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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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ORGANIZING MEETING FOR MARCH 19 MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.
[See call for March 19 immediately below...bw]
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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[StopFBI-National] Jan. 25: Protest FBI and Grand Jury Repression!
Join the National Day of Action on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 4:30-5:45 P.M.
Federal Building
7th and Mission Streeta
San Francisco, CA
Northern California United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
For more information: 510-268-9429
In December 2010, under the direction of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the FBI delivered 9 new subpoenas in Chicago to anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists - bringing the total number of subpoenaed activists to 23. Patrick Fitzgerald's office is ordering the 9 to appear at a Grand Jury in Chicago on January 25.
In response, we are calling for protests across the country and around the world to show our solidarity. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of people will be protesting at Federal Buildings, FBI offices, and other appropriate places, showing solidarity with the 9 newly subpoenaed activists and with all the activists whose homes were raided by the FBI.
Fitzgerald's expanding web of repression already includes the 14 subpoenaed when the FBI stormed into homes on September 24th, carting away phones, computers, notebooks, diaries and children's artwork. In October, all fourteen activists from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Michigan decided to not participate in the secret proceedings of Fitzgerald's Grand Jury. Each signed a letter invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. However, three women from Minneapolis - Tracy Molm, Anh Pham and Sarah Martin - are facing re-activated subpoenas. They are standing strong and we are asking you to stand with them - and with the newly subpoenaed nine activists - by protesting Patrick Fitzgerald and his use of the Grand Jury and FBI to repress anti-war and international solidarity activists.
Defend free speech! Defend the right to organize! Opposing war and occupation is not a crime!
**Tell Patrick Fitzgerald to call off the Grand Jury!
**Stop FBI raids and repression!
Please organize a local protest or picket in your city or on your campus and e-mail us at stopfbi@gmail.com to let us know what you have planned.
In Struggle,
--Tom Burke
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression
www.StopFBI.net - stopfbi@gmail.com - 612-379-3585
petition: http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
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Next meeting of UNAC Sunday, January 30, 1:00 P.M.
U.C. Berkeley Campus
Room to be announced
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Saturday, March 19, 2011:
Day of Action to Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
Scores of organizations coming together for worldwide protests
In San Francisco, the theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions. The SF action will include a march to boycotted hotels in solidarity with the Lo. 2 workers. The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.
In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.
March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.
The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.
While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.
Actions of civil resistance are spreading.
On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.
Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.
Click this link to endorse the March 19, 2011, Call to Action:
http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=8062&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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Are you joining us on April 8 at the Pentagon in a climate chaos protest codenamed "Operation Disarmageddon?" It has been decided that affinity groups will engage in nonviolent autonomous actions. Do you have an affinity group? Do you have an idea for an action?
So far these are some of the suggested actions:
Send a letter to Sec. of War Robert Gates demanding a meeting to disclose the Pentagon's role in destroying the planet. He will ignore the letter, so a delegation would then go to the Metro Entrance to demand a meeting.
Use crime tape around some area of the Pentagon. The idea of crime/danger taping off the building could be done just outside the main Pentagon reservation entrance (intersection of Army/Navy) making the Alexandria PD the arresting authority (if needed) and where there is no ban on photography. Hazmat suits, a 'converted' truck (or other vehicle) could be part of the street theater. The area where I am thinking is also almost directly below I-95 and there is a bridge over the intersection - making a banner drop possible. Perhaps with the hazmat/street closure at ground level with a banner from above. If possible a coordinated action could be done at other Pentagon entrances and / or other war making institutions.
A procession onto the Pentagon reservation, without reservations, and set up a camp on one of the lawns surrounding The Pentagon. This contingent would reclaim the space in the name of peace and Mother Earth. This contingent would plan to stay there until The Pentagon is turned into a 100% green building using sustainable energy employing people who work for peace and the abolishment of war and life-affirming endeavors.
Bring a potted tree to be placed on the Pentagon's property to symbolize the need to radically reduce its environmental destructiveness.
Since the Pentagon is failing to return to the taxpayers the money it has misappropriated, "Foreclose on the Pentagon."
Banner hanging from a bridge.
Hand out copies of David Swanson's book WAR IS A LIE. Try to deliver a copy to Secretary of War Robert Gates.
Have short speeches in park between Pentagon and river; nice photo with Pentagon in background.
Die-in and chalk or paint outlines of victim's bodies everywhere that remain after the arrest to point to where real crimes are really being committed.
Establish command center, Peacecom? Paxcom? Put several people in white shirts and ties plus a few generals directing their armies for "Operation Disarmageddon."
Make the linkage between the tax dollars going to the Pentagon and war tax resistance. Use the WRL pie chart and carry banners "foreclose on war" and "money for green jobs not war jobs."
Hold a rally with representative speakers before going to the Pentagon Reservation. This would be an opportunity to speak out against warmongering and the Pentagon's role in destroying the environment.
As part of "Operation Disarmageddon," we will take a tree and plant it on the reservation. Our sign reads, "Plant trees not landmines."
Use crime tape on Army/Navy Drive to declare the Pentagon a crime scene. Do street theater there as well. Other affinity groups could go to selected entrances.
Establish a Peace Command Center at the Pentagon. Hold solidarity actions at federal buildings and corporate offices.
What groups have you contacted to suggest joining us at the Pentagon? See below for those who plan to be at the Pentagon on April 8 and for what groups have been contacted.
Kagiso,
Max
April 8, 2011 participants
Beth Adams
Ellen Barfield
Tim Chadwick
Joy First
Jeffrey Halperin
Malachy Kilbride
Max Obuszewski
David Swanson
April 8 Outreach
Beth Adams -- Earth First, Puppet Underground, Emma's Revolution, Joe Gerson-AFSC Cambridge, Code Pink(national via Lisa Savage in Maine), Vets for Peace, FOR, UCC Justice & Witness Ministries, Traprock, Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, (National-INt'l) Vets for Peace and WILPF, Pace e Bene, Christian Peace Witness & UCC Justice & Witness (Cleveland).
Tim Chadwick -- Brandywine, Lepoco, Witness against Torture, Vets for Peace (Thomas Paine Chapter Lehigh Valley PA), and Witness for Peace DC.
Jeffrey Halperin -- peace groups in Saratoga Spring, NY
Jack Lombardo - UNAC will add April 8 2011 to the Future Actions page on our blog, and make note in upcoming E-bulletins, but would appreciate a bit of descriptive text from the organizers and contact point to include when we do - so please advise ASAP! Also, we'll want to have such an announcement for our next print newsletter, which will be coming out in mid-December.
Max Obuszewski - Jonah House & Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore
Bonnie Urfer notified 351 individuals and groups on the Nukewatch list
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Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City (Union Sq. at noon)and San Francisco (Time and place to be announced)
--Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
--Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
--End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
--Immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
To add your group's name to the endorser list, local, state or national, please contact:
United National Antiwar Committee
P.O. Box 123 Delmar, New York 12054
518-227-6947 UNACpeace.org unacpeace@gmail.com
email you endorsement to:
jmackler@lmi.net and cc: unacpeace@gmail.com
Initial List of Endorsers (List in formation)
* = For Identification only
Endorsers:
United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Center for Constitutional Rights
Muslim Peace Coalition, USA
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Veterans for Peace
International Action Center
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Black Agenda Report
Code Pink
National Assembly to End U.S. Wars and Occupations
World Can't Wait
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
Project Salam
Canadian Peace Alliance
BAYAN USA
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Office of the Americas
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Middle East Children's Alliance
Tariq Ali
Dr. Margaret Flowers PNHP *
Ramsey Clark
Ambassador Syed Ahsani, Former Ambassador from Pakistan
Ahmed Shawki, editor, International Socialist Review
Ali Abunimah, Palestinian American Journalist
Alice Sturn Sutter, Washington Heights Women in Black *
Al-Awda NY: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
American Iranian Friendship Committee
American Muslim Task Force, Dallas/Ft. Worth
Ana Edwards, Chair, Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project - Richmond, Va.
Anthony Arnove, Author, "Iraq: The logic of Withdrawal"
Andy Griggs, Co-chair, California Teachers Association, Peace and Justice Caucus/UTLA-retired*
B. Ross Ashley, NDP Socialist Caucus, Canada *
Bail Out the People Movement
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Barrio Unido, San Francisco
Bashir Abu-Manneh
Baltimore Job Is a Right Campaign
Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, US Peace Council Chapter
Battered Mother's Custody Conference
Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace
Blanca Misse, Student Worker Action Team/UC Berkeley, Academic Workers for Democratic Union - UAW 2865 *
Blauvelt Dominican sisters Social Justice Ministry
Bob Hernandez, Chapter President, SEIU Local 1021*
Bonnie Weinstein - Bay Area United Against Wars Newsletter
Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights
Boston UNAC
Boston University Anti-War Coalition
Café Intifada - Los Angeles
Camilo E. Mejia, Iraq war veteran and resister
Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor
Carole Seligman - Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal *
Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War
Chesapeake Citizens
Howard Terry Adcock, Colombia Support Network, Austin (TX) , Center for Peace and Justice *
Coalition for Justice - Blacksburg, Va.
Colombian Front for Socialism (FECOPES)
Columbus Campaign for Arms Control
Committee for Justice to Defend the Los Angeles 8
Dave Welsh, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council
David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
David Keil - Metro West Peace Action (MWPA) *
Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality - Virginia
Derrick O'Keefe, Co-chair StopWar.ca (Vancouver)
Detroit Committee to Stop FBI/Grand Jury Repression.
