*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Saturday, March 19, 2011: Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
In San Francisco, people will gather at 12 noon for a rally at UN Plaza (7th & Market Sts.) followed by a march to Lo. 2 boycotted hotels. 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.
http://www.answercoalition.org/sf/index.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
U.S./NATO HANDS OFF MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA! END ALL AID TO ISRAEL! STOP FUNDING DICTATORS ACROSS THE GLOBE! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION! LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE HERE AND EVERYWHERE!
TAX THE RICH! LEAVE WORKERS AND THEIR UNIONS ALONE! DON'T AGONIZE, ORGANIZE!...BW
RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home 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! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to 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.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, 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.
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
VICTORY IN EGYPT!
U.S. Hands off the Ongoing Egyptian Revolution!
End US Military Aid to Egypt and Israel!
A Statement by the United National Antiwar Committee
On Friday, February 11th, the heroic Egyptian people won a historic victory with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Now they are proceeding to secure this victory by moving on to eliminate the rest of this hated regime, and to win the freedom, jobs, equality and dignity which has motivated their revolution from the start.
The announcement of Mubarak's resignation was coupled with news that the officers of the Armed Forces are now running the country. This comes as more and more rank and file soldiers and lower-level officers were joining the protests, and as others stood by as protesters blockaded the state TV, parliament and other government facilities.
We can be sure that the military hierarchy in alliance with what's left of the old regime will do everything in their power to stop the blossoming revolution in its tracks, to tell the protesters they must go home now and wait for gifts from on high.
AND THE DANGER IS REAL THAT WHEN THE MASSES SAY NO THAT THE MILITARY WILL DO WHAT IT DOES BEST.
We can be equally sure that Washington will give its full blessing and backing to these efforts of the remnants of the old regime and the military. Obama has made clear that he is solidly committed to the new face of the Egyptian regime, Omar Suleiman, who has proven over the years that he will collaborate with Washington in its torture and rendition policies. Meanwhile Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted in the New York Times saying that Washington would help organize political parties for future elections in Egypt - a typical maneuver used to subvert revolutions.
The United National Antiwar Committee has repeatedly urged supporters to mobilize for demonstrations called by Egyptian organizations in the US in solidarity with the revolution in Egypt and against US military and diplomatic intervention. UNAC hails the call for today's march in Washington, DC by Egyptian groups, and takes this opportunity to point out the special obligations of antiwar activists in the US given Washington's multifaceted efforts to obstruct the wishes of the majority of the Egyptian people.
The $1.3 billion a year in military aid which the US gives to Egypt must be cut off immediately. All US soldiers serving in Egypt, such as those in the Multinational Force in the Sinai, must be immediately withdrawn. And the US warships headed for Egypt must be immediately turned around.
UNAC has from its founding opposed all US aid to Israel. That position takes on particular importance given the real danger that as the Egyptian revolution advances, Israel will intervene to derail it - or launch new attacks against Lebanon, Gaza, or elsewhere, as a diversionary tactic.
Amidst the euphoria in Cairo, Al Jazeera interviewed a young woman in the crowd, who said:
"Its not just about Mubarak stepping down. It is about the process of bringing the people to power... The issue of women, the issue of Palestine, now everything seems possible."
WE MUST ENSURE THOSE POSSIBILITIES STAY ALIVE! UNAC ENCOURAGES ALL ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS AND ORGANIZATIONS TO STEP UP SUPPORT FOR RALLIES PLANNED BY THE EGYPTIAN COMMUNITY, AND TO INITIATE THEM WHERE NONE ARE PLANNED.
Finally, we urge all supporters of the Egyptian people to redouble efforts to build the national antiwar marches called by UNAC for April 9th in New York and April 10th in San Francisco. These marches, called to demand an end to US wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, an end to support for Israeli occupation, and in favor of social justice and jobs, take on ever more importance with the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere throughout the Arab world and Washington's attempts to crush or derail them.
SUPPORT THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY AND AGAINST EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION THROUGHOUT THE ARAB WORLD!
BUILD THE NATIONAL ANTIWAR MARCHES ON APRIL 9TH AND 10TH!
For more information: In SF: UNACNorthernCalifornia@gmail.com; (415) 49 NO War; www.unacpeace.org, unacpeace@gmail.com. For NYC information: unac-nyc@juno.com
San Franciscans/Northern California: Next UNAC Organizing Meeting: Sunday March 13, at 1 PM, Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street, (between 15th and 16th Streets second floor in the rear) SF
SAVE THE DATE: Sunday, APRIL 10, Mass antiwar/social justice march and rally, Assemble: 11 AM Dolores Park, 19th and Dolores; Rally Noon; March at 1:30 pm.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
From Wisconsin to California
STOP THE ATTACK ON WORKERS!
Rally to STOP Union Busting!
FRIDAY - MARCH 4
12:00 pm
University of California Medical Center
513 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco
(on N-Judah Line)
This week University of California Regent David Crane called for an end to collective bargaining for public employees in California. If Regent Crane had his way, patient care workers would not be allowed to have a strong voice to advocate for our patients and our families. UC executives would have more power to give themselves bonuses while low-wage UC staff such as custodians and food service workers would be forced into poverty.
Regent Crane is following the lead of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who is fighting to make it illegal for public employees to bargain with one voice through a union.
We must take a stand against this attack on our patients, students, and our families!
From Wisco to Frisco: WE ARE ONE!
Endorsed by AFSCME 3299, Jobs with Justice, San Francisco Labor Council, Senator Leland Yee and others
Join the RAMEN-IN to protest Community College fee hikes and budget cuts
What: Ramen-in
Where: Steps of the State Building, Governor Brown's SF Office, 350 McAllister St. (between Polk and Larkin)
When: Friday, March 4th, 1:30 pm
Join students and educators to deliver a message to the governor: Fees hurt students and damage the state's economic recovery. Across California, students will deliver thousands of packages of ramen noodles to the governor's offices to show the impact of the proposed $300 community college fee increase ($10 per unit for 30 units, a normal academic year's load). This increase, which amounts to a tax, will come from students' budgets for food and other necessities and could cause hundreds of thousands of students to lose access to a community college education. Students should not have to shoulder the burden of California's budget crisis when there are so many wealthy people and corporations in this state who are not paying their fair share.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
To mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day
Mothers March and Rally
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
End Poverty, Criminalization, War and Occupation
Gather: 4:30pm,16th & Mission (nr BART)
Stops at Welfare Dept, Chase Bank, Federal Building
Invest in caring not killing!
WOMEN, MEN, YOUNG, OLD, BRING YOUR CHILDREN, FRIENDS, DRUMS, DEMANDS!
We march because:
· Mothers produce/care for the world's people, while war & profit destroy us.
· Most women do caring work - mothers, grandmothers, daughters, partners. Unrecognized, unpaid or low paid we care for children, older people, people
with disabilities, Vets, each other....
· In Haiti & Palestine, wherever there is an occupation, women do the survival work without which resistance would be impossible.
· Resources go to weapons & banks, not to caregivers, healthy food, accessible affordable housing, breast-feeding support, health care, education, living wages, pay equity, care of Mother Earth.
· Budget cuts increase hunger & threaten those of us on lowest incomes, starting with communities of color.
· Poverty, uncaring social services & immigration laws tear children from us.
· Sex workers & homeless people are jailed not supported. As in Oscar Grant shooting, police use our children as target practice. LGBTQ denied civil rights.
· We're robbed of benefits, services & wages that our unwaged & low waged labor & taxes have paid for. We face eviction & foreclosures.
Everywhere people are risking their lives to bring change - from Palestine to Egypt,
from Haiti to Colombia, from the Philippines to Kenya & Nigeria ...
Mothers Marches in CA, Philly, Haiti, Guyana, India, Peru, UK
Planning Group Bay Area: Haiti Action Committee; Legal Action for Women; Ruckus Society; US PROStitutes Collective; Wages Due Lesbians; Women of Color/GWS and individuals from the Bay Area and Santa Cruz.
www.globalwomenstrike.net sf@globalwomenstrike.net 415-626-4114
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"Remembering Triangle - Connecting the Struggles of Immigrant Women Workers Past and Present", Wednesday, March 9th, 6:30-9:30 p.m., City College of San Francisco Mission Campus Auditorium, 1125 Valencia. Presenters include: The Rockin' Solidarity Labor Heritage Chorus, Mark Levy, Francisco Herrera and El Coro Jornalero, La Familia Pena-Govea, Elena Dykewomon, the Chinese Progressive Association, Alice Rogoff, Judith Offer and special guest, Triangle survivor descendant
Eileen Nevitt.
