safety and environmental record.
In 2008, one of its subsidiaries paid what federal prosecutors called the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry after pleading guilty to safety violations that contributed to the deaths of two miners in a fire in one of its mines. That year, Massey also paid a $20 million fine - the largest of its kind levied by the Environmental Protection Agency - for clean water violations.
It is still unclear what caused Monday's blast, which is under investigation. Rescuers finished drilling a hole into the mine Wednesday morning and got no response when they tried to communicate with potential survivors by banging on the pipe. Once three more holes are drilled to release poison gases, the rescuers can begin searching for the four miners still unaccounted for.
"We're in a full rescue operation now, then we'll go into recovery," Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia said at a news conference Wednesday morning. "Everyone is holding on to the hope that is their father, their son."
Governor Manchin said at the news conference that two miners were hospitalized. According to The Associated Press, Governor Manchin said that one was doing well and the other was in intensive care
The disaster has raised new questions about Massey's attention to safety under the leadership of its pugnacious chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, and about why stricter federal laws, put into effect after a mining disaster in 2006, failed to prevent another tragedy.
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the magnitude of the explosion - the worst mining accident in 25 years, which also left four people missing, including a woman working as a mining operator - showed that "something went very wrong here."
"All explosions are preventable," Mr. Stricklin said. "It's just making sure you have things in place to keep one from occurring."
Mr. Rahall said that even veteran rescue workers, some with decades of experience, had told him they were shocked by what they saw inside the mine. They said they had never witnessed destruction on that scale, Mr. Rahall said, or dealt with the aftermath of an explosion of that magnitude.
"It turned rail lines into pretzels," Mr. Rahall said. "There seems like there was something awfully wrong to make such a huge explosion."
Gov. Manchin and members of Congress said state and federal officials would begin investigating the explosion.
In an interview with the Metronews radio network in West Virginia, Mr. Blankenship said that despite the company's many violations, the Mine Safety and Health Administration would never have allowed the mine to operate if it had been unsafe.
"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," Mr. Blankenship said.
"There are violations at every coal mine in America, and U.B.B. was a mine that had violations," he added, referring to Upper Big Branch.
"I think the fact that M.S.H.A., the state and our fire bosses and the best engineers that you can find were all in and around this mine, and all believed it to be safe in the circumstances it was in, speaks for itself as far as any suspicion that the mine was improperly operated," Mr. Blankenship said.
The Massey Energy Web site also contains a defense of the company's safety record. It says 2009 was the 17th year out of 20 that the company had scored above the industry average in safety.
But miners and other workers in the mine took issue with Mr. Blankenship's reassurances.
"No one will say this who works at that mine, but everyone knows that it has been dangerous for years," said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who worked on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt as a subcontractor at the mine two years ago.
Mr. Tyler said workers had regularly been told to work 12-hour shifts when eight hours is the industry standard. He also said that live wires had been left exposed and that an accumulation of coal dust and methane was routinely ignored.
"I'm willing to go on record because I am a subcontractor who doesn't depend on Massey for my life," Mr. Tyler said.
In March alone, the Mine Safety and Health Administration cited the Upper Big Branch mine for 53 safety violations.
Last year, the number of citations issued against the mine more than doubled, to over 500, from 2008, and the penalties proposed against the mine more than tripled, to $897,325.
J. Davitt McAteer, a former assistant director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the Massey company "is certainly one of the worst in the industry" when it came to safety and called recent violations at the mine for substandard ventilation and other problems "cardinal sins."
"The Massey record is without doubt one of the most difficult in the industry from a safety standpoint," Mr. McAteer, now the vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University, said in an interview. He said other large, diversified coal operators had far better safety records than Massey.
In 2008, the Aracoma Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey, agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to plead guilty to several safety violations related to a 2006 fire that killed two miners at a coal mine in Logan, W.Va.
After the fire broke out, the two miners found themselves unable to escape, partly because the company had removed some ventilation controls inside the mine. The workers died of suffocation. Federal prosecutors at the time called it the largest such settlement in the history of the coal industry.
The company's commitment to safety came under scrutiny in 2005 after Mr. Blankenship sent a memorandum to his deep mine superintendents.
"If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal," said the memo, a copy of which was obtained from Bruce E. Stanley, a lawyer who represented the widows of the victims of the Aracoma mine fire. "This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills."
In a follow-up memo a week later, Mr. Blankenship said some superintendents might have interpreted his first memo as implying that safety was a secondary consideration; in the second memo he called safety the company's "first responsibility."
In Washington on Tuesday during an Easter prayer breakfast, President Obama offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said the federal government was ready to help in whatever way needed.