Doug Bullock, Albany County Legislator
Dr. Andy Coates PNHP *
DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) - New York
Elaine Brower - national steering committee of World Can't Wait and anti-war military mom
Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST)
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Socialist Party
Gilbert Achcar - Lebanese academic and writer
Guilderland Neighbors for Peace
Haiti Action Committee
Haiti Liberte
Hands off Venezuela
Howie Hawkins, Co-Chair, Green Party of New York State *
IIan Pappe, Director Exeter University, European Centre for Palestine Studies
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
International Socialist Organization
International support Haiti Network (ISHN)
Iraq Peace Action Coalition - Minneapolis
Italo-American Progressive Fraternal Society
Janata Dal (United), India
Jersey City Peace Movement
Jimmy Massey, Founding member of IVAW
John Pilger, Journalist and Documentary film maker
Journal Square Homeless Coalition
Justice for Fallujah Project
Kclabor.org
Karen Schieve, United Educators of San Francisco *
Kim Nguyen, Metrowest Peace Action (MWPA)*
Kwame Binta, The November Coalition
Larry Pinkvey, Black Activist Writers Guild
Lillie "Ms. K" Branch-Kennedy - Director, Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (R.I.H.D.), Virginia
Lisa Savage, CODEPINK Maine, Bring Our War $$ Home Coalition *
Los Angeles - Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee
Maggie Zhou - ClimateSOS *
Maine Veterans for Peace
Malu Aina, Hawaii
Maria Cristina Gutierrez, Exec. Director, Companeros del Barrio
Mark Roman, Waterville Area Bridges for Peace & Justice
Marlena Santoyo, Germantown Friends Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
Mary Flanagan, United Teachers of Richmond *
Masjid As-Salam Mosque, Albany, NY
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Michigan Emergency Committee Against Wars and Injustice
Mike Alewitz, Central Ct. State University *
Middle East Crisis Committee
Mobilization Against War and Occupation - Vancouver, Canada
Mobilization to Free Mumia
Moratorium NOW Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs
Muslim Solidarity Committee
Nancy Murray, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights*
Nancy Parten, Witness For Peace *
Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council *
New Abolitionist Movement
New England United
New Jersey Labor Against War
New Socialist Project
New York City Labor Against the War
New York Collective of Radical Educators
No More Victims
Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
Northeast Peace and Justice Action Coalition
Northern California Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Northwest Greens
NotMyPriorities.org
Nuestro Norte Es El Sur ((NUNO-SUR) Our North is the South
Omar Barghouti, Human rights activist (Palestine)
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum
Pakistani Trade Union Defense Campaign
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action Montgomery
Peacemakers of Schoharie County, New York
Peace and Freedom Party
People of Faith, Connecticut
Peninsula Peace & Justice, Blue Hill, Maine
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center - Palo Alto, Ca.
Peoples Video Network
Phil Wilayto, Editor, The Virginia Defender
Philadelphia Against War
Progressive Peace Coalition, Columbus Ohio
Protestobama.org
Queen Zakia Shabazz - Director, United Parents Against Lead National, Inc.
Radio Free Maine
Ralph Poynter, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Revolutionary Workers Group
Rhode Island Mobilization Committee
Roland Sheppard, Retired Business Agent Painters Local #4, San Francisco *
Rochester Against War
Ron Jacobs, writer
Saladin Muhammad - Founding Member, Black Workers for Justice
Sarah Roche-Mahdi, Code Pink Boston*
Saratoga Peace Alliance
Senior Action Network
Seth Farber, PhD., Institute of Mind and Behavior *
Sherry Wolf - International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Author Sexuality and Socialism
Siege Busters Working Group
Socialist Action
Socialist Organizer
Socialist Viewpoint
Solidarity
Solidarity Committee of the Capital District
Staten Island Council for Peace & Justice
Steve Scher, Breen Party of NYC 26 AD *
Stewart Robinson, Stop Targeting Ohio Poor *
Stop the Wars Coalition, Boston
Tarak Kauff, Veterans for Peace
The Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran
The Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
Twin Cities Peace Campaign
Upper Hudson Peace Action
Virginia Defender
West Hartford Citizens for Peace and Justice
WESPAC Foundation
Women against Military Madness
Women in Black, Westchester
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Pittsburgh
Workers International League
Workers World Party
Youth for International Socialism
To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to:
UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTcSOygSBBM
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Song for Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eood7DUwI
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Supermax Prison Cell Extraction - Maine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=player_embedded
Warning, this is an extremely brutal video. What do you think? Is this torture?
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Rachel Maddow- New GOP scapegoat- public workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ5byLyKPRI
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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw
police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summ
Protestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related
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The Wars in "Vietnamistan!" (The name Daniel Ellsberg gave to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted from the video...bw)
Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOde31QYbI0&feature=player_embedded
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John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
December 15, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzaclKj2B8M
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WikiLeaks founder concern for Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPrShC8qx4k&feature=player_embedded
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Newsnight: Bailed Julian Assange live interview (16Dec10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NouXB5JACCw&feature=player_embedded
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Julian Assange: 'ongoing attempts to extradite me'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30UhZDOO9A&feature=player_embedded
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Published on Thursday, December 16, 2010 by Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Quantico, the New Gitmo
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/16-0
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GO TO: http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/day-3-of-historic-prison-strike-in-georgia-blacked-out-by-media-guards-committing-violence/
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Posted: December 12, 2010 by Davey D in 2010 Daily News, Political articles
On Thursday morning, December 9, 2010, thousands of Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopped all other activities and locked down in their cells in a peaceful protest for their human rights. The December 9 Strike became the biggest prisoner protest in the history of the United States. Thousands of men, from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons, among others, initiated this strike to press the Georgia Department of Corrections ("DOC") to stop treating them like animals and slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. They set forth the following demands:
--A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK
--EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
--DECENT HEALTH CARE
--AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS
--DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS
--NUTRITIONAL MEALS
--VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
--ACCESS TO FAMILIES
--JUST PAROLE DECISIONS
Despite that the prisoners' protest remained non-violent, the DOC violently attempted to force the men back to work-claiming it was "lawful" to order prisoners to work without pay, in defiance of the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery. In Augusta State Prison, six or seven inmates were brutally ripped from their cells by CERT Team guards and beaten, resulting in broken ribs for several men, one man beaten beyond recognition. This brutality continues there. At Telfair, the Tactical Squad trashed all the property in inmate cells. At Macon State, the Tactical Squad has menaced the men for two days, removing some to the "hole," and the warden ordered the heat and hot water turned off. Still, today, men at Macon, Smith, Augusta, Hays and Telfair State Prisons say they are committed to continuing the strike. Inmate leaders, representing blacks, Hispanics, whites, Muslims, Rastafarians, Christians, have stated the men will stay down until their demands are addressed, one issuing this statement:
"...Brothers, we have accomplished a major step in our struggle...We must continue what we have started...The only way to achieve our goals is to continue with our peaceful sit-down...I ask each and every one of my Brothers in this struggle to continue the fight. ON MONDAY MORNING, WHEN THE DOORS OPEN, CLOSE THEM. DO NOT GO TO WORK. They cannot do anything to us that they haven't already done at one time or another. Brothers, DON'T GIVE UP NOW. Make them come to the table. Be strong. DO NOT MAKE MONEY FOR THE STATE THAT THEY IN TURN USE TO KEEP US AS SLAVES...."
When the strike began, 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!"
Here's the link to our recent Hard Knock Radio interview w/ Elaine Brown on this historic strike
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/65925
READ Black Agenda Report Article at: http://www.BlackAgendaReport.com/?q=content/ga-prisoner-strike-continues-second-day-corporate-media-mostly-ignores-them-corrections-offi
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
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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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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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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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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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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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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Hunger strike of the Lucasville Uprising prisoners - starting Monday, Jan. 3
Posted on December 25, 2010 by denverabc
http://denverabc.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/hunger-strike-of-the-lucasville-uprising-prisoners-starting-monday-jan-3/
Dear family members, friends and supporters of the Lucasville uprising prisoners,
Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday Jan. 3 to protest their 23-hour a day lock down for nearly 18 years. These four death-sentenced prisoners have been single-celled (in solitary) in conditions of confinement significantly more severe than the conditions experienced by the approximately 125 other death-sentenced prisoners at the supermax prison, Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. They are completely isolated from any direct human contact, even during "recreation". They are restricted from certain kinds of good ordering including gold weather items for the almost unbearably cold condtions in the cells. They are denied access to computer databases they need in order to prepare their appeals. It has been made clear to them that the outcome of their annual "security level reviews" is pretermined, as one reads, "...regardless of your behavior while confined at OSP."
Prisoners whose death sentences were for heinous crimes are able to win privileges based on good behavior, but not the death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prisoners.
Meanwhile out in the world, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted additional due process rights to some of the Gauantanamo prisoners, some death-sentenced prisoners have been exonerated or had their sentences commuted, an evidentiary hearing was ordered for Troy Anthony Davis, and prisoners in Georgia are engaging in a non-violent strike for improvements in a wide range of conditions. So the four death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prinsoners have decided that being punished by the worst conditions allowable under the law has gone far enough, especially since their convictions were based on perjured testimony. They are innocent! They were wrongfully convicted! They are political prisoners. This farce has gone on far too long and their executions loom in the not too distant future. These brave men are ready to take another stand. We ask that you get ready to support them.
The hunger strike will proceed in an organized manner, with one prisoner, probably Bomani Shakur starting on Jan.3. The hunger strike becomes official after he has refused 9 meals. Therefore the plan is that 3 days later, Siddiquie Abdullah Hasan will start his hunger strike and 3 days later, Jason Robb will follow. Namir Mateen has a great willingness to participate and plans to take part to the extent that his diabetes will allow.
On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Saturday, Jan. 15, we will be holding a press conference about the hunger strike and other issues pertaining to Ohio State Penitentiary. Details of time and location are being worked out. There will very likely be a brief rally near the gates of OSP, as we have in previous years to honor Dr. King, to protest the death penalty and to protest the farce of the Lucasville uprising convictions. There will probably be one or more vans and/or a car caravan to OSP for the event. Stay tuned for more information.
Please forward this email to other people you think would be interested, here in Ohio, around the country and around the world.
the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
53504 - 054
Unit 2N
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
2. Visiting is very liberal but first I have to get people on my visiting list Wait til I or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
3. One hour time difference
4. Commissary Money is always welcome It is how I pay for the phone and for email. Also need it for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing , ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons , 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated ? Of course, it's the BOP !)