Thanks,
Bill Shields
Chair, Labor and Community Studies
City College of San Francisco
1400 Evans Avenue, Room 224
San Francisco, California 94124
415-550-4473 (phone)
415-550-4400 (fax)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
March 9 (Wednesday) 6:30-9:30PM
Remembers the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and Immigrant Women Workers
At: Berkeley City College Auditorium
2050 Center Street Berkeley
Free, Open to the Public
More information: Email, Laura E. Ruberto, lruberto@peralta.edu
Sponsored by the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at Berkeley City College
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
GI Resistance Pizza / Mailing Party Thursday, March 10, 5 pm to 10 pm at 55 Santa Clara Ave, Suite 126, Oakland CA 94610 (One block north of 580 at Harrison--behind the Budget Inn). We can also use help earlier in the day as well. Call us for more info at 510-488-3559, or courage@riseup.net
We'll be sending out our tri-annual newsletter and fund appeal again next Thursday, March 10th. If you're in the Bay Area that evening, please drop by for our mailing / pizza party! This is a great way to learn more about our work in support of GI resisters.
Newsletter highlights will include updates on the growing international campaign to free alleged Wikileaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning, the ongoing efforts to end Bradley's extreme and illegal pre-trial confinement, and conscientious objector Kyle Wesolowski's recent discharge victory from the Army.
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Avenue, No. 41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Next UNAC Organizing Meeting TO BUILD APRIL 10 MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS: Sunday March 13, at 1 PM, Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street, (between 15th and 16th Streets second floor in the rear) SF
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Saturday, March 19, 2011: Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
In San Francisco, people will gather at 12 noon for a rally at UN Plaza (7th & Market Sts.) followed by a march to Lo. 2 boycotted hotels. 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.
Come to Washington, D.C., on March 19 for veterans-led civil resistance at the White House
March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by nearly 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.
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.
Last Dec. 16, 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.
In Washington, D.C., on March 19 there will be an even larger veterans-led civil resistance at the White House initiated by Veterans for Peace. People from all over the country are joining together for a Noon Rally at Lafayette Park, followed by a march on the White House where the veterans-led civil resistance will take place.
Many people coming to Washington, D.C., will be also participating in the Sunday, March 20 demonstration at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia to support PFC Bradley Manning. Quantico is one hour from D.C. Manning is suspected of leaking Iraq and Afghan war logs to Wikileaks. For the last eight months, he has been held in solitary confinement, pre-trial punishment, rather than pre-trial detention.
The ANSWER Coalition is fully mobilizing its east coast and near mid-west chapters and activist networks to be at the White House.
In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home 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! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to 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.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, 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.
Next organizing meeting Sunday, February 20, 1:00 P.M., Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street (between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor Beat: No Concessions Emergency Meeting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaFrWNi2gM0
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A joke:
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are
sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a
dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies,
looks at the tea partier and says,"watch out for that union guy, he
wants a piece of your cookie."
Marc Luzietti
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Charlie Sheen on 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PviXgj-yS5Y
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18th dead baby dolphin washes ashore in Northern Gulf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFeuSNszSg&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[This is a great video. Kipp Dawson, the school teacher in the video, is an old friend...bw]
Middle Class Revolution
Hundreds packed USW headquarters Feb. 24. 2011, to rally for the middle class and stand up against attacks on workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere. Check out highlights here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_UmZYlSyC5U
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TmSNPpzkWc
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
solidarity
'We Stand With You as You Stood With Us': Statement to Workers of Wisconsin by Kamal Abbas of Egypt's Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services
February 20th, 2011 3:45 PM
About Kamal Abbas and the Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services:
Kamal Abbas is General Coordinator of the CTUWS, an umbrella advocacy organization for independent unions in Egypt. The CTUWS, which was awarded the 1999 French Republic's Human Rights Prize, suffered repeated harassment and attack by the Mubarak regime, and played a leading role in its overthrow. Abbas, who witnessed friends killed by the regime during the 1989 Helwan steel strike and was himself arrested and threatened numerous times, has received extensive international recognition for his union and civil society leadership.
KAMAL ABBAS: I am speaking to you from a place very close to Tahrir Square in Cairo, "Liberation Square", which was the heart of the Revolution in Egypt. This is the place were many of our youth paid with their lives and blood in the struggle for our just rights.
From this place, I want you to know that we stand with you as you stood with us.
I want you to know that no power can challenge the will of the people when they believe in their rights. When they raise their voices loud and clear and struggle against exploitation.
No one believed that our revolution could succeed against the strongest dictatorship in the region. But in 18 days the revolution achieved the victory of the people. When the working class of Egypt joined the revolution on 9 and 10 February, the dictatorship was doomed and the victory of the people became inevitable.
We want you to know that we stand on your side. Stand firm and don't waiver. Don't give up on your rights. Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their just rights.
We and all the people of the world stand on your side and give you our full support.
As our just struggle for freedom, democracy and justice succeeded, your struggle will succeed. Victory belongs to you when you stand firm and remain steadfast in demanding your just rights.
We support you. we support the struggle of the peoples of Libya, Bahrain and Algeria, who are fighting for their just rights and falling martyrs in the face of the autocratic regimes. The peoples are determined to succeed no matter the sacrifices and they will be victorious.
Today is the day of the American workers. We salute you American workers! You will be victorious. Victory belongs to all the people of the world, who are fighting against exploitation, and for their just rights.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Stop LAPD Stealing of Immigrant's Cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lf4kENkxo
On Februrary 19, 2011 Members of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC) organized and engaged in direct action to defend the people of Los Angeles, CA from the racist LAPD "Sobriety" Checkpoints that are a poorly disguised trap to legally steal the cars from working class people in general and undocumented people in particular. Please disseminate this link widely.
Venceremos,
SCIC
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Protesters weather major snowstorm in Wausau, Wisconsin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7enVDAr1IY&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
[For subtitles, press the little red cc at the bottom, right of the screen.]
Sout Al Horeya Amir Eid - Hany Adel - Hawary On Guitar & Sherif On Keyboards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgw_zfLLvh8
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Hymn of Egyptian revolution on Youtube with EN subtitels "Saut al Hurria" (Voice of the revolution)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5CqhL5X4o
First Responders
Wednesday, February 16th, in the State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin, well over ten thousand citizens representing many others (teachers and students, nurses, custodial workers, firefighters, parents, families, community members and staunch union supporters) gathered to say NO! to Governor Scott Walker's so-called "Repair Bill"
The message was unequivocal and clear: no rolling back workers collective bargaining rights and to NEGOTIATE not LEGISLATE our way toward a better future.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Most Heroic Word in All Languages is Revolution
By Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs, that greatest son of the Middle American west, wrote this in 1907 in celebration of that year's May Day events. It retains all of its vibrancy and vitality as events breathe new life into the global struggle for emancipation. "Revolution" remains the most heroic word in every language. -The Rustbelt Radical
Today the slaves of all the world are taking a fresh breath in the long and weary march; pausing a moment to clear their lungs and shout for joy; celebrating in festal fellowship their coming Freedom.
All hail the Labor Day of May!
The day of the proletarian protest;
The day of stern resolve;
The day of noble aspiration.
Raise high this day the blood-red Standard of the Revolution!
The banner of the Workingman;
The flag, the only flag, of Freedom.
Slavery, even the most abject-dumb and despairing as it may seem-has yet its inspiration. Crushed it may be, but extinguished never. Chain the slave as you will, O Masters, brutalize him as you may, yet in his soul, though dead, he yearns for freedom still.
The great discovery the modern slaves have made is that they themselves must achieve. This is the secret of their solidarity; the heart of their hope; the inspiration that nerves them all with sinews of steel.
They are still in bondage, but no longer cower;
No longer grovel in the dust,
But stand erect like men.
Conscious of their growing power the future holds up to them her outstretched hands.
As the slavery of the working class is international, so the movement for its emancipation.
The salutation of slave to slave this day is repeated in every human tongue as it goes ringing round the world.
The many millions are at last awakening. For countless ages they have suffered; drained to the dregs the bitter cup of misery and woe.
At last, at last the historic limitation has been reached, and soon a new sun will light the world.
Red is the life-tide of our common humanity and red our symbol of universal kinship.
Tyrants deny it; fear it; tremble with rage and terror when they behold it.
We reaffirm it and on this day pledge anew our fidelity-come life or death-to the blood-red Banner of the Revolution.
Socialist greetings this day to all our fellow-workers! To the god-like souls in Russia marching grimly, sublimely into the jaws of hell with the Song of the Revolution in their death-rattle; to the Orient, the Occident and all the Isles of the Sea!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.
It thrills and vibrates; cheers and inspires. Tyrants and time-servers fear it, but the oppressed hail it with joy.
The throne trembles when this throbbing word is lisped, but to the hovel it is food for the famishing and hope for the victims of despair.