Thirty-one miners were in the mine around 3 p.m. Monday when the explosion occurred. Some died from the explosion. Others suffocated from the fumes, state safety officials said. Seven of the bodies have been removed, and 14 have not yet been identified.
Four of the miners who were believed to have been farther back in the mine remained unaccounted for late Tuesday. Officials said there was still a possibility, though slim, that they had been able to reach airtight chambers, where there are stockpiles of food, water and oxygen.
Governor Manchin said at an afternoon news conference on Tuesday that four drills were in place to begin drilling holes behind the rescue chambers, an effort that began in earnest later in the day. It may not be until Wednesday night that rescue workers can regain entry to the mine after the first ventilation hole is drilled, he said.
"Everyone is going to cling on to the hope of that miracle," the governor said of the four missing miners. "The odds are against us. These are long odds. They know. These are mining families. They know methane, they know about air."
As the families of the miners waited on Tuesday, frustrations grew. State and mine officials were taking a long time to confirm the names of the dead, many of the miners said. Families also voiced frustration that they had learned about the disaster from news reports rather than from Massey officials.
Some of these tensions boiled over around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd, but people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners' lives.
After another Massey official informed the crowd of the new death toll, one miner threw a chair. A father and son stormed off screaming that they were quitting mining work. And several people yelled at Mr. Blankenship that he was to blame before he was escorted from the scene.
Ian Urbina reported from Montcoal, and Michael Cooper from New York. Reporting was contributed by Bernie Becker and Dan Heyman from Montcoal, and Dan Barry, Charles Duhigg, Liz Robbins and Stephanie Strom from New York.
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4) U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric
By SCOTT SHANE
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.
American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.
But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community," he said. "If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that." He did not name Mr. Awlaki as a target.
The step taken against Mr. Awlaki, which occurred earlier this year, is a vivid illustration of his rise to prominence in the constellation of terrorist leaders. But his popularity as a cleric, whose lectures on Islamic scripture have a large following among English-speaking Muslims, means any action against him could rebound against the United States in the larger ideological campaign against Al Qaeda.
The possibility that Mr. Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.
"The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words," said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity. "He's gotten involved in plots."
The official added: "The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual - through his own actions - has become one. Awlaki knows what he's done, and he knows he won't be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone."
As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country, and officials said that was the standard used in adding names to the list of targets. In addition, Congress approved the use of military force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R. Ford.
Both the C.I.A. and the military maintain lists of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are approved for capture or killing, former officials said. But because Mr. Awlaki is an American, his inclusion on those lists had to be approved by the National Security Council, the officials said.
At a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California and chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, called Mr. Awlaki "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us."
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5) Wikileaks Defends Release of Video Showing Killing of Journalists in Iraq
By ROBERT MACKEY
April 6, 2010, 11:49 am
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/wikileaks-defends-release-of-video-showing-killing-of-journalists-in-iraq/
Updated | 5:49 p.m. As my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller reported, a senior American military official confirmed on Monday that a graphic video released by the Web site WikiLeaks.org, which shows an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver during a July 2007 attack in Baghdad, is authentic.
One of the whistle-blowing group's founders, Julian Assange, explained and defended the decision to release the graphic, disturbing video shot from the helicopter during interviews in Washington on Monday with Al Jazeera and Russia Today.
Both of those appearances, and an edited version of the leaked video, are available on YouTube. (Be warned that even the edited version shows people being killed.)
Wikileaks uploaded the 17-minute edit to YouTube on Monday morning, along with the complete video, which runs more than 39 minutes.
Soon after releasing the video, Mr. Assange discussed it with Alyona Minkovski, a Washington correspondent for Russia Today, an English-language satellite channel financed by the Russian government.
Mr. Assange also spoke with Al Jazeera on Monday about the video:
On Tuesday, an Iraqi journalists' union called on the country's government to investigate incident. The head of the union, Mouyyad al-Lami said, "This is another crime added to the crimes of the U.S. forces against Iraqi journalists and civilians," The Associated Press reported.
After the video was released, Al Jazeera English broadcast an interview with Nabil Noor-Eldeen, whose brother Namir Noor-Eldeen was one of the two Reuters journalists killed in the attack. He asked: "Is this the freedom and democracy that they claim to have brought to Iraq?"
On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an excerpt from David Finkel's book "The Good Soldiers," which includes an account of the attack that day from the reporter, who was embedded with American troops who came across the dead and wounded soon after the helicopters fired.
As my colleagues Noam Cohen and Rogene Fisher reported on Monday, WikiLeaks, which describes itself as "an intelligence agency of the people," is a nonprofit group, created in the spring of 2007. In March, Stephanie Strom reported in The Times that the group's release of an internal Pentagon report had upset the military:
The Pentagon concluded that "WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army" - or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.