5. Food is vastly improved. Just had Sunday Brunch real scrambled eggs, PORK sausage, Baked or home fried potatoes, Butter(sweet whipped M'God !!) Grapefruit juice Toast , orange. I will probably regain the weight I lost at MCC! Weighing against that is the fact that to eat we need to walk to another building (about at far as from my house to the F Train) Also included is 3 flights of stairs up and down. May try to get an elevator pass and try NOT to use it.
6. In a room with 4 bunks(small) about two tiers of rooms with same with "atrium" in middle with tv sets and tables and chairs. Estimate about 500 on Unit 2N and there are 4 units. Population Black, Mexicano and other spanish speaking (all of whom iron their underwear, Marta), White, Native Americans (few), no orientals or foreign speaking caucasians--lots are doing long bits, victims of drugs (meth etc) and boyfriends. We wear army style (khaki) pants with pockets tee shirts and dress shirts long sleeved and short sleeved. When one of the women heard that I hadn't ironed in 40 years, they offered to do the shirts for me. (This is typical of the help I get--escorted to meals and every other protection, explanations, supplies, etc. Mostly from white women.) One drawback is not having a bathroom in the room---have to go about 75 yards at all hours of the day and night --clean though.
7. Final Note--the sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous, the place is very open and outdoors there are pecan trees and birds galore (I need books for trees and birds (west) The full moon last night gladdened my heart as I realized it was shining on all of you I hold dear.
Love Struggle
Lynne
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network. December 22, 2010
The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.
We need your help in pressing the following demands:
End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.
Quantico Base Commander
Colonel Daniel Choike
3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-2707 (phone)
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)
Background
In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.
Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."
Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."
In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."
In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.
What can you do?
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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KOREA: Emergency Response Actions Needed
The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.
As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:
NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White House
In Many Cities - Federal Buildings
Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.
China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.
The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.
On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.
UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:
15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!
UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.
The United National Antiwar Committee, www.UNACpeace.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alive
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap
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GEORGIA PRISON STRIKE PETITION:
http://ca.defendpubliceducation.org/?p=716
A handful of East Bay organizations have put together an open letter to the strikers. If your organization would like to become a signatory, you can email me to put you on it you and can do so here.
A Letter to the Prisoners on Strike in Georgia,
We, as members of activist and community organizations in the Bay Area of California, send our support for your strike against the terrible conditions you face in Georgia's prisons. We salute you for making history as your strike has become the largest prison strike in the history of this nation. As steadfast defenders of human and civil rights, we recognize the potential that your action has to improve the lives of millions subject to inhumane treatment in correctional facilities across this country.
Every single day, prisoners face the same deplorable and unnecessarily punitive conditions that you have courageously decided to stand up against. For too long, this nation has chosen silence in the face of the gross injustices that our brothers and sisters in prison are subjected to. Your fight against these injustices is a necessary and righteous struggle that must be carried out to victory.
We have heard about the brutal acts that Georgia Department of Corrections officers have been resorting to as a means of breaking your protest and we denounce them. In order to put a stop to the violence to which you have been subjected, we are in the process of contacting personnel at the different prison facilities and circulating petitions addressed to the governor and the Georgia DOC. We will continue to expose the DOC's shameless physical attacks on you and use our influence to call for an immediate end to the violence.
Here, in the Bay Area, we are all too familiar with the violence that this system is known to unleash upon our people. Recently, our community erupted in protest over the killing of an unarmed innocent black man named Oscar Grant by transit police in Oakland. We forced the authorities to arrest and convict the police officer responsible for Grant's murder by building up a mass movement. We intend to win justice with you and stop the violent repression of your peaceful protest in the same way-by appealing to the power and influence of the masses.
We fully support all of your demands. We strongly identify with your demand for expanded educational opportunities. In recent years, our state government has been initiating a series of massive cuts to our system of public education that continue to endanger our right to a quality, affordable education; in response, students all across our state have stood up and fought back just as you are doing now. In fact, students and workers across the globe have begun to organize and fight back against austerity measures and the corresponding violence of the state. Just in the past few weeks in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico - tens and hundreds of thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets. We, as a movement, are gaining momentum and we do so even more as our struggles are unified and seen as interdependent. At times we are discouraged; it may seem insurmountable, but in the words of Malcolm X, "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."
You have inspired us. News of your strike, from day one, has served to inspire and invigorate hundreds of students and community organizers here in Berkeley and Oakland alone. We are especially inspired by your ability to organize across color lines and are interested in hearing an account from the inside of how this process developed and was accomplished. You have also encouraged us to take more direct actions toward radical prison reform in our own communities, namely Santa Rita County Jail and San Quentin Prison. We are now beginning the process of developing a similar set of demands regarding expediting processing (can take 20-30 hours to get a bed, they call it "bullpen therapy"), nutrition, visiting and phone calls, educational services, legal support, compensation for labor and humane treatment in general. We will also seek to unify the education and prison justice movements by collaborating with existing organizations that have been engaging in this work.
We echo your call: No more Slavery! Injustice to one is injustice to all!
In us, students, activists, the community members and people of the Bay Area, you have an ally. We will continue to spread the news about your cause all over the Bay Area and California, the country and world. We pledge to do everything in our power to make sure your demands are met.
In solidarity,
UC-Berkeley Student Worker Action Team (SWAT) _ Community Action Project (CAP) _ La Voz de los Trabajadores _ Laney College Student Unity & Power (SUP) _ Laney College Black Student Union (BSU)
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In Solidarity
By Kevin Cooper
On Thursday, December 9, 2010, the inmates in the state of Georgia sat down in unity and peace in order to stand up for their human rights.
African American, White, and Latino inmates put aside their differences, if they had any, and came together as a 'People' fighting for their humanity in a system that dehumanizes all of them.
For this they have my utmost respect and appreciation and support. I am in true solidarity with them all!
For further information about Kevin Cooper:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony - that he only saw one attacker - was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has many other troubling aspects which call into question the reliability of the state's case and its conduct in obtaining this conviction (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/013/2004/en).
Kevin Cooper was less than eight hours from execution in 2004 when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a stay and sent the case back to the District Court for testing on blood and hair evidence, including to establish if the police had planted evidence. The District Court ruled in 2005 that the testing had not proved Kevin Cooper's innocence - his lawyers (and five Ninth Circuit judges) maintain that it did not do the testing as ordered. Nevertheless, in 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling. One of the judges described the result as "wholly discomforting" because of evidence tampering and destruction, but noted that she was constrained by US law, which places substantial obstacles in the way of successful appeals.
In 2009, the Ninth Circuit refused to have the whole court rehear the case. Eleven of its judges dissented. One of the dissenting opinions, running to more than 80 pages and signed by five judges, warned that "the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man". On the question of the evidence testing, they said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and...imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing" ordered by the Ninth Circuit. They pointed to a test result that, if valid, indicated that evidence had been planted, and they asserted that the district court had blocked further scrutiny of this issue.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had already denied clemency in 2004 when the Ninth Circuit issued its stay. At the time, he had said that the "courts have reviewed this case for more than eighteen years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming". Clearly, a notable number of federal judges disagree. The five judges in the Ninth Circuit's lengthy dissent in 2009 stated that the evidence of Kevin Cooper's guilt at his trial was "quite weak" and concluded that he "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him".
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
On 2 June 1983, two days before the Chino Hills murders, Kevin Cooper had escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a four-year term for burglary, and had hidden in an empty house near the Ryen home for two nights. After his arrest, he became the focus of public hatred. Outside the venue of his preliminary hearing, for example, people hung an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the Nigger!!" At the time of the trial, jurors were confronted by graffiti declaring "Die Kevin Cooper" and "Kevin Cooper Must Be Hanged". Kevin Cooper pleaded not guilty - the jury deliberated for seven days before convicting him - and he has maintained his innocence since then. Since Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency in 2004, more evidence supporting Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence has emerged, including for example, testimony from three witnesses who say they saw three white men near the crime scene on the night of the murders with blood on them.
In 2007, Judge Margaret McKeown was the member of the Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel who indicated that she was upholding the District Court's 2005 ruling despite her serious concerns. She wrote: "Significant evidence bearing on Cooper's guilt has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued, including, for example, blood-covered coveralls belonging to a potential suspect who was a convicted murderer, and a bloody t-shirt, discovered alongside the road near the crime scene. The managing criminologist in charge of the evidence used to establish Cooper's guilt at trial was, as it turns out, a heroin addict, and was fired for stealing drugs seized by the police. Countless other alleged problems with the handling and disclosure of evidence and the integrity of the forensic testing and investigation undermine confidence in the evidence". She continued that "despite the presence of serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation and evidence supporting the conviction, we are constrained by the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)". Judge McKeown wrote that "the habeas process does not account for lingering doubt or new evidence that cannot leap the clear and convincing hurdle of AEDPA. Instead, we are left with a situation in which confidence in the blood sample is murky at best, and lost, destroyed or tampered evidence cannot be factored into the final analysis of doubt. The result is wholly discomforting, but one that the law demands".
Even if it is correct that the AEDPA demands this result, the power of executive clemency is not so confined. Last September, for example, the governor of Ohio commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence because of doubts about his guilt even though his death sentence had been upheld on appeal (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/079/2010/en). Governor Ted Strickland said that despite circumstantial evidence linking the condemned man to the crime, "many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it. In particular, Mr Keith's conviction relied upon the linking of certain eyewitness testimony with certain forensic evidence about which important questions have been raised. I also find the absence of a full investigation of other credible suspects troubling." The same could be said in the case of Kevin Cooper, whose lawyer is asking Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence before he leaves office on 2 January 2011. While Kevin Cooper does not yet have an execution date, it is likely that one will be set, perhaps early in 2011.
More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence in the USA since 1976. At the original trial in each case, the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear beyond any dispute that the USA's criminal justice system is capable of making mistakes. International safeguards require that the death penalty not be imposed if guilt is not "based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts". Amnesty International opposes all executions regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the guilt or innocence of the condemned.