Let us glorify today the revolutions of the past and hail the Greater Revolution yet to come before Emancipation shall make all the days of the year May Days of peace and plenty for the sons and daughters of toil.
It was with Revolution as his theme that Mark Twain's soul drank deep from the fount of inspiration. His immortality will rest at last upon this royal tribute to the French Revolution:
"The ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood-one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two Reigns of Terror, if we would but remember it and consider it: the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death on ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."
-The Rustbelt Radical, February 25, 2011
http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/the-most-heroic-word-in-all-languages-is-revolution/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
New music video by tommi avicolli mecca of the song "stick and stones," which is about bullying in high school, is finished and up on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of_twpu3-Nw
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
New antiwar song that's bound to be a classic:
box
http://www.youtube.com/user/avimecca
by tommi avicolli mecca
(c) 2009
Credits are:
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, guitar/vocals
John Radogno, lead guitar
Diana Hartman, vocals, kazoo
Chris Weir, upright bass
Produced and recorded by Khalil Sullivan
I'm the recruiter and if truth be told/ I can lure the young and old
what I do you won't see/ til your kid's in JROTC
CHO ooh, put them in a box drape it with a flag and send them off to mom and dad
send them with a card from good ol' uncle sam, gee it's really just so sad
I'm the general and what I do/ is to teach them to be true
to god and country flag and oil/ by shedding their blood on foreign soil
CHO
I'm the corporate boss and well I know/ war is lots of dough dough dough
you won't find me over there/ they just ship the money right back here
CHO
last of all it's me the holy priest/ my part is not the least
I assure them it's god's will/ to go on out and kill kill kill
CHO
it's really just so sad
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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?
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MECA Middle East Children's Alliance
Howard & Roslyn Zinn Presente! Honor Their Legacy By Providing Clean Water for Children in Gaza
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
Howard Zinn supported the work of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) from the beginning. Over the years, he lent his name and his time countless times to support our work. Howard and Roz were both personal friends of mine and Howard helped MECA raise funds for our projects for children in Palestine by coming to the Bay Area and doing events for us.
On the first anniversary of Howard's passing, I hope you will join MECA in celebrating these two extraordinary individuals.
- Barbara Lubin, Executive Director
YES! I want to help MECA build a water purification and desalination unit at the Khan Younis Co-ed Elementary School for 1,400 students in Gaza in honor of Howard & Roslyn Zinn.
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
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!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us
by: Richard D. Wolff, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Wednesday 02 March 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/how-rich-soaked-rest-us68155
2) Soldier Faces 22 New WikiLeaks Charges
[NOTE TO READERS: It is more urgent now to DEFEND Bradley Manning
Donate to Bradley's Defense Fund:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/858/1/
Rally for Bradley at Quantico 3/20:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/889/1/
FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE AND WIKILEAKS! ...BW]
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/us/03manning.html?ref=world
3) Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?
"There are signs of a backlash in favor of teachers. A New York Times poll taken last week found that by nearly two to one - 60 to 33 percent - Americans opposed restricting collective bargaining for public employees. A similar majority - including more than half of Republicans - said the salaries and benefits of most public employees were 'about right' or 'too low.' ...In interviews this week, even teachers facing layoffs or pay cuts said they felt a calling to be in the classroom. 'I put my heart and soul into teaching,' said Lindsay Vlachakis, 25, a high school math teacher in Madison. 'When people attack teachers, they're attacking me.'"
By TRIP GABRIEL
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/education/03teacher.html?ref=us
4) Bill Weakening Union Rights Moves to Ohio House
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04states.html?ref=us
5) Texas: DNA Evidence Clears Man Jailed for 17 Years
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/us/03brfs-DNAEVIDENCEC_BRF.html?ref=us
6) Broke Town, U.S.A.
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06Muni-t.html?ref=business
7) On March 2 at Laney College, Oakland, Alameda Sheriffs Attack LGBTQI Student
Via Email
8) Wikileaks: Bradley Manning Faces 22 New Charges, Possible Death Penalty
'Aiding the enemy' is most serious of new counts filed against private in WikiLeaks case
by Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube
Published on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 by MSNBC
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/368-wikileaks/5143-bradley-manning-faces-death-penalty
9) US UK, French forces land in Libya
India sending 3 warships in support , Gadhafi vows to 'triumph over enemy'
Akhtar Jamal
March 4, 2011
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/132-132/5147-us-french-english-special-forces-enter-libya-to-reinforce-uprising
10) Soldier in Leaks Case Was Jailed Naked, Lawyer Says
"Investigators have been seeking evidence that could implicate Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, as a conspirator in the leaking of the military and diplomatic documents and videos."
[So, they are torturing Bradley Manning in order to get him to implicate Julian Assange. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks' revelations exposing the truth are changing the world and exposing the treachery of the U.S. and the dictators they support and arm...bw]
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04manning.html?hp
11) The Poor Fight Back
Chicago Tenants Block Streets to Protest Republican Budget Cuts
by John Bartlett
Published on Thursday, March 3, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/03-1
12) Fighting rages in Libya's east
At least 30 civilians killed after Gaddafi loyalists try to retake rebel-held town of Az Zawiyah, witnesses say.
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2011 17:15 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/03/201134161217430734.html
13) Protesters converge on Iraq capital
Thousands of Iraqis take to the streets across the country to protest against corruption and unemployment.
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2011 15:03 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/03/20113492534217409.html
14) Friday Prayers Again Lead to Protests in Mideast
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/world/middleeast/05unrest.html?hp
15) Egypt's Generals Struggle in New Role
"'The military understands it is not business as usual - but the question is on the range of change and the extent of change,' said Samer Soliman, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. 'The major challenge for the military now is to convince the population to wait.'"
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html?ref=world
16) Libya's Hidden Wealth May Be Next Battle
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/business/global/04sovereign.html?ref=world
17) Trial Against U.S. Contractor Starts in Cuba
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/04/world/americas/AP-CB-Cuba-Detained-American.html?ref=world
18) Wisconsin Protesters Leave Capitol After Judge's Ruling
By MONICA DAVEY
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/us/05wisconsin.html?ref=us
19) Harvard Says It Will Allow the R.O.T.C. to Return
By KATIE ZEZIMA
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/education/04rotc.html?ref=us
20) Democrats Open Talks by Offering $6.5 Billion More in Cuts
[I.e., who can cut the most from those with the least and get away with it!...bw]
By CARL HULSE and JACKIE CALMES
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/politics/04congress.html?ref=us
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us
by: Richard D. Wolff, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Wednesday 02 March 2011
http://www.truth-out.org/how-rich-soaked-rest-us68155
How the rich soaked the rest of us: The astonishing story of the last few decades is a massive redistribution of wealth, as the rich have shifted the tax burden.
Over the last half-century, the richest Americans have shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves and onto everybody else. The three convenient and accurate Wikipedia graphs below show the details. The first graph compares the official tax rates paid by the top and bottom income earners. Note especially that from the end of the Second World War into the early 1960s, the highest income earners paid a tax rate over 90 percent for many years. Today, the top earners pay a rate of only 35 percent. Note, also, how the gap between the rates paid by the richest and the poorest has narrowed. If we take into account the many loopholes the rich can and do use far more than the poor, the gap narrows even more.
One conclusion is clear and obvious: the richest Americans have dramatically lowered their income tax burden since 1945, both absolutely and relative to the tax burdens of the middle income groups and the poor.
Consider two further points based on this graph: first, if the highest income earners today were required to pay the same rate that they paid for many years after 1945, the federal government would need far lower deficits to support the private economy through its current crisis; and second, those tax-the-rich years after 1945 experienced far lower unemployment and far faster economic growth than we have had for years.
The lower taxes the rich got for themselves are one reason why they have become so much richer over the last half-century. Just as their tax rates started to come down from their 1960s heights, so their shares of the total national income began their rise. As the two other Wikipedia graphs below show, we have now returned to the extreme inequality of income that characterized the US a century ago.
The graph above shows the portion/percentage of total national income taken by the top 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent, and the top 100th of a percent of individuals and families: the richest of the rich. The third graph compares what happened to the after-tax household incomes of Americans from 1979 to 2005 (adjusted for inflation). The bottom fifth of poorest citizens saw their income barely rise at all. The middle fifth of income earners saw their after-tax household income rise by less than 25 percent. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of households saw their after-tax household incomes rise by 175 percent.
In simplest terms, the richest Americans have done by far the best over the last 30 years; they are more able to pay taxes today than they have been in many decades, and they are more able to pay than other Americans by a far wider margin. At a time of national economic crisis, especially, they can and should contribute far more in taxes.