While it seems clear that the American military mistook the camera equipment the two journalists were carrying for weapons, Slate's Twitter feed points to an analysis of the footage by a blogger named Anthony Martinez, who argues that two of the men in the group they were with may have been armed.
Mr. Martinez, who says that he served in Iraq with the American Army, writes: "I have spent quite a lot of time (a conservative estimate would be around 4,500 hours) viewing aerial footage of Iraq." Near the start of his post he says, "I support WikiLeaks in their endeavors to bring about transparency in government," but he goes on to criticize the edited version of the video produced by the group for not properly noting what look to him like weapons.
Between 3:13 and 3:30 it is quite clear to me, as both a former infantry sergeant and a photographer, that the two men central to the gun-camera's frame are carrying photographic equipment. This much is noted by WikiLeaks, and misidentified by the crew of Crazyhorse 18. At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution, video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable.
He adds that he still finds fault with the actions of the crew that attacked the group - and sees absolutely no justification for the subsequent attack on a van driver who arrived after the initial barrage and tried to help the victims:
I have made the call to engage targets from the sky several times, and know (especially during the surge) that such calls are not taken lightly. Had I been personally involved with this mission, and had access to real-time footage, I would have recommended against granting permission. [...]
The point at which I cannot support the actions of [the crew of] Crazyhorse 18, at all, comes when the van arrives somewhere around 9:45 and is engaged. Unless someone had jumped out with an RPG ready to fire on the aircraft, there was no threat warranting a hail of 30mm from above. Might it have been prudent to follow the vehicle (perhaps with a UAV), or at least put out a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for the vehicle? Absolutely without question. Was this portion of the engagement even remotely understandable, to me? No, it was not.
WikiLeaks also uploaded a video made by an Icelandic journalist the group sent to Iraq to find two children who were wounded in the attack after their father stopped his van to try to rescue some of the victims. The father was also shot and killed in the effort.
On a page of links to additional information and reports on the strike, WikiLeaks points to this blog post from Reuters in 2007 about the two slain journalists.
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6) For 2 Grieving Families, Video Reveals Grim Truth
By TIM ARANGO and ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07baghdad.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - The women of Saeed Chmagh's family wept, but the men did not as they watched a video of him being shot to death by a gunner on an American Apache attack helicopter.
"I saw the truth," Samir Chmagh, 19, son of the dead man, said Tuesday in his family's living room in Baghdad. "They saw clearly that they were journalists and that they were holding cameras. It was painful when we saw this movie."
It was a fog-of-war moment in July 2007 on the streets of Baghdad in which American troops gunned down men they identified as insurgents. The attack left 12 people dead, including Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old Reuters photographer, and Mr. Chmagh, 40, a driver and assistant for the news agency.
A video from the cockpit of an Apache helicopter was released on Monday by WikiLeaks.org, an online organization that said it had received the video from a whistle-blower in the military. The video has become an Internet sensation, with defenders saying the soldiers believed they were under threat and critics denouncing what they said were callous and bloodthirsty comments by the soldiers as they killed about a dozen people.
A spokesman for United States Central Command, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, said on Tuesday that the Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was "looking into" the shootings, but stopped short of referring to it as an investigation.
The only investigation so far has been one directed in 2007 by Maj. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, who at the time was a brigadier general and the deputy commander of international forces in Baghdad and the surrounding areas. The inquiry concluded that the pilots had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group on the street. No disciplinary action was taken.
A senior American military official said that officials at Central Command saw the video for the first time on Monday, the day it was made public by WikiLeaks in a 38-minute version and a 17-minute edited version.
The official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter, said that the 38-minute version "makes clear that the forces involved clearly believed they were engaging armed insurgents, and were not aware that there were unarmed civilians, let alone journalists, in that group of people."
The official also said that the video, a gun-camera tape, did not show that the helicopters were in support of ground forces, Company B, who had been under attack from small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades since early that day. The investigation reported that Company B, also referred to as Bravo Company, was about 300 feet from the group on the street that included the Reuters employees, and "since Bravo Company had been in near continuous contact since dawn, the pilots were looking primarily for armed insurgents."
But among many Iraqis, many of whom consider Americans to be occupiers who have often used excessive force, any explanation paled against deep anger.
"At last the truth has been revealed, and I'm satisfied God revealed the truth," Noor Eldeen, the photographer's father, said in Mosul. "If such an incident took place in America, even if an animal were killed like this, what would they do?"
Both families said they watched the video on Monday evening on Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language news network.