California has the largest death row in the USA, with more than 700 prisoners under sentence of death out of a national total of some 3,200. California accounts for 13 of the 1,234 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. There have been 46 executions in the USA this year. The last execution in California was in January 2006.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death;
- Urging Governor Schwarzenegger to take account of the continuing doubts about Kevin Cooper's guilt, including as expressed by more than 10 federal judges since 2004, when executive clemency was last requested;
- Urging the Governor to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence.
APPEALS TO:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA
Fax: 1 916-558-3160
Email: governor@governor.ca.gov or via http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact
Salutation : Dear Governor
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 2 January 2011.
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.509.8193
Fax: 202.675.8566
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase
By MONICA DAVEY
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13illinois.html?hp
2) Army Called In as Tunisian Protests Hit Capital
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/africa/13tunisia.html?ref=world
3) Winds of Change
By Bonnie Weinstein
January 13, 2011
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/
4) DANGER: 'Food Safety' Is Coming To a Farm Near You!
By Chris Kinder
January 13, 2011
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_11/janfeb_11_22.html
5) Tunisian Rioters Overwhelm Police Near Capital
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and J. DAVID GOODMAN
January 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/world/africa/14tunisia.html?hp
6) The Tragic State of the Gulf of Mexico: Sampling Reveals Oil and Dispersants on Mississippi Coast
Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld
[Note: This is a link only in order to accommodate the very important and informative photographs by Erika Blumenfeld...bw]
Wednesday 12 January 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/the-tragic-state-gulf-mexico-sampling-reveals-oil-and-dispersants-mississippi-coast66726
7) Agency Revokes Permit for Major Coal Mining Project
By JOHN M. BRODER
January 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/science/earth/14coal.html?hp
8) Cuban Exile Lied to U.S., Prosecutor Tells Texas Jury
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13carriles.html?ref=world
9)Secret government informer "Karen Sullivan" infiltrated Minnesota activist groups
By Nick Pinto
Protest News
Wed., Jan. 12 2011 @ 12:59PM
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/01/secret_government_informer_karen_sullivan.php
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1) Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase
By MONICA DAVEY
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13illinois.html?hp
CHICAGO - With only hours left before new state lawmakers were to take over, Illinois's State Legislature narrowly approved early on Wednesday an increase of about 66 percent in the state's income tax rate.
The vast size of the increase, the rarity of such increases here - the last one came two decades ago - and the hour of the vote (in the wee hours of Wednesday) all reflected the urgency and depth of this state's fiscal crisis.
Even grudging supporters of the tax increase, which won no Republican support in a state capital controlled by Democrats, voiced a desperate sense of regret over the circumstances in which Illinois finds itself. State Representative Elaine Nekritz, a Democrat who voted for the increase, described her decision as an alternative "between bad and worse." Another Democrat cautioned his colleagues: "We don't have a better choice today."
Many states are struggling with anemic revenues and the prospect of an end to additional federal funds, but Illinois faces a budget deficit of as much as $15 billion, owes some $8 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, doctors, dentists and others, and is receiving mounting signs of worry from bond investors.
Under the legislation, the income tax rate would, at least temporarily, rise to 5 percent from its current rate of 3 percent. Lawmakers had talked about an even steeper increase, but set that aside as the hours went by and the debate grew increasingly emotional. The rate for corporate taxes would rise to 7 percent from its current rate of 4.8 percent. As part of the deal, the state's spending growth would be limited from one year to the next over the next four years.
Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, a Democrat whose signature would be needed to make any rate increase final, has indicated in the past he believes a tax increase is necessary.
The tax hike irked Republicans in Springfield, the state capital, and business owners around the state. Again and again, Republicans argued that the state needed to make significant spending cuts to solve its deficit before it even began considering a tax increase.
On the Statehouse floor on Tuesday night, Roger L. Eddy, a Republican representative, said that lawmakers were essentially "making up for our mistakes" on the backs of taxpayers, while one state senator called it a "train wreck." Representative David Reis, another Republican, warned of the "sucking sound" he imagined would now be heard of businesses leaving the Illinois.
The fallout of the vote remains to be seen: Will Illinois businesses really now flock to neighbors Wisconsin and Indiana as opponents have suggested? Will the increase impress investors and quickly improve the state's sunken bond rating? And, perhaps most of all, will the change be enough to turn around the financial woes of a state where the deficit has grown to the size of half of the annual general fund?
Democrats, who control the state's House of Representatives and Senate, had been racing to push through the tax increase before noon on Wednesday, when legislators elected in November arrive in Springfield and a new legislative session begins.
In the new session, Democrats will continue to control both chambers, but their margins will shrink. Some leading Democrats viewed this as the only time when such a politically difficult vote might be possible: a moment when departing legislators need not fret over how voters might react.
In the House, where until noon on Wednesday Democrats hold 70 seats, the bill passed 60 to 57. In the Senate, which had shown earlier willingness to raise taxes, the measure passed 30 to 29 in a vote that was tallied after 1 a.m. Central time.
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2) Army Called In as Tunisian Protests Hit Capital
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/africa/13tunisia.html?ref=world
TUNIS - Clouds of tear gas floated up this city's cafe-lined main boulevard on Wednesday as troops swarmed onto downtown streets to tamp down the first major protests to hit the capital since rioting and demonstrations began three weeks ago.
The government fired the country's interior minister over the violent clashes, which have shaken the government and left 21 dead. The government has also said it would release some of those arrested during the recent riots, but it was not clear whether any had been freed.
Riots over poverty and unemployment stemming from the country's dire economic situation were unleashed last month after a young unemployed man set himself on fire. The government is scrambling to try to contain the mounting unrest, with some of the worst protests the country has witnessed in decades.
The Tunisian army filled the streets around the National Party headquarters and television broadcasting facilities here in the capital on Wednesday, and security forces used tear gas to break up demonstrations near the French Embassy. Anger against the country's leaders ran high.
"They say the people are terrorists, but they are the real terrorists," said Ala Djebali, an 18-year-old student who had taken refuge in a train station near the embassy.
Armed police violently confronted demonstrators who gathered in three separate neighborhoods around the capital , sweeping up suspected protesters as businesses shut their doors and pedestrians fled. Witness said snipers fired on the crowds and that several had been hit.
"How can you fire on your own people?" said a 30-year-old business owner who was protesting downtown and declined to provide his name for fear of reprisals. "If you do that, then there is no return. Now you are a killer."
In previous protests, riot police had used live ammunition to disperse the crowds, resulting in deaths.
Demonstrators railed against government corruption, a lack of jobs and the perceived self-enrichment of the president and his family. In Sfax, the nation's second largest city, workers called a general strike.
In a region full of police states, Tunisia is considered by far the most repressive. Tunisian rights activists said the police have been arresting opposition figures in their homes. Radhia Nasraoui, head of a group that opposes torture, said the police had arrested her husband, Hamma Hammémi, chief of the Communist Party, who in recent days has given several interviews to French news media about the demonstrations.
"He explained that the regime has lost all legitimacy so we were expecting this," Ms. Nasraoui said Wednesday after her husband's arrest. She showed a reporter the broken down door of their apartment. "It is kidnapping."
Social media sites are also believed to have played a roll in helping protesters to organize, and the government reportedly directed Internet service providers to provide information on the accounts of individual users.
The State Department expressed concern about intrusions into the privacy of Tunisian customers of American companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, urged restraint and respect for freedom of expression.
On Monday, the government ordered the closing of all schools and universities until further notice in an attempt to quell the unrest.
Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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3) Winds of Change
By Bonnie Weinstein
January 13, 2011
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/
In spite of the fact that working people are taking huge economic hits while corporate profits are soaring, there is a fightback beginning. Workers, students and even prisoners are taking action indicating that a deep radicalization is taking place.
Corporate profits soar
In a November 23, New York Times article by Catherine Rampell titled, "Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter":
"...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 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...
"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."
And, the new tax package will continue to guarantee the transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy elite. In a December 7, 2010 New York Times article by David Kocieniewski, titled, "Tax Package Will Aid Nearly All, Especially Highest Earners":
"...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 one percent of the population."
Decertifying state employee unions
If this were not bad enough, signs of worse things to come were outlined in an article that appeared December 12, 2010 in the Leader-Telegram Eau Claire Now, a small newspaper from Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin, titled, "State Labor Unions now Facing Reality of Benefit Costs," by Tom Giffey.
"After angering rail advocates by rejecting $810 million in federal funds for a high-speed line from Milwaukee to Madison, Gov.-elect Scott Walker seems intent on picking a fight with state employees. Last week, the incoming Republican even suggested moving to decertify state employee unions in an effort to cut workers' benefits and save the state money."
The article goes on:
"In an era of chronic budget shortfalls and double-digit health cost increases, overly generous public employee benefits are no longer reasonable or sustainable. Walker is on the right track when he suggests state workers should pay 12 percent of their health costs and make five percent pension contributions-moves that would save the state $154 million in only six months."
And what of a labor fightback? The article continues:
"Beginning in 2009, state workers have taken what amounts to a three percent pay cut because of mandatory furlough days. And Friday, the Wisconsin State Employees Union voted for a no-pay-increase contract that included eight furlough days annually as well as increased payments toward healthcare and retirement."
While the economic news is dismal and on the surface there doesn't seem to be much fight left in U.S. workers, the signs point in another direction; to a growing consciousness among workers, especially, students-even prisoners buried in the U.S. prison industrial complex-that their struggles are the same and they face the same enemy.
Georgia prisoners show the way
Beginning on December 9, 2010 according to an article titled, "Thousands of Georgia Prisoners go on Strike," by "Anonymous," published December 10, 2010, that appeared on Infoshop News1, in an unprecedented action organized through contraband cell-phones between prisons, prison inmates across Georgia united and refused to work. These are their demands.
"No more slavery: Injustice in one place is injustice to all. Inform your family to support our cause. Lock down for liberty!
"A living wage for work: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the Department Of Corrections (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 healthcare: 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."
Originally scheduled as a one-day strike, it spread to more than seven prisons in Georgia and while some prisoners have returned to work, the strike is continuing.