Instead, a rather vicious cycle has been at work for years. Reduced taxes on the rich leave them with more money to influence politicians and politics. Their influence wins them further tax reductions, which gives them still more money to put to political use. When the loss of tax revenue from the rich worsens already strained government budgets, the rich press politicians to cut public services and government jobs and not even debate a return to the higher taxes the rich used to pay. So it goes - from Washington, to Wisconsin to New York City.
How do the rich justify and excuse this record? They claim that they can invest the money they save from taxes and thereby create jobs etc. But do they? In fact, cutting rich people's taxes is often very bad for the rest of us (beyond the worsening inequality and hobbled government it produces).
Several examples show this. First, a good part of the money the rich save from taxes is then lent by them to the government (in the form of buying US Treasury securities for their personal investment portfolios). It would obviously be better for the government to tax the rich to maintain its expenditures, and thereby avoid deficits and debts. Then, the government would not need to tax the rest of us to pay interest on those debts to the rich.
Second, the richest Americans take the money they save from taxes and invest big parts of it in China, India, and elsewhere. That often produces more jobs over there, fewer jobs here, and more imports of goods produced abroad. US dollars flow out to pay for those imports and so accumulate in the hands of foreign banks and foreign governments. They, in turn, lend from that wealth to the US government because it does not tax our rich, and so we get taxed to pay for the interest Washington has to give those foreign banks and governments. The largest single recipient of such interest payments today is the People's Republic of China.
Third, the richest Americans take the money they don't pay in taxes and invest it in hedge funds and with stockbrokers to make profitable investments. These days, that often means speculating in oil and food, which drives up their prices, undermines economic recovery for the mass of Americans and produces acute suffering around the globe. Those hedge funds and brokers likewise use part of the money rich people save from taxes to speculate in the US stock markets. That has recently driven stock prices higher: hence, the stock market recovery. And that mostly helps - you guessed it - the richest Americans who own most of the stocks.
The one kind of significant wealth average Americans own, if they own any, is their individual home. And home values remain deeply depressed: no recovery there.
Cutting the taxes on the rich in no way guarantees social benefits from what they may choose to do with their money. Indeed, their choices can worsen economic conditions for the mass of people. These days, that is exactly what they are doing.
This article was also published in The Guardian.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Soldier Faces 22 New WikiLeaks Charges
[NOTE TO READERS: It is more urgent now to DEFEND Bradley Manning
Donate to Bradley's Defense Fund:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/858/1/
Rally for Bradley at Quantico 3/20:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/889/1/
FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE AND WIKILEAKS! ...BW]
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/us/03manning.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The Army announced 22 additional charges on Wednesday against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the military intelligence analyst who is accused of leaking a trove of government files to WikiLeaks a year ago.
The new charges included "aiding the enemy"; wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it was accessible to the enemy; multiple counts of theft of public records, transmitting defense information and computer fraud. If he is convicted, Private Manning could be sentenced to life in prison.
"The new charges more accurately reflect the broad scope of the crimes that Private First Class Manning is accused of committing," said Capt. John Haberland, an Army spokesman.
The charges provide new details about when prosecutors believe that Private Manning downloaded copies of particular files from a classified computer system in Iraq. For example, the charges say he copied a database of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables between March 28 and May 4, 2010.
The charges also accuse Private Manning of twice "adding unauthorized software" to the secret computer system - once between February and early April 2010, and again on May 4. A press release accompanying the charges said the software was used "to extract classified information" from the system.
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, noted that several of the charges seemed to be describing the same basic act, but in different ways. He said that it was "typical for military prosecutors to draft charges in as many ways as possible," and he predicted that the defense would challenge the redundancies later in the process.
"We're potentially entering a new chapter with this set of charges," Mr. Fidell said.
Several of the charges were predicated on the notion that various sets of files were worth more than $1,000. The charge sheet did not explain how the government had determined the value of the copied files, but it cited a federal statute that has a higher penalty when property worth at least $1,000 is involved.
The charge sheet also did not identify "the enemy" that Private Manning was accused of aiding. A military statement says that charge can be a capital offense, but the prosecution team had decided against recommending the death penalty in this case.
In its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks said the charge of aiding the enemy was "a vindictive attack on Manning for exercising his right to silence. No evidence of any such thing." It also said the charge suggested that "WikiLeaks would be defined as 'the enemy.' A serious abuse."
Military officials did not respond to a question on Wednesday about who the "enemy" was. The charge sheet, however, accuses the private of giving intelligence to the enemy "through indirect means," which could suggest that prosecutors are referring to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents rather than to WikiLeaks.
Private Manning's lawyer, David E. Coombs, who has largely declined to talk to the news media, said on Twitter that "aiding the enemy" was the "most significant additional charge."
Mr. Coombs also posted on his Web site two statements in response to the new charges. One contained an excerpt from a military rule describing what can qualify for that charge. The other said "the defense has been preparing for the possibility of additional charges in this case" for several weeks. In a statement on Tuesday, he predicted that a hearing on whether to move forward with a court-martial would probably begin in May or June.
Private Manning has been held under highly restrictive conditions since July at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. One question has been why legal proceedings against him did not seem to be moving forward.
The Army said Wednesday that the delay was to evaluate Private Manning's "mental capacity" at the defense's request. That evaluation is pending, it said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?
"There are signs of a backlash in favor of teachers. A New York Times poll taken last week found that by nearly two to one - 60 to 33 percent - Americans opposed restricting collective bargaining for public employees. A similar majority - including more than half of Republicans - said the salaries and benefits of most public employees were 'about right' or 'too low.' ...In interviews this week, even teachers facing layoffs or pay cuts said they felt a calling to be in the classroom. 'I put my heart and soul into teaching,' said Lindsay Vlachakis, 25, a high school math teacher in Madison. 'When people attack teachers, they're attacking me.'"
By TRIP GABRIEL
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/education/03teacher.html?ref=us
The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage.
"You feel punched in the stomach," said Ms. Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees' two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor's plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights.
Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class.
"I love teaching, but I have $26,000 of student debt," she said. "I'm 30 years old, and I can't save up enough for a down payment" for a house. Nor does she own a car. She is making plans to move to Colorado, where she could afford to keep teaching by living with her parents.
Around the country, many teachers see demands to cut their income, benefits and say in how schools are run through collective bargaining as attacks not just on their livelihoods, but on their value to society.
Even in a country that is of two minds about teachers - Americans glowingly recall the ones who changed their lives, but think the job with its summers off is cushy - education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters.
Republican lawmakers in half a dozen states are pressing to unwind tenure and seniority protections in place for more than 50 years. Gov. Chris Christie's dressing down of New Jersey teachers in town-hall-style meetings, accusing them of greed, has touched a populist vein and made him a national star.
Mayors are threatening mass layoffs, including in New York City and in Providence, R.I., where all 1,926 teachers were told last week they would lose their jobs - a largely symbolic gesture since most will be hired back.
Some experts question whether teaching, with its already high attrition rate - more than 25 percent leave in the first three years - will attract high-quality recruits in the future.
"It's hard to feel good about yourself when your governor and other people are telling you you're doing a lousy job," said Steve Derion, 32, who teaches American history in Manahawkin, N.J. "I'm sure there were worse times to be a teacher in our history - I know they had very little rights - but it feels like we're going back toward that direction."
Those pressing for teachers' concessions insist the changes will improve schools.
"This is in no way, shape or form an attack on teachers; it is a comprehensive effort to reform a system," said Tony Bennett, the superintendent of public instruction in Indiana, where demonstrators have also besieged the Capitol in opposition to bills supported by Dr. Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican. The legislation would limit teachers' collective bargaining to pay and benefits and allow principals to set class sizes and school hours and to lay off teachers based on job performance, not years of service.
Dr. Bennett said the state teachers' union had distorted the legislation to create fear.
There are signs of a backlash in favor of teachers. A New York Times poll taken last week found that by nearly two to one - 60 to 33 percent - Americans opposed restricting collective bargaining for public employees. A similar majority - including more than half of Republicans - said the salaries and benefits of most public employees were "about right" or "too low."
As for teachers' mood, an annual poll sponsored by the MetLife Foundation found in 2009, before this year's blast of opprobrium, that 59 percent were "very satisfied," up from 40 percent in 1984. In interviews this week, even teachers facing layoffs or pay cuts said they felt a calling to be in the classroom.
"I put my heart and soul into teaching," said Lindsay Vlachakis, 25, a high school math teacher in Madison. "When people attack teachers, they're attacking me."
Although crushing state budget deficits are the proximate cause of lawmakers' pressure, a further justification for many of the proposed measures comes from the broad accountability movement, which aims to raise student achievement and sees teachers' unions as often blocking the way.