"My question is, those highly skilled American pilots with all their high-tech information, could not distinguish between a camera and a missile?" said Nabel Noor-Eldeen, the photographer's brother who is an archaeology professor at Mosul University.
Reuters had unsuccessfully sought to obtain the footage through a Freedom of Information Act request.
It depicts the raw reality of one deadly encounter in Iraq, chilling for many viewers both for the wrenching images of death and the dialogue of the pilots as they killed the men they called a threat.
After the initial gunfire bursts, Mr. Chmagh is seen crawling on the side of the street, wounded.
"Come on buddy, all you gotta do is pick up a weapon," crackled the voice over the radio in an American Apache attack helicopter circling overhead. No weapon was in sight.
A minibus arrived, with two children inside. As Mr. Chmagh was being helped in to the vehicle, the helicopter opened fire again.
"Oh yeah, look at that, right through the windshield," the voice on the radio said. Laughter is heard.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group based in New York that promotes press freedom and monitors violence against journalists around the world, said in a statement that the video "confirms our long-held view that a thorough and transparent investigation into this incident is urgently needed."
Since 2003, when the Iraq war began, 140 journalists have been killed, most who were singled out by other Iraqis because of their sectarian identity, the group said. The group has tracked 16 cases in which journalists were killed from fire by American forces, although in none of these cases is there evidence the journalists were intended to be targets. This list, however, does not include Mr. Chmagh, because he is considered a media support worker.
"It's the most deadly conflict ever recorded by C.P.J.," said Joel Simon, the organization's executive director. "It's probably the most deadly ever, certainly more deadly than Vietnam."
For Mr. Noor-Eldeen's family, the video seemed to bring closure for an event that had left many questions unanswered.
"God has answered my prayer in revealing this tape to the world," said the photographer's father, who taught his son how to take pictures. "I would have sold my house and I all that I own in order to show this tape to the world."
Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Mujahid Yousef contributed reporting from Mosul.
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7) Mines Fight Strict Laws by Filing More Appeals
By GARDINER HARRIS and ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07company.html?ref=us
Armed with tougher federal mining laws passed in 2006, federal investigators had new powers to crack down on mines with persistent violations.
But mining companies have been able to fend off this tougher regulatory approach by challenging more of the citations filed against them.
As recently as March, for example, federal mine inspectors found dangerous coal dust accumulations during two separate inspections at the Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch mine, the site of an explosion on Monday that killed at least 25 miners.
And throughout last year, the mine, in Montcoal, W.Va., was cited for failing to conduct inspections that would have spotted dangerous piles of coal dust and other unsafe conditions.
Massey appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations for serious safety violations that it received last year.
At a hearing in February, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, complained that the growing number of appeals by coal companies threatened to "render the federal efforts to hold mine operators accountable meaningless." Mining safety experts have expressed similar concerns.
One in four citations issued against coal mines are now appealed by operators - three times the appeal rate before the law, according to regulators. The result is a backlog of 18,000 pending appeals and $210 million in contested penalties.
The appeals "are also allowing miners, in some cases the worst operators, to escape liability for which they are in fact liable and continue to put miners in harm's way," Mr. Miller said at the hearing.
Mine operators blamed the government for the increasing appeals. Bruce Watzman, senior vice president of the National Mining Association, called the government's citation process "irrational" but said appeals did nothing to endanger the safety of miners.
Officials at Massey did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment. The company's Web site says that its safety record is better than the industry's average when it comes to accidents that result in lost time.
And Don L. Blankenship, the company's chief executive, cautioned in a radio interview Tuesday against reading too much into the Upper Big Branch mine's history of violations.
"Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," Mr. Blankenship said in the interview with the West Virginia MetroNews radio network, adding that there are violations at every coal mine in the country.
Although all mining companies have filed appeals, Massey - and Mr. Blankenship in particular - has developed a reputation for an aggressive style.
Mr. Blankenship has taken on unions, believers in global warming and even, in West Virginia, the trade association representing coal mining companies. He unintentionally set a new national legal precedent last year when the United States Supreme Court ruled that judges must disqualify themselves from cases involving people who spent unusually large sums to elect them.
That case was brought after Mr. Blankenship spent about $3 million in 2004 to defeat an incumbent justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court. The beneficiary of Mr. Blankenship's spending, Brent D. Benjamin, went on to become the court's chief justice, and he twice joined the majority in 3-to-2 decisions throwing out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
More questions about Mr. Blankenship's ties to the court were raised in 2008, when another justice on the court lost his re-election bid after photographs surfaced showing him dining on the French Riviera and in Monaco with Mr. Blankenship at a time when cases involving Massey were pending before the court.
