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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Fifth Annual Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Summit
FIVE YEARS LATER:
THE LEGACY OF STANLEY TOOKIE WILLIAMS
Looking back at Stan's life, his work,
and the impact of his legacy on the struggles for peace and justice
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Merritt College
Huey P. Newton/Bobby Seale Student Lounge
12500 Campus Drive, Oakland
F E AT U R I N G
AUDIO RECORDINGS of Stanley Tookie Williams
MESSAGES from prisoners on the subject of Stan's life and legacy
READINGS from Stan's children's books and other writings
BARBARA BECNEL, co-author and friend of Stanley Tookie Williams
MINISTER CHRISTOPHER MUHAMMAD, Nation of Islam
DR. SIRI BROWN, Chair, African American studies department, Merrit College
FRED JACKSON, friend of Stan and community organizer
CEPHUS JOHNSON, Oscar Grant's uncle
JACK BRYSON, father of two of Oscar Grant's friends
CRYSTAL BYBEE, anti-death penalty activist
SPONSORS
African American Studies at Merritt College
Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
For directions, go to www.merritt.edu
For more information, call 510-333-7966
This event is free and open to the public
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Mon. Dec. 13, 5-7pm
Stop AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)
Oakland Marriott Hotel, 1001 Broadway (12th St. BART)
On Mon., Dec. 13 AIPAC, the leading lobbying group demanding even more military aid to Israel-the No. 1 recipient of U.S. aid-will be holding its annual membership meeting in downtown Oakland. To see a flyer for the protest:
http://www.stopaipac.org/protestaipac.htm
The ANSWER Coalition is an endorser of this action.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
415-821-6545
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We are pleased to present both, Wallace Shawn's, "The Fever" and Howard Zinn's, "Marx in Soho." The two plays are complementary. "The Fever" is a raw portrayal of a person who is coming to social consciousness. "Marx in Soho" humanizes the man whose ideas describe these fundamental realities of our societies' social structure.
Two benefit performances by veteran actor and sociologist, Jerry Levy. LevyArts' mission is to utilize theater and social theory to entertain, enlighten and stimulate a constructive and reflective dialogue about society.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 7:00 P.M. "THE FEVER," a one-man play by Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn's play, "The Fever" explores what a sensitive, well educated, arts loving and consumption-driven man or woman of any age discovers when his/her life-affirming existence is related to the often brutal suffering of others. In the bathroom of a hotel our "anti-hero" feverishly defends and relentlessly attacks his own way of life. Inner voices and imagined characters fuel his fever as he narrates and often attempts to enact his story.
Actor Jerry Levy rehearses "The Fever," a one-man play which was be presented Dec. 4 and 10-12 at the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Brattleboro. (Jon Potter/Reformer)
http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_16720592
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1:30 P.M. "MARX IN SOHO," a one-man play by Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn's play, "Marx in Soho" portrays the return of Karl Marx. Embedded in some secular afterlife where intellectuals, artists, and radicals are sent, Marx is given permission by the administrative committee to return to Soho London to have his say. But through a bureaucratic mix-up, he winds up in SOHO in New York. From there the audience is given a rare glimpse of a Marx seldom talked about; Marx the man. The play offers an entertaining and thorough introduction to a person who knows little about Marx's life, while also offering valuable insight to students of his ideas.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street
(Between 16th and 15th Streets, San Francisco. Wheelchair accessible.)
Reserved ticket discounts for each play: $10.00
Tickets at the door: $20.00
No one turned away for lack of funds.
To reserve your discount tickets, email:
giobon@comcast.net
(Your name will be placed on a the discount ticket list at the door.)
To benefit: Barrio Unida and Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, bauaw.org
"The Fever" presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Services Inc.
Marx in Soho by Howard Zinn (c) Howard Zinn Revocable Trust
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NEXT MEETING OF THE UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9, 1:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(BETWEEN 16TH AND 15TH STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO)
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
Andy Cousins
counterfire.org
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POLICE KETTLING (STUDENT DEMONSTRATION against the EDUCATION CUTS), LONDON, 30-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRV9h2dyBVU&NR=1
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Oscar Grant family not convinced of Johannes Mehserle's tears
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anxXupa9_iw
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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You need to watch this video. It made us furious, and it made us cry.
It's a powerful reminder of the real faces behind unemployment statistics. It's about three minutes and it's worth every second so I hope you'll turn up your speakers and watch the whole thing.
The same senators who are fighting to charge $700 billion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to our national credit card say extending unemployment is "too expensive" and "must be paid for." Meanwhile, more than one person a second is losing his or her lifeline.
If this video doesn't fuel your outrage and give you a sense of the human cost of delay on emergency unemployment, nothing will.
Please watch and send a strong message to your members of Congress. Tell them to restore unemployment insurance benefits for jobless workers who are being cut off right now at the rate of more than one a second.
Then, share this video with your friends and ask them to take action, too.
Let's fix this outrage.
Sincerely,
Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO
P.S. The online day of solidarity with jobless workers is coming Tuesday. Get ready to change your Facebook status and photo and to Tweet the word out. Thanks.
http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1011
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41st Native American Day Of Mourning: Thanksgiving Day- Nov. 25, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYmKess4hrc
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Road To Hope Convoy Reaches Gaza - Special Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2sO-T_AjY
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A little holiday levity:
Check this out. It's for Willie Nelson (he's actually in it). It's a video from the Colbert Report and make sure to watch the very end:
http://rutube.ru/tracks/1248708.html
I have no money in my coffer,
No gold or silver do I bring,
Nor have I precious jewels to offer,
To celebrate the newborn king.
Yet do not spurn my gift completely,
O ye three wise men please demur,
Behold a plant that smokes more sweetly,
Than neither frankincense or myrrh.
And like a child born in this manger,
This herb is mild yet it is strong,
And it brings peace to friend and stranger,
Goodwill to men lies in this bong.
And now my wonder weed is flaring, - "Are you high?"
Lit like that special star above, - "Can it be?"
Pass it around in endless sharing, - "On christmas day"
And let not mankind bogart love. - "You'd smoke my tree!"
And the wise men started toking,
And yea, the bud was kind,
It was salvation they were smoking,
And his forgiveness blew their mind.
And still that wonder weed is flaring, - "Are you high?"
Lit like that special star above, - "You're so high!"
Pass it around in endless sharing, - "Dude, man, dude"
And let not mankind bogart love. - "You're really high, I'm gonna tell your savior"
And let not mankind bogart love.
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20 November 2010 Afghanistan: Time to Go
On 20 November 2010, as the Nato leaders met in Lisbon to discuss war strategy thousands of anti-war protesters marched through London calling for all British troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan now.
The march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square was led by military families who have lost loved ones in the war, or who have relatives serving there now, and by Joe Glenton, the soldier who was jailed and court martialled for refusing to fight a war that he believed to be unjustified.
These videos capture the spirit of the day on which the cry was Afghanistan: Time to Go and Cut War Not Welfare.
Watch the great video's of this demonstration at this site:
http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2170/246/
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The New Normal Recovery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z87XBKNto4Q&feature=player_embedded
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Don't Touch My Junk (the TSA Hustle) song + video by Michael Adams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhEMRSp7vaY&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Bird's Eye View: You've Got To See This
Blog - BPs Oil Drilling Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 11:22
http://healthygulf.org/201011241558/blog/bps-oil-drilling-disaster-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/birds-eye-view-you-ve-got-to-see-this
Yesterday's monitoring trip took me down to an isolated area on the eastern edge of Bay Ronquille on Louisiana's coast. Bay Ronquille is to the southeast of Barataria Bay. I went to this area after being informed by a source that there are stretches of beach near Ronquille that are "completely covered in oil "and "untouched "by any clean-up crew.
Our journey began in Myrtle Grove, LA aboard a boat with Captain Zach Mouton. On board this day was Jo Billups, GRN sponsor and member of the band Sassafrass, Randy Perez, a videographer from New Orleans, and my brother Jason Henderson, a Geography Professor visiting from San Francisco.
My source was correct in that there are miles long stretches of beach that are caked with huge mats of oil. There are enormous mats of tar that stretch from the shore to the water. In some spots, the tide covers the mats as it washes in only to reveal them as it washes back out. In other areas, the mats are so huge that they stretch from the sea bed all the way to the beach. It's impossible to tell how far out underwater they stretch. There are areas where you think you are standing on sand or mud only to realize that you are standing on huge blankets of weathered oil. There are tidal pools in the middle of the island that are filled with oil. The smell of oil is everywhere. Skulls and bones from dead birds and fish litter the sand and coyote tracks are all around. What a pity.
Whether BP has sent anyone to attempt to clean this area anytime in that last few months was hard to discern just by looking at the sand and soil. There were no usual tell-tell signs like tire tracks from four wheelers or left behind plastic bags., water bottles, and gloves. BP is aware of the area because as soon as we got onto the beach, a boat carrying BP workers saw us and sent someone to chase after us. Having been through this song and dance so many times with BP "supervisors", I decided to let my brother run interference while I foraged ahead to document the disaster. According to Jason, the BP contractor was cordial but did ask a lot of questions about who we were and what we were doing. The man explained that BP will be cleaning this area starting Monday, complete with heavy equipment and all. I am planning another trip next week to see if his claim is accurate. I've heard it all before.
By the way, on the way down to Bay Ronquille, we made a pass through Bay Jimmy. While the marsh is still covered in oil, there was not one clean up worker to be found anywhere in the Bay. That's funny considering I know of thousands of struggling out of work Gulf coast residents that would love a job cleaning up BP's mess.
Jonathan Henderson is the Coastal Resiliency Organizer for GRN
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Quantitative Easing Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&feature=player_embedded#
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Report: "Tar balls and black oily plumes" wash up in Apalachicola Bay, FL - 70 miles EAST of Panama City (VIDEO)
November 12th, 2010 at 09:02 AM Email Post
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Seattle Cop: 'I'll Beat the F--ing Mexican Piss Out of You Homey'
http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/05/seattle_cop_ill_beat_the_f---ing_mexican_piss_out_of_you_homey.html
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Burning Desperation
Self-immolation has become a common form of suicide for Afghan women. Photographer Lynsey Addario speaks with women who survived their suicide attempts.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/11/07/world/1248069290784/burning-desperation.html?ref=world
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Anonymous BP cleanup worker: The oil "really hasn't even been touched"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vegVKrg84HI&feature=player_embedded
http://allhiphop.com/stories/editorial/archive/2010/11/09/22476630.aspx
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Tag-Team Wrestling
"We have Learned who is For Real and who is Frontin'."
Glen Ford speaks in West Haven, CT just before the Oct. 2010 "One Nation Working Together" DC demo. See his scathing comments about the speakers from the main stage at the actual demo at blackagendareport.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAIuTM3cK9I
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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UAW Workers Picket The UAW Over Two-Tier
http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/uaw-workers-picket-the-uaw/
Rally To End Two-Tier & Stand in Solidarity with GM Lake Orion | UAW HQ, Detroit MI (1 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bST5aTYZa00&feature=player_embedded
Rally To End Two-Tier & Stand in Solidarity with GM Lake Orion | UAW HQ, Detroit MI (2 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHLb-KMXD9c&feature=player_embedded
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BP Contract Worker "Trenches Dug To Bury Oil On Beaches"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qop9xbGv4&feature=player_embedded
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RETHINK Afghanistan: The 10th Year: Afghanistan Veterans Speak Out
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/
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Firefighters Watch As Home Burns:
Gene Cranick's House Destroyed In Tennessee Over $75 Fee
By Adam J. Rose
The Huffington Post -- videos
10- 5-10 12:12 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/firefighters-watch-as-hom_n_750272.html
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Soldier Describes Murder of Afghan for Sport in Leaked Tape
By ROBERT MACKEY
September 27, 2010, 6:43 pm
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/soldier-describes-murder-of-afghan-for-sport-in-leaked-tape/?ref=world
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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Stephen Colbert's statement before Congress
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39343087#39343087
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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The $5 million for selling the Custer flag
should be donated to helping out Native
Americans, particularly those who are in
poverty with Caucasian diseases and freeze
to death on reservations because they cannot
afford to buy space heaters. By doing this, it
would be a minuscule contribution for all of
the indigenous people in the United States
that Custer murdered. Don't you think?
Little Bighorn Battlefield National
Monument
http://www.nps.gov/libi/index.htm
Sothbeys
http://www.sothebys.com/
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://www.sandcreekmassacre.net
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"You must be the change you want to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi
If you have received this message in error or do not wish to receive these, messages in future, please accept our apologies and reply with:, REMOVE in the Subject line. We sincerely regret any inconvenience.
Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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Dear Friends, Please forward widely...
Dear Friends,
I write again to correct a possible mis-statement of the facts in my earlier email regarding Lynne's status. I called Lynne's husband, Ralph Poynter, today to learn more of the details of her situation.
Here's the basic facts:
1) Lynne's conviction on frame-up charges of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism makes her a candidate for a maximum security prison. This is usually what happens with all male prisoners. They are segregated to terrible facilities within various federal prisons.
2) It appears that the treatment for female prisoners may differ, case by case, and especially so since the facilities for females with such a conviction are more limited.
3) At present Ralph reports, based on talks with Lynne, that plans are underway to send her to a permanent prison as opposed to her present place of incarceration at the Manhattan Correctional Institution in New York City.
4) Rumors have it that she is being considered for a terrible facility in Texas as well as for a much better facility in Danbury, Connecticut. No one knows for sure as the government's Bureau of Prisons has made no public decisions and people have been relegated to rumors of every sort.
5) Lynne has been informed that a decision is immanent and that if Ralph doesn't hear from her each day, she will be en route to wherever they choose to send her.
To conclude, there is still some hope that Lynne will be sent to Danbury, CT. As prisons go, this is the best variant and close to NYC by train, making it easier for family visits. But there is also a strong possibility that she will be sent to a bad Texas prison.
I will keep you posted.
In solidarity,
Jeff
I just received a terribly sad one-sentence letter from Ralph Poynter, Lynne Stewart's husband. Lynne will very be shortly (if not already) sent to a maximum security prison, location still unknown, but possibly in Texas.
Lynne had previously requested that her ten-year sentence be served at Danbury Federal Correction Institution, a minimum security prison, but with several amenities that make prison life more tolerable. Danbury was the place where the famous Hollywood Ten were incarcerated in the 1950s. But vindictive prison officials, utilizing the pretext that Lynne was (falsely) convicted of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism, placed her in a terrible facility far away from her friends and family.
Lynne's appeals of her conviction and sentence will continue to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the very court that previously, in essence, ordered Lynne's sentence to be reviewed and extended. Lynne was originally sentenced to 28 months, only to have her sentence revisited by the same Judge John Koeltl. Judge Koeltl had originally ordered that Lynne serve a 28-month sentence. He undoubtedly bent to the pressures of his "superiors" and handed Lynne a terrible sentence of ten years, a term that Lynne, in poor health, will have a hard time serving. She has already been in prison for about one year and will likely receive an automatic "good behavior" sentence reduction of ten percent, making the date of her release some eight years from now.
Without doubt we must continue the fight for Lynne's freedom and for her assignment to a prison that is the most conducive to Lynne's comfort and well-being.
This will require some significant fund-raising to assist Ralph and Lynne's family to make regular visits.
Please make your generous check payable to:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
Please send a note to me as well so I can keep in close touch regarding future developments.
I have enclosed a recent letter of solidarity that Lynne sent to a California meeting celebrating the life of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, whose horrific execution five years ago outraged social justice activists around the world.
In solidarity,
Jeff Mackler,West Coast Coordinator
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
510-268-9429
Tribute to Tookie
Message From Lynne Stewart to the Fifth Annual Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Summit coming up:
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Merritt College
Huey P. Newton/Bobby Seale Student Lounge
12500 Campus Drive, Oakland
Tookie Williams may have left us five years ago but I believe and hope he will live on in our consciousness as a symbol of both the evils of this society and also the possibility of human redemption against overwhelming odds.
For me, Tookie represents the very real genocide in the African American communities of this country. The spiral, as my friend and colleague, ex-convict Eddie Ellis repeats on his "On the Count" radio show on WBAI, is from the plantation to the projects to the penitentiary. This is a descent into death fueled by educational systems that quit on the children before they are even enrolled in school and whose main purpose is to make sure the paychecks leave the inner cities and enrich the suburbs. They dumb-down and then leave alienated adolescents, provided they haven't already dropped out, full of anger, resentment and devoid of any clue of political understanding. Although poverty worsens this despair, it is not limited to those who have little; this racial depression also rages in the Black middle class because it is, at its root, born of the racism that still thrives in this society.
In the 1960's (and not to idealize) the "revolution" was recruiting everywhere but most successfully in the Universities and the Prisons. George Jackson, Attica, were the textbooks studied by persons similarly situated. Now the prisons hold elderly, respected heroes, political prisoners, POWs, and those more recently framed by the police state (Mumia, the Scott Sisters, Troy Davis, entrapped Muslims). Many of these came to jail already politicized and active. But the vast majority in prison today, are scooped off the street-a generation of mostly young men. They have attitude but not much else to build with.