The most powerful and encouraging aspect of this largest prison strike in U.S. history is that the inmates, in spite of previous deep divisions between them, have unified and are acting in solidarity with each other. Black, Latino and white inmates have put aside their differences to demand humane treatment for all.
In addition, their actions have been carried out peacefully. This is no prison riot, but a conscious, clearly thought-out plan of democratically decided mass-action, albeit within the prison walls of one of the most repressive states in the country. They simply refused to leave their cells or to report to work, exercising the most powerful tool working people have-the right to withhold their labor.
Of course, the prison's response has been to place the prison population in "lock-down" in spite of the fact that the prisoners already, in essence, "locked themselves down." There have also been widespread reports of beatings by prison officials of those thought to be the leaders of these united actions.
Nothing to lose but their chains
It's hard to fathom what could make these prisoners-already incarcerated, tortured, deprived and seemingly helpless-to be so bold as to plan and carry out such a massive and effective action. Why are they able to organize such a fightback under the worst conditions of incarceration; locked behind bars without any weapons of self-defense against their well-armed jailers; many with no hope of ever getting out of prison; many who are undoubtedly innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for; how is it they can take such action when workers on the outside appear to cave in to the bosses-their economic jailers?
There is an explanation. The prisoners have nothing to lose and a chance of something to gain while the prisoners on the outside, the majority of the U.S. working class, still have much to lose, although they are now losing those things at breakneck speed.
There is also a great divide in consciousness between those workers who still have jobs, credit cards, etc. and those who have already had to forfeit those things to unemployment and foreclosure; or those poorer workers-youth especially-who have never had any job security, let alone credit cards2.
As Gov.-elect Scott Walker's suggestion of decertifying state employee unions in Wisconsin shows, the economy promises to get much worse for the working class. But there are strong signs that a major change is in the air. The Georgia prison strike is one of these signs.
Students on the rise
Students are also beginning to take matters into their own hands. In fact, students in the San Francisco Bay Area recently issued a solidarity letter to Georgia inmates that expresses the basic human instinct that workers' solidarity is power:
"We fully support all of your demands. We strongly identify with your demand for expanded educational opportunities. In recent years, our state government has been initiating a series of massive cuts to our system of public education that continue to endanger our right to a quality, affordable education; in response, students all across our state have stood up and fought back just as you are doing now. In fact, students and workers across the globe have begun to organize and fight back against austerity measures and the corresponding violence of the state. Just in the past few weeks in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico-tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets. We, as a movement, are gaining momentum and we do so even more as our struggles are unified and seen as interdependent. At times we are discouraged; it may seem insurmountable, but in the words of Malcolm X, 'Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.'"
Students and workers unite
In the massive student strikes in England recently, similar sentiments were expressed by the striking students in support of striking transit workers. At a Coalition of Resistance National Conference Youth, Students and Education Workshop that took place November 27, 2010 in Camden, London, a 15-year-old student said:
"We are no longer that post-ideological generation; we are no longer that generation that doesn't care. We are no longer that generation that's prepared to sit back and take whatever they give us. We are now the generation at the heart of the fightback. We are now the generation that will stand with everyone who's fighting back. The most inspiring thing, I think, was that just after Wednesday hundreds of people joined the Facebook group-school students-joined the Facebook group in solidarity with RMT (Rail Maritime and Transport) members on strike. Those are people that previously thought tube strikes were something annoying because they stopped you getting into school, now they think they've got to link arms and fight back with everyone. So we want to show solidarity with everyone who's fighting back. We hope you'll show solidarity with us and send a strong message to this government that they can't throw their cuts at us. We're going to stand up and we're going to fightback!"3
And, according to a December 20, 2010 Guardian article by Peter Walker titled, "Students Win Trade Union Support for Tuition Fees Protest" the sentiment expressed by the students has been reciprocated:
"Students protesting against increased tuition fees and cuts to education spending have won pledges of trade union support ahead of their next demonstration in London on January 294, [2011].
"The fourth national protest, organized by the National Campaign Against Cuts and Fees and the Education Activist Network, will be the first since the chaotic scenes in the center of the capital on December 9, the day MPs voted in favor of the bill allowing tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year.
"...The two organizing groups asked unions to assist in 'a united struggle to defend education.'
"Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, replied: 'Can I express complete support for the call for opposition to the disgraceful and immoral attacks on access to education which these latest fee rates represent? It was bad enough having tuition fees to start with, but these attacks-dressed up as being required because of the banking crisis-really are immoral.'
"Len McCluskey, the new leader of Unite, said unions had been 'put on the spot' by the student demonstrations. 'Their mass protests against the tuition fees increase have refreshed the political parts a hundred debates, conferences and resolutions could not reach,' he said."5
Freedom's just another word for nothing else to lose
Clearly, workers, including prison inmates at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, and students, in the U.S. and across the globe, are quickly realizing that they are running out of things to lose!
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4) DANGER: 'Food Safety' Is Coming To a Farm Near You!
By Chris Kinder
January 13, 2011
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/janfeb_11/janfeb_11_22.html
Agribusiness is the real disease
So, the U.S. government says it wants to radically improve the safety of food in the U.S., so that the eats here will be "the safest in the world." And if you believe that, I've got a ... well, you know the one about that bridge in Brooklyn.
Of course improving food safety sounds good to everyone, which is one reason the new bill on that subject is scurrying through Congress as we speak. (By the time you read this, it will probably have zipped across Obama's desk and be signed into law.) And it's not as though there is no cause for alarm on the question of safe food. Several huge recalls in recent years have been necessary due to E coli and Salmonella contaminations of foods such as peanut butter, ground beef, produce, and most recently four billion eggs (the largest egg recall ever).
It's a corporate "Food Safety"
But the bill-The Food Safety Modernization Act-only puts a band-aid on the gaping wound that is big agribusiness. It is in fact counterproductive, because its real purpose is to prop up the huge corporate monopolies, which are a central component of U.S. capitalism and imperialism, and whose mega mono-cropping operations, are the source of all the major food contaminations (as well as the source of other non-food disease vectors, such as the "swine flu" virus). The bill will add unnecessary burdens on the expanding small organic farm operations and small slaughterhouses, which operate more sustainably, produce healthier as well as safer food, and are more productive (in terms of overall output) than big mono-cropping.
Generally what the bill does is require registration of food producing operations and more paper work and reporting on the part of operators; and it jacks up the power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to inspect and track foods. Operators of "food facilities" will be required to evaluate hazards, implement appropriate controls, monitor the performance of the controls, and "maintain records of such monitoring."1 Superficially, this sounds good, but it's a one size fits all "solution" that could drive small operators out of business. Small Farm lobbyists and advocates have been arguing for an exemption for small producers, and finally an amendment-the Tester Amendment-was added to the bill. This would exclude farmers who sell less than $500,000 worth of food per-year from the more onerous paperwork and compliance burdens found in the bill. But this amount refers to gross sales, not profits, and it is not indexed to inflation, which could easily skyrocket soon. "In fact," says Mike Adams, editor of Natural News and a virulent opponent of the bill, "a single family farm with just four people could easily sell $500,000 worth of fresh produce a year right now."2
Big agribusiness interests supported this bill-and paid for it with heavy contributions to both Democrats and Republicans-despite the Tester amendment (not without some grumbling of course), knowing all the while that it will help cripple organic farms. This is an echo from the early Twentieth Century, when the 1906 publication of Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle, put a spotlight on monstrous scandals in the Chicago-based meat packing industry, and prompted reform bills in Congress. The big capitalists opposed the reforms, until they were convinced that the proposed bill would help them eliminate their smaller competitors.
Measures already being taken are scarier than the bill
But so far, we are just scratching the surface of the current food safety debate. The point here is not to support the small capitalist producer or farm operation over the large necessarily, but to examine the agricultural practices that can and should be applied to solve the world's food safety as well as food security problems. For starters, what is much scarier than the Food Safety bill itself are the measures, which big producers are taking now-many of which are forced on them by distribution and marketing companies for whom they are the suppliers-in order to prevent contamination. This gets to the heart of the difference between the organic farm and large mono-cropping operations: natural conditions and biological controls versus a fruitless and environmentally destructive quest for perfect sterility.
A stark example: one farmer "planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. He has since ripped out such plants because his big customers demand sterile buffers."3 The "Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement," written by a small group of the largest growers, suggests that farmers maintain a 30-foot buffer zone of bare ground between grazing land and row crops. Bagged lettuce distributor Fresh Express has a much stricter set of demands. It requires its suppliers to maintain a several hundred-foot barrier around grazing lands, and 150 feet of bare ground around waterways, which means tearing up and destroying all living things in riparian environments!
Ironically, some government agencies, as in Salinas Valley in California for instance, have been encouraging farmers for years to use more sustainable land management practices, such as planting hedgerows, creating storm water ponds, using off-season cover crops, and constructing wetlands to both protect the environment and help prevent salt-water contamination of the aquifer. But now a 2007 survey in Monterey County found that 40 percent of farmers on the California Central Coast have removed wildlife from their fields, and 30 percent have eliminated non-crop vegetation from their farms. Others are bulldozing ponds and waterways to meet the new sterility requirements. Farmers have lost the ability to market crops because of deer tracks being found in the field, or because frogs and tadpoles were discovered in a nearby creek (despite the fact that these animals are not found to carry virulent E coli strains)4.
The real cause of disease
The Food Safety bill completely ignores the real causes of disease in the food production system: the huge concentrations of animals who are filled with antibiotics and growth hormones, and spend their whole lives crushed together and standing in their own feces; as well as large single-crop operations that depend on chemical fertilizers and increasingly ineffective pesticides. These huge, concentrated operations are much more likely to cause massive outbreaks of disease, since the contamination of just one plant or animal can so easily spread to all the others, thus infecting whole product lines nationally or internationally in just one incident.
Although productive in terms of cranking out huge amounts of one product, these operations are extremely damaging to the soil and the environment. Mono-cropping depletes the top soil, and huge slaughterhouses, instead or treating animal waste and waste animal parts for use as fertilizers, simply deposit fecal and other waste matter in huge holding ponds or dumps which are loaded with toxic chemicals and crawling with a zoo full of dangerous microbes.