Accountability, particularly as measured by student test scores, has brought sweeping changes to education and promises more, but many teachers feel the changes are imposed with scant input from classroom-level educators. Nearly 70 percent said in the MetLife survey that their voices were not heard in education debates.
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education policy group, said the decline in teachers' status traced to the success of unions in paying teachers and granting job security based on their years of service, not ability.
"They are reaping a bitter harvest that they didn't individually plant but their profession has planted over 50 years, going from a respected profession to a mass work force in which everyone is treated as if they are interchangeable, as in the steel mills of yesteryear," Mr. Finn said.
Those who oppose the gathering momentum to evaluate teachers based in significant part on student test scores argue that it will drive good teachers from the neediest schools.
Anthony Cody, who taught middle-school science for 18 years and now mentors new teachers in the Oakland, Calif., school district, said many leave at the three-year mark for higher salaries and easier conditions elsewhere.
Oakland has many poor students and schools at the bottom on standardized tests - schools the federal Education Department identifies as candidates to be sweepingly overhauled by removing half their staffs.
"What we need in these schools is stability," said Mr. Cody, 52, who writes a blog about teaching. "We need to convince people that if they invest their career in working with these challenging students, then we will reward them and appreciate them. We will not subject them to arbitrary humiliation in the newspaper. We will not require they be evaluated and paid based on test scores that often fluctuate greatly beyond the teacher's control."
Mr. Cody acknowledged that many of his younger colleagues, who have come of age in the era of test scores used to gauge progress and accountability - first for schools, and now increasingly for teachers - are not as resistant to the concept.
"I'm not too concerned or worried about that," said Kevin Tougher, 31, who teaches third grade in Lake Grove, N.Y., where a new statewide evaluation system will rate teachers based 40 percent on their students' test scores or comparable measures.
Last month Mr. Tougher was notified that because of his lack of seniority, he will be laid off, or "excessed," this year under the state's proposed cuts to school aid. A union activist, he believes seniority-based layoffs are fair.
"The seniority part, I get that," said Mr. Tougher, who is single. "While it would be a bummer if I were excessed for next year, that's just how things go sometimes."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Bill Weakening Union Rights Moves to Ohio House
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04states.html?ref=us
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A bill narrowly approved by the Ohio Senate that would weaken public employee unions is expected to be passed by the House next week.
The Republican-sponsored legislation would curtail collective bargaining rights for public sector workers by banning strikes and putting the power of breaking labor impasses in the hands of local elected officials.
Amid boos and shouts of "shame on you," the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate voted 17 to 16 on Wednesday for the bill, with six Republicans voting against it.
After the measure is approved by the House, where Republicans hold a majority, it is expected to be signed into law by Gov. John Kasich. Mr. Kasich, a Republican, issued a statement applauding the Senate vote. Democratic lawmakers said they would take it to a ballot referendum this fall.
Unions call the bill the biggest blow to public sector workers since the legal framework was put in place to protect them in 1983. Republican lawmakers argued that it was required in order to keep financially pressed local governments solvent.
"This is the first big step in restoring fiscal responsibility in Ohio," said Kevin Bacon, a Republican senator.
The battle in Ohio has unfolded over the past month along with similar confrontations in Wisconsin and Indiana. Unlike in the other states, where Democrats are needed for a quorum, in Ohio, Republicans make a quorum on their own.
In Wisconsin, a standoff over legislation that would cut collective bargaining rights for public employees intensified. Democrats in the State Senate, who left Wisconsin last month to prevent a vote from taking place, learned that the Republicans left behind were taking steps to start fining missing lawmakers $100 for each day they stay away.
Though some of the Democrats and Republicans met early in the week, it was clear by Wednesday that the sides were farther apart than ever. And each side suggested that the other caucus appeared to be fracturing under the tension.
From an undisclosed location in Illinois, Mark Miller, a leader of the Senate Democrats, issued a statement accusing the Republicans of "schoolyard bully tactics."
Scott Fitzgerald, leader of the Senate Republicans, then issued his own and reminded the Democrats of Gov. Scott Walker's warnings that some 1,500 state workers might be laid off soon if the lawmakers did not act on the bill.
In Ohio, Nina Turner, a Senate Democrat, said, "This bill seeks to vilify our public employees and turn what used to be the virtue of public service into a crime."
At its heart, the bill redraws rules governing how several hundred thousand public-sector workers bargain with the governments that employ them. Among the most objectionable parts, workers said, are the rules giving local officials the final say in breaking labor impasses. Currently, non-elected, third parties decide.
Shannon Jones, the senator who sponsored the bill, argued that elected bodies, like city councils, were responsible for appropriating taxpayer money and so should ultimately decide disputes involving it, an argument that Democrats and even some Republican rejected.
"The elected representatives have the responsibility to oversee the services that people elected them to provide," she said.
Republican senators who voted against the bill said many of its proposals were badly needed, but that it ultimately went too far, erasing too many rights for public-sector workers in a way that risks its repeal in a ballot referendum later.
One such senator, Bill Seitz, argued that the new rule was unfair because it placed the power to decide in the hands of city councils who would always take the side of local managers. His proposal to use judges, who are elected in Ohio and would be more neutral, was rejected.
"It's like a husband and wife going to negotiate and it doesn't work, so the wife gets everything she wants," he said. "Who would go for that?"
Tim Grendell, another Republican who voted against the bill, argued that it was elected bodies that were largely responsible for the country's current budget mess.
"The people we want to entrust the genie of the future to are those who created the morass of problems we are trying to solve," he said. "That's schizophrenic thinking."
City administrators said they thought the law, which was amended over the weekend, had been softened in favor of public-sector workers, because it preserves the right to collective bargaining. Mike Bell, the mayor of Toledo, said the law would help ailing local governments "push a reset switch" when they have nothing left to offer at the bargaining table.
"Most contracts are silent on what to do when you can't afford to pay your employees," he said.
But the bill also bans the right to strike for all public-sector workers, an option currently forbidden only for emergency workers. Dissenting Republican senators said the stipulation made the right to collective bargaining that the bill ultimately preserved, purely cosmetic.
"Without having something to lose, collective bargaining is not bargaining, it's just a conversation," Mr. Grendell said.
Lawmakers who supported the bill said it would allow government to function more like the private sector, with the flexibility to have more control over its operating costs. But its opponents argued that the private sector had slashed older workers, something the new bill was in danger of allowing.
"Who says the private sector has the golden standard on what it means to treat folks?" Senator Turner said.
Monica Davey contributed reporting from Chicago.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Texas: DNA Evidence Clears Man Jailed for 17 Years
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/us/03brfs-DNAEVIDENCEC_BRF.html?ref=us
DNA testing has cleared a 50-year-old man who spent 17 years in prison for rape. George Rodriguez has been free since 2004, when his verdict was overturned after the court ruled that faulty evidence had been introduced at his trial. The Harris County district attorney, Patricia Lykos, says the DNA evidence vindicates him and verified the true identities of the two men who committed the crime. The evidence shows that Manuel Beltran, 50, committed the rape in 1987. He is serving a 60-year prison term for the assault. The second man, Isidro Yanez, has died.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Broke Town, U.S.A.
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06Muni-t.html?ref=business
Vallejo, a city about 25 miles north of San Francisco, offers a sneak preview of what could be the latest version of economic disaster. When the foreclosure wave hit, local tax revenue evaporated. The city managers couldn't make their budget and eliminated financing for the local museum, the symphony and the senior center. The city begged the public-employee unions for pay cuts - all to no avail. In May 2008, Vallejo filed for bankruptcy. The filing drew little national attention; most people were too busy watching banks fail to worry about cities. But while the banks have largely recovered, Vallejo is still in bankruptcy. The police force has shrunk from 153 officers to 92. Calls for any but the most serious crimes go unanswered. Residents who complain about prostitutes or vandals are told to fill out a form. Three of the city's firehouses were closed. Last summer, a fire ravaged a house in one of the city's better neighborhoods; one of the firetrucks came from another town, 15 miles away. Is this America's future?
Cities across America are facing dire financial distress. Meredith Whitney, a banking analyst turned independent adviser who correctly predicted the banking meltdown, has issued an Armageddon-like prediction of mass municipal defaults. Others - notably Newt Gingrich - have suggested that state governments as well as cities should be allowed to file for bankruptcy. Congress held a hearing to examine the idea.
These forecasts of apocalypse have touched a nerve. Americans, still reeling from the devastating impact of the mortgage debacle, are fearful that the next economic disaster is only a matter of time. To anyone reading the headlines of budget deficits and staggering pension liabilities, it takes little imagination to conclude that the next big one will be government itself. The problems of cities are everywhere. The city council of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, has enlisted a big New York law firm to explore bankruptcy as a means of restructuring a crushing debt. Central Falls, R.I., is in receivership. Hamtramck, Mich., a small city within Detroit's borders, says it could run out of money next month. Hamtramck has only 90 employees, yet it is saddled with the pensions and health care obligations of 252 retirees. Detroit itself is at risk. Large deficits will mean closing about half of the city's schools and will push high-school class sizes to 60 students.