Not Tookie-while he represented the vast majority of prisoners who ended up in jail, programmed for the trip since birth for all the reasons advanced above-but because the human spirit is indomitable and he was a person whose innate intellect had not been destroyed and who was able to discern the enticements and bling of a false, fraudulent society and begin to resist them. He changed, in jail. And that change led to his homicide by the State of California.
However, the careless society that produced him and thousands like him that remain in our prisons has not changed. Their goals are political-to remove and imprison the unlit dynamite of social change, to prove that crime can be deterred by the death penalty that kills and the lifetime imprisonments that throw away redeemable human beings. Tookie represented the bright hope. He was a shining example that change was possible, achievable. His efforts toward negotiation between warring factions and his understanding of the root causes that sparked "gang" wars made him stand out and so, THEY took him out.
We are here today to affirm out belief in the Tookie Williams' who are still behind bars, to acknowledge forthrightly the death of the intellect and curiosity of children wrought by the schools they attend and to stand against the genocide of African Americans. You can't see the boxcars or the concentration camps? Just sniff the air for the smoke of lives burnt up/out.
Love Struggle Lynne Stewart
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MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE
Your Year-End Gift for the Children
Double your impact with this matching gift opportunity!
Dear Friend of the Children,
You may have recently received a letter from me via regular mail with a review of the important things you helped MECA accomplish for the children in 2010, along with a special Maia Project decal.
My letter to you also included an announcement of MECA's first ever matching gift offer. One of our most generous supporters will match all gifts received by December 31. 2010 to a total of $35,000.
So, whether you are a long time supporter, or giving for the first-time... Whether you can give $10 or $1,000... This is a unique opportunity to double the impact of your year-end gift!
Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar, making it go twice as far so that MECA can:
* Install twenty more permanent drinking water units in Gaza schools though our Maia Project
* Continue our work with Playgrounds for Palestine to complete a community park in the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where violent Israeli settlers attack children and adults, Israeli police arrest the victims, and the city conducts "administrative demolitions" of Palestinian homes.
* Send a large medical aid shipment to Gaza.
* Renew support for "Let the Children Play and Heal," a program in Gaza to help children cope with trauma and grief through arts programs, referrals to therapists, educational materials for families and training for mothers.
Your support for the Middle East Children's Alliance's delivers real, often life-saving, help. And it does more than that. It sends a message of hope and solidarity to Palestine-showing the people that we are standing beside them as they struggle to bring about a better life for their children.
With warm regards,
Barbara Lubin
Founder and Director
P.S. Please give as much as you possible can, and please make your contribution now, so it will be doubled. Thank you so much.
P.S.S. If you didn't receive a MAIA Project decal in the mail or if you would like another one, please send an email message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "MAIA Project decal" in the subject line when you make your contribution.
To make a gift by mail send to:
MECA, 1101 8th Street, Berkley, CA 94710
To make a gift by phone, please call MECA's off at: 510-548-0542
To "GO PAPERLESS" and receive all your MECA communications by email, send a message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "Paperless" in the subject line.
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AN ATTACK AGAINST ONE IS AN ATTACK AGAINST ALL! WE ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS OUR WEAKEST LINK! UNITY AND SOLIDARITY AGAINST THESE ATTACKS IS OUR MOST POWERFUL DEFENSE!
THIS JUST IN: NEW GRAND JURY INVESTIGATIONS; AND ATTACK AGAINST JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE ACTIVISTS:
FBI Raid Victims Get New Grand Jury Subpoenas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIlMwbkIo2E
APNewsBreak: Activists called back to grand jury
By AMY FORLITI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 17, 2010; 6:10 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/17/AR2010111705560.html
MINNEAPOLIS -- Three Minnesota anti-war activists who refused to testify before a federal grand jury in Chicago after their homes were raided in a terrorism investigation have been told they'll be called again, an attorney told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
In late September, authorities searched seven homes and an office in Minneapolis and Chicago in what the FBI said was an investigation into material support of terrorism. Fourteen activists in the two states were summoned to testify, but they refused and their subpoenas were postponed.
None of the activists have been charged. Warrants suggest agents were looking for connections between them and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East.
Bruce Nestor, an attorney who represents some of the activists, said Wednesday that three of them have been told they'll be called back to the grand jury, but it's not clear when. Individual attorneys for those activists are working out details with prosecutors, Nestor said.
"They don't have a specific date, but they are being told that basically they will be called back in front of the grand jury," Nestor said. "They all have individual counsel, and those individual counsel are in the process of discussing with the U.S. attorney the details as to how proceed."
Randall Samborn, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, declined to comment about the case, saying he could neither confirm nor deny anything involving a federal grand jury because such proceedings are confidential.
Nestor said activists Anh Pham, Sarah Martin and Tracy Molm - whose homes were raided in September - have been told they'll be called again before the grand jury.
"These three are being called back, and within a matter of weeks will be facing the decision of testifying or facing contempt," Nestor said.
Pham said Wednesday she knew little about the situation and declined comment until she had a chance to talk to her attorney. Messages left for Martin were not immediately returned, and a phone number for Molm was not immediately available.
The activists said previously that they wouldn't appear before a grand jury because they felt grand juries had historically been used to harass activists and that testifying in secret would stifle free speech.
The government has not revealed the target of its investigation, but the activists have said they felt singled out because of their work in the anti-war movement.
"The government is not saying much, and they kind of hold all the cards at the moment," Nestor said.
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NOTE TO READERS:
The BAUAW Newsletter stands squarely opposed to the Grand Jury investigation of antiwar and social justice activists. An injury to one is an injury to all. We are all under attack now! We must stand united in defense of our fellow activists!
We have a right to fight injustice wherever it occurs in the world! Justice is an inalienable human right for everyone!
We are also alarmed and outraged about the recent pepper-spray attack against Jewish Voice for Peace activists at their own meeting carried out by Zionist thugs:
Right-wing Israel advocacy group San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs
Member Pepper Sprays Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) members
at Bay Area JVP Chapter Meeting. Wraps self in Israeli flag.
Group well known in Bay Area for harassing and intimidating peace activists
Contact: Jesse AT Jvp.org
[Oakland, CA November 15, 2010]
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/right-wing-israel-advocacy-group-pepper-sprays-jewish-voice-peace-jvp-members
Sunday night, November 14, 2010, up to a dozen members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs, a right-wing Israeli advocacy group with a documented track record of aggressively taunting and intimidating grassroots peace activists, attended a Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace community meeting at a South Berkeley Senior Center.
Jewish Voice for Peace is the largest U.S. Jewish peace group dedicated to a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on democracy and full equality --- the Bay Area chapter is the founding chapter of the organization. Approximately 50 to 60 people were at the meeting, and numerous witnesses are available to corroborate the events.
Watch video of some of the disruptions and the victims and perpetrator of attacks here:
StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel Pepper-sprays peace activists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLO2xKcYDwc
Eyewitness testimonies are here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-testimony-jvp-member-about-stand-us-swu-attacks
and here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-report-stand-us-attacks-jvp-meeting
Article by a Berkeley Daily Planet reporter here:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/eyewitness-testimony-berekeley-daily-planet-reporter-about-swu-attacks
Americans for Peace Now condemned the attack here:
http://peacenow.org/entries/post_25
and Meretz USA called it not a legitimate part of Jewish communal discourse here.
http://meretzusa.blogspot.com/2010/11/meretz-usa-violence-not-legitimate-part.html
Wrapped in an Israeli flag, San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs (SFVI/SWU) member Robin Dubner, an Oakland based attorney, pepper-sprayed two JVP members in the eyes and face after they attempted to nonviolently block her ability to aggressively videotape the faces of JVP meeting attendees against their will. The members, Alexei Folger and Glen Hauer, were careful to make no physical contact with her or her camera prior to the attack.
Folger said, "I did not see it coming and all of a sudden there was gooey stuff all over my head and hand. I have never been pepper-sprayed before, my whole head felt like it was on fire."
JVP had earlier this year filed a police report about a June SFVI/SWU protest at which JVP and (peace group) Women in Black members were intimidatingly videotaped and threatened by a StandWithUs supporter after being taunted with chants like "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi" or "Kapo,Kapo,Kapo".
Caught on a widely seen videotape was a SFVI/SWU supporter pointing his camera to the faces of silent peace vigil participants while saying "You're all being identified, every last one of you...we will find out where you live. We're going to make your lives difficult. We will disrupt your families..."
For that reason, JVP members were particularly concerned about protecting the safety of meeting attendees and preventing the videotaping.
Hauer, a retired attorney and member of San Francisco's Congregation Sha'har Zahav who was treated for pepper spray explained, "When one of the intruders [Dubner] continued standing and filming people despite the facilitator and facility manager repeatedly telling her that she could not, I first asked her politely to please put away the video camera, then several times told her to put away the camera, and then tried nonviolently to stay in front of the camera with my body, even when she shoved me. I could have taken the camera but decided instead to talk to the woman and to try to be the only person she photographed."
Hauer, who also leads groups on healing from WWII & the Holocaust, and speaks to churches about anti-Semitism as it relates to the movement for peace in the Middle East, went on:
"In my mind was the history of targeting of Jewish peace activists by the right wing of the Jewish community--the posting of our photos on internet hate sites, for example, followed by acts of vandalism at our homes and places of work. There were many in the room for whom I care deeply. I could also see that many at the meeting were new to the work we were doing, and I did not want them to be scared away."
Dubner was accompanied by up to a dozen other StandWithUs members--including Dan Spitzer, Susan Meyers, Mike Harris, Bea Lieberman, Faith Meltzer, and Ross Meltzer--who repeatedly disrupted and aggressively videotaped the JVP meeting and JVP members against their will, wielding the cameras in an intimidating and belligerent manner. Despite repeated requests from the JVP meeting facilitator and other JVP activists to desist from recording and put away their videocameras, the SFVI/SWU activists - who had spread themselves throughout the room - continued to record and launch lengthy monologues while the presenters attempted to speak.
They were explicitly invited by the JVP facilitator to stay in the meeting and participate without videotaping but they refused. They also refused offers for floor time by the presenters. The manager of the facility asked the SFVI/SWU members to abide by JVP's rules or face the police, and when SFVI/SWU refused to comply with JVP's protocol, the police were called.
At one point, JVP members and presenters worked to restore calm and de-escalate by singing the Hebrew peace song, Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu (Peace will come to us) while waiting for the police to arrive. Most meeting attendees did not know until later that 2 people had been attacked with pepper spray.
When police arrived, Dubner was temporarily placed in handcuffs while other members of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs remained inside the meeting blowing loud whistles, using videocameras to intimidate meeting attendees.
Dubner refused repeated requests by JVP members or the police to identify the substance she sprayed. A police officer later identified it as pepper spray and paramedics were called to help treat the victims of the attack. One of them, Alexei Folger, looked visibly red and swollen, as though she had been burned on more than half her face.
Immediately following the attack, Ms. Folger, not knowing the nature of the substance on her face, rubbed some of it on Ms. Dubner's shirtsleeve at which point Ms.Dubner, who is a large woman, started physically shoving the petite Ms. Folger. A Jewish Voice for Peace staff member stood between them to prevent further escalation or physical contact between Ms Dubner and the shocked and injured Ms. Folger.
This deliberate confrontation is part of a pattern of escalating intimidation and attacks against peace activists in the Bay Area. Earlier this year, the home of Tikkun Magazine editor Michael Lerner was covered in threatening posters. In addition to the videotaped harassment of Women in Black and JVP members, several months ago someone placed threatening graffiti outside of the JVP offices.
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These actions cannot be tolerated by the peace and justice movement--anywhere! We have a right to meet and protest injustice without being harassed, videotaped, pepper-sprayed, disrupted or summoned by the FBI for Grand Jury questioning!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War Newsletter. bauaw.org
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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FREE THE SCOTT SISTERS
http://mije.org/node/1343
freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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San Francisco Labor Council Resolution Adopted unanimously on Nov. 8, 2010
Resolution Condemning Police Attack on Free Speech & Assembly following Oscar Grant Rally
Whereas, on Friday November 5, former BART cop Johannes Mehserle was given a jail sentence of 2 years for the 'involuntary manslaughter' of Oscar Grant. Subtracting time served and 'good behavior', Mehserle may be back on the streets in as little as 7 months; and
Whereas, the organizers of a November 5th Rally and Gathering in Frank Ogawa Plaza to honor Oscar Grant and Respond to the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, were refused a permit for an organized march after the rally to an indoor gathering at DeFremery Park; and
Whereas, after the rally many hundreds of community members spontaneously started marching toward Fruitvale BART, the site of Oscar Grant's murder, and after the cops sealed off an entire city block, police did not allow people to disperse, called it a 'crime scene', and arrested 152 people, including San Francisco Labor Council Delegate Dave Welsh, resulting in more arrests than at any other Oscar Grant-related protest; and
Whereas, most arrestees have been cited on misdemeanor charges, held for 24 hours and have mass arraignments in the first week of December at Wiley Manuel Courthouse, 661 Washington Street in Oakland.
Therefore be It Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council condemns this assault on freedom of speech and assembly and demands that all these misdemeanor assembly charges be dropped.
Presented by Marcus Holder, delegate from ILWU Local 10, and adopted unanimously at the regular delegates meeting of the San Francisco Labor Council held Nov. 8, 2010 in San Francisco, California.
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Deafening Silence, Chuck Africa (MOVE 9)
Check out other art and poetry by prisoners at:
Shujaas!: Prisoners Resisting Through Art
...we banging hard, yes, very hard, on this system...
http://shujaas.wordpress.com/
Peace People,
This poem is from Chuck Africa, one of the MOVE 9, who is currently serving 30-100 years on trump up charges of killing a police officer. After 32 years in prison, the MOVE 9 are repeatly denied parole, after serving their minimum sentence. Chuck wanted me to share this with the people, so that we can see how our silence in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom is inherently an invitation to their death behind prison walls.
Deafening Silence
Don't ya'll hear cries of anguish?
In the climate of pain come joining voices?
But voices become unheard and strained by inactions
Of dead brains
How long will thou Philly soul remain in the pit of agonizing apathy?
Indifference seems to greet you like the morning mirror
Look closely in the mirror and realize it's a period of mourning....
My Sistas, mothers, daughters, wives and warriors
Languish in prisons obscurity like a distant star in the galaxies as does their brothers
We need to be free....
How loud can you stay silence?
Have the courage to stand up and have a say,
Choose resistance and let go of your fears.
The history of injustice to MOVE; we all know so well
But your deafening silence could be my DEATH KNELL.
Chuck Africa
Please share, inform people and get involve in demanding the MOVE 9's freedom! www.MOVE9parole.blogspot.com
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Say No to Islamophobia!
Defend Mosques and Community Centers!
The Fight for Peace and Social Justice Requires Defense of All Under Attack!
http://www.petitiononline.com/nophobia/petition.html
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Kevin Keith Update: Good News! Death sentence commuted!
Ohio may execute an innocent man unless you take action.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-kevin-keith
Ohio's Governor Spares Life of a Death Row Inmate Kevin Keith
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/us/03ohio.html?ref=us
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Please sign the petition to release Bradley Manning
http://www.petitiononline.com/manning1/petition.html (Click to sign here)
To: US Department of Defense; US Department of Justice
We, the Undersigned, call for justice for US Army PFC Bradley Manning, incarcerated without charge (as of 18 June 2010) at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.
Media accounts state that Mr. Manning was arrested in late May for leaking the video of US Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent people and seriously wounding two children in Baghdad, including those who arrived to help the wounded, as well as potentially other material. The video was released by WikiLeaks under the name "Collateral Murder".
If these allegations are untrue, we call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
If these allegations ARE true, we ALSO call upon the US Department of Defense to release Mr. Manning immediately.
Simultaneously, we express our support for Mr. Manning in any case, and our admiration for his courage if he is, in fact, the person who disclosed the video. Like in the cases of Daniel Ellsberg, W. Mark Felt, Frank Serpico and countless other whistleblowers before, government demands for secrecy must yield to public knowledge and justice when government crime and corruption are being kept hidden.
Justice for Bradley Manning!
Sincerely,
The Undersigned:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?manning1
--
Zaineb Alani
http://www.thewordsthatcomeout.blogspot.com
http://www.tigresssmiles.blogspot.com
"Yesterday I lost a country. / I was in a hurry, / and didn't notice when it fell from me / like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. / Please, if anyone passes by / and stumbles across it, / perhaps in a suitcase / open to the sky, / or engraved on a rock / like a gaping wound, / ... / If anyone stumbles across it, / return it to me please. / Please return it, sir. / Please return it, madam. / It is my country . . . / I was in a hurry / when I lost it yesterday." -Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi poet
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Please forward widely...
HELP LYNNE STEWART -- SUPPORT THESE BILLS
These two bills are now in Congress and need your support. Either or both bills would drastically decrease Lynne's and other federal sentences substantially.
H.R. 1475 "Federal Prison Work Incentive Act Amended 2009," Congressman Danny Davis, Democrat, Illinois
This bill will restore and amend the former federal B.O.P. good time allowances. It will let all federal prisoners, except lifers, earn significant reductions to their sentences. Second, earn monthly good time days by working prison jobs. Third, allowances for performing outstanding services or duties in connection with institutional operations. In addition, part of this bill is to bring back parole to federal long term prisoners.