Mr. Blankenship has been an active political donor. In 2006 he contributed more than $100,000 to legislative races in West Virginia, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group based in Montana.
And people associated with Massey Energy, and the company's political action committee, have donated more than $300,000 to federal candidates since 1990, with 91 percent of the money going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington.
Mr. Blankenship has long seemed to revel in the role of a modern-day coal baron. He amassed coal rights when some doubted the future of Appalachian coal and raised profits by holding down production costs, collecting dozens of environmental and safety violations along the way.
A self-described "street fighter," Mr. Blankenship, a large man with a moustache and a slight drawl, has staunchly defended the practice of blasting off mountaintops to reach coal seams. He has accused state regulators of being anti-business and in cahoots with the union.
In 2008, according to public filings, Mr. Blankenship was paid $11.2 million in salary, bonuses and other benefits, up from $5.3 million in 2006. He lives in a relatively modest home in Rawl, W.Va. - where dozens of residents have sued Massey for, they say, poisoning the water supply.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting.
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8) Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site
By NOAM COHEN and BRIAN STELTER
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/07wikileaks.html?ref=us
Three months ago, WikiLeaks, a whistleblower Web site that posts classified and sensitive documents, put out an urgent call for help on Twitter.
"Have encrypted videos of U.S. bomb strikes on civilians. We need super computer time," stated the Web site, which calls itself "an intelligence agency of the people."
Somehow - it will not say how - WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt a graphic video, released Monday, of a United States Army assault in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.
The release of the Iraq video is drawing attention to the once-fringe Web site, which aims to bring to light hidden information about governments and multinational corporations - putting secrets in plain sight and protecting the identity of those who help do so. Accordingly, the site has become a thorn in the side of authorities in the United States and abroad. With the Iraq attack video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging closer toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy.
"That's arguably what spy agencies do - high-tech investigative journalism," Julian Assange, one of the site's founders, said in an interview on Tuesday. "It's time that the media upgraded its capabilities along those lines."
Mr. Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, founded the site three years ago along with a group of like-minded activists and computer experts. Since then, WikiLeaks has published documents about toxic dumping in Africa, protocols from Guantánamo Bay, e-mail messages from Sarah Palin's personal account and 9/11 pager messages.
Today there is a core group of five full-time volunteers, according to Daniel Schmitt, a site spokesman, and there are 800 to 1,000 people whom the group can call on for expertise in areas like encryption, programming and writing news releases.
The site is not shy about its intent to shape media coverage, and Mr. Assange said he considered himself both a journalist and an advocate; should he be forced to choose one, he would choose advocate. WikiLeaks did not merely post the 38-minute video, it used the label "Collateral Murder" and said it depicted "indiscriminate" and "unprovoked" killing. (The Pentagon defended the killings and said no disciplinary action was taken at the time of the incident.)
"From my human point of view, I couldn't believe it would be so easy to wreak that kind of havoc on the city, when they can't see what is really going on there," Mr. Schmitt said in an interview from Germany on Monday night.
The Web site also posted a 17-minute edited version, which proved to be much more widely viewed on YouTube than the full version. Critics contend that the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.
By releasing such a graphic video, which a media organization had tried in vain to get through traditional channels, WikiLeaks has inserted itself in the national discussion about the role of journalism in the digital age. Where judges and plaintiffs could once stop or delay publication with a court order, WikiLeaks exists in a digital sphere in which information becomes instantly available.
"The most significant thing about the release of the Baghdad video is that several million more people are on the same page," with knowledge of WikiLeaks, said Lisa Lynch, an assistant professor of journalism at Concordia University in Montreal, who recently published a paper about the site. "It is amazing that outside of the conventional channels of information something like this can happen."
Reuters had tried for two and a half years through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the Iraq video, to no avail. WikiLeaks, as always, refuses to say how it obtained the video, and credits only "our courageous source."
Mr. Assange said "research institutions" offered to help decrypt the Army video, but he declined to detail how they went about it. After decrypting the attack video, WikiLeaks in concert with an Icelandic television channel sent two people to Baghdad last weekend to gather information about the killings, at a cost of $50,000, the site said.
David Schlesinger, Reuters editor in chief, said Tuesday that the video was disturbing to watch "but also important to watch." He said he hoped to meet with the Pentagon "to press the need to learn lessons from this tragedy."
WikiLeaks publishes its material on its own site, which is housed on a few dozen servers around the globe, including places like Sweden, Belgium and the United States that the organization considers friendly to journalists and document leakers, Mr. Schmitt said.
By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond the reach of any institution or government that hopes to silence it.