These and other struggling locales do not begin to approach Whitney's forecast of hundreds of billions in municipal defaults this year. (It would take defaults by 40 cities with as much debt as Detroit to reach even $100 billion.) Some industry experts accuse Whitney of exaggerating the crisis and of worsening the cities' problems by frightening away investors. Whitney's theory is that states, whose finances are also in desperate shape, will cut off local aid to preserve their own budgets; cities that have been subsisting on government transfers would become fiscal orphans and, in a financial sense, unworkable. She has not elaborated on her thesis beyond a few well-chosen television appearances. (She declined to talk to me.) But in the two months following Whitney's warning, investors unloaded about $25 billion in shares of mutual funds that invest in municipal bonds. The selling spree sent the prices of these munis, typically among the most reliable investments, into a free fall.
If muni bonds were to default (causing investors permanent harm, as distinct from the temporary discomfort of price fluctuations), ordinary Americans would lose big. Munis are bonds issued by state and local governments, as well as agencies like hospitals, with the interest going to bondholders tax-free. Their relative safety, plus the tax break, has made them a favorite among individual investors, who own about two-thirds of the total, either directly or via mutual funds.
But what if the burden of municipal woes falls elsewhere than on bondholders? Yes, cities and states have creditors. They also have citizens who rely on their services and who pay the taxes, and they have public employees who are dependent on stable public-sector jobs and often-ample benefits. Whitney isn't wrong about a crisis in local government; the crisis is here. The question is, will it be articulated in terms of bond defaults or larger kindergarten classes - or no kindergarten classes at all? The efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere to squash organized labor suggest that politicians are no longer so willing to protect public employees. Teachers and nurses are likely to suffer well in advance of investors.
The United States has nearly $3 trillion in municipal bonds outstanding. Though some are backed by specific projects like airports and toll roads, most are general-obligation bonds; local taxes are used to pay the interest on those bonds before other expenses. Unlike a corporation, whose revenue can disappear, cities do not go away - or at least, most of them don't. Detroit is in trouble because of its shrinking population, as are any number of towns in the former steel region of Western Pennsylvania. Many former industrial cities are burdened with governments that are out of proportion to their shrunken tax bases. Local budgets were stretched even before the recession; now, diminished tax receipts have threatened their ability to balance budgets. Bondholders in those municipalities have reason to sweat.
For areas with a stable economy, however, solvency is largely a matter of political will. Historically, far fewer than 1 percent of municipal bonds fail, and most that do tend to be issued for quasi public projects rather than cities. Typical is a monorail that links Las Vegas casinos - and that defaulted for lack of riders. In 2008, a record 166 issues defaulted, but the great majority were Florida land developments; essentially, builders used the tax code to finance sewers and water lines and then walked away when the mortgage bubble burst. The issues were small; defaults in 2008 totaled $8.5 billion. Last year, defaults fell to $2.8 billion.
Chastened by their failure to foresee the mortgage bust, the credit agencies have downgraded munis as the cities' troubles have accelerated. But the agencies that evaluate muni bonds are paid to worry about bondholders, not about kindergartners or local fire departments; consequently, they are not alarmed. Moody's says it expects defaults to rise in 2011. But the agencies do not predict a default epidemic. "Munis are not like subprime bonds," Eric Friedland, a managing director at Fitch Ratings, said.
Government entities do seem less exposed to the sort of chain-reaction panic that undid banks. Lehman Brothers needed financing every day; when confidence disappeared, Lehman disappeared, too. Cities are generally not dependent on short-term financing. (A sizable exception involves some $80 billion in variable credit lines expiring over the next six months - which could force some governments to scramble.)
Another factor that tilts against default is that states and cities carry much less debt relative to the size of their economies than do troubled national governments like those of Greece or Spain (or the United States, for that matter). And muni debts generally come due in a steady stream - not all at once. Robert Kurtter, a managing director at Moody's, says, "State and local governments really don't have a crushing debt problem."
Which is not to say they don't have a problem. For most of the past decade, local government was a growth business. Avid consumption and the real estate boom spurred an abundance of sales- and property-tax receipts; with dollars flowing in, governments got used to spending more and borrowing more. Then, in the recession, tax revenues dried up, while demands for services kept rising. For the last few years, both cities and states have faced severe, recurring budget gaps.
As part of the 2009 stimulus package, Washington gave the states $150 billion. The states became dependent on a higher level of federal aid - 35 percent of their budgets, compared with about 25 percent before. But the stimulus is ending, and the states will have to cut.
Determining who will suffer from budget cuts is a political and a legal calculation. The cities' problem is that annual spending is greater than revenue; that imbalance does not entitle them to walk away from bond payments. Moreover, states and cities devote less than 10 percent of their revenue to annual debt service. In other words, they have ways of balancing budgets without defaulting. Lately, governments have been taking a chain saw to ordinary spending. The cuts sometimes reflect a retreat from what was once conceived as the essential mission of government. Education is being hit hard. Arizona is seeking a federal waiver to remove 280,000 adults from Medicaid rolls. Massachusetts is stripping out funds for homeless shelters. New Jersey has canceled a commuter-rail tunnel under the Hudson River. If the government doesn't build a rail tunnel, who will?
States are also cutting aid to cities - much as Whitney forecast - aggravating the loss of local tax revenues. Camden, N.J., which has one of the highest crime rates in the country, has dismissed nearly half its police force. Michigan cities have seen aid diminish by $4 billion. In San Diego, where the city has cut other spending to pay for spiraling pension costs, residents have formed 56 "maintenance assessment districts" to take care of parks and patch up sidewalks. When the city failed to pass a hospitality tax, local hotels banded together and agreed to charge a 2 percent visitors' fee. Scott Lewis, who writes about politics for the Web site Voice of San Diego, says, "I think the city is dissolving."
In Wisconsin, Scott Walker, the new governor, declared that the state was "broke." He does not mean that Madison intends to default on its obligations to debt holders; he means that public employees will have to increase contributions toward their benefits in an amount equal to 7 percent of their pay. For some employees, the cuts will mean real hardship. Public institutions like schools are also likely to suffer. Though elected officials prefer not to mention it, taxpayers will also have to ante up. Illinois sharply raised its income tax; Arizona voted for a sales-tax increase. Both of those states had markedly low tax rates to begin with, but Illinois's case should be troubling to bondholders. Even after raising taxes, the state is planning to borrow about $12 billion to cover pensions and past-due bills - pushing both benefit costs and current expenses into the future.
The deficit problems have, at times, seemed to blend with the issue of pensions into a single, giant mess. As E. J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute observes, "This is a conflating of different things." States and cities have to put money aside to pay for future pensions, and the portion of that obligation that is "unfunded" represents a huge liability - from $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion, depending on your assumptions about future pension-fund investment returns. This underfunding won't be felt in a big bang but as a continuous burden for years to come.
Nonetheless, because governments are required to make catch-up payments to those funds, the pension problem is worsening the current budget squeeze. In some cities, the pressure is suffocating. In Miami, according to Fitch, the pension-fund obligation eats up 25 percent of the city budget. In Philadelphia, which has neglected to make payments, the pension fund could be exhausted as early as 2015, says Joshua Rauh of the Kellogg School at Northwestern. Rob Dubow, the city's finance director, insists that "we'll make contributions to make sure that doesn't happen." The city has budgeted a huge $460 million contribution next year. "The real story" of the pension debacle, Dubow says, "is that it will leave less money for police and fire and sanitation."
For a long while, government budget-cutting obeyed a distinctive political calculus: pensions were considered untouchable, so jobs were eliminated instead. Now, governments are going after pensions. Many states have taken the easy step of reducing benefits for new employees. Benefits for existing workers were considered inviolable. But some, like New Mexico and Mississippi, are dunning employees for higher contributions, and Wisconsin may follow. Minnesota and Colorado have watered down pension cost-of-living increases; both have been sued.
Whether such efforts will significantly ease the states' burdens may depend on the courts. In Illinois, where the pension underfunding is among the most egregious, the state constitution says that "benefits shall not be diminished." This language has long been interpreted to mean that when a public employee is promised a pension that increases with each year of service, the rate of accrual can never be changed. Sidley Austin, a law firm in Chicago hired by a pro-business civic group, has circulated a memo arguing that the clause refers only to benefits already earned - not to the rate of accrual in the future. That interpretation, if acted on by the Legislature, would shatter previous notions of pension protections. Sidley also makes the even-more-explosive argument that if Illinois's pension funds dried up, the state could not be forced to contribute more. Let pensioners go hungry.