According to one observer of the California Central Valley,
"... huge confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) run by agribusiness [are] destroying family farmers, polluting the water supply and air, and creating health problems. The family farmers... cannot understand why no government agencies or politicians take any actions to enforce water, air and health laws and regulations. Little do they know that agribusiness (corporation agriculture) is one of the most powerful entities in the U.S. I have driven past a huge cattle feed lot in the Central Valley of California on Interstate Highway 5 and could smell the stench of animal feces five miles away."5
Hog farms: pollution and "Superbugs"
These operations can pollute whole communities. A hog farm concentration in the State of Vera Cruz in Mexico-principally a Smithfield plant (Smithfield is the largest hog producer in the world)-is widely and justifiably blamed as the source of the H1N1 "swine flu" virus. Residents of the town of La Gloria complained for years of the smelly pig breeding farms that attracted hordes of flies and made people sick. Many developed flu-like symptoms. Finally, government workers arrived to test for disease, and eventually found swine flu virus.6
Hog farms like these, as well as cattle operations and "dark house" chicken breeding are connected to the spread of "superbugs," antibiotic resistant strains which evolve in industrial agricultural concentrations in which animals are regularly injected with antibiotics, as a preventative measure, whether they're sick or not. In a few years, microbes evolve a resistance, become more virulent, and require more and stronger antibiotics to combat them. Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. are used to "treat" healthy livestock, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. More antibiotics are fed to livestock in North Carolina alone than to humans in the entire U.S. "Routine use of antibiotics to raise livestock is widely seen as a major reason for the rise of superbugs."7 Antibiotic resistant microbes such as these have caused a drastic decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics in general-a growing human health threat.
The big picture
The observant reader may have noticed that we have strayed somewhat from the strict confines of the FDA "Food Safety" bill by talking about meat production, which is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (not the FDA) and inspected by the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). But it's all part of the same big picture, as shown by the USDA's proposed "National Animal Identification System" (NAIS), which would require-again-registration of all operators, and the ID tagging of all animals.
The implementation of NAIS threatens the small producers of organic foods, including fruits and vegetables as well as meat sources, because the tagging requirements could drive them out of business by adding expensive processes, while large operators get away with tagging herds of animals rather than individual animals. And again, the point here is not to support small capitalists against large, but to show how the system as a whole is dominated by monopolists who use unsustainable methods which are rapidly destroying agriculture itself, when the organic methods developed by many small farmers here and abroad are what is needed for the future of human food production as well as the environment.
If we accept that the big picture of food safety is really about how the whole system works, and not just about a few new rules and regulations that the FDA may or may not enforce properly, then we can proceed to a list of problems in the food production system that illustrate what some of the real dangers for the environment as well as food safety and security really are. None of these issues are addressed by the FDA, USDA, or the "Food Safety" bill:
• Fertilizer: Plants require nitrogen in the soil to grow. But mono-cropping raids the soil of nitrogen, and requires artificial inputs, in the form of chemicals. Much of the nitrogen from these chemicals does not get used by the plants however; it gets flushed into waterways as run-off. It floats down the river systems to the ocean, where it creates "dead zones." The flood of nitrogen fuels the algae, which grows explosively, sucking up oxygen in the process. This creates huge areas in which nothing else can live, thus helping to destroy the ocean food supply. Such "dead zones" exist around the deltas of all major river systems, totaling perhaps 400 worldwide.
•
• Pesticides, and the example of the bees: Chemical pesticides are in widespread use throughout capitalist agriculture, to the great detriment of the agricultural workers, food safety and consumers. But there couldn't be a better example of this devastation than the plight of honeybees.
•
Honeybee "Colony Collapse Disorder" has been trumpeted in the press as a great mystery, and a great problem for agriculture. Problem it is, but mystery it ain't. Honeybees are grown in colonies and are essential for pollination of many crops, including large monoculture crops, which require pollination for a few weeks in the growing season. But the scorched earth methods of agribusiness leave no other plants for honeybees to live on during the rest of the year. That's where migratory bee keeping comes in, as truckloads of stacked beehives crisscross the country.
The only natural foods for honeybees comes from the nectars and pollens they collect, but today's beekeepers commonly feed their honey bees artificial syrups and patties made out of high fructose corn syrup, which are much less nutritious. And today's beekeepers use fungicides, pesticides and herbicides in and around the hives. They say they have no choice, because bees are increasingly infected with diseases and parasites. But bees are weakened by a number of factors, including the stress of traveling, in which they have trouble with temperature control of the hive, as well as few or no natural food sources at their destinations.
The honeybee's problems are many
But the bees' problems don't stop there. The natural process of bee reproduction involves a queen bee, who is inseminated by several drone bees in the air, following which she returns to the hive and produces offspring by laying eggs for several years. However, today's beekeepers have a different plan. Every year or two they crush the reigning queen and introduce a queen they have purchased. The new queen has been shipped across the country and inseminated from decapitated drones, in an effort to build certain desirable traits. After this treatment, are we supposed to wonder why the offspring can't find the way back to their hives?
As the honeybee colonies have grown weaker, the beekeepers fight back with chemicals, including organophosphates banned in other countries. The herbicides, fungicides and insecticides used around colonies are tested on adult bees, but the effects on newly hatched bee larvae, through chemical residues in the beeswax, honey and pollen, is only beginning to be studied.8 With all of these assaults on their colonies and lives, bee survival is amazing if it happens at all. Yet bees are critical to the pollination of so many plants that their functional extinction would be a major devastation to agriculture, which in turn could easily collapse world food supplies.
• GMOs: Genetic modification of crops (and animal treatments) is likely the single greatest threat to food safety and security on the planet today. Rather than being concerned, the government has promoted it. Use of GMOs was conceived as a way for big U.S. corporations, principally Monsanto, to take over world food markets. Working with the George W. Bush administration, and in conjunction with the corrupt accounting firm Arthur Anderson (which was later brought down in the Enron scandal), Monsanto conceived a world in which 100 percent of all seeds would be genetically modified and patented, thus allowing them to seize power over farmers everywhere as well as replacing nature itself. This strategy was promoted and given de-regulatory support through a Council on Competitiveness, headed by Dan Quayle. Later, the Clinton administration was also supportive in efforts to use this new technology to boost U.S. exports and monopolize food markets.
•
The FDA, which now (allegedly) is so concerned about food safety, also helped considerably, by ruling in 1992 that GM crops are "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). But in order to be GRAS, a substance must be approved by an overwhelming consensus among the scientific community. Not only was this not done, but individual FDA scientists were objecting vociferously. Subsequently revealed internal FDA memos show that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases.9
Government of, by and for the big corporations
But this is a government of, by and for big corporations like Monsanto, so the FDA changed its own criteria to a totally unregulated "consultation" process in which the company assures the FDA that its products are safe, and the FDA simply repeats those assurances in an official letter! We can be assured, however, that nothing has changed today: the FDA will enforce the new "food safety" bill with the same deference to big agribusiness as it shows to Monsanto, while directing most its fire at smaller producers with no clout in Washington.
Actual food safety issues due to GM crops and animal treatments are mounting, though the full potential effects are still mostly unknown. Known effects range from sheep and buffalo in India that grazed on Bt [Bacillus thuringiensis toxins used on crops as a pesticide] cotton plants and died by the thousands, animals who died or suffered infertility or weakened immune systems or other drastic effects after being fed GM products, and pregnant rats, whose babies died. As for crops, the biggest issue facing farmers all over the world is the contamination of their crops by GM seeds that blow in on the wind or otherwise cross-pollinate. Due to Monsanto's legendary control at the top of the U.S. political system, a legal ruling now makes a farmer's product the property of Monsanto, even though the claim is only based on such "accidental" contamination! The U.S./Monsanto plan to take over the world's food supply with GMOs failed generally, but Monsanto's dirty tactics through bribery, lawsuits against critics, buying up local seed companies, and contracts that require farmers who use their products to buy all their seeds and chemicals from them continue to plague the world's food supply.
A bigger plague
But a bigger plague than this may yet be in store for humans. The Bt toxin developed by Monsanto, when inserted into a plant's genetic structure, creates a plant that manufactures a poison, which kills insects that attack the plant. Monsanto claims this is safe, since the natural bacteria this toxin is based on is found in soil, and is used by organic farmers as an insecticide spray. But the toxin in Monsanto's Bt crops is thousands of times more concentrated. Now consider the following:
"The only published human feeding study revealed that even after we stop eating GMOs, harmful GM proteins may be produced continuously inside of us: genes inserted into Monsanto's GM soy transfer into bacteria inside our intestines and continue to function. If Bt genes also transfer, eating corn chips might transform our intestinal bacteria [i.e., good bacteria] into living pesticide factories." -Jeffrey M. Smith (see note 9)
Every living thing has DNA, we are all interconnected, and contaminations such as this are not only inevitable now that GMOs have been let out of the bottle, but they're permanent. The self-propagating genetic pollution released into the environment by Monsanto's crops could outlast both climate change and the degeneration of nuclear waste.
A revolutionary alternative
One of the worst crimes of big agribusiness is the attack on bio-diversity. By selecting certain "perfect" crops, whether through genetic engineering or more primitive methods, and by destroying non-crop vegetation and enforcing sterile boundaries around crops, agribusiness is rapidly obliterating both the environment and our future as a healthy species. Chemicals can't make up for the fact that the soil is being killed, and the natural predators of plant pests have been destroyed; which is not to mention that the same chemicals are killing the rest of the environment.
Bio-diversity, and the understanding that all living things are connected to each other and the planet itself through evolution, is central to a materialist understanding of the world, and as such, to Marxism. It was in fact a Soviet scientist, Vladimir Vernadsky, who first postulated the concept of the "biosphere," thus anticipating Lovelock's much weaker "Gaia" hypothesis by several decades. Following on Vernadsky, and with Lenin's insistence, the early Bolshevik regime promoted conservation of the environment even in the midst of a brutal civil war in which reactionaries sought to overthrow the world's first workers state. Conservation organizations and journals promoted rational agricultural techniques, and published articles for biological pest controls and against monocultures.10 (Later, this was all destroyed under the Stalinist counter-revolution, which ushered in a bureaucratically deformed regime that, among many other betrayals, ignored conservation.)