Because it relies on donations, however, WikiLeaks says it has struggled to keep its servers online. It has found moral, but not financial, support from some news organizations, like The Guardian in Britain, which said in January that "If you want to read the exposés of the future, it's time to chip in."
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks claimed to have another encrypted video, said to show an American airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year, and used the opportunity to ask for donations.
WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it has published more material. (The United States Army called it a threat to its operations in a report last month.) Many have tried to silence the site; in Britain, WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade injunctions on publication by courts that ruled that the material would violate the privacy of the people involved. The courts reversed themselves when they discovered how ineffectual their rulings were.
Another early attempt to shut down the site involved a United States District Court judge in California. In 2008, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the American version of the site shut down after it published confidential documents concerning a subsidiary of a Swiss bank. Two weeks later he reversed himself, in part recognizing that the order had little effect because the same material could be accessed on a number of other "mirror sites."
Judge White said at the time, "We live in an age when people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability necessarily in a court of law."
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9) Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care
By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.html?ref=education
Only half the youths who had turned 18 and "aged out" of foster care were employed by their mid-20s. Six in 10 men had been convicted of a crime, and three in four women, many of them with children of their own, were receiving some form of public assistance. Only six in 100 had completed even a community college degree.
The dismal outlook for youths who are thrust into a shaky adulthood from the foster care system - now numbering some 30,000 annually - has been documented with new precision by a long-term study released Wednesday, the largest to follow such children over many years.
Researchers studied the outcomes for 602 youths in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, and compared them with their peers who had not been in foster care. Most youths had entered the foster care system in their early teens and then were required to leave it at 18 or, in the case of Illinois, 21.
"We took them away from their parents on the assumption that we as a society would do a better job of raising them," said Mark Courtney, a sociologist at the University of Washington who led the study with colleagues from the Partners for Our Children program at Washington and the Chapin Hall center at the University of Chicago. "We've invested a lot money and time in their care, and by many measures they're still doing very poorly."
Over the last decade, the federal government and many states have started to assist former foster care youths with education grants, temporary housing subsidies and, in some places, extra years of state custody and support. The new data showed that just over half of them are doing reasonably well and benefit from such aid. But they throw a spotlight, researchers said, on two groups that need more sweeping and lasting help.
About one-fourth of the people in the study, mainly women, are receiving public aid and struggling to raise their own children, usually without a high school degree. Researchers found that one in five in a second group, mainly men, are badly floundering, with multiple criminal convictions, low education and incomes and, often, mental health or substance abuse problems.
Once they leave foster care, these most troubled youths often have no reliable adults to advise them or provide emotional support, said Gary Stangler, director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a private foundation. "When these kids make a mistake, it's life altering, they have nothing to fall back on," Mr. Stangler said.
Finding a mentor who provides "that backbone you need" has made all the difference, said Cameron Anderson, 21, of Tampa, Fla., who entered foster care at 15 after he got into trouble with the law, then lived in group homes.
Mr. Anderson, who is now in community college and works at a printer cartridge company, receives education and other financial aid that has helped him keep an apartment. But he has made some missteps since moving out on his own, he said, like not paying bills in full so he could buy shoes and hanging out with old friends who were bad influences.
Last fall, he was introduced to a mentor, an investor in Tampa, by a Casey program, Connected by 25. The two now speak daily, Mr. Anderson said, discussing "school and life in general, even to the point where he'll say, 'Hey, are you using protection?' "
Had he had such a relationship earlier, Mr. Anderson said, "it would have saved me from a ton of bridges I've had to cross."
While younger children are often adopted when their parents' rights are terminated, fewer prospective parents want to adopt teenagers. Recent research, including the new study, shows that most foster children, even though they have been removed from their homes, maintain ties with a parent or other relative. Some agencies are trying to support such ties or to locate relatives who might adopt the children or provide long-term support.
Illinois, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia now allow youths to remain in foster care to age 21, and some states help with transitional housing.
Congress in 2008 passed a law providing matching money to states that extend foster care to age 21, something that the authors of the study call for. But in the face of large budget deficits, few states have signed on so far.
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10) Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video
By BENEDICT CAREY
[The fact that the young men and women coerced into joining the military-most because of economic necessity-have been turned into "lean, mean, killing machines," a favorite chant of Bootcamp, is a "no duh" understatement that doesn't take a bunch of psychiatrists to figure out. Every kid in JROTC should be forced to watch this documented demonstration of U.S. mass murder. In fact, everyone should watch it-then join together to fight like hell against it! ...bw]
April 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html?ref=world
The sight of human beings, most of them unarmed, being gunned down from above is jarring enough.