That is unlikely. Even in Illinois, pensions will be paid. Failure to do so would embroil the government in court for years. That may be the hope of ideologues, who envision that the courts - or possibly even a bankruptcy filing - could be used to alter employee contracts. In the 1930s, progressives persuaded Congress to let cities declare bankruptcy to escape the clutches of creditors. Now, conservatives want Congress to authorize states to file for bankruptcy. "Some people on the right see it as a chance to whack the public unions," says David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has written in favor of state bankruptcy. It's not hard to fathom why Gingrich, who as speaker of the House in the 1990s briefly shut down the U.S. government, would favor default by the states.
But the fantasy of using bankruptcy to suspend government runs up against a hard truth: even in bankruptcy, cities and states don't disappear - nor do their obligations. Orange County, Calif., which entered bankruptcy in the mid-1990s after its treasurer ran up massive losses in derivatives, ultimately paid every cent it owed. "Among the reasons so few [cities] choose to go this option is, it's not clear what they gain," Kurtter of Moody's says.
Another reason is that cities are creatures of their states, which fear a negative impact on their own credit. Connecticut prevented Bridgeport from declaring bankruptcy in the '90s, and Michigan is stopping Hamtramck now. In Pennsylvania, about 20 municipalities are operating under a program to nurse insolvent cities back to health. The program has helped Pittsburgh, despite its woefully underfunded pension plan, to slowly improve its credit.
Harrisburg is a different story. A former mayor wanted to create a destination city with a series of ambitious projects, including a Wild West museum. He also approved an expensive plan to refurbish an incinerator so that it could become a moneymaker - a project that has buried Harrisburg under a mountain of debt. There are other Harrisburgs, cities undone by foolhardy projects, but these cases are particular, not systemic.
Vallejo, which ran out of money when the economy imploded, is more representative. A blue-collar city of 110,000, it had been hurting since a naval base closed in the 1990s. In 2007, the Wal-Mart left town. Then, with the recession, property taxes crashed from $29 million to $20 million. Vallejo cut back on street repairs and vehicle maintenance and reduced its staff by a third. The city sought pay cuts from the police and fire unions, whose members' pay and benefits accounted for about 80 percent of the budget; the unions offered to defer pay raises. The council considered, but rejected, the idea of putting a tax increase to a referendum. Rob Stout, the outgoing finance director, who noted that the police chief is retiring on a $200,000 pension, says the general attitude was one of resistance to footing the bill.
Vallejo was a failure of political will. It is also an example of why bankruptcies for cities don't work. All the constituencies who might have hoped to avoid hardship are being walloped anyway. Labor costs are being cut (though not pensions) and holders of $54 million in city bonds will suffer losses - how much won't be known for years. Even Marc Levinson, a partner with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which represents the city, calls the bankruptcy a waste of money and time. "It's better to cut a deal than go through the pain we have in Vallejo," he says. Pain is coming regardless. In some cities, bondholders will be burned. But America's failing governments may be one of those crises whose full impact is not registered in the muni market, or in any market. Until voters can agree on what government services they want and will pay for, it is possible that bondholders will bank the profits while taxpayers, employees and citizens share the losses.
Roger Lowenstein (elrogl@gmail.com) is a contributing writer and the author of "While America Aged" and, most recently, "The End of Wall Street."
Editor: Vera Titunik (v.titunik-MagGroup@nytimes.com)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) On March 2 at Laney College, Oakland, Alameda Sheriffs Attack LGBTQI Student
Via Email
Hey All:
Today, at Laney College (Oakland, CA), a student was violently tackled and arrested by Alameda Sheriffs during the March 2nd protest against the budget cuts. As part of the March 2nd protests, students had marched on the district office, demanding to speak with the Peralta Chancellor. Instead, they were met by a row of angry Sheriffs aggressively protecting the suddenly locked and empty district office.
When the Chancellor finally emerged, students presented him with their concerns, questions and demands. When a group of LGBTQI students from a group called Queers Fighting Back stood up to present hundreds of petitions calling on the administration to make Laney a safe campus for LGBTQI, the police violently detained one gender-queer student.
For more than 8 hours, we were unable to get information regarding the student's location or the charges she is facing. Now, we have been informed that she is being charged with battery of a police officer, resisting arrest, and disrupting a peaceful assembly and that bail is set at $35,000 (which means we need to turn over $3,500 to have her released).
*We will be publishing an official statement in the next couple days. In the meantime, we need urgently to raise money for bail. Please, if you or your org can donate money, contact me at 310.308.0866
Solidarity in Struggle, Claire
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Wikileaks: Bradley Manning Faces 22 New Charges, Possible Death Penalty
'Aiding the enemy' is most serious of new counts filed against private in WikiLeaks case
by Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube
Published on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 by MSNBC
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/368-wikileaks/5143-bradley-manning-faces-death-penalty
WASHINGTON - Following an intensive seven-month investigation, the Army on Wednesday filed 22 additional charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of illegally downloading tens of thousands of classified U.S. military and State Department documents that were then publicly released by WikiLeaks, military officials tell NBC News.
The most serious of the new charges is "aiding the enemy," a capital offense which carries a potential death sentence.
Pentagon and military officials say some of the classified information released by WikiLeaks contained the names of informants and others who had cooperated with U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, endangering their lives.
According to the officials, the U.S. military rounded up many of those named and brought them into their bases for protection. But, according to one military official, "We didn't get them all." Military officials tell NBC News a small number of them still have not been found.
Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, did not immediately return a call from msnbc.com for comment.
But Coombs wrote on his blog Wednesday that it was uncertain whether any additional charges filed against his client would stick.
"The decision to prefer charges is an individual one by PFC Manning's commander," he wrote. "The nature of the charges and the number of specifications under each reflects his determination, in consultation with his Staff Judge Advocate's office, of the possible offenses in this case. Ultimately, the Article 32 Investigating Officer will determine which, if any, of these additional charges and specifications should be referred to a court-martial."
Manning, 23, was first charged on July 6, 2010, with illegally downloading and transferring defense information to an "unauthorized source," when he worked as a military intelligence analyst in Baghdad. He was also charged on accusations that he obtained 150,000 classified State Department cables, many of which were also eventually released by WikiLeaks.
The charges filed Wednesday include 16 specifications of wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet, knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy. Other charges include the illegal transmission of defense information and fraud.
While conviction on the charge of "aiding the enemy" could result in the death penalty, military prosecutors recommended that he be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on that charge alone. But the presiding military judge would have the authority to dismiss the prosecution's recommendation and impose the death penalty.
Like the earlier charges, the charges made no specific mention of WikiLeaks.
Pentagon and military officials also report that investigators have made no direct link between Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Manning remains in custody at the U.S. Marine Brig at Quantico south of Washington, D.C., awaiting court martial proceedings.
Coombs, Manning's lawyer, has complained that his confinement conditions - in maximum custody under a "prevention of injury" watch - are unduly harsh and undermine his right to a fair trial. Manning has been confined in a 6-by-12-foot cell with a bed, a drinking fountain and a toilet for about 23 hours a day, Coombs has said.
Anti-war groups, a psychologist group as well as filmmaker Michael Moore and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg have called for Bradley to be released from detention. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have condemned the Obama administration's imprisonment conditions.
James Eng of msnbc.com contributed to this report.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) US UK, French forces land in Libya
India sending 3 warships in support , Gadhafi vows to 'triumph over enemy'
Akhtar Jamal
March 4, 2011
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/132-132/5147-us-french-english-special-forces-enter-libya-to-reinforce-uprising
Islamabad-The United States, Britain and France have sent several hundred "defence advisors" to train and support the anti-Gadhafi forces in oil-rich Eastern Libya where "rebels armed groups" have apparently taken over.
According to an exclusive report confirmed by a Libyan diplomat in the region "the three Western states have landed their "special forces troops in Cyrinacia and are now setting up their bases and training centres" to reinforce the rebel forces who are resisting pro-Qaddafi forces in several adjoining areas.
A Libyan official who requested not to be identified said that the U.S. and British military gurus were sent on February 23 and 24 night through American and French warships and small naval boats off Libyan ports of Benghazi and Tobruk.
The Western forces are reportedly preparing to set-up training bases for local militias set-up by the rebel forces for an effective control of the oil-rich region and counter any push by pro- Qaddafi forces from Tripoli.
Other reports claim that efforts to "neutralize" the Libyan Air Force were also underway to limit Qaddafi's rule in Tripoli if not fully uprooted from the country.
Meanwhile, three Indian Navy warships, are also being dispatched to be deployed in the rebel-held areas of Libya.