Today, although not necessarily revolutionary politically, organic farmers in the U.S. and elsewhere do point the way toward an agriculture that can feed the world both environmentally-sustainably and safely. This is done chiefly through crop rotation, in which both different crops, and livestock, alternatively use the same fields. This is not a new idea: if you're like me, you remember a school history text that reported that crop rotation was a major innovation in the Middle Ages in Europe. Crop rotation, together with preservation of surrounding ecosystems such as hedgerows and riparian vegetation, reduces or eliminates the need for pesticides, since most pests survive on one target crop, and are greatly reduced by plant variety. Plus mixing in crops that fix nitrogen in the soil, such as legumes, is another improvement. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers, as well as mono-cropping itself, kills the soil, but natural processes can maintain it. The soil is the immediate root of all life, and must maintain its plethora of living things, from microbes to worms.11
Capitalism: grow and expand, or die
Capitalist agriculture, based on chemical saturation and monocultures, as well as attempts to dominate global food markets, is destroying the world food supply, killing us, and threatening the planet. But this form of agriculture is embedded deeply in the system. In the wake of the financial crash, financial capital is flooding into the world land market big time, both to capture future food supplies and open up investments in biofuels, all at the expense of formerly colonialized peoples who need their lands for their own food. Big financial capital is just doing what its capitalist DNA tells it to... expand into the most profitable investments, or die. Big agribusiness is a key component of a system, which will rape, plunder and destroy the world's working people and nature itself before it dies... unless it gets killed first.
Let's look at this from a slightly different perspective: what should we do assuming we want to save the planet, clean up the environment, revolutionize the agricultural system to provide safe, healthy food for everyone, and put working people-the ones who actually produce the things that we need-in charge rather than finance capital?
What we really want
In broad outline, that, in my opinion, would be:
1. Expropriate the land-removing all the big owners without compensation-and put it in the hands of the organized working people;
2.
3. Attend to the small organic farms first, supporting their efforts, and developing leaders and educators who can tackle the big job;
4.
5. Transform the big mono-cultural estates into sustainable, fully organic operations, whether through applying new methods on a large scale, or breaking them up into small coordinated units;
6.
7. Control and coordinate all this through cooperatives and collectives of agriculture workers who meet regularly and work in coordination with a democratically decided upon national plan;
8.
9. Put unemployed or partially employed agricultural workers to work in this vital project.
10.
Such a program would be easier to implement than trying to work within the existing system, but then "easy" is not exactly on the radar screen of a planet hurtling toward eco-suicide. But can it be done? Can big agribusiness be dumped and agriculture transformed into a sustainable, use-value system controlled by the people who work it?
Cuba provides a positive example here. Based on a mono-cultural, export-oriented agribusiness around sugar during the long years under U.S. domination, Cuba was slow to change its practice after the 1959 revolution. But under relentless U.S. imperialist pressure culminating in the "Bay of Pigs" invasion, the Castro regime moved to the total expropriation of big capital in a few years. Gradually, with the resistance of private owners removed, the study and application of sustainable agricultural practices began to make headway.
The challenge of Cuba's "Special Period"
Then, following the collapse of Eastern European and Soviet Russian states in 1989-91, a "special period" ensued. The cheap oil and other supports from the USSR were gone, and Cuba dropped into a nightmare of deprivation and disorganization. Undeterred by this adversity, the Cuban people began to reorganize. Food supplies were boosted through urban agriculture, which developed unused city land and today provides most of Havana's food supply. And farming was transformed from agro-chem dependent monocultures (the chemicals were no longer available) to virtually all-organic farming. With no capitalist class, and no private market in land, there was no resistance to this working-class response to the crisis. Government programs fostering sustainable agriculture were expanded, and the government facilitated land reorganizations when necessary.12
Such a plan would be what real people actually need, and it would represent a program to organize production for human need, not the profit of a few. But this would involve overthrowing the government, and expropriating the expropriators: forcibly taking the power from the big imperialist finance capitalists. Unfortunately, most of the left is still entranced by the siren song of reformism: maybe there's hope if we just push Obama to the left, or if we get something passed in Congress that can improve things, or if we support the "lesser evil" at the polls. The idea of overthrowing the system entirely and starting fresh now seems like a distant (maybe forgotten) memory of struggles of the past. But look to the past, because the financial bubbles, bailouts of the rich, and gigantic transfers of wealth upward from the working and poor masses to the very rich are still happening. We still need a mass working class movement and party, which though it may have been betrayed by bad leadership in the past, points the way forward to the overthrow of capitalism, and to the regime of working people, with safe food for all and production for use not profit.
Chris Kinder is an Oakland resident, revolutionary socialist, and coordinator of the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
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5) Tunisian Rioters Overwhelm Police Near Capital
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and J. DAVID GOODMAN
January 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/world/africa/14tunisia.html?hp
HAMMAMET, Tunisia - The police on Thursday all but abandoned this exclusive Mediterranean beach town - haven to the capital's rich and powerful - as rioters calling for the ouster of Tunisia's authoritarian president swarmed the streets, torched bank offices and ransacked a mansion belonging to one of his relatives.
In the fourth week of protests sweeping Tunisia, violence escalated in the capital, Tunis, as well, where late in the afternoon crowds defied tanks and machine guns deployed around the central boulevards. Witnesses said several were killed, adding to a death toll already in the dozens. There were reports that a general strike had been called for Friday.
In a possible sign of divisions in the government, the Tunisian military withdrew from the capital later Thursday and interior security forces took their place in the streets. Tunisian news organizations reported that the president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, would deliver a televised address on Thursday evening.
The protesters - many from the ranks of Tunisia's legions of unemployed college graduates, demanding more jobs and denouncing perceived corruption by the president's family - relied on social networking media to advertise and coordinate their actions.
The riots in Hammamet, a town roughly equivalent to Tunisia's East Hampton, were announced this morning on an Arabic Facebook page called "The People of Tunisia are setting themselves on fire, Mr. President." The name is a reference to the Dec. 17 event that sparked the protests, the self-immolation of an college graduate who sold vegetables on the street of a small town in the provinces. And on Thursday morning the page called on patriotic Tunisians to prepare to shed their blood in protest in the town of Hammamet.
By midday, hundreds of rioters were rampaging through the streets here. Several banks were aflame and police officers huddled defensively shields and clubs raised around their station. A few hours later, they had given up the pretense. Most relaxed, smoking, while one officer at the center of talked with angry residents about the problem of government corruption and the need to stay calm.
Protesters in the crowd explained that the few officers left were locals, born in Hammamet. "They are poor like us," one said.
As the rioters lost interest in taunting the police, they shifted attention to the beachfront mansion of a presidential relative. Several said it belonged to the family of the president's second wife, the former Leila Trabelsi, but a neighbor said it belonged to the president's uncle, Sofiane Ben Ali.
After breaking down the gate to the empty house, rioters pulled out two all terrain vehicles and set them aflame on the streets. A horse kept by the family ran free in the mansion's yard, and young men on motorcycles did wheelies around rows of towering palm trees on the well-manicured lawn. (Two said the yard had previously been a public soccer field.) A Tunisian coast guard boat watched from the sea.
Two of the rioters said that fearful police had directed them away from attacking the station and toward the mansion. "They said, please you go to the Trabelsi's, and it is logical," said Cheadi Mahamed, a 32-year-old protester with a job at the airport.
Like others in the crowd, he said he was feeling emboldened to speak publicly without fear of reprisals. "Now we can say we what we want-it has started to change," he said.
Asked why the riots broke out here on Thursday, one protester said the police had killed two people here on Wednesday and a third in a neighboring town.
But the focus on the mansion was also vivid evidence of the deep resentment at the great wealth and lavish life of the president's family. Some presidential relatives appear to have fled to other homes abroad.
"They have gone and taken all the money," one protester said. "And we don't have any jobs."
As evening approached, trucks of police reinforcements arrived. But they proceeded to stand idle as rioters began looting a shoe store, a toy store, and a hotel.
Overnight, at least three civilians were killed by Tunisian security forces in the south and west of the country, according to news reports on Thursday. The victims included a 38-year-old French professor of information technology, Hattem Bettahar, who was vacationing with his family and was shot dead in the city of Douz, around 330 miles south of Tunis. Tunisia, a former French colony, has a large French community, many with dual nationality.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Hammemet, Tunisia, and J. David Goodman from New York. Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and Katrin Bennhold from Paris.
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6) The Tragic State of the Gulf of Mexico: Sampling Reveals Oil and Dispersants on Mississippi Coast
Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld
[Note: This is a link only in order to accommodate the very important and informative photographs by Erika Blumenfeld...bw]
Wednesday 12 January 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/the-tragic-state-gulf-mexico-sampling-reveals-oil-and-dispersants-mississippi-coast66726
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7) Agency Revokes Permit for Major Coal Mining Project
By JOHN M. BRODER
January 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/science/earth/14coal.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency revoked the permit for one of the nation's largest mountaintop-removal coal mining projects on Thursday, saying the mine would have done unacceptable damage to rivers, wildlife and communities in West Virginia.
Arch Coal's proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County has been the subject of controversy since the Bush administration approved its construction in 2007, issuing a permit required under the Clean Water Act. Environmentalists and local residents strongly opposed the sprawling project, and the Obama administration moved last year to rescind the permit, prompting lawsuits by West Virginia and the coal company.
The agency's action on Thursday is certain to provoke an outcry from West Virginia politicians, the coal industry and other businesses that have raised objections to what they consider economically damaging regulatory overreach by the E.P.A.
The coal mining project would have involved dynamiting the tops off mountains over an area of 2,278 acres to get at the rich coal deposits beneath. The resulting rubble, known as spoil, would be dumped into nearby valleys and streams, killing fish, salamanders and other wildlife. The agency said that disposal of the mining material would also pollute the streams and endanger human health and the environment downstream.