But for many people who watched the video of a 2007 assault by an Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad, released Monday by WikiLeaks.org, the most disturbing detail was the cockpit chatter. The soldiers joked, chuckled and jeered as they shot people in the street, including a Reuters photographer and a driver, believing them to be insurgents.
"Look at those dead bastards," one said. "Nice," another responded.
In recent days, many veterans have made the point that fighters cannot do their jobs without creating psychological distance from the enemy. One reason that the soldiers seemed as if they were playing a video game is that, in a morbid but necessary sense, they were.
"You don't want combat soldiers to be foolish or to jump the gun, but their job is to destroy the enemy, and one way they're able to do that is to see it as a game, so that the people don't seem real," said Bret A. Moore, a former Army psychologist and co-author of the forthcoming book "Wheels Down: Adjusting to Life After Deployment."
Military training is fundamentally an exercise in overcoming a fear of killing another human, said Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of the book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society," who is a former Army Ranger.
Combat training "is the only technique that will reliably influence the primitive, midbrain processing of a frightened human being" to take another life, the colonel writes. "Conditioning in flight simulators enables pilots to respond reflexively to emergency situations even when frightened."
The men in the Apache helicopter in the video flew into an area that was being contested, during a broader conflict in which a number of helicopters had been shot down.
Several other factors are on display during the 38-minute video, said psychologists in and out of the military. (A shortened 17-minute version of the video has been viewed about three million times on YouTube.)
Soldiers and Marines are taught to observe rules of engagement, and throughout the video those in the helicopter call base for permission to shoot. But at a more primal level, fighters in a war zone must think of themselves as predators first - not bait. That frame of mind affects not only how a person thinks, but what he sees and hears, especially in the presence of imminent danger, or the perception of a threat.
The fighters in the helicopter say over the radio that they are sure they see a "weapon," even though the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, is carrying a camera.
"It's tragic that this all begins with the apparent mistaking of a camera" for a weapon, said David A. Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University. "But it's perfectly understandable with what we know now about context and vision. Take the same image and put it in a bathroom, and you swear it's a hair dryer; put it in a workshop, and you swear it's a power drill."
To a soldier or a pilot, it can look like life or death. "I worked with medevac pilots, and vulnerability is a huge issue for them," Dr. Moore said.
The video does show that the second object that the soldiers identified as a weapon was a rocket-propelled grenade, or R.P.G. "An R.P.G. can take them down in a second," Dr. Moore said.
After the helicopter guns down a group of men, the video shows a van stopping to pick up one of the wounded. The soldiers in the helicopter suspect it to be hostile and, after getting clearance from base, fire again. Two children in the van are wounded, and one of the soldiers remarks, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
Here again, psychologists say, when people are intensely focused on observing some specific feature of the landscape, they may not even see what is obvious to another observer. The classic demonstration of this is a video in which people toss around a basketball; viewers told to count the number of passes rarely see a person in a gorilla suit who strolls into the picture, stops and faces the camera, and strolls out.
The soldiers were looking for combatants; experts say it is not clear they would have seen children, even if they should have.
The video's emotional impact on viewers is also partly rooted in the combination of intimacy and distance it gives them, some experts said. The viewer sees a wider tragedy unfolding, in hindsight, from the safety of a desk; the soldiers are reacting in real time, on high alert, exposed.
In recent studies, researchers have shown that such distance tempts people to script how they would act in the same place, and overestimate the force of their own professed moral principles.
"We don't express our better angels as much as we'd like to think, especially when strong emotions are involved," Dr. Dunning said. He added, "What another person does in that situation should stand as forewarning for what we would do ourselves."
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11) Landslide Buries Scores of Houses Built on Garbage
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
April 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/world/americas/09brazil.html?ref=world
NITEROI, Brazil - A deadly landslide caused by drenching rains swept away a neighborhood built atop an old garbage dump Wednesday night, burying dozens of homes and a small church underneath tons of rubble, mud and rotting debris.
The rains have triggered flash floods and mudslides across the state of Rio de Janeiro in recent days, paralyzing Rio's airports and transportation systems and killing as many as 150 people.
Here in the Morro do Bumba slum of Niteroi, a Rio suburb, the rains weakened decades-old compressed layers of refuse and dirt upon which homes had been built, and sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., the neighborhood gave way. The slide destroyed at least 50 homes and one church, which was said to have as many as 30 people inside.
News reports said that as many as 200 people could be buried, but there were no official counts of the total number of missing. As of Thursday afternoon, nine people had been found dead and 51 were injured, according to Brazilian authorities.