Go to: www.FedCURE.org and www.FAMM.org
At this time, federal prisoners only earn 47 days per year good time. If H.R. 1475 passes, Lynne Stewart would earn 120-180 days per year good time!
H.R. 61 "45 And Older," Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (18th Congressional District, Texas)
This bill provides early release from federal prison after serving half of a violent crime or violent conduct in prison.
Please write, call, email your Representatives and Senators. Demand their votes!
This information is brought to you by Diane E. Schindelwig, a federal prisoner #36582-177 and friend and supporter of Lynne Stewart.
Write to Lynne at:
Lynne Stewart 53504-054
MCC-NY 2-S
150 Park Row
New York, NY 10007
For further information call Lynne's husband, Ralph Poynter, leader of the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Send contributions payable to:
Lynne Stewart Organization
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York, 11216
---
Listen to Lynne Stewart event, that took place July 8, 2010 at Judson Memorial Church
Excerpts include: Mumia Abu Jamal, Ralph Poynter, Ramsey Clark, Juanita
Young, Fred Hampton Jr., Raging Grannies, Ralph Schoenman
http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
And check out this article (link) too!
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2010/062210Lendman.shtml
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL GRAVELY CONCERNED THAT RULING PUTS TROY DAVIS ON TRACK FOR EXECUTION; CITES PERSISTING DOUBTS ABOUT HIS GUILT
"Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence."
Amnesty International Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Contact: Wende Gozan Brown at 212-633-4247, wgozan@aiusa.org.
(Washington, D.C.) - Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today expressed deep concern that a federal district court decision puts Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis back on track for execution, despite doubts about his guilt that were raised during a June evidentiary hearing. Judge William T. Moore, Jr. ruled that while executing an innocent person would violate the United States Constitution, Davis didn't meet the extraordinarily high legal bar to prove his innocence.
"Nobody walking out of that hearing could view this as an open-and-shut case," said Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA. "The testimony that came to light demonstrates that doubt still exists, but the legal bar for proving innocence was set so high it was virtually insurmountable. It would be utterly unconscionable to proceed with this execution, plain and simple."
Amnesty International representatives, including Cox, attended the hearing in Savannah, Ga. The organization noted that evidence continues to cast doubt over the case:
· Four witnesses admitted in court that they lied at trial when they implicated Troy Davis and that they did not know who shot Officer Mark MacPhail.
· Four witnesses implicated another man as the one who killed the officer - including a man who says he saw the shooting and could clearly identify the alternative suspect, who is a family member.
· Three original state witnesses described police coercion during questioning, including one man who was 16 years old at the time of the murder and was questioned by several police officers without his parents or other adults present.
"The Troy Davis case is emblematic of everything that is wrong with capital punishment," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "In a system rife with error, mistakes can be made. There are no do-overs when it comes to death. Lawmakers across the country should scrutinize this case carefully, not only because of its unprecedented nature, but because it clearly indicates the need to abolish the death penalty in the United States."
Since the launch of its February 2007 report, Where Is the Justice for Me? The Case of Troy Davis, Facing Execution in Georgia, Amnesty International has campaigned intensively for a new evidentiary hearing or trial and clemency for Davis, collecting hundreds of thousands of clemency petition signatures and letters from across the United States and around the world. To date, internationally known figures such as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have all joined the call for clemency, as well as lawmakers from within and outside of Georgia.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters, activists and volunteers who campaign for universal human rights from more than 150 countries. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
# # #
For more information visit www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis.
Wende Gozan Brown
Media Relations Director
Amnesty International USA
212/633-4247 (o)
347/526-5520 (c)
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police
Letter to Interpol
By Naomi Wolf
December 7, 2010 09:40 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html
2) Judge Dismisses Challenge to Targeted Killing
"The ruling clears the way for the Obama administration to continue to try to kill Mr. Awlaki and represents a victory in its efforts to shield from judicial review one of its most striking counter-terrorism policies."
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/middleeast/08killing.html?hp
3) Ireland Parliament to Vote on Austere Budget
By LIZ ALDERMAN
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08ireland.html?hp
4) Legal Challenge to the Death Penalty Begins in Texas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY
December 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07texas.html?ref=us
5) Summary Box: Oil Prices Hit $90 Milestone
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 7, 2010
Filed at 3:15 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/07/business/AP-US-Oil-Prices-Summary-Box.html?src=busln
6) "The Truth Will Always Win"
By Julian Paul Assange, WikiLeaks Founder
The Australian
December 7, 2010
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mediadiary/index.php/australianmedia/comments/julian1/
Petition in support of Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
WikiLeaks' Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/wikileaks
WikiLeaks' Support Page: http://wikileaks.ch/support.html
Lieberman Attacks New York Times Over WikiLeaks Documents:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-joe-lieberman-new-york-times-investigated
7) Election Violence Flares in Haiti, Closing Airport
By DEBORAH SONTAG
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/americas/09haiti.html?ref=world
8) British Court Denies Bail to Assange
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08assange.html?ref=world
9) U.S. Prosecutors Study WikiLeaks Prosecution
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/08leak.html?ref=world
10) Canada: Report Criticizes Police Crackdown
By IAN AUSTEN
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/americas/08briefs-Canadabrf.html?ref=world
11) Tax Package Will Aid Nearly All, Especially Highest Earners
"But the tax benefits will flow most heavily to the highest earners, just as the original cuts did when they were passed in 2001 and 2003. At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/us/politics/08impact.html?ref=us
12) Texas: Hearing on Death Penalty Halted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/us/08brfs-HEARINGONDEA_BRF.html?ref=us
13) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Bradley Manning Support Network accepts responsibility for all expenses to defend accused Wikileaks whistle-blower
MEDIA
Jeff Paterson, Steering Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network
jeff@bradleymanning.org
+1-510-488-3559
VIA EMAIL
14) To Trim Deficit, Mayor Seeks Increased Fees for Recreation
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/nyregion/08fees.html?ref=nyregion
15) Framed for Murder?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1
16) Web Attackers Find a Cause in WikiLeaks
By NOAM COHEN
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/10wiki.html?ref=world
17) Protesters Attack Car Carrying Prince Charles
"The Cameron government has cut university funding by about 80 percent, shifting the burden to the students."
By JOHN F. BURNS
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10britain.html?ref=world
18) Spain to Seek Prison Time for Striking Air Controllers
By RAPHAEL MINDER
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10iht-spain.html?ref=world
19) Jury Convicts 3 Officers in Post-Katrina Death
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/10katrina.html?ref=us
20) New York City Sues State Over the Cost of Housing Juveniles in Prisons
By DAVID W. CHEN
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/nyregion/10juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
21) Militarism as Cause and Consequence of Climate Change
Expulsion of Organizer from COP16 Leads to Cancellation of Press Conference from Climate SOS, Biofuel Watch, and Global Compliance Research Project
Contacts for media:
-Maggie Zhou, Ph.D. Climate SOS mzhou_us@yahoo.com, 1-781-316-8283, 52-9981083832 skype: mzhou_us
-Rachel Smolker, Ph.D. Biofuel Watch, and Climate SOS rsmolker@riseup.net, 1- 802 482 2848, 1- 802 735 7794
-Joan Russow, Ph.D. Global Compliance Research Project jrussow@gmail.com
PRESS RELEASE: Dec 10, 2010 VIA EMAIL
22) Thousands of Georgia Prisoners go on Strike
Contributed by: Anonymous
Friday, December 10 2010 @ 05:07 PM UTC
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101210170702158
23) Activists Say Web Assault for Assange Is Expanding
By RAVI SOMAIYA
December 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11anonymous.html?ref=world
24) After Attack on Royal Limo, Questions and Reproach
By RAVI SOMAIYA and ELISSA GOOTMAN
December 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11royal.html?ref=world
25) Activists Target Dutch Website After Boy Arrested
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:11 p.m. ET
December 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/12/11/technology/tech-us-wikileaks.html?src=busln
26) Following the Money, Doctors Ration Care
"Wealthy people will always be able to buy most of what they want. But for everyone else, if we stay on the current course, the lines are likely to get longer and longer."
By TYLER COWEN
December 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12view.html?src=busln
27) 6 Companies That Haven't Wussed Out of Working with WikiLeaks
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on December 10, 2010, Printed on December 11, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149142/
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1) Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police
Letter to Interpol
By Naomi Wolf
December 7, 2010 09:40 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html
Dear Interpol:
As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.
I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke. I understand, from the alleged victims' complaints to the media, that Assange is also accused of texting and tweeting in the taxi on the way to one of the women's apartments while on a date, and, disgustingly enough, 'reading stories about himself online' in the cab.
Both alleged victims are also upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first. (Of course, as a feminist, I am also pleased that the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings. That's what our brave suffragette foremothers intended!).
Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone -- there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately. I also have firsthand information that John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party -- with strippers! -- that his girlfriend wanted him to skip, and that Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut -- even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER.
Terrorists. Go get 'em, Interpol!
Yours gratefully,
Naomi Wolf
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2) Judge Dismisses Challenge to Targeted Killing
"The ruling clears the way for the Obama administration to continue to try to kill Mr. Awlaki and represents a victory in its efforts to shield from judicial review one of its most striking counter-terrorism policies."
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/middleeast/08killing.html?hp
WASHINGTON - A federal judge threw out a lawsuit on Tuesday that sought to block the American government from trying to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen and Muslim cleric accused of playing a significant role in Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen.
The ruling clears the way for the Obama administration to continue to try to kill Mr. Awlaki and represents a victory in its efforts to shield from judicial review one of its most striking counter-terrorism policies.
The court not only rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that Mr. Awlaki's father had no standing to file it on behalf of his son, but held that decisions to mount targeted killings overseas are a "political question" for executive officials to make - not judges.
In an 83-page opinion, Judge John Bates of the District of Columbia district court acknowledged that the case raised "stark, and perplexing, questions" - including whether the president could "order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization."
But even though the "legal and policy questions posed by this case are controversial and of great public interest," he wrote, they would have to be resolved on another day or outside of the courts, since this case had to be dismissed at the onset.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the ruling. But Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who helped represent Mr. Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, in the matter, called the decision "a profound mistake" that he said would dangerously expand presidential powers.
"If the court's ruling is correct, the government has unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation," Mr. Jaffer said. "It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution, or more dangerous to American liberty."
Judge Bates rejected the notion that his ruling amounting to holding that the executive possesses "unreviewable authority to order the assassination of any American whom he labels an enemy of the state." His ruling emphasized that it was limited to the circumstances of Mr. Awlaki, whom the intelligence community has said is engaged in specific operational planning of attacks against the United States.
"The court only concludes that it lacks capacity to determine whether a specific individual in hiding overseas, whom the director of national intelligence has stated is an 'operational member' " of Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, Judge Bates said, "presents such a threat to national security that the United States may authorize the use of lethal force against him." Robert Chesney, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in national security law, said the limits of the theory articulated by Judge Bates would be a matter of hot dispute.
"The slippery slope is obviously the concern here," Mr. Chesney said. "Judge Bates is at pains not to decide this question for other circumstances. But the question remains, what else besides this fact pattern would enable the government to have the same result - no judicial involvement in a targeted-killing decision?"
The A.C.L.U., along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, brought the lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Awlaki's father last summer. It first had to receive permission to represent Nasser al-Awlaki from the Treasury Department, which has labeled Anwar al-Awlaki a "specially designated global terrorist."
Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico in 1971, moved to Yemen in 2004. He has made many videos and published many writings on the Internet calling for Muslims to attack the United States.
Within the last year, government officials contend, he has evolved from being a mere propagandist to playing an "operational role" in specific attempted attacks. Among other things, he is accused of directing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009.
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3) Ireland Parliament to Vote on Austere Budget
By LIZ ALDERMAN
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08ireland.html?hp
DUBLIN - Pressured by onerous debts and fears of financial contagion, the Irish government introduced one of the strictest budgets in the nation's history Tuesday, raising taxes and slashing government and welfare spending to qualify for an 85 billion euro aid package from its European partners.
Citing "the worst crisis in our history, with few international parallels," Finance Minister Brian Lenihan urged the Parliament to pass 6 billion euros worth of savings for 2011 in a vote expected later Tuesday or Wednesday morning as a "first step in ensuring that we can get firmly back on our feet." Tony Killeen, Ireland's defense minister, said he was "confident we have the numbers" to push the budget through.
The plan, unveiled as an increasingly rowdy throng of protesters chanted and lit flares outside the Parliament building, is the first installment of a wider blueprint designed to find 15 billion euros in savings over three years. The measures are needed to reduce the nation's soaring indebtedness and deficit and to help pay for a banking crisis that has tattered Ireland's finances, leading to a dramatic weakening of Prime Minister Brian Cowen's government and increased worries about the financial stability of other heavily indebted European countries, notably Spain and Portugal.
Opposition parties and two independent lawmakers who are key to the government's slim 2-seat majority signaled they would approve the measures in order to receive the bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, despite a rancorous debate about how the budget will hit working people and delay an economic recovery. A vote was expected later Tuesday only on measures that would take effect at midnight, including higher taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel at the pump.
Separate votes on the more contentious and difficult aspects of the budget, such as measures to cut social welfare and other government spending; widen Ireland's tax base; and cap salaries for government employees including the president and the prime minister, will be held through the end of January. While opposition parties want to see the cuts shaped differently, they generally agree on the size of the proposed budget, which is expected to be signed into law by next February.
A failure to approve the budget would trigger an immediate general election, and a new government would have to pass a budget soon after in order to secure the E.U. bailout. Politicians seem eager to avoid that outcome since it would fan new uncertainty in financial markets that have already shut Ireland off from borrowing, and raise fresh fears of contagion among other weak members of Europe's monetary union, the euro.
Dublin's police have been out in force since Monday night to prepare for the largest protests to date against the budget - which would cut sharply into the welfare state - and the bailout.
The action kicked off at around 7:30 Tuesday morning, when a man was arrested after commandeering a cherry picker that he had festooned with anti-government signs and rigged with speakers, from which he blasted the theme song to "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in front of Parliament.
Interest groups of all stripes formed a heaving crowd that gathered strength throughout the day at the same spot, banging pots and pans, sounding foghorns and lighting flares while chanting, "Cowen, out! IMF, out!"
Protestors from a series of Facebook-organized marches snaked through Dublin, and were expected to enlarge the crowds in front of Parliament well into the evening, as lawmakers continued to debate the measure inside.
"This is a bailout for the speculators and the financial markets of the world. The I.M.F., the E.U. commission and the E.C.B. were over here 2 weeks ago, not in any sense as friends of the Irish people, but as friends of the speculators in the financial markets, and their strategy is to turn working people of this country into serfs," Joe Higgins, one of the Irish parliamentarians who walked out of bailout discussions in Brussels a couple weeks ago with E.U. Commissioner Ollie Rehn, shouted into a microphone as crowds cheered.
Emma Nolan, who was laid off with 21 other people from her job at Laura Ashley, the home-furnishings and fashion company, said the budget punished ordinary people and let bankers escape without penalty. She said that five of her jobless colleagues plan to emigrate to seek jobs elsewhere.
Ireland is deepening its austerity as investors turn their attention to Portugal and Spain, which also must reduce high debt and deficit levels from the boom years. Investors raised borrowing costs on these countries immediately after Ireland last month announced it had sought financial aid from the E.U. and I.M.F., the second such package for a euro country after Greece.
Lawmakers in Portugal have said the country, which suffers from weak growth, does not need a bailout. Last month they approved a tough 2011 budget to help Portugal meet a pledge to cut the deficit to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product from 9.3 percent in 2009. Spain is also taking steps to ease investor fears about whether the banking industry might be holding more losses than thought from a collapse in the construction and real estate sectors announcing new stress tests to increase transparency.
Of the 6 billion euros in savings to be found next year in Ireland's budget, about a third will come from tax increases and the rest from cuts in spending. They include a cut of about 5 percent to social welfare payments, such as jobseeker allowances and child subsidies, as well as cuts in pensions for most public sector workers. The salaries of people entering the public sector - including judges - will be cut by 10 percent.
Ministers will also have to start sharing rides as the government reduces it private transportation fleet - including one of its two private jets. In addition, the prime minister will take a 14,000 euro pay cut, bringing his salary to just above 90,000 euros, while other ministers will see their salaries cut 10,000 euros to about 60,000 euros. A pay cap of 250,000 euros will also apply across government and include the president as well as people who at the head of quasi-state agencies.
More taxes would also be collected by requiring people who make less than 18,300 euros per year to start paying taxes and by reducing tax credits. Currently, about 45 percent of Ireland's workforce is outside the tax net. People on minimum wage, which is falling by 1 euro to 7.45 euros per hour, will not pay income tax. About 15,000 new job activation placements will be opened to the unemployed, which today number about 400,000.
Mr. Cowen said the measures would allow the economy to become more competitive, return to growth, and attract greater investment over time, leading to job creation and a reduction of the unemployment rate to less than 10 percent within 3 years, from nearly 14 percent now.