The agency said it was using its authority under the Clean Water Act to revoke the permit, an action it has taken only 12 times in the past 40 years. The agency said in a release that it reserved this authority only for "unacceptable cases."
"The proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine would use destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and clean water on which they depend," said Peter S. Silva, the agency's assistant administrator for water. "Coal and coal mining are part of our nation's energy future, and E.P.A. has worked with companies to design mining operations that adequately protect our nation's waters. We have a responsibility under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on clean water."
An official of Arch Coal, based in St. Louis, said the company would continue to challenge the federal action in court.
"We remain shocked and dismayed at E.P.A.'s continued onslaught with respect to this validly issued permit," said Kim Link, the company's spokeswoman. "Absent court intervention, E.P.A.'s final determination to veto the Spruce permit blocks an additional $250 million investment and 250 well-paying American jobs."
"Furthermore, we believe this decision will have a chilling effect on future U.S. investment," she added, "because every business possessing or requiring a permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act will fear similar overreaching by the E.P.A. It's a risk many businesses cannot afford to take."
She was referring to the provision of federal law under which the permit was originally issued and then revoked.
Anticipating the agency's decision, a group of regulated industries wrote to the White House this week asking that the mine be allowed to proceed, and seeking clarification on when the administration intended to use its Clean Water Act authority to block industrial and agricultural projects.
Groups including the National Realtors Association, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association wrote to Nancy Sutley, the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, asking that the Spruce Mine permit be approved.
The groups said in their letter that if the agency revoked the coal mining permit, "every similarly valid permit held by any entity - businesses, public works agencies and individual citizens - will be in increased regulatory limbo and potentially subject to the same unilateral, after-the-fact revocation."
"The implications could be staggering," they added, "reaching all areas of the U.S. economy including but not limited to the agriculture, home building, mining, transportation and energy sectors."
An agency official said that though the current design for the Spruce No. 1 project had been rejected, the company was free to submit a new proposal, as long as it addressed the potential environmental harm.
Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, who until recently was the state's governor, issued a blistering statement opposing the agency's determination to kill the mining project.
"Today's E.P.A. decision is not just fundamentally wrong, it is an unprecedented act by the federal government that will cost our state and our nation even more jobs during the worst recession in this country's history," Mr. Manchin said. "While the E.P.A. decision hurts West Virginia today, it has negative ramifications for every state in our nation, and I strongly urge every senator and every member Congress to voice their opposition."
He added, "It goes without saying, such an irresponsible regulatory step is not only a shocking display of overreach, it will have a chilling effect on investments and our economic recovery. I plan to do everything in my power to fight this decision."
Environmentalists, on the other hand, praised the revocation of the permit. "We breathe a huge sigh of relief today," said Janet Keating, president of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, in a statement, adding that the move "halts the destruction of Pigeon Roost Hollow," a wooded valley where much of the mining debris was to be dumped.
Ms. Keating said the decision was a milestone in the debate over mountaintop-removal coal mining. "Spruce No. 1 is the only individual permit to have undergone a full environmental impact statement," she said. "The science completely validates what we have been saying for more than a decade: These types of mining operations are destroying our streams and forests and nearby residents' health, and even driving entire communities to extinction."
Tom Zeller Jr. contributed reporting.
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8) Cuban Exile Lied to U.S., Prosecutor Tells Texas Jury
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
January 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13carriles.html?ref=world
EL PASO - A prosecutor told jurors Wednesday than an elderly Cuban exile lied repeatedly under oath about how he entered the United States and about his role in terrorist attacks in Havana.
The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, 82, is a veteran of the cold war struggles against Fidel Castro who once worked for the C.I.A. and is a suspect in several bombings. He is charged with perjury, obstruction of federal proceedings and making false statements during a naturalization hearing.
Cuba and Venezuela have charged that Mr. Posada was the mastermind behind the downing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 in which 73 people were killed. Both governments also claim that he orchestrated a series of bombings in Havana in 1997, killing a tourist.
Timothy J. Reardon, the lead prosecutor, told the jury in his opening argument that Mr. Posada was not on trial for his opposition to the Cuban government. But he said he would show that Mr. Posada lied during a deportation hearing in 2005 when he said he had not recruited the bombers who carried out the attacks in Cuba.
A key piece of evidence, he said, will be tapes of a lengthy interview Mr. Posada gave to The New York Times in 1998, in which he freely admitted organizing the campaign of explosions at hotels and a restaurant to scare off tourists.
The prosecutor also said the government had evidence that Mr. Posada entered the country on a converted shrimp boat that docked in Miami in March 2005, even though he later claimed under oath that he had crossed through Mexico and had sneaked into Texas near Brownsville.
"This is a case, at bottom, in its essence, about lying, about lying to gain a benefit, a benefit with which all are very sensitive to, and that's the benefit of naturalization, of the great privilege of being a U.S. citizen," Mr. Reardon said. "No matter who you are, no matter what you have done, you must play by the rules and tell the truth to become a citizen."
But Mr. Posada's lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, said the prosecution's case rested on unreliable witnesses. He also raised questions about the reliability of the tapes of the Times interview, saying there were at least 16 places where the tape had been erased.
His voice rising in passion, Mr. Hernandez claimed Mr. Posada had told the truth when he said that he had come into the country in Texas. He said the paid government informer who told the F.B.I. that the exile had arrived on a shrimp boat was lying and had a history of mental illness and fraud. He also accused the informer, Gilberto Abascal, another Cuban exile, of spying for the Castro government.
Mr. Hernandez also said Mr. Posada did not take responsibility for the bombings in Cuba in his interview with The Times. He said that a close reading of the interview showed that Mr. Posada said several times that the bombings "were a product of internal dissent."
"He makes it abundantly clear that the bombings were an inside operation," Mr. Hernandez told the jurors, a number of them Hispanic. "He never admitted to being involved. That was not his role. What we will prove is that his role was to bring publicity to the acts of sabotage."
A federal judge in New Jersey ordered The Times to turn over tapes of the interview as part of a 2007 investigation into accusations that Mr. Posada raised money from Cuban exiles there for terrorist attacks; that investigation did not lead to an indictment. The Times objected to the subpoena but the judge ruled against it; the paper then complied.
Mr. Posada, gray-haired and stooped, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on 10 counts in the indictment, and 10 years on the last count. He worked for the C.I.A. from 1965 to 1967, spying on exile groups in Miami, then became a high-ranking official in the Venezuelan intelligence service, which he left in 1974.
Declassified F.B.I. documents place him at two meetings during which the bombing of a Cubana airliner was planned in 1976. He was held in a Venezuelan prison for nine years as a suspect in that case, but never convicted. In 2000, he was convicted in Panama in connection with a plot to kill Castro at a summit meeting.
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9) Secret government informer "Karen Sullivan" infiltrated Minnesota activist groups
By Nick Pinto
Protest News
Wed., Jan. 12 2011 @ 12:59PM
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/01/secret_government_informer_karen_sullivan.php
The Twin Cities activists who had their homes raided by the FBI last September are starting to learn more about why they're being investigated by a Chicago grand jury in relation to material support of terrorism.
Lawyers for the activists have learned from prosecutors that the feds sent an undercover law enforcement agent to infiltrate the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee in April 2008, just as the group was planning its licensed protests at the Republican National Convention.
Going by the name "Karen Sullivan," the agent blended in with the many new faces the Committee was seeing at meetings in the lead-up to the RNC. But she stayed active afterward, attending virtually every meeting.
"She presented herself as a lesbian with a teenage daughter, and said she had a difficult relationship with her daughter's father, which is one of the reasons she gave us for not being more transparent about her story," says Jess Sundin, a member of the Anti-War Committee and one of the activists who has received a subpoena from the Chicago grand jury. "It was a sympathetic story for a lot of us."
Sullivan told the group she was originally from Boston but that she had had a rough childhood and was estranged from her family. She said she had spent some time in Northern Ireland working with Republican solidarity groups.
Sullivan at first said that she didn't have any permanent address in the area, but she eventually got an apartment in the Seward neighborhood. She claimed to be employed by a friend's small business, checking out foreclosed properties that he might buy. The cover story of a flexible job schedule let her attend all the meetings she wanted to, and to have individual lunches with other activists.
"She really took an interest," Sundin said. "It raised some suspicions among other members at first, but after the other undercover agents from the RNC Welcoming Committee came out, and no in our organization did, we figured we didn't have any. Besides, we didn't think we had anything we needed to be secretive about."
Sullivan began to take on more responsibilities with the organization, chairing meetings, handling the group's bookkeeping, and networking with dozens of other organizations.
In the summer of 2009, Sullivan joined two other Twin Cities activists in a trip to visit Palestine. Somehow, when they landed in Tel Aviv, Israeli security forces knew they were coming, and that they were headed to Palestine.
The three women were told they could get on the next plane back home or they could face detention. Sullivan took the flight. The other two women chose detention and were ultimately deported.
Attorneys for the activists have also learned that prosecutors are especially interested in a small donation the women intended to give to their host organization in Palestine, the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees. The group is registered as an NGO with the Palestinian Authority and not listed as a terrorist group by the United States.
Last fall, Sullivan disappeared from the Twin Cities, telling her fellow activists that she had some family business to take care of. She never came back. On September 24, the FBI launched a series of early morning raids on the homes of members of the Anti-War Committee and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
The FBI would not confirm or deny Sullivan's identity as a government agent or comment on this story by the time of publication. The U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago has said it will not comment on anything related to the grand jury investigation.
Last fall the Justice Department's Inspector General released a scathing report that criticized the FBI for invoking anti-terrorist laws to justify their investigations and harassment of groups including Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Catholic Worker.
"This is exactly what the Inspector General's report was talking about," Sundin told City Pages this morning. "The FBI doesn't have the right to spy on us. It's an abuse of our democratic rights. We're supposed to have freedom of association, not, 'You can associate but we're going to spy on you.'"
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I just want to say Hi to Everyone!
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