Rescuers picked through debris and dirt as they searched for survivors and bodies. As six-earth moving machines dug through the refuse, government officials called the landslide a catastrophe, and residents said they had no idea that their neighborhood had been built on such precarious terrain. "There's little chance of finding people alive," said Pedro Machado, a Rio civil-defense official. "It's different from Haiti where buildings collapsed and people were caught trapped inside air bubbles. Here there were tons of land, stones and garbage falling over the houses."
The odor of decomposing garbage was overwhelming Thursday afternoon under a hot sun.
Sergio Côrtes, state secretary for civil defense said that the landfill turned out to be a "huge environmental problem," and officials expressed concern that rescue workers could be contaminated, and worried about the possibility of another landslide at a nearby neighborhood, also built on top of an old dump.
Reporting was contributed by Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro and Jack Healy from New York
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12) After Warning, Mine Escaped Extra Oversight
By MICHAEL COOPER, IAN URBINA and BERNIE BECKER
April 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/us/10westvirginia.html?hp
The operator of the West Virginia mine that exploded on Monday, killing at least 25 people, was warned by federal officials just over two years ago that it could be cited for having a "pattern of violations," which would have allowed far stricter federal oversight. But the mine escaped the stepped-up enforcement even though it continued to amass violations, federal records show.
Rescuers searching for survivors faced another setback Friday, pulling back for a third time after confronting smoke from an apparent underground fire.
The rescuers, who had re-entered the mine early Friday morning, also returned with bad news: They had reached one of the two airtight rescue shelters that officials hoped would give trapped miners refuge, but found that it had not been used. The rescuers were unable to reach the second shelter.
Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, told reporters that officials might have to lower a camera down a borehole to determine whether the second airtight chamber had been used.
The mine, operated by the Massey Energy Company, was warned that it had a "potential pattern of violations" in a Dec. 6, 2007, letter from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The letter noted that the mine had received 204 violations that were deemed serious and significant over the previous two years, well above average.
But six months later, the safety agency announced that the Upper Big Branch mine, located in Montcoal, W.Va., and 19 others that were warned that December, had all instituted plans to fix their problems, and had received fewer violations. They all escaped the added oversight, which would have allowed the federal government to close down the mines every time they found a significant violation.
After the violations went down, they more than doubled the following year. Federal inspection records show that the mine had recently been given warnings for accumulation of flammable coal dust and ventilation problems.
Since the start of 2009, the records show, the mine had at least 50 notices of problems that Massey knew existed but failed to correct. At least four of those concerned violations of a rule that requires the mine operator to follow an approved ventilation plan. Massey officials declined comment on the records.
Some mine experts said that the failure to declare a pattern of violations was a missed opportunity. Tony Oppegard, a former mine agency official who is now a lawyer and mine safety advocate in Kentucky, said that he believed the warning letters helped the coal industry avoid oversight.
Officials of the mine safety agency said that they were bound by the current regulations, which require them to issue warning letters, and that if companies successfully reduce their rate of violations by 30 percent, they are not to be found to have a pattern of violations. The officials added that before this week's explosion they were considering tightening the regulations.
Companies can escape the added oversight even if they continue to be worse than the national average. The warning letter to the Upper Big Branch mine, for instance, said that the mine had been issued serious violations at a rate nearly twice the national average over the previous two years. Three months later, the mine cut the rate to just above the national average, enough of a reduction to avoid being labeled a pattern of violations.
In a March 25, 2008, letter that found that a pattern of violations did not exist at the mine, the agency wrote "congratulations on your achievements."
Even without establishing a pattern, though, the officials could still pull workers and machinery out of the mine if they found problems. The government issued 63 such "withdrawal" orders in 2009 and 2010, according to the safety agency.
In Washington, the White House said that President Obama would meet next week with Labor Department officials to discuss the cause of Monday's explosion and efforts by the federal government to beef up mine safety enforcement.
On Thursday, emergency crews continued drilling holes more than 1,000 feet deep through rock and dirt to ventilate the mine of its noxious and explosive gases. Four teams of eight rescuers made it within 500 feet of an airtight shelter where state officials hoped some of the miners were, but they were pulled back after roughly five hours when monitors indicated dangerous levels of methane and carbon dioxide.
As some families held out hope that their loved ones were still alive, others have moved fully into the grieving process.
The funerals for at least five miners are scheduled for either Friday or Saturday. According to obituaries in The Beckley Register-Herald those miners are: Carl Calvin Acord, Robert Clark, Steve Harrah, Deward Scott and Benny R. Willingham. Massey officials said they would pay for those funerals, and for the services of the other miners who died in the explosion.
Michael Cooper reported from New York, and Ian Urbina and Bernie Becker from Montcoal, W.Va.
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