"Our No. 1 priority for 2011 and beyond must be on economic growth and maximizing employment creation," Mr. Lenihan added.
His opponents took issue with that forecast, saying the squeeze on "middle Ireland" would hit the economy hard. "Individuals will be clobbered, but the question is whether the economy will be clobbered as well," said Alex White, a representative of the Labor Party, which has argued that anything greater than 4.5 billion euros taken out of the economy next year would only stunt a recovery.
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4) Legal Challenge to the Death Penalty Begins in Texas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY
December 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07texas.html?ref=us
HOUSTON - The death penalty went on trial Monday in Texas, a state where more prisoners are executed every year than in any other and where exonerations of people on death row occur with surprising regularity.
Lawyers for John E. Green Jr., who stands accused of murdering a woman in front of her children, are arguing that the death penalty as carried out in Texas violates the Constitution because there is a high risk innocent people will be executed.
The hearing stems from a routine argument defense lawyers make in most death penalty cases. Judges rarely grant the motion, however, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the death penalty as outside of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
But Judge Kevin Fine, a Democrat elected last year, shocked many Texans by giving the argument serious consideration. As a result, his courtroom in downtown Houston became a forum Monday for defense lawyers to present a broad indictment of problems in the criminal justice system that they say lead to wrongful convictions.
They said that they hoped to prove that some of the biggest tools in the prosecution's arsenal were frequently unreliable and led to mistaken convictions: eyewitness testimony, fingerprint evidences and the testimony of informers.
Alan Curry, the chief of the appellate division in the Harris County District Attorney's Office, argued that the hearing should not be held and announced his office would not participate.
He declined to cross-examine witnesses. The prosecution has claimed that Judge Fine is biased against the death penalty and moved to remove him from the case, but the highest criminal court denied the motion.
Before the hearing started, Mr. Curry argued that the Supreme Court had already ruled that the risk of an innocent person might be executed did not make the death penalty unconstitutional. He also said Mr. Green had no standing to challenge the law, since he had yet to be convicted.
Mr. Curry argued that the fact that some innocent people had been wrongly convicted and condemned to death did not mean the evidence in Mr. Green's case was faulty.
But Richard Burr, one of the defendant's lawyers, said wrongful convictions happened so frequently in Texas that Mr. Green was at serious risk of ending up on death row. He also said the chances of overturning a bad conviction on appeal were low in Texas, which requires a defendant to show "no reasonable juror" would have convicted him.
"There is no safety net," Mr. Burr said.
Still, Judge Fine, a maverick former defense attorney who talks openly of his past as a recovering alcoholic and has tattoos depicting his struggle with addiction, ruled the hearing should go forward.
To prevail, the defense must show the death penalty statute in Texas violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it creates a risk that innocent people will be convicted and put to death.
Texas has executed 464 people for murder in the last three decades, more than any other state, and the death penalty has widespread support here. But in at least 12 cases since 1973, people on death row in Texas have been exonerated. In addition, questions have been raised about the convictions of two men already executed for their crimes - Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones.
Mr. Willingham was put to death in 2004 after being convicted of burning down his home in Corsicana in 1991, killing his three children. His guilt is now in question as arson experts have found fault in the evidence against him. Mr. Jones was executed in 2000 for the 1989 killing of a liquor store owner near Point Blank. After his death, a DNA test showed that a hair that had linked him to the crime scene did not belong to him.
Both cases are expected to be raised during the hearing.
Richard C. Dieter, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, was the first witness. He said that since 1973, at least 138 people sentenced to death had been later exonerated. "There certainly is a risk of executing the innocent and that risk still exists today," he said.
"The mistakes are happening at the trial level," Mr. Dieter said. "And then you get into the appellate level where the focus is on legal problems that might have occurred, not on whether you got the right person."
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5) Summary Box: Oil Prices Hit $90 Milestone
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 7, 2010
Filed at 3:15 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/07/business/AP-US-Oil-Prices-Summary-Box.html?src=busln
NEW YORK (AP) - MILESTONE REACHED: Oil hit the $90-per-barrel mark for the first time since October 2008. OPEC and Wall Street analysts say it won't be long before prices rise back above $100 per barrel.
CONSUMERS HIT: Thanks in part to rising crude costs, heating oil and diesel prices are expected to increase year-over-year for the first time since 2008. The Oil Price Information Service said gasoline prices may hit a national average of $3 per gallon before Christmas day.
TIME TO CONSERVE? Analysts say American consumers probably won't curb holiday spending because of fuel prices alone, but they'll probably start pulling back on spending in the new year.
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6) "The Truth Will Always Win"
By Julian Paul Assange, WikiLeaks Founder
The Australian
December 7, 2010
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/mediadiary/index.php/australianmedia/comments/julian1/
Petition in support of Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
WikiLeaks' Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/wikileaks
WikiLeaks' Support Page: http://wikileaks.ch/support.html
Lieberman Attacks New York Times Over WikiLeaks Documents:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-joe-lieberman-new-york-times-investigated
In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.
I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?
Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.
People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain 's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.
Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.
And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:
The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran 's nuclear program stopped by any means available.
Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests."
Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.
The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.
Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
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7) Election Violence Flares in Haiti, Closing Airport
By DEBORAH SONTAG
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/americas/09haiti.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Protesters torched the headquarters of the government-backed presidential candidate, burned tires and blocked streets with rubble from earthquake-destroyed buildings on Wednesday morning, hours after the release of preliminary election results set off violence and new questions about vote rigging.
This normally traffic-clogged city was almost empty of cars except for Haitian police patrols, the airport was shut down after American Airlines canceled flights in and out of the country and an eerie quiet reigned, interrupted by the chanting from sporadic marches and by sirens wailing.
By late morning, in the hilly suburb of Pétionville, hundreds demonstrators were massing to march toward the electoral board offices, which they threatened to burn down, Haitian radio reported. United Nations peacekeeping troops, guarding the offices, were shooting in the air to keep the protesters away, the radio said.
Nine days after a turbulent election marred by disorganization, voter intimidation and fraud, the country's electoral board announced late Tuesday night that Mirlande Manigat, a former Haitian first lady, and Jude Célestin, the governing party's candidate, had won the first round of voting.
It also said that Michel Martelly, a singer with an impassioned following in the streets of this bedraggled city, had come in third, closely behind Mr. Célestin. This means, if the results stand, that he would not qualify to compete in a January run-off election.
The exclusion of Mr. Martelly and the inclusion of Mr. Célestin, who is considered a hand-picked successor to the increasingly unpopular departing President René Préval, incited the protests.
Early Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Préval addressed the country by radio and television, appealing for calm and saying that the election results should be challenged by means of a formal protest to the electoral board. "It is not through disorder that we will find the true results," Mr. Préval said.
Mr. Martelly had vowed on Monday to contest the results if they did not appear to reflect "the will of the people."
Reached by telephone on Wednesday morning, Mr. Martelly, who has not spoken publicly since the results were released, declined to comment, saying he needed to confer first with his manager.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Célestin's campaign manager, sitting in a parked car behind a windshield freshly shattered by rocks, said that Mr. Célestin was also going to contest the election results.
According to the electoral board, Ms. Manigat garnered 31.4 percent of the vote, with Mr. Célestin getting 22.5 percent and Mr. Martelly getting 21.8 percent. If these results withstood challenges, Ms. Manigat and Mr. Célestin would head into a runoff on Jan. 16.
But Mr. Célestin's campaign manager, Sen. Joseph Lambert, said that Mr. Célestin believed he won the vote outright, with 52 percent. Mr. Lambert asserted that "the international community" had pressured the electoral board to announce "diplomatically engineered results" because they feared instability.
Mr. Lambert also said that Mr. Celestin was doing his best to keep his supporters in the rough slum called Cité Soleil from pouring into the streets in outrage.
"If we cannot hold them back, prepare yourself for civil war," he said.
The violence began late Tuesday, after a long, tense day in which Haitians expressed anxiety that the results could ignite unrest. The official announcement at 9 p.m. resulted in rock-throwing, tire-burning and shooting in several urban neighborhoods and outside the capital city. Toward midnight, smoke curled into the sky above Port-au-Prince and protesters' chants and drums filled the air.
Haiti had remained calm this year after a devastating earthquake, a slow recovery, a deadly hurricane and a raging cholera epidemic. But the angry reactions to Tuesday night's announcement raised concerns that a period of volatility could lie ahead.
The United States Embassy put out a statement late Tuesday urging all Haitian political figures to stay calm and urge their followers to do the same. It expressed concern that the preliminary results were "inconsistent" with the findings of an independent Haitian election group that posted thousands of observers throughout the country and anticipated a runoff between Ms. Manigat and Mr. Martelly - as well as with the reports of other observers, including Americans.
"The United States, together with Haiti's international community partners, stands ready to support efforts to thoroughly review irregularities in support of electoral results that are consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes," the statement said.
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8) British Court Denies Bail to Assange
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/europe/08assange.html?ref=world
LONDON - After months of posting troves of classified American documents on the Internet, Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks Web site, surrendered to British authorities and was jailed on Tuesday after a judge reviewing a Swedish extradition request found him to be a flight risk and denied him bail.
For Mr. Assange and his supporters, as well as for those who have condemned him for the brazen leak of American secrets, there was a bizarre twist in the fast-moving events at a London courthouse. Instead of being arrested for punching a gaping hole in the secret worlds of American military and diplomatic power, an outcome he has long predicted, Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, found himself ensnared in allegations stemming from brief sexual encounters this summer with two young Swedish women.
What lies ahead, beyond a new court appearance on Dec. 14, when Mr. Assange's bail bid will be renewed, is a legal battle that could last weeks, or much longer.
That contest will focus on whether the Swedish request for Mr. Assange's extradition to face questioning on charges of "rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion" is unrelated to WikiLeaks, as Swedish prosecutors and the women themselves say - or whether they are linked, in what Mr. Assange has called a smear campaign to punish him for his WikiLeaks activity.
The reaction among those Mr. Assange has made his adversaries was predictably enthusiastic. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was in Afghanistan, reacted to the arrest by saying, "I hadn't heard that, but it sounds like good news to me."
But how Mr. Assange's arrest on the Swedish charges might affect the Obama administration's continuing deliberations about how - or whether - to charge him for publicizing leaks of classified information remains uncertain. It is also unclear whether Mr. Assange will follow through on his past threats to retaliate for an arrest by releasing new batches of secret information, possibly in a less measured way than the organization has to date.
Officers from Scotland Yard arrested Mr. Assange after he went to a central London police station by agreement with the authorities. In a packed courtroom hearing lasting nearly an hour, Gemma Lindfield, a lawyer acting for the Swedish government, outlined some of the detailed allegations made by the Swedish women, both WikiLeaks volunteers. They involved three incidents in August, including one in which Mr. Assange was alleged to have had unprotected sex with one of his accusers as she was asleep.
Mr. Assange has denied wrongdoing, saying that he had consensual relations with the two women, whom he met during a trip to Sweden that he made in a bid to establish a haven for himself and WikiLeaks under Sweden's broad press freedoms.
Outside court, Mark Stephens, Mr. Assange's lead lawyer, described the allegations of sexual impropriety as "very thin indeed," and predicted the case would "go viral" as the argument for its being a political vendetta was pressed.
Mr. Assange, in a dark blue suit and flanked by two uniformed security officials, was characteristically defiant in court. When he was arrested Tuesday morning, the hearing was told, he refused requests that he submit to a photograph, a DNA swab and fingerprinting, standard procedures for all those arrested in Britain.
In court, proceedings were interrupted when, having confirmed his name and date of birth, he refused to give a current address, giving first a post office box, then an address in Parkville in the Australian state of Victoria, where he lived before adopting a nomadic lifestyle since founding WikiLeaks in 2006.
The exchange appeared to have weighed against his bid for bail, which his lawyers had initially seemed confident of securing. The bid was supported by financial guarantees of more than $150,000 from a cast of well-known supporters who appeared in court, including the filmmaker Ken Loach and Jemima Khan, a socialite and political activist.
There was audible dismay as the judge, Howard Riddle, agreed with Ms. Lindfield that there were "significant grounds" for thinking Mr. Assange posed a flight risk, because of his "nomadic lifestyle," his lack of ties in Britain, his network of international contacts and his access to substantial sums donated by WikiLeaks supporters.
As Mr. Assange was loaded into an armored police truck in the bitterly cold afternoon and driven to Wandsworth prison in south London, one sure thing was that his long months as a self-described refugee were over.
Accustomed to a life in the shadows, staying with friends, paying cash and communicating mainly by Twitter, he has added a sense of mystery to the celebrity - or notoriety - that has developed around him. The passions he has aroused among followers were evident as dozens chased the police truck as it pulled into traffic, banging on its sides and shouting, "We love you, Julian!"
Now the authorities he has reveled in provoking will have a new degree of control over his movements, though not necessarily over WikiLeaks. In a reaction to the events in court, a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed said the group was "let down by the U.K. justice system's bizarre decision to refuse bail" to its founder, but added that the releases of secret State Department cables that began last week would "continue as planned."
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on Monday that American officials were conducting "a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature" into the WikiLeaks releases, a position the Obama administration has held for months, since WikiLeaks began releasing secret Pentagon documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars in summer.
But the London arrest could complicate matters for Washington, backing up any criminal case it might begin against Mr. Assange behind the Swedish investigation. Sweden and Britain have extradition treaties with the United States, but both allow extradition rulings to be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
Of more immediate concern to Washington, Mr. Assange had threatened for weeks to respond to legal action by speeding the release of secret documents. He had warned that "over 100,000 people" worldwide had downloaded an encrypted version of the 251,287 State Department documents the group holds, a small fraction of which has been released, and that "if something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically."
That warning appeared to be suspended, with one of Mr. Assange's closest aides, Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist, saying outside the court that the organization had no plans to mount a retaliatory release. Mr. Stephens, the lawyer, also said there would be no change in WikiLeaks's scheduled releases.
"WikiLeaks will continue, WikiLeaks is many thousands of journalists around the world," Mr. Stephens told a crush of reporters on the courthouse steps. He added, "I am sure justice will out, and Mr. Assange will be vindicated in due course."
In an interview with The New York Times in October, Mr. Assange seemed prepared for an eventual arrest, saying he occasionally savored the prospect of imprisonment on the basis that he "might be able to spend a day reading a book" away from the stresses of his WikiLeaks life.
But, he said, no legal action would deter him. "Retiring on some sunlit upland for some 15 years is not in my nature," he said.
Reporting was contributed by Scott Shane, Charlie Savage and Brian Knowlton from Washington, and Ravi Somaiya from London.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 8, 2010
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Gemma Lindfield.
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9) U.S. Prosecutors Study WikiLeaks Prosecution
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/08leak.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department, in considering whether and how it might indict Julian Assange, is looking beyond the Espionage Act of 1917 to other possible offenses, including conspiracy or trafficking in stolen property, according to officials familiar with the investigation.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. acknowledged this week that there were problems with the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that says the unauthorized possession and dissemination of information related to national defense is illegal. But he also hinted that prosecutors were looking at other statutes with regard to Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
"I don't want to get into specifics here, but people would have a misimpression if the only statute you think that we are looking at is the Espionage Act," Mr. Holder said Monday at a news conference. "That is certainly something that might play a role, but there are other statutes, other tools that we have at our disposal."
Last week, The New York Times and four other news organizations began carrying articles based on an archive of a quarter-million confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to them. After WikiLeaks released a batch of government documents concerning Iraq and Afghanistan in July, Mr. Holder and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, both said the leaks were being investigated, and Mr. Assange said United States officials had previously warned his organization that there had been "thoughts of whether I could be charged as a co-conspirator to espionage, which is serious."
Mr. Assange was arrested Tuesday in Britain in connection with a Swedish investigation into accusations of sexual offenses. But United States law enforcement officials said the fact that he was in custody did not affect their deliberations about whether he might be charged in this country in connection with the publication of leaked government documents.
Prosecutors have used the Espionage Act to convict officials who leaked classified information. They have never successfully convicted any leak recipient who then passed the information along, however, and the Justice Department has never tried to prosecute a journalist -which Mr. Assange portrays himself as being - under either a Republican or a Democratic administration.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said Tuesday on Fox News that he believed The Times should be investigated alongside WikiLeaks, although he cautioned, "This is very sensitive stuff because it gets into the America's First Amendment."
"I certainly believe that WikiLleaks has violated the Espionage Act, but then what about the news organizations - including The Times - that accepted it and distributed it?" Mr. Lieberman said, adding: "To me, The New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime, I think that bears a very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department."
A government official familiar with the investigation said that treating WikiLeaks different from newspapers might be facilitated if investigators found any evidence that Mr. Assange aided the leaker, who is believed to be a low-level Army intelligence analyst - for example, by directing him to look for certain things and providing technological assistance.
If Mr. Assange did collaborate in the original disclosure, then prosecutors could charge him with conspiracy in the underlying leak, skirting the question of whether the subsequent publication of the documents constituted a separate criminal offense. But while investigators have looked for such evidence, there is no public sign suggesting that they have found any.
Meanwhile, according to another government official familiar with the investigation, Justice Department officials have also examined whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could be charged with trafficking in stolen government property.
But scholars say there might be legal difficulties with that approach, too, because the leaked documents are reproductions of files the government still possesses, not physical objects missing from its file cabinets. That means they are covered by intellectual property law, not ordinary property law.
"This is less about stealing than it is about copying," said John G. Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in Internet issues and intellectual property.
Intellectual property law criminalizes the unauthorized reproduction of certain kinds of commercial information, like trade secrets or copyrighted music, films and software files. But those categories do not appear to cover government documents, which by law cannot be copyrighted and for which there is no ordinary commercial market.
Mr. Assange has received leaks of private-sector information as well. He has indicated, for example, that his next step might be to publish a copy of the contents of a hard drive belonging to an executive at a bank - apparently, Bank of America.
If he does so, some of the problems associated with trying to find a way to prosecute him for distributing leaked government documents could disappear. The works of a person in the private sector are automatically copyrighted, and bank documents could be deemed trade secrets.
"If you had large-scale dissemination of a private-sector company's records, there might be some kind of argument there similar to commercial espionage," said James Boyle, a Duke University law professor who specializes in intellectual property and public-domain issues.
There would still be obstacles. For example, Mr. Assange could claim that his distribution of the files was allowable under the "fair use" exception to copyright law and that it was not for financial gain. Still, "fair use" does not allow wholesale reproduction, and prosecutors could argue that his organization was raising money from its activities.
Even so, Mr. Boyle cautioned, intellectual property law is not well designed to prosecute what WikiLeaks is doing.
"The reason people are upset about this is not about commercial theft or misusing the fabulous original expressions of U.S. diplomats," Mr. Boyle said. "I think it is the wrong tool. You go after Al Capone for tax evasion rather than bootlegging - fine. But this is a bridge too far."
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10) Canada: Report Criticizes Police Crackdown
By IAN AUSTEN
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/world/americas/08briefs-Canadabrf.html?ref=world
A report released Tuesday by the ombudsman for the province of Ontario found that a secret regulation used to detain protesters at the June meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 in Toronto had "dubious legality" and probably violated the Canadian Constitution by creating "extravagant police authority." The report is one of a series of inquires into actions by the police during the meeting. About 1,100 people were arrested, including many bystanders; only 278 were ultimately charged. André Marin, the ombudsman, said that regulations enacted under a World War II-vintage law on sabotage had given the police " 'go directly to jail' cards," and that the police had exceeded even those exceptional powers.
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11) Tax Package Will Aid Nearly All, Especially Highest Earners
"But the tax benefits will flow most heavily to the highest earners, just as the original cuts did when they were passed in 2001 and 2003. At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/us/politics/08impact.html?ref=us
The deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years includes a bevy of additional credits and deductions that will reduce the burden on nearly all households.
But the tax benefits will flow most heavily to the highest earners, just as the original cuts did when they were passed in 2001 and 2003. At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.
The tentative deal includes a two-year patch for the alternative minimum tax, a reduction in the payroll tax and a plan to reinstate the estate tax with lower rates and higher exemptions than in 2009 - all of which will offer far more savings for high earners than those in the low- or middle-income bracket.
The wealthiest Americans will also reap tax savings from the proposal's plan to keep the cap on dividend and capital gains taxes at 15 percent, well below the highest rates on ordinary income.
And negotiators have agreed that the estimated $900 billion cost of the cuts will simply be added to the deficit - not covered by reductions in spending or increases in other taxes. That is good news for hedge fund managers and private equity investors, who appear to have withstood an effort to get them to pay more by eliminating a quirk in the tax code that allows most of their income to be taxed at just 15 percent.
In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale - individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,000.
"It's going to look like the rich are getting richer again," said Anne Mathias, an analyst for MF Global Inc.
In the agreement, which breaks a campaign pledge to eliminate some tax breaks for the top 2 percent of American earners, President Obama won a few concessions from Republicans, including a 13-month extension in government benefits for the long-term unemployed. After several extensions, the maximum has been 99 weeks.
The administration also succeeded in extending several of the tax credits in last year's stimulus plan to aid low- and moderate-income Americans: the earned-income tax credit, the child credit, the child and dependent-care credit and the tuition deduction.
As a result, families with an income near the median of $55,000 would owe about $2,700 less in taxes than if the Bush-era cuts had been allowed to expire.
A two-income couple earning $146,000 would owe about $7,000 less than if the tax cuts were allowed to expire, and about $3,400 less than they did in 2009.
The proposal does not include an extension of Mr. Obama's signature tax cut, the Making Work Pay credit, which provided a credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for families of low and moderate income. Instead, the plan creates a one-year reduction in Social Security payroll taxes, which are generally levied on the first $106,800 of income. For an individual earning $110,000, that provision would reduce payroll taxes by $2,136.
Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.
"It will come to a few dollars a week," said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, "but it is an increase."
To the wealthiest Americans, however, an assortment of breaks is available.
The plan includes a two-year "patch" for the alternative minimum tax, which is now paid by about 4 million taxpayers with income in the mid- to high six figures. Without the patch, more than 20 million additional taxpayers would have been liable for that tax.
The estate tax - which was allowed to lapse this year and was scheduled to resume at a rate of 55 percent on most assets above $1 million - will be reinstated under less onerous terms. Estates over $5 million will be subject to a 35 percent tax.
The proposal will also maintain the current rates on dividends and capital gains, averting scheduled increases to ordinary income and 20 percent, respectively.
The marginal tax rate on high incomes will also remain unchanged. The top brackets had been scheduled to increase to 36 percent and 39.6 percent, from 33 percent and 35 percent.
Under Mr. Obama's failed proposal, which would have raised the rates on income over $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals, the taxpayers at the top 1 percent of the income scale - those with incomes above $564,000 - would have received an average tax break of $28,000. Under the agreement reached with Republicans, the top 1 percent will receive breaks of about $70,000.
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12) Texas: Hearing on Death Penalty Halted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/us/08brfs-HEARINGONDEA_BRF.html?ref=us
The State Court of Criminal Appeals granted a request by the Harris County District Attorney's Office to stop an unusual court hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty in Texas. The hearing began Monday in Houston as ordered by State District Judge Kevin Fine. Lawyers for John E. Green Jr., the Houston man who had asked for the hearing, said they intended to show how flaws in death penalty prosecutions in Texas create a risk that innocent people will be executed.
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13) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Bradley Manning Support Network accepts responsibility for all expenses to defend accused Wikileaks whistle-blower
MEDIA
Jeff Paterson, Steering Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network
jeff@bradleymanning.org
+1-510-488-3559
Oakland, CA, December 8, 2010 - Since July 2010, the Bradley Manning Support Network, in collaboration with Oakland, CA based Courage to Resist, has solicited and distributed funds in support of accused Wikileaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Over 1,200 individuals and organizations have responded with contributions totaling over $90,000, either to the defense fund or to Bradley's legal trust account. Thus far $50,000 has been transferred to Bradley's lead civilian attorney, David Coombs, half of the total expected legal expense of $100,000.
The Support Network has also made expenditures for printing and international distribution of leaflets, posters and information cards; staging public forums, events and demonstrations; production of banners, t-shirts, stickers and whistles for organizers; travel expenses for Bradley's visitors at the Quantico brig; communication expenses, including phone and Internet hosting; processing the "Stand with Brad" public declaration and petition (www.standwithbrad.org); accounting; fiscal fees and credit card company fees.
Immediately following Bradley's arrest in late June 2010, the whistle-blower website Wikileaks publicly solicited donations specifically for Bradley's legal defense expenses. In July 2010, Wikileaks pledged to contribute a "substantial amount" towards Bradley's legal defense costs. Since Bradley's selection of David Coombs as his civilian defense attorney in August 2010, the Bradley Manning Support Network has unsuccessfully attempted to facilitate the pledged Wikileaks contribution.
"We understand the difficult situation Wikileaks currently faces as the world's governments conspire to extinguish the whistle-blower website," explained Jeff Paterson, Bradley Manning Support Network steering committee member and project director of Courage to Resist (couragetoresist.org). "However, in order to meet Bradley Manning's legal defense needs, we're forced to clarify that Wikileaks has not yet made a contribution towards this effort. We certainly welcome any contribution from Wikileaks, but we need to inform our supporters that it may not be forthcoming and that their continued contributions and support are crucial."
Donations towards Bradley's defense can be made at bradleymanning.org -- to either the Support Network for both public education efforts and legal defense, or directly to Bradley's legal trust account.
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14) To Trim Deficit, Mayor Seeks Increased Fees for Recreation
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
December 7, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/nyregion/08fees.html?ref=nyregion
He has implored New Yorkers to cut down on salt, to stop guzzling sugary drinks and to think twice about the calorie content in extra-tall lattes and grande burritos. But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's latest idea may actually make it harder for New Yorkers to stay fit.
To help close a $2.4 billion budget gap, the Bloomberg administration has proposed doubling the admission fee at the city's 32 recreation centers and increasing the fee to play on tennis courts and ball fields.
Under the plan, adults would pay $150 each year for access to recreational centers with pools, up from $75. At centers without pools, adults would pay $100 instead of $50. Children under 17 would continue to be admitted free, and senior citizens would face a modest raise, to $25, from the current $10 each year.
The proposed increases are a tiny part of Mr. Bloomberg's strategy to find new revenue as the city prepares for drastic, across-the-board cuts, including major decreases in the teaching force and cutbacks in services for vulnerable children.
But the higher recreational fees may prompt some of the most visible ire, given that about 174,000 people use the centers. The city must hold a public hearing before the increases go into effect, but it has not yet been scheduled.
Under the plan, the Parks and Recreation Department would also increase the cost of tennis court permits to $200, from $100, and the fee for lighted ball fields would rise to $50, from $32.
The increases would be instituted sometime before June 30, and according to city estimates could potentially generate $1 million for the city this fiscal year, which ends then. In subsequent years, the increases could yield $4 million a year in revenue.
Mr. Bloomberg, asked about the possible increases on Tuesday, said the city faced grim choices and could not afford to pay for everything that served a public need. He noted that free subway rides were not fiscally feasible, even though they might encourage public transportation and benefit the environment.
"Make no mistake about it: we will not be able to do everything that we did in the past," Mr. Bloomberg said. "There will be no sacred cows."
Public health advocates and policy experts said the proposal could undermine a hallmark of Mr. Bloomberg's tenure: turning New York City into the weight-watcher capital of the world, replete with calorie counters and advertisements comparing soda to liquid fat.
Yevgeniya Bukshpun, a policy analyst at the city's Independent Budget Office, said the effects of higher recreational fees could be particularly severe in poorer communities, where diabetes and obesity are more prevalent.
"The fee increase may seriously undercut access in low-income communities that are likely to be especially sensitive to price increases," Ms. Bukshpun said.
Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, said the city should not "pick the pockets of our residents with nickel-and-dime increases," like the higher fees. "The cost of living in New York is high enough," Ms. Quinn said in a statement. "Let's not, as a government, add insult to an already challenging situation."
The city estimates that membership would decline about 5 percent if the higher fees were instituted. When the city made fees mandatory at all centers in 2006, standard adult membership dropped nearly 40 percent. The fees have not changed since, and membership has climbed steadily. Parks officials emphasized that the increases were still under review and that the city was working to expand its free offerings, like running trails, bike paths and bocce courts, and recreation classes in some low-income neighborhoods.
"Even with the fee increase, recreation centers are still a bargain, and we would rather raise the rates for everyone instead of closing sites" or eliminating programming, said Vickie Karp, a parks department spokeswoman.
At St. Mary's Recreation Center in the South Bronx on Tuesday, reactions to the proposal were mixed. C. J. Hines, 32, a member for the past year who uses the center's computers and weight room, said he would probably switch to a private gym if the increases were instituted.
"You can't say, 'I'm going to charge double and keep everything the same,' " Mr. Hines said. "That's like saying today a Big Mac is $5 and you go back next week and it's $10, but it's the exact same Big Mac. You'd be a fool to buy that."
But Natlynn Haywood, 62, a retired social services worker who recently joined the center, said she would not mind paying more for its facilities, which include a pool, dance room and basketball court. Still, she added, "for other people, that could be a hardship."
At the Hansborough Recreation Center in Harlem, Craig M. Woods, 49, a longtime member, said he did not understand the rationale behind the proposal.
"You're raising the price in the wrong area; we're all poor here," said Mr. Woods, a martial arts and fitness instructor. "Mayor Bloomberg needs to take a second look and see what damage could be done."
Elizabeth A. Harris and Tim Stelloh contributed reporting.
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15) America Criticized For Human Rights Abuses
By Linn Washington, Jr.
This Can't Be Happening!
December 8, 2010
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/334
Given the sensationalism in mainstream U.S. news media coverage of alleged sexual impropriety charges filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sweden, it's no surprise that other significant news about America involving that Scandinavian nation is being left uncovered.
In early November, Sweden called on the U.S. to end the death penalty and to improve conditions in maximum-security prisons, as the United States went through its first-ever Universal Periodic Review by the United Nation's Human Rights Council.
U.S. condemned for its continued use of capital punishment
Sweden joined nearly two-dozen countries in calling upon the U.S. to end its pariah-like status as the only western industrialized nation to engage in executions. The U.S. has over 3,200 people facing death sentences, a sharp rise from 1968, when America's death row population numbered just 517, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Other countries critical of the U.S. posture on the death penalty-practiced by the federal government and 35 states-included Australia (the birthplace of Assange), France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Vatican.
The caustic onslaught in the U.S. against Assange for leaking sensitive documents, where attackers include members of Congress-some even calling for Assange's death, either extra-judicially or after a trial-is ironic, coming so close to December 10th, the annual international observance of Human Rights Day.
That observance commemorates the UN's 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
One clause in that Declaration provides people worldwide with the right to receive and impart information "through any media and regardless of frontiers."
The American assaults on Assange extend beyond the White House and Capitol Hill. Amazon, under pressure from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), removed WikiLeaks from its computer servers, while MasterCard, PayPal and Visa have halted payments to WikiLeaks from donors supportive of work of that entity, almost certainly after receiving pressure from the U.S. government.
While U.S. officials attending that human rights review held in Switzerland proudly pointed to such continuing rights progress in America as the election of a black President and his selection of a Hispanic female U.S. Supreme Court Justice, fifty-six countries including staunch U.S. allies offered 228 recommendations for improving human rights in the nation that touts itself as the world's leader in protecting the rights of all.
Those recommendations involved a wide range of issues, ranging from attacking poverty among Native Americans to addressing abuses impacting immigrants and closing the infamous Guantanamo prison. However, most of the recommendations presented at that human rights review centered on concerns about deprivations and disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Belgium and Switzerland, for example, called on America to stop sentencing teens to life in prison. Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of life-sentenced teens, with over 300 currently languishing in the state's prisons.
Haiti called for ending the discriminatory impact of mandatory minimum sentences and Thailand called for addressing sexual violence inside U.S. prisons, where homosexual rapes far exceed heterosexual rapes outside prison walls.
France urged the U.S. to study the racial disparities evident in the application of the death penalty. African-Americans comprise 41.43 percent of the people on death rows across America-a figure more than twice the percentage of America's black population.
The United Kingdom expressed concerns about damning evidence that the death penalty could sometimes be administered in a discriminatory manner.
Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz recently wrote a commentary expressing his concerns about Kevin Cooper, a black California death row inmate facing execution for slaughtering four members of a white family in 1983, despite the troubling reality that the lone survivor told police the murderers were white.
Facts now establish that police destroyed blood-stained clothing evidence supplied by the girlfriend of one (white) man police never investigated, and that the prosecution's forensic witnesses falsified evidence against Cooper.
Dershowitz stated that the facts "do not add up" in the murder conviction of Cooper. He has asked outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant Cooper clemency. America's largest death row is in California, which has 697 persons facing execution.
U.S. representatives responding to their international critics stated that despite legitimate debate on the propriety of the death penalty, as a matter of law at the federal level and in 35 states, "that punishment is permitted," according to the draft report issued by the UN Human Rights Council.
While America's governmental scheme makes it structurally difficult for the federal government to outright ban states from conducting executions, the federal government could end its own use of the death penalty for federal crimes. The U.S. government death row holds nearly 70 persons.
One U.S. death-row inmate-Pennsylvania's "Death Row Journalist," Mumia Abu-Jamal-received mention by name in one recommendation. Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most well known of 25,000-plus under death sentence worldwide, observes the macabre anniversary of spending 29-years inside a death-row prison cell on December 9th.
Cuba called on the U.S. to "end the unjust incarceration of political prisoners including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal." Ample evidence supports international claims that Native American leader Peltier, repeatedly denied parole, and ex-Black Panther Abu-Jamal, are unjustly incarcerated for deaths involving law enforcement officers.
The issue of political prisoners in the U.S. is a subject generating interest internationally, yet it is an issue largely ignored by Americans, said Efia Nwangaza, a lawyer who attended that UN human rights review session held in Geneva, Switzerland.
"There are over 75 political prisoners in the U.S., most of them former Black Panther or Black Liberation Army people," said Nwangaza, a Philadelphia native now living in South Carolina, who helped prepare documentation on U.S. political prisoners for that UN review. "We've made progress through an admission by omission, with the U.S. not denying it has political prisoners."
In addition to criticisms about death penalty policies in the U.S., nations around the world raised concerns about racial profiling practices in America against blacks, Latinos and persons perceived as Muslim, inclusive of U.S. citizens, immigrants and visitors.
U.S. representatives, responding to criticisms about racial profiling, "assured delegations" that America "condemns racial and ethnic profiling in all forms," according to the Human Rights Council's report.
Ironically, even as U.S. representatives offered their assurances, the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a class-action lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department for racial profiling in that city where the U.S. Constitution was drafted and approved.
That lawsuit involves the police practice called "stop-and-frisk"-where police detain and search persons. This practice in Philadelphia impacted 253,333 persons in 2009-a 148-percent increase over 2005-with 72.2 percent of those subjected being blacks, who comprise 44 percent of that city's population, according to the lawsuit.
This dragnet-style policing only produced arrests in 8.4 percent of the "stops," with the majority of those arrests being for "interactions following the initial stop" like disorderly conduct and resisting arrest-i.e. alleged crimes that most likely resulted from legitimate objections to being stopped without cause.
One of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit is State Representative Jewell Williams, a veteran of 20-years in law enforcement work, who was roughed up by Philadelphia police in March 2009 while inquiring about a police stop of two 65-year-old black men during an encounter around the corner from Williams' house.
Exposing a paradox in America's race-based policing, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and the city's Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey (named in the ACLU lawsuit) are both black, but they back their stop-and-frisk policy, downplaying its demonstrable, racially-disproportionate impact.
"Mayor Nutter repeatedly promised that this policy [stop-and-frisk] would be carried out in a way that respected the Constitution," said Mary Catherine Roper, an ACLU-Pennsylvania staff attorney. "But instead of stopping people suspected of criminal activity, the police appear to be stopping people because of race."
Former Philadelphia Mayor John Street told ThisCantBeHappening! recently that the excessive stop-and-frisk practices are actually counter-productive to effective crime fighting because the practices alienate citizens that police need to assist in crime fighting.
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15) Framed for Murder?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
December 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1
"California may be about to execute an innocent man."
That's the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.
Mr. Cooper's impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it's up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper's sentence before leaving office.
This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983. Doug and Peggy Ryen were stabbed to death in their house, along with their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. The Ryens' 8-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. They were all white.
Josh initially told investigators that the crime had been committed by three people, all white, although by the trial he suggested that he had seen just one person with an Afro. The first version made sense because the weapons included a hatchet, an ice pick and one or two knives. Could one intruder juggling several weapons overpower five victims, including a 200-pound former Marine like Doug Ryen, who also had a loaded rifle nearby?
But the police learned that Mr. Cooper had walked away from the minimum security prison where he was serving a burglary sentence and had hidden in an empty home 125 yards away from the crime scene. The police decided that he had committed the crime alone.
William A. Fletcher, a federal circuit judge, explained his view of what happens in such cases in a law school lecture at Gonzaga University, in which he added that Mr. Cooper is "probably" innocent: "The police are under heavy pressure to solve a high-profile crime. They know, or think they know, who did the crime. And they plant evidence to help their case along."
Judge Fletcher wrote an extraordinary judicial opinion - more than 100 pages when it was released - dissenting from the refusal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. The opinion is a 21st-century version of Émile Zola's famous "J'Accuse."
Mr. Fletcher, a well-respected judge and former law professor, was joined in his "J'Accuse" by four other circuit judges. Six more wrote their own dissents calling for the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case. But they fell just short of the votes needed for rehearing.
Judge Fletcher laid out countless anomalies in the case. Mr. Cooper's blood showed up on a beige T-shirt apparently left by a murderer near the scene, but that blood turned out to have a preservative in it - the kind of preservative used by police when they keep blood in test tubes.
Then a forensic scientist found that a sample from the test tube of Mr. Cooper's blood held by police actually contained blood from more than one person. That leads Mr. Cooper's defense team and Judge Fletcher to believe that someone removed blood and then filled the tube back to the top with someone else's blood.
The police also ignored other suspects. A woman and her sister told police that a housemate, a convicted murderer who had completed his sentence, had shown up with several other people late on the night of the murders, wearing blood-spattered overalls and driving a station wagon similar to the one stolen from the murdered family.
They said that the man was no longer wearing the beige T-shirt he had on earlier in the evening - the same kind as the one found near the scene. And his hatchet, which resembled the one found near the bodies, was missing from his tool area. The account was supported by a prison confession and by witnesses who said they saw a similar group in blood-spattered clothes in a nearby bar that night. The women gave the bloody overalls to the police for testing, but the police, by now focused on Mr. Cooper, threw the overalls in the trash.
This case is a travesty. It underscores the central pitfall of capital punishment: no system is fail-safe. How can we be about to execute a man when even some of America's leading judges believe he has been framed?
Lanny Davis, who was the White House counsel for President Bill Clinton, is representing Mr. Cooper pro bono. He laments: "The media and the bar have gone deaf and silent on Kevin Cooper. My simple theory: heinous brutal murder of white family and black convict. Simple as that."
That's a disgrace that threatens not only the life of one man, but the honor of our judicial system. Governor Schwarzenegger, are you listening?
Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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16) Web Attackers Find a Cause in WikiLeaks
By NOAM COHEN
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/10wiki.html?ref=world
They got their start years ago as cyberpranksters, an online community of tech-savvy kids more interested in making mischief than political statements.
But the coordinated attacks on major corporate and government Web sites in defense of WikiLeaks, which began on Wednesday and continued on Thursday, suggested that the loosely organized group called Anonymous might have come of age, evolving into one focused on more serious matters: in this case, the definition of Internet freedom.
While the attacks on such behemoths as MasterCard, Visa and PayPal were not nearly as sophisticated as some less publicized assaults, they were a step forward in the group's larger battle against what it sees as increasing control of the Internet by corporations and governments. This week they found a cause and an icon: Julian Assange, the former hacker who founded WikiLeaks and is now in a London jail at the request of the Swedish authorities investigating him on accusations of rape.
"This is kind of the shot heard round the world - this is Lexington," said John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization that advocates for a freer Internet.
On Thursday, the police in the Netherlands took the first official action against the campaign, detaining a 16-year-old student in his parents' home in The Hague who they said admitted to participating in attacks on MasterCard and Visa. The precise nature of his involvement was unclear, but in past investigations, the authorities have sometimes arrested those unsophisticated enough not to cover their tracks on the Web.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Mr. Assange, 39, said he strongly denied that he had encouraged any attacks on behalf of WikiLeaks.
"It is absolutely false," the lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in London on Thursday. "He did not make any such instruction, and indeed he sees that as a deliberate attempt to conflate hacking organizations" with "WikiLeaks, which is not a hacking organization. It is a news organization and a publisher."
Although Anonymous remains shadowy and without public leaders, it developed a loose hierarchy in recent years as it took on groups as diverse as the Church of Scientology and the Motion Picture Association of America.
The coordination and the tactics developed in those campaigns appeared to make this week's attacks more powerful, allowing what analysts believe is a small group to enlist thousands of activists to bombard Web sites with traffic, making them at least temporarily inaccessible. Experts say the group appears to have used more sophisticated software this time that allowed supporters to repeatedly visit the sites at a specific time when the command was given.
The Twitter account identified with the Anonymous movement contained messages with little more than the words "Fire now."
The attacks thus far have been of limited effect, shutting down the MasterCard Web site, not its online transactions.
But to security experts and people who have tracked or participated in the Anonymous movement, they indicated a step forward for cyberanarchists railing against the "elites" - corporations and governments with power over both the machinery and, critics increasingly argue, the content on the Web.
"In the past, Anonymous made quite a lot of noise but did little damage," said Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer at Imperva, a California-based security technology company. "It's different this time around. They are starting to use the same tools that industrial hackers are using."
Despite the name, Anonymous can be found in many locations and formats. Members converse in online forums and chat rooms where friendships and alliances often build.
"It's the first place I go when I turn on my computer," said one Anonymous activist, reached on an online chat service, who did not want to be named discussing the structure of the organization.
Groups of these friends, who form new conversations, or threads, sometimes decide on a topic or an issue that they feel is deserving of more attention, the activist said.
"You post things, discuss ideas and that leads to putting out a video or a document" for a campaign. In the case of WikiLeaks, the activist said, it appears that two groups decided almost simultaneously to mount a concerted effort against the site's enemies.
"I got e-mailed these two links on Sunday or Monday," he said. Denouncing "what's being done to Julian and WikiLeaks," he said, he decided to join in.
These ideas bubble up, but ultimately a small group decides exactly what affiliated site should be attacked and when, according to a Dutch writer on the Anonymous movement, who writes a blog under the name Ernesto Van der Sar. There is a chat room "that is invite only, with a dozen or so people," he said, that pick the targets and the time of attack.
He described the typical Anonymous member as young; he guessed 18 to 24 years old.
While Anonymous has recently had success with attacks on sites related to copyright infringement cases, the WikiLeaks cause has brought a much greater intensity to its efforts.
The campaigns are part of Operation Payback, created in the summer to defend a file-sharing site in Sweden that counts itself part of the mission of keeping the Internet unfettered and unfiltered and that was singled out by the authorities.
"We could move against enemies of WikiLeaks so easily because there was already a network up and running, there was already a chat room for people to meet in," said Gregg Housh, an activist who has been involved in Anonymous campaigns but disavows a personal role in any illegal online activity.
The software used to coordinate the attacks is being downloaded about 1,000 times per hour, with about one-third of those downloads coming from the United States. Recently the software was improved so that a command could be sent to a supporter's computers and the attack would begin - no human needed.
But even Mr. Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation appeared to have second thoughts about where such escalation could lead: On Thursday, he said that the Anonymous group members represented "a stunning force in the world.
"But still," he said, it is "better used to open, not to close." He added that he opposed denial-of-service attacks on principle: "It's like the poison gas of cyberspace. The fundamental principle should be to open things up and not close them."
Things were hardly so serious when Anonymous first made a name for itself. The group grew out of online message boards like 4chan, an unfiltered meeting place with more than its share of misanthropic behavior and schemes.
Mr. Housh said of Anonymous: "It was deliberately not for any good. We kind of took pride in it."
That changed when Mr. Housh and a few dozen others were incensed by the Church of Scientology's attempt to use copyright law to remove a long video in which the actor Tom Cruise had spoken about church beliefs.
With its work on behalf of WikiLeaks, Anonymous has found a much more high-profile cause. As the campaign expands, many fear a more contentious Internet as governments and businesses respond to more serious attacks by activists who benefit from improvements in bandwidth and readily available hacking tools.
"Home field advantage goes to the attacker," said Gunter Ollmann, vice president of research at Damballa, an Atlanta-based firm that specializes in Internet protection. "With a little bit of coordination and growing numbers of participants, these things will continue to happen regularly."
Reporting was contributed by John Markoff and Ashlee Vance from San Francisco, Ravi Somaiya from London and Marlise Simons from Paris.
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17) Protesters Attack Car Carrying Prince Charles
"The Cameron government has cut university funding by about 80 percent, shifting the burden to the students."
By JOHN F. BURNS
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10britain.html?ref=world
LONDON - Britain's coalition government survived the most serious challenge yet to its austerity plans on Thursday when Parliament narrowly approved a sharp increase in college fees. But violent student protests in central London, including an attack on a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, to the theater, provided a stark measure of growing public resistance.
The 62-year-old heir to the British throne and his 63-year-old wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, were said by palace officials to have been unharmed in the episode. The confrontation occurred when a group of about 50 protesters, some in full-face balaclavas, broke through a cordon of motorcycle police flanking the car as it approached London's theater district in slow-speed traffic. Some of the demonstrators shouted "off with their heads!" and others "Tory scum!"
A photograph of the couple, in formal evening dress, showed them registering shock as protesters beat on the side of their armored, chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with sticks and bottles, smashing a side window, denting a rear panel and splashing the car with white paint. A Jaguar tailing the car and carrying a palace security detail was so battered that the police ended up using its doors as shields.
Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack on the royal couple's car "shocking and regrettable."
Other violence across the city center continued into the night, with demonstrators trying to smash their way into the Treasury building at the heart of the Whitehall government district with makeshift rams made from steel crowd barriers, shouting "We want our money back!" The protesters set small fires and clashed with riot police officers and mounted units that formed cordons outside government buildings. BBC reporters at the scene wore helmets as the rioters threw shattered blocks of steel-reinforced concrete.
Scotland Yard said at mid-evening that at least 12 police officers were injured, six of them seriously, including one who was taken unconscious to the hospital after falling or being pulled off his horse. At that point, one large fire was still burning in front of the Palace of Westminster, seat of the House of Commons. At the height of the unrest, rioters threw snooker balls, lighted flares and fireworks at the police, and tried to topple statues in Westminster Square, across from the Commons. At least 43 were arrested.
The violence provided a disturbing backdrop to the day's political events, which were themselves a watershed moment for the seven-month-old coalition government of Mr. Cameron. Ahead of the parliamentary vote on the college fee increase, the government confronted a difficult rupture as the Liberal Democrats, who are the coalition's junior partners, split among themselves, raising questions over the coalition's long-term survival.
Although half of the Liberal bloc in the House of Commons voted against the tuition fee increase, the coalition won the vote by a margin of 323 to 302 votes. The 21-vote margin was far short of the coalition's nominal 84-vote majority, and threatened at one point to dwindle even further as Liberal leaders considered abstaining in a bid to keep their party together. In the end, the Liberal leader Nick Clegg and other Liberal ministers voted for the increase, though two Liberal ministerial aides resigned.
Without the continued backing of the Liberals, Mr. Cameron's Conservatives would likely have to face a new election, with no certainty they could win a contest that would be sure to center on the austerity program.
The Labour Party, loser in the May election, has a new leader in Ed Miliband, who replaced the former prime minister, Gordon Brown. It has focused its stand on opposition to the scale of the spending cuts, saying they hit hardest at the poor and risk pitching Britain back into recession.
Recent weeks have seen other occasions when street protests have spilled over into violence, but nothing on the scale of Thursday's unrest, which was punctuated by the unexpected and, many said, ill-advised appearance of Prince Charles and Camilla in the midst of the uproar.
A witness at the scene described the royal vehicle turning up Regent Street, one of London's main shopping thoroughfares, and heading into a crowd of protesters massed across the street, some of them smashing shop windows and setting fires. "I thought it was mad of them to head up Regent Street, because there were thousands of protesters at the top of the street, and the car was heading straight into them," the witness told the BBC.
He said Prince Charles and the duchess remained in their vehicle throughout and ultimately relaxed after a moment when the duchess, looking terrified, slid into the footwell beside the door. "He remained absolutely calm, he was beaming, as Camilla was," the witness said. "People were just trying to have a chat with them."
When the car moved on to the London Palladium, where Prince Charles and his wife were the guests of honor at an annual pre-Christmas variety show, photographs showed the royal couple smiling broadly. "There's a first time for everything," the duchess told reporters before the couple drove off in an armored police truck after the performance.
Student protests have been a vehicle for wider popular resistance to the 20 percent across-the-board cuts in government spending announced by the Cameron government in October, with tens of thousands of young people angered by a doubling, or potentially even a tripling, of government-regulated tuition fees, to a maximum of about $14,200 a year.
Under the new fees, which are to take effect in 2012, many students are expected to accumulate loans of as much as £40,000, about $63,000, during a three-year degree course. Part of what has stoked anger over the increases is that Britain's universities traditionally charged no tuition fees, with tuition costs met out of taxpayer grants to colleges or endowment funds.
The Labour government stirred its own wave of protest under Prime Minister Tony Blair, imposing a tuition fee ceiling of about $5,200. The Cameron government has cut university funding by about 80 percent, shifting the burden to the students.
The street clashes on Thursday raised concerns that the protests could be the template for even wider disturbances in the future, as the spending cuts and expected job losses begin to bite. The Liberals, with 57 parliamentary seats to the Conservatives' 308, had promised during the May election not to support a tuition fee increase, but made a U-turn once in government, saying the size of the deficit inherited from Labour made the increases necessary. With the Conservatives, they drew up a new schedule for the repayment of government-backed student loans, saying students will not have to begin paying back the loans until they earn at least $33,100.
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18) Spain to Seek Prison Time for Striking Air Controllers
By RAPHAEL MINDER
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/europe/10iht-spain.html?ref=world
MADRID - Spain's attorney general said Thursday that he would recommend prison sentences of as long as eight years for air traffic controllers found guilty of staging an illegal strike that shut down airports around the country last weekend.
Underlining the authorities' determination to set a strong precedent and avoid any repeat of such wildcat action, Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido also insisted that, while the strike's leadership would most likely face the toughest sentencing, he would seek terms of at least three years for all those responsible for a chaotic weekend that affected about 650,000 passengers.
"This is a very serious crime," he told reporters. "We're talking about paralyzing an essential public service."
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero explained before Parliament his government's decision to call an unprecedented state of alarm as a response to the strike, which he called "open rebellion against the state of law" and "a calamity."
The state of alarm, which was decreed Saturday and has left Spain's air traffic control under military supervision, is set to last 15 days. Mr. Zapatero, however, did not rule out prolonging it beyond that deadline, which could help avoid further disruption over the Christmas vacation period.
"What we are judging today is neither a labor conflict nor a strike, but an act of disobedience and a challenge to the democratic order," Mr. Zapatero said. "The state can respond to a blackmail situation."
The controllers' main labor union presented an appeal to the Supreme Court on Thursday against the decision to decree a state of alarm. The union has apologized to Spaniards for the strike but also maintained that the government has been using excessive and unconstitutional means in a yearlong dispute to force them to work longer and for less money.
The first group of 12 controllers summoned by the attorney general's office in Madrid refused to provide evidence Thursday, arguing that, given the military's intervention, they should be heard instead by a military judge.
The government's disputed measures include raising controllers' normal working hours to 1,670 hours a year, from 1,200 hours, and cutting their average annual salary to €200,000, or $263,000, from €350,000. In comparison, German controllers earn on average €150,000 a year, and British controllers €120,000.
Mr. Zapatero seems to have won widespread support for his tough response, and lawmakers from opposition parties broadly endorsed the military intervention.
Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Popular Party, the main opposition, did criticize the government for not resolving the labor dispute earlier. "Declaring the state of alarm amounts to a declaration of impotence," Mr. Rajoy told Parliament.
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19) Jury Convicts 3 Officers in Post-Katrina Death
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/us/10katrina.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS - More than five years after a man named Henry Glover was shot and his body burned here by police officers in the days after Hurricane Katrina, a jury has weighed in on the circumstances of his death. Three police officers were found guilty Thursday night on nine federal counts in an emotionally charged case that painted a grim portrait of the city's troubled Police Department.
David Warren, a former police officer, was found guilty of manslaughter in the shooting of Mr. Glover; Officer Gregory McRae was convicted of obstructing justice and other charges for burning Mr. Glover's body; and Lt. Travis McCabe was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice for drawing up a false police report.
Two other police officers were found not guilty on various counts. The mixed verdict, returned by the jury after nearly three days of deliberation, left relatives and friends of Mr. Glover with an incomplete sense of vindication.
"All of them should have been found guilty," said Rebecca Glover, Mr. Glover's aunt, as she left the courtroom. "They all participated in this. How are you going to let them go free?"
This was the first trial of an untold number of New Orleans officers being investigated by the federal authorities. There are at least eight other such investigations into actions by the city Police Department, including one into shootings on the Danziger Bridge on Sept 4, 2005, that left two civilians dead and six wounded.
Six police officers who were indicted in that case face trial, four of them charged in connection with the deaths. Five other officers have pleaded guilty. One of them, Michael Hunter, was sentenced to eight years in prison last week.
The horrific nature of some of the actions being investigated, as well as the city's stubborn crime rate, led the Justice Department to begin conducting a full scale review of the department in May.
Few of the criminal cases contain such grisly details as the one involving Mr. Glover, which remained uninvestigated for years despite repeated inquiries by his family. In late 2008, an article about the killing was published by The Nation, in a joint investigative project with ProPublica. Federal investigators began looking into the case shortly afterward.
Preparing to leave the city, Mr. Glover, 31, and a friend drove in a stolen truck to a strip mall in the Algiers neighborhood, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. They had come to pick up suitcases that had been looted from the mall but left behind earlier, prosecutors said.
Mr. Warren, who was patrolling the strip mall - which was being used as a detective bureau - shot Mr. Glover, who was unarmed. Mr. Warren claimed at trial that he had fired in self-defense, and that he had perceived something in Mr. Glover's hand. His partner testified that he shot him in the back. Mr. Glover, his shirt covered in blood, was picked up by a stranger, William Tanner, who drove him, his brother and a friend to an elementary school that was being used as headquarters for a police special operations division.
There, Mr. Tanner says, he was beaten by Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and Officer McRae, though they were both found not guilty on this count. Officer McRae did not deny taking Mr. Tanner's car, with Mr. Glover's body inside, and driving it to a levee behind a police substation. There, Mr. McRae used flares to set afire the car and the body.
The other two defendants, Robert Italiano, a retired lieutenant, and Lieutenant McCabe, were charged with creating a false report to cover up the killing. Lieutenant Italiano was found not guilty.
All of the testimony was haunted by the specter of Hurricane Katrina, and a debate about the nature of law and order within catastrophe.
"When you take into account reasonable versus unreasonable," Rick Simmons, who represents Mr. Warren, said in his closing arguments, "you have to take into consideration the conditions under which he was living."
But prosecutors, who described Mr. Warren as zealously looking for an opportunity to use his expensive personal assault rifle, said that even under the harrowing conditions after the hurricane, the rule of law was never abandoned.
"Hurricane Katrina didn't turn petty theft into a capital offense," said Jared Fishman, a federal prosecutor in his closing arguments.
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20) New York City Sues State Over the Cost of Housing Juveniles in Prisons
By DAVID W. CHEN
December 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/nyregion/10juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
Taking a contentious step intended to shake up the state's troubled juvenile prison system, New York City is suing the state, claiming it overcharged tens of millions of dollars a year for housing many of the city's young offenders in upstate jails.
The suit, which was filed last month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, surprised and incensed state officials, who had been trying for months to hammer out an agreement on the issue with the Bloomberg administration.
It is unusual, lawyers said, for the city to sue the state, especially over a budget dispute. But the suit reflects the severity of the impasse in an increasingly urgent debate over how to improve New York's system of juvenile prisons.
A state task force reported a year ago that young people battling addiction or mental illness were often grouped with violent offenders in substandard facilities where physical abuse is routine and counseling rare.
A suit brought by the Legal Aid Society in federal court last December contended that the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs the prisons, had failed to offer adequate mental health services. In July, the state agreed to place four of its most dangerous youth prisons under federal oversight.
What makes the city's lawsuit different is that it throws into public view an arcane but contentious budget process. The timing could not be more delicate, since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made the issue of improving the juvenile justice system a high priority, as has the governor-elect, Andrew M. Cuomo.
Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who is a member of the state task force, said the lawsuit brought the issue "out of the twilight and into the spotlight."
To city officials, the lawsuit is an unfortunate but necessary step to prod the state into acting more responsibly and to give Mr. Bloomberg more control over the city's juvenile offenders. The city would like the state to speed up its efforts to transfer more juveniles from remote state facilities to local programs that advocates for young offenders say are more effective in reducing recidivism.
"We don't particularly like leading this fight on a complaint about the cost," Deputy Mayor Linda I. Gibbs said. "But we have to use every tool that we have, because the way that the current system works makes it impossible to say that you're using taxpayer money most effectively.
"Our frustration is over the state's reluctance to act and putting special interests before the best interests of the kids."
In a statement, Susan Steele, a spokeswoman for the state's Office of Children and Family Services, said that since the city opted to sue, the state agency "cannot comment or discuss specifics that could influence the outcome of the litigation."
"We will let the legal process unfold and await the outcome," she continued.
Privately, though, state officials say that they were taken aback.
"We're very surprised that the city resorted to this, because a lawsuit is not the best vehicle to engage in conversation," said one high-ranking state official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the litigation. The official said the city's tactics seemed to be intended to force the state to bargain.
The state is expected to respond formally to the lawsuit by January.
State law requires the state to split the total costs of holding juvenile offenders with local governments. The state sets a per diem rate each year for services, like foster care, secure and less-restrictive residential services and community residential facilities for those offenders.
In the last decade, the number of youths sent to the state's juvenile centers has dropped to roughly 700 - 400 of whom are from New York City - from 2,300. Yet, according to the lawsuit, the per diem rates for services have more than tripled. As a result, the city is actually spending more money now - $62 million - than it did a decade ago, even though there are far fewer youths in the system. Part of what the city wants is a recalculation of those rates.
The suit claims that rate increases over the years "divert city funds that would otherwise be available to expand and provide these services to pay instead for a costly idle system."
The Bloomberg administration has become more interested in the state's youth prisons. In January, the mayor announced that the city's Department of Juvenile Justice would be folded into the Administration for Children's Services so the city could offer more community-based services to juveniles who did not pose a risk to public safety.
"The bottom line for us is we feel that we have demonstrated that local control works, because it preserves ties to family and education," said John Feinblatt, the mayor's chief adviser for policy and strategic planning.
The state does not disagree with those general goals. Gladys Carrion, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, has been praised by advocates for troubled youths for moving aggressively to close 16 youth prisons, reduce the number of youths in state custody and limit the use of force on those who remain.
Mr. Cuomo visited the Tryon Residential Center for Boys in Johnstown - which has recently had significantly more staff than prisoners - to call attention to what he views as wasteful spending.
But the state cannot close facilities rapidly because it must give a year's notice before juvenile detention centers or adult prisons can be shut down. Unions and upstate legislators have been resistant to such closings because the detention centers provide hundreds of jobs in economically distressed parts of the state.
Advocates for juveniles in the state system have mixed feelings about the lawsuit, but hope the city and the state can resolve their dispute quickly.
"What is fundamentally at stake in all juvenile justice reform transcends money," said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. "Given what we know about the current problems in both the city and state facilities, any juvenile justice system, regardless of who runs it, must include independent external monitoring and increased diversion.
"The well-being of young people and the safety of the public hang in the balance."
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21) Militarism as Cause and Consequence of Climate Change
Expulsion of Organizer from COP16 Leads to Cancellation of Press Conference from Climate SOS, Biofuel Watch, and Global Compliance Research Project
Contacts for media:
-Maggie Zhou, Ph.D. Climate SOS mzhou_us@yahoo.com, 1-781-316-8283, 52-9981083832 skype: mzhou_us
-Rachel Smolker, Ph.D. Biofuel Watch, and Climate SOS rsmolker@riseup.net, 1- 802 482 2848, 1- 802 735 7794
-Joan Russow, Ph.D. Global Compliance Research Project jrussow@gmail.com
PRESS RELEASE: Dec 10, 2010 VIA EMAIL
(Cancun, Dec 10, 2010): As climate negotiations in Cancun become increasingly chaotic and the outcomes uncertain, over 70 diverse environmental, peace and social justice organizations declare that on this 62nd International Human Rights Day, we must recognize that all efforts to address climate change or human rights will fail unless we contend with the "elephant in the living room": militarism, and a logic of Might is Right. The group sent their statement (available at www.climatesos.org) to delegates at the COP16, and to president Obama. On the same website is a factsheet with detailed resources on this topic.
A press conference scheduled for today inside the COP16 had to be cancelled, because its main organizer, Dr. Maggie Zhou, a biologist with Climate SOS, was expelled from the UN climate conference, due to supposedly showing 'disrespect' to UN security by demanding an explanation when her badge was forcefully snatched away on Tuesday, following her very marginal participation in a peaceful, non-disruptive demonstration on the conference grounds. The majority of other participants had their badges returned. An interview with Zhou is still on the official UNFCCC website (http://www.climate-change.tv/maggie-zhou-december-2010), as of the time of this release.
According to Zhou's article published in today's Alter-ECO newsletter (issue #4, see www.climate-justice-now.org), USA alone spends well over $1 trillion/year on military related expenses, magnitudes higher than the climate 'assistance' of $10 billion/y for 2010-2012, or $100 billion/y by 2020, from all developed countries combined! Worse, these climate 'aid' pledges under the Copenhagen Accord will come mostly as loan guarantees, private investments for profit, and even recycled aid commitments. She added: "President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace prize exactly one year ago, although it has done nothing to stop him from further increasing the U.S.'s military budget."
"Using military force to control access to oil and other resources, at the expense of millions of lives and countless misery, is a clear violation of human rights, while refusing to take strong action on climate change and repay climate debt directly threatens with extinction-scale global human rights violation (the UN high commission has recognized climate change as a direct human rights threat)", she continued.
The human toll of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere have been horrific, but extend even further than usually acknowledged: a UN environmental report about the first Gulf War for example, points to the damage inflicted by 70-ton tanks like the M-1 Abrams on the ecology of the desert: Approximately 50% of Kuwait's land area has had its fragile soil surface destroyed as scores of tanks moved out of that country each day, headed for Iraq. This kind of damage to landscapes, along with chemical and radioactive contamination from military operations leaves a legacy of disease, poverty, hunger, and death.
Dr. Rachel Smolker, an ecologist with Biofuewatch observed: "The magnitude of the world's military funding belies the claim that strong climate actions (or even the extremely weak targets as the current pledges) must depend on profit-driven carbon markets and the commodification of the global commons. While trillions are offered for ongoing warfare, funding to protect forests is made dependent on programs like REDD (which threatens the rights of millions of indigenous peoples, on top of merely providing polluters an "offset" substitute for reducing their own emissions), and mitigation efforts are focused on false solutions like large scale biofuels (which threaten agriculture, water and land resources, and lead to further deforestation), and Carbon Capture and Sequestration (which enables continued reliance on fossil fuels, and creates an extremely dangerous time bomb, given that storage formations will eventually, inevitably leak, or even, heaven forbid, abruptly fail.)"
The US military is also the world's largest institutional source of greenhouse gases (equipping, manning, training, and transporting for military operations and bases, patrolling oil shipping routes for what's dubbed "oil protection service", etc.), while causing massive ecosystem destruction worldwide. According to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon, who refers to fuel consumption in terms of "gallons per mile," "gallons per minute," and "barrels per hour." Yet, none of this was discussed in any climate negotiations.
According to Dr. Joan Russow, of Global Compliance Research Project, "The US military operates in the shadows of climate negotiations, having demanded that their emissions be exempted from scrutiny or regulation. This absolutely cannot continue: the climate crisis has reached the point where all of life - now and for future generations - is threatened. We cannot just ignore the largest polluter on earth, fight more wars over access to oil, and continue to feed this vicious cycle!"
Ironically, even the Pentagon recognizes that climate change is a "threat multiplier", that will result in mass migrations, and far more wars and conflicts, threatening US "national security". But their response is more of the same: build up fortress America, and run the military on liquefied coal and biofuels to reduce reliance on foreign oil. Their total disregard for human rights around the world is apparent from a 2003 Pentagon report, which calculated dispassionately: "Deaths from war as well as starvation and disease will decrease population size, which overtime, will re-balance with carrying capacity."
"What the imperialist warlords don't understand", said Zhou, "is that no one nation or elite class can survive the climate catastrophe without saving the planet as a whole, given the multitude of interconnectedness of the earth's eco- and geophysical/chemical/climate systems. In fact, allowing massive suffering in 'unimportant' regions will logically lead to further decimation of ecosystems and the transfer of their biomass carbon into the atmosphere, as people will be driven to seeking out the last of water and sustenance amid crop failures, droughts and wildfires... We are literally one people, sharing one fate. Human rights is not only a moral issue, it has very sound physical and existential basis."
The groups demand an end to militarism, that the impacts of militarism be fully and transparently assessed, and that the multi-trillion USD world military budgets be redirected towards domestic and international obligations to ensure adequate human rights, and enabling real solutions to the climate crisis.
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22) Thousands of Georgia Prisoners go on Strike
Contributed by: Anonymous
Friday, December 10 2010 @ 05:07 PM UTC
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101210170702158
In an action which is unprecedented on several levels, black, brown and white inmates of Georgia's notorious state prison system are standing together for a historic one day peaceful strike today, during which they are remaining in their cells, refusing work and other assignments and activities. This is a groundbreaking event not only because inmates are standing up for themselves and their own human rughts, but because prisoners are setting an example by reaching across racial boundaries which, in prisons, have historically been used to pit oppressed communities against each other.
Thousands of Georgia Prisoners go on Strike
December 9th, 2010
Georgia, USA
In an action which is unprecedented on several levels, black, brown and white inmates of Georgia's notorious state prison system are standing together for a historic one day peaceful strike today, during which they are remaining in their cells, refusing work and other assignments and activities. This is a groundbreaking event not only because inmates are standing up for themselves and their own human rughts, but because prisoners are setting an example by reaching across racial boundaries which, in prisons, have historically been used to pit oppressed communities against each other.
The action is taking place today in at least half a dozen of Georgia's more than one hundred state prisons, correctional facilities, work camps, county prisons and other correctional facilities. We have unconfirmed reports that authorities at Macon State prison have aggressively responded to the strike by sending tactical squads in to rough up and menace inmates.
Outside calls from concerned citizens and news media will tend to stay the hand of prison authorities who may tend to react with reckless and brutal aggression. So calls to the warden's office of the following Georgia State Prisons expressing concern for the welfare of the prisoners during this and the next few days are welcome.
Macon State Prison is 978-472-3900.
Hays State Prison is at (706) 857-0400
Telfair State prison is 229-868-7721
Baldwin State Prison is at (478) 445- 5218
Valdosta State Prison is 229-333-7900
Smith State Prison is at (912) 654-5000
The Georgia Department of Corrections is at http://www.dcor.state.ga.us and their phone number is 478-992-5246
Prisoner leaders issued the following call: "No more slavery. Injustice in one place is injustice to all. Inform your family to support our cause. Lock down for liberty!" The prisoners have also set forth the following demands: ·
A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free. ·
EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society. ·
DECENT HEALTH CARE: In violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering. ·
AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: In further violation of the 8th Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules. ·
DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer. ·
NUTRITIONAL MEALS: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful. ·
VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise. ·
ACCESS TO FAMILIES: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation. ·
JUST PAROLE DECISIONS: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.
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23) Activists Say Web Assault for Assange Is Expanding
By RAVI SOMAIYA
December 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11anonymous.html?ref=world
LONDON - The online activist group Anonymous, which has been waging a campaign of cyberattacks in defense of WikiLeaks, opened new offensives on Friday as Internet security experts said that tens of thousands more supporters had downloaded the attack software in the days since the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, was jailed in Britain.
The Web site for Moneybookers, a British PayPal competitor that ceased dealings with WikiLeaks in recent days, was under attack on Friday, according to members of Anonymous who were reached by e-mail and online chat services and who asked for anonymity in discussing activity that could be illegal. Independent Internet security analysts confirmed the accounts.
Amazon.com, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal are among the other commercial sites that, after halting their dealings with WikiLeaks, have been struggling with overwhelming demands for access that have crashed or drastically slowed their sites.
Some governmental sites have also been hit. On Friday, Dutch prosecutors said their Web site had been overwhelmed in attacks they connected to their arrest of a 16-year-old in The Hague on Thursday, Reuters reported. The police said the teenager had admitted to aiding in the attacks on MasterCard and Visa. He has been ordered to spend 13 days in custody while the case is being examined, according to Reuters.
The attackers - operating by the thousands behind the shroud of the Internet - are rallying behind Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks as champions of freedom of information, and are defying those who they believe are influenced by the American government to halt the disclosures of classified documents.
That belief appears to be broadening, despite denials from the companies, the American government and the Swedish prosecutors seeking to question Mr. Assange on accusations of sexual coercion.
An international Internet security company, Imperva, said Friday that until Tuesday there had been less than 1,000 daily downloads of the Anonymous software used against Moneybookers and in other attacks. That was when Mr. Assange was jailed in Britain on an extradition warrant in the Swedish case. The number of downloads then leaped to about 10,000 a day, most coming from the United States, it said.
The United States government has been looking into ways to pursue prosecutions over the leaks, and on Friday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the Justice Department was investigating the Web attacks as well, Reuters reported.
But Mr. Holder also added to the denials that American pressure was behind the moves against Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks, telling reporters in San Francisco, "We have not pressured anybody to do anything."
Paul Mutton, a Web security analyst with the British firm netcraft, said that the attackers were not being as invisible as they might hope. "Maybe people taking part think they're just downloading software," he said, "but they are doing something illegal, and particularly if they have a high-bandwidth Internet connection, they may be found."
In conversations late Thursday, several of the group's members said that support for the campaign was growing significantly beyond the 1,000 or so core activists who began it last weekend with the release of two manifestos. Many of the new attackers, they said, are ordinary people using available tools to defend the right to information.
"We're technically not hackers, though we do have some professionals on board," one said. "We're mostly normal people, we have doctors and lawyers and guys who work at McDonald's."
He said, "We see WikiLeaks as a litmus test for freedom of speech."
Previous high-profile campaigns by Anonymous, most notably against the Church of Scientology in 2008 and 2009, put enough infrastructure in place for the group to be able to handle the rush of new supporters, said Gregg Housh, a member of the group who helped instigate that campaign but who disavowed any personal illegal action.
"There are propaganda people and programming people and different groups with different levels of engagement," he said.
In the campaign in defense of WikiLeaks, those groups are marshaled by five to 10 core members who occupy a private chat room on an Anonymous online forum, according to group members.
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24) After Attack on Royal Limo, Questions and Reproach
By RAVI SOMAIYA and ELISSA GOOTMAN
December 10, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11royal.html?ref=world
LONDON - The British police promised an investigation into the attack on a limousine carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, while security experts and the news media raised questions Friday about how the royal couple were placed into the potentially dangerous situation.
Dozens of protesters broke through a cordon of police motorcycles on Thursday to smash and deface the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI that was carrying the prince and his wife. The demonstrators dented a rear panel, splattered the glossy dark brown exterior with white paint, pelted the car with sticks and bottles, and smashed a side window. Some yelled, "Off with their heads!"
Photographs splashed across the front pages of newspapers on Friday showed the couple, who were on their way to a royal gala, in the back seat wearing formal attire, mouths agape, as the car crawled through the theater district in London.
The public initially was sympathetic to the trapped and terrified couple. But by Friday, the reaction had turned into criticism and recriminations, with questions raised about why the couple were not riding in an armored car, why they took the route they did and why, once crowds of angry youths were visible, they kept to their route.
"Prince Charles and Camilla's Rolls-Royce was wrong car," declared a headline in The Telegraph. "Could Charles and Camilla have been better protected?" asked a headline on the Web site of the BBC.
The police focused on the protesters, thousands of whom were demonstrating against a sharp increase in college tuition fees. More than 50 people were injured, according to news reports, and 33 protesters were arrested, the police said.
The Metropolitan Police force said Friday that it had opened a "major investigation" into the attack and into "all of the circumstances behind the violent disorder." Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted to make sure "the people who behaved in these appalling ways feel the full force of the law of the land."
But the stately vintage vehicle, a gift to the queen, was not armored and, The Telegraph reported, was "designed to give the public the best possible view of members of the royal family."
Ken Wharfe, a former royal protection police officer, said it was "old, heavy, has a poor turning circle and has no protective qualities." The route, he wrote in The London Evening Standard, "was dangerous and should have been avoided."
The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, said the route had been checked "several minutes beforehand" and had been clear.
"The unpredictability of thugs and how they moved about the capital meant the protection officers were placed in a very difficult position," he said. He praised the officers for showing restraint and keeping their guns holstered.
Witnesses said the car continued toward the crowd, even after it was apparent that the road was blocked with protesters. But from videos of the episode, it appeared that by then there may have been no way to turn back.
Charles and Camilla, who eventually arrived unscathed at their destination, an annual pre-Christmas variety show at the London Palladium, had nothing but praise for the police.
"Their Royal Highnesses totally understand the difficulties which the police face," a spokesman said, "and are always very grateful to the police for the job they do in often very challenging circumstances."
Ravi Somaiya reported from London, and Elissa Gootman from New York.
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25) Activists Target Dutch Website After Boy Arrested
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:11 p.m. ET
December 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/12/11/technology/tech-us-wikileaks.html?src=busln
LONDON (Reuters) - Cyber activists attacking organizations seen as foes of WikiLeaks briefly blocked a Dutch prosecution website on Friday after a 16-year-old suspected of involvement in the campaign was arrested in the Netherlands.
The activists also tried to block the website of online payment firm Moneybookers, but denied their attacks were intended to create business turmoil or badly disrupt online Christmas shopping.
Several companies have ended services to WikiLeaks after it published thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic reports that have caused tension between Washington and several of its allies.
The website continued its release of U.S. cables on Friday, with the latest reports including a prediction by the U.S. ambassador to Cairo that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would "inevitably" win 2011 elections and stay in office for life.
U.S. authorities said they had not pressured companies to stop working with WikiLeaks.
"We have not pressured anybody to do anything," Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters in San Francisco, where he was attending a financial fraud conference.
Holder said authorities were aware of the attacks and looking at them, pointing to a computer crimes section of the Justice Department that can "trace back" where the attacks originate.
A lawyer for Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website, told ABC News in London she expected U.S. prosecutors would indict her client soon for espionage, but the report offered no further details or comment.
A U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawyer's prediction.
Dutch prosecutors said activists targeted their website with "denial-of-service" attacks that slowed it for several hours and briefly made it unavailable. The incident was probably related to the teenage boy's arrest, they said.
INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION
"We have been investigating this with international authorities and we are working together with the FBI," Dutch prosecution service spokesman Wim de Bruin said.
A Rotterdam judge ordered the boy, who was arrested in The Hague on Thursday, to spend 13 days in custody while the investigation continues, the prosecution service said.
The maximum prison sentence in the Netherlands for distributed denial-of-service attacks is six years, de Bruin said.
The suspect, whose identity was not disclosed, told investigators he participated in the attacks on the MasterCard and Visa websites, authorities said.
The attack on Moneybookers froze the site for about two minutes. Activists said they picked Moneybookers because it informed WikiLeaks in August it had closed its account. They promised to continue their attacks, and spoke of MasterCard and Interpol as fresh targets.
Some participants in a chat room used by the "Operation Payback" campaign were defiant, but others voiced despair at what they considered a lack of discipline.
"The whole thing is getting out of control, people are attacking local police websites and giving us a bad reputation. This was supposed to be to help WikiLeaks and not an excuse for kids to crash random websites," one wrote.
"SYMBOLIC ACTION"
Online retail and web-hosting powerhouse Amazon stopped hosting WikiLeaks' website last week, and on Thursday it briefly became the pro-WikiLeaks campaigners' main target -- before they admitted it was too big for them, for the moment.
The statement by the activists, who collectively call themselves "Anonymous," added that a lack of firepower was not the only reason the attack on Amazon had not succeeded. They felt "attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones, would be in bad taste."
The Anonymous statement followed one by WikiLeaks, which said the website had no links to the cyber attacks, and neither supported nor condemned them. It quoted WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson as saying the attacks were "a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets."
Some freedom of information campaigners sympathetic to WikiLeaks say its cause cannot be furthered by denying freedom of information to others. On an online chat service used by the campaign, participants debated whether to end the attacks and focus instead on discovering more embarrassing material in the leaked documents.
(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London, Marius Bosch in Johannesburg, Greg Roumeliotis in Amsterdam, Dan Levine in San Francisco and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; Writing by William Maclean and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Walsh and Peter Cooney)
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26) Following the Money, Doctors Ration Care
"Wealthy people will always be able to buy most of what they want. But for everyone else, if we stay on the current course, the lines are likely to get longer and longer."
By TYLER COWEN
December 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12view.html?src=busln
UNEQUAL access to health care is hardly a new phenomenon in the United States, but the country is moving toward rationing on a scale that is unprecedented here. Wealthy people will always be able to buy most of what they want. But for everyone else, if we stay on the current course, the lines are likely to get longer and longer.
The underlying problem is that doctors are reimbursed at different rates, depending on whether they see a patient with private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. As demand increases relative to supply, many doctors are likely to turn away patients whose coverage would pay the lower rates.
Let's see how this works. Medicare is the major federal health program for the elderly, who vote at high rates and are politically influential, and so it is relatively well financed. Medicaid, which serves poorer people, is paid for partly by state governments, and the poor have less political clout than the elderly, so it is less well financed. Depending on the state and on the malady, it is common for Medicaid to reimburse at only 40 percent to 80 percent the rate of Medicare. Private insurance pays more than either.
A result is that physicians often make Medicaid patients wait or refuse to see them altogether. Medicare patients are also beginning to face lines, as doctors increasingly prefer patients with private insurance.
Access to health care will become problematic, and not only because the population is aging and demand is rising. Unfortunately, the new health care legislation is likely to speed this process. Under the new law, tens of millions of additional Americans will receive coverage, through Medicaid or private insurance. The new recipients of private insurance will gain the most, but people previously covered through Medicaid will lose.
Ideally, higher demand for medical care would prompt increases in supply, which in turn would lower prices and expand access. But the health care sector does not always work this way.
Doctors are highly regulated and in that manner restricted in supply. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the United States could face a shortage of 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. To its credit, the new health care bill does improve incentives for general practitioners, but still, supply probably will not keep up with the crush of demand.
We could go further by giving greater scope to nurse practitioners, admitting more immigrant doctors, reforming malpractice law and allowing cheap, retail "Wal-Mart style" medical care, all to increase access and affordability. Yet these changes do not seem to be in the offing, so access is likely to decline.
The health care bill will further privilege private insurance coverage by offering many individuals new subsidies for its purchase. That will create incentives for employers to game the system, dropping or discouraging coverage and sending their workers to buy health insurance on the more expensive federally subsidized exchanges. That will strain the federal health care budget. This problem is outlined by Amy Monahan and Daniel Schwarcz, law professors at the University of Minnesota, in their new paper "Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?"
There is also the danger that a few governors with tight budgets will shirk their Medicaid responsibilities, with an eye toward sending potential recipients to the federally subsidized insurance exchanges. In both cases, the quest for a better deal will strain the federal budget.
The American system of federalism, with its checks and balances and slow policy evolution, has many strengths, but it has also helped create this crazy quilt of health care reimbursement rates. The more demand-side pressure is placed on medical supply, the more Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements rates will determine who and what is rationed.
One option is to simply allow budget pressures to dominate, forcing down even private insurance reimbursements. Most people would end up with low, Medicaid-like reimbursement rates, and would endure long waits and low-quality service. But wealthier people could jump the line by paying more. Think of "Medicaid for everyone" but the rich.
An alternative is giving most people means-tested vouchers for a fixed amount of insurance coverage - which can run out or face up-front caps - making Medicaid and Medicare less of a blank check. The cost explosion would be checked by shifting more of the burden onto consumers. We would have better incentives for consumer-oriented care, and cost control, but we would be making an explicit public decision, at some point or another, to let some people do without medical care.
Recently the Arizona state government restricted transplant coverage for Medicaid patients, but it remains to be seen whether such measures can be applied to Medicare recipients. President Obama already has reversed some of the planned, budget-saving cuts to Medicare.
AN entirely different approach is suggested by the system in Singapore, where the government requires savings (say 10 percent to 12 percent of income), patients pay for medical care from those savings, and the government takes care of additional catastrophic expenses. That system has a good record for cost control and access, but would Americans accept so much required saving?
The default course is to maintain or extend Medicare reimbursement rates, raise taxes considerably and accept that Medicaid recipients will face worsening health care access. If you hear of a new solution to the health care puzzle, put aside the politics and instead think through the endgame. Ask not about the rhetoric, but rather about the reimbursement rates.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
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27) 6 Companies That Haven't Wussed Out of Working with WikiLeaks
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on December 10, 2010, Printed on December 11, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149142/
Giants like PayPal, Amazon.com, Visa and MasterCard almost instantly crumbled under government (and p.r.) pressure to drop WikiLeaks, depriving the site of vital funding sources and online platforms. But other companies, some of them small, independent start-ups, have decided to risk the wrath of Joe Lieberman, the State Department, and their European counterparts and help keep WikiLeaks afloat by providing funding sources (yeah, you can now donate to WikiLeaks even if you only have Visa or MasterCard.) and hosting the site. Here's a list of companies that have stood by WikiLeaks:
1. Xipwire:
The Philly online payment company has announced that unlike PayPal they welcome customer donations to WikiLeaks. According to their site, they're even waiving fees and charges so that 100% of the money goes to the whistleblower site. "While people may or may not agree with WikiLeaks, we at XIPWIRE believe that anyone who wishes to support the organization through a donation should be able to do so," they say on their site. While the publicity advantages are obvious, there's also the threat of backlash. One of the founders told the tech blog BaltTech, "We're fully aware that not everyone likes what Wikileaks is. But we are prepared to accept the consequences."
(For the moment the money goes to an escrow account because they haven't been able to reach WikiLeaks.)
2. Flattr
Flattr, which was started by one of the founders of Pirate Bay, has also been funneling money to WikiLeaks. The site lets users put money into accounts; when they run into a website they want to support, they can click on their "flattr" button to donate money to site. According to TechCrunch, WikILeaks has used Flattr since August and received over 3,000 Flattr donations when they released the Afghanistan war diary.
3. Datacell
The Icelandic company processes debit and credit card donations to WikiLeaks, so Visa and Mastercards' recent decision to cut all donations to the site has not done great things for their business.
In a statement published on their site, CEO Andreas Fink slammed Visa for letting political considerations get in the way of customer service: "The suspension of payments towards Wikileaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers. Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to Wikileaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish."
Founder Ólafur Sigurvinsson pointed out in an interview with an Icelandic news channel, "I've got confirmed today that I am capable of supporting Al-Qaeda, Ku Klux Klan, buy weapons, drugs and all sorts of pornopraphy with a VISA card. But that's not being investigated. Instead I can not support a humanitarian organisation fighting for the freedom of speech."
4. OVH
WikiLeaks moved to the French data server OVH after getting kicked off Amazon. This did not sit well with French Industry Minister Eric Besson, who demanded that the site be purged from all French servers. Rather than instantly boot WikiLeaks offline, the company asked the courts to clarify Besson's order. Earlier this week a judge ruled that the French government had to actually prove that WikiLeaks broke the law, instead of just saying so and then trying to intimidate private companies. A company spokesperson said, "OVH is neither for nor against this site. Now that it's with us, we will fulfill the contract. That's our job."
5. Twitter
WikiLeaks relies on Twitter to communicate, and their account seems to be safe for now. The micro-blogging site has been accused of blocking #WikiLeaks and #Cablegate from the trending topics though, a claim they dispute.
6. Facebook
Facebook recently released a statement saying that they have no plans to delete the WikiLeaks account, which has 1,187,990 fans.
Tana Ganeva is an AlterNet editor. Follow her on Twitter. You can email her at tanaalternet@gmail.com.
(c) 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149142/
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