According to reports the Indian Navy has already sent two warships plus one its largest amphibious vessel INS Jalashwa. According to defence experts "Jalshwa" is the largest ship of Indian Navy which was delivered by the U.S. four years ago. Jalashwa, formaly the USS Trenton, has the capability to embark, transport & land various elements of an amphibious force & its equipped with mechanised landing craft, Sea King helicopters & armed with raders, ship to air missiles & rapid firing guns.
Experts say that Indian ship Jalashwa has a Landing Platform Dock with a capability 1000 fully armed troops. The warship is also used for maritime surveillance, special operations, search & rescue and to undertake other tasks.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Soldier in Leaks Case Was Jailed Naked, Lawyer Says
"Investigators have been seeking evidence that could implicate Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, as a conspirator in the leaking of the military and diplomatic documents and videos."
[So, they are torturing Bradley Manning in order to get him to implicate Julian Assange. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks' revelations exposing the truth are changing the world and exposing the treachery of the U.S. and the dictators they support and arm...bw]
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/04manning.html?hp
WASHINGTON - A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday.
The conditions of Private Manning's confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va., have drawn criticism in recent months from supporters and his lawyer, David E. Coombs.
The soldier's clothing was returned to him Thursday morning, after he was required to stand naked outside his cell during an inspection, Mr. Coombs said in a posting on his Web site.
"This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification," Mr. Coombs wrote. "It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation."
First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said a brig duty supervisor had ordered Private Manning's clothing taken from him. He said that the step was "not punitive" and that it was in accordance with brig rules, but he said that he was not allowed to say more.
"It would be inappropriate for me to explain it," Lieutenant Villiard said. "I can confirm that it did happen, but I can't explain it to you without violating the detainee's privacy."
Private Manning is being held as a maximum security detainee under a special set of restrictions intended to prevent self-injury, even though supporters say there is no evidence that he is suicidal.
During an appearance on MSNBC earlier on Thursday, Geoffrey Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, attributed the general conditions of Private Manning's confinement to "the seriousness of the charges he's facing, the potential length of sentence, the national security implications" and to protect him from potential harm.
Also, earlier on Thursday, one of Private Manning's friends, David House, said in a conference call with reporters that he had visited the soldier the previous weekend and that his mental condition was severely deteriorating as a result of being confined to his cell 23 hours a day, with one hour to exercise in an empty room, and largely isolated from human contact.
But Mr. House said that Private Manning did not seem suicidal and contended that he was being pressured to cooperate.
Investigators have been seeking evidence that could implicate Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, as a conspirator in the leaking of the military and diplomatic documents and videos.
Mr. House spoke on the conference call with Daniel Ellsberg, who compared the leaking of documents to WikiLeaks to his own leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. On Wednesday, the Army announced 22 additional charges against Private Manning, including "aiding the enemy."
The charge sheet did not explain who "the enemy" was, leading some to speculate that it was a reference to WikiLeaks. On Thursday, however, the military said that it instead referred to any hostile forces that could benefit from learning about classified military tactics and procedures.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) The Poor Fight Back
Chicago Tenants Block Streets to Protest Republican Budget Cuts
by John Bartlett
Published on Thursday, March 3, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/03-1
On Friday evening February 25th, 400 people, mostly low-income tenants, braved a chilly winter day to take to the streets in Chicago to stand up against the proposed Republican budget cuts. The cuts would decimate many of the nation's affordable housing programs. Initiated by the Chicago Housing Initiative, a coalition of organizations focused on preserving subsidized housing, the demonstration included acts of civil disobedience. Although many of the organizations had never previously engaged in civil disobedience, the Coalition felt that the situation is so dire that we have to take stronger action. Eleven people blocked a main downtown street to send a message that low-income and working families are ready to fight.
People came to the demonstration to tell elected representatives that the economic crisis is not over for the majority of people living in this country. Rents are too high. Foreclosures have not slowed down. Millions are still looking for work or working at jobs that don't pay enough. So many people are struggling just to survive and to meet the basic needs of themselves and their families. Ms. Adrena Townsend, one of the protestors, said, "I came here because I cannot tighten my belt any more. I cannot do without my home. The House's proposed cuts are aimed at basic human needs such as housing, food, education, and health care. These are not extra trimmings, they are basic necessities."
Just before it left for its February recess, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash $61 billion from the current federal budget. They want to cut the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by 66%. The program provides people with money to pay for heat in the winter. Are these lawmakers willing to turn down or turn off their heat to cut the deficit? They want to cut Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program by 10 %. This program helps pregnant women, new mothers and young children eat well. The House's spending bill would discontinue housing assistance for homeless veterans and cut housing subsidies, job programs and more. In addition the House wants to cut programs like the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that fund the agencies that provide necessities such as rental subsidies and energy assistance. These cuts are direct hits to "human services" programs the help meet the basic needs of so many.
The government may need to make cuts, but who decides what to cut? On February 11, 2011 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised that budget cuts will be historic. The Republican controlled House proposed cutting the Housing and Urban Development's $43.5 billion 2011 budget by over 21%. Yet on February 24th we learned that the Air Force is awarding Boeing a $35 billion contract to build air tankers. Why do the House's proposed cuts almost solely target human need programs? Why is it that Congress does not ask working families what is most important to them?
During the demonstration, protestors chanted, "Tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, we can see who you're for and we won't take it anymore," a slogan that highlights a very real division in this country. One aspect of this division is defining the role of government. The Tea Partiers and their (billionaire) backers want people to think that government is too big and business can handle things on its own without any government interference. According to Herman Bonner, a subsidized tenant and protestor at Friday's demonstration, "I believe the role of government is to ensure that the basic needs of everyone are met and that people have a voice in how this is done."
How you view the government and its role shapes what you think causes the crisis facing this country. For those Tea Party budget cutters in Washington the crisis facing our country is the huge deficit. If nothing is done about the deficit then the country will fall into default and decay. Yet less than two months ago those same representatives voted to cut the taxes on the rich. These cuts were pushed through in the face of growing evidence that wealth disparity in this country has reached epidemic proportions. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the wealthiest 1 % of the population owns 33 % of all the wealth and the top 10 % own over 70 % of all the wealth. The last time there was such inequality was the 1920's just before the depression. Rather than ask the rich to pay their fair share, the Tea Party plans to cut the deficit and to do it on the backs of the poor.
For millions of Americans, the day to day struggle to maintain food on the table and a roof over one's head defines the crisis. For many families, the economy is stuck in a depression. They worry whether they will have a job next week or next year and what will happen if they don't. Young and old alike worry about social security benefits and retirement. They are afraid that the government will abandon any commitment to help and that they will be left to fend for themselves. They don't expect handouts but they do expect - and deserve - support.
The tenant representatives who blocked traffic on Friday are the beginning signs of a budding movement to demand economic justice. This brewing discontent can also be seen in Madison, Wisconsin where union workers are battling for their right to collective bargaining. There will be more protests as people are asked to "compromise" and to forgo basic necessities. In January, the wealthy won their tax cuts and now they want more. It is in this context that the tenants took to the street chanting "They say cut backs and we say fight back." It is for this reason that people need to unite and fight the draconian cuts to human services that are happening across the country on the local, state, and federal level.
John Bartlett is Executive Director for the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, where he has defended tenants' rights for the past seventeen years. Mr. Bartlett began his work for social change more than 20 years ago in Seattle, Washington as a door-to-door canvasser/fundraiser for an environmental organization. Mr. Bartlett is a certified mediator and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Community Organizing from Northeastern Illinois University.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Fighting rages in Libya's east
At least 30 civilians killed after Gaddafi loyalists try to retake rebel-held town of Az Zawiyah, witnesses say.
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2011 17:15 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/03/201134161217430734.html
t least 30 civilians have been killed after security forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, Libyan leader, attempted to retake the rebel-held town of Az Zawiyah, near the capital Tripoli, that has for days been defying his rule, witnesses have said.
The rebellion in Az Zawiyah - the closest rebel-held territory to the capital and also the site of an oil refinery - has been an embarassment to the Libyan authorities who are trying to show they control at least the west of the country.
Eastern regions of the country, around the city of Benghazi, have already fallen out of Gaddafi's control after a popular revolt against his four decades of rule.
"I have been to hospital less than 15 minutes ago. Dozens were killed and more were wounded," Mohamed, a Zawiyah resident, told the Reuters news agency.
"We have counted 30 dead civilians. The hospital was full. They could not find space for the casualties.
"We receive updates from the hospital and they say the number of casualties is rising."
Another resident, Ibrahim, said between 40 and 50 people were killed in the clashes.
Their accounts could not be independently verified because reporters' movements in Libya are restricted.
Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tripoli, said a source close to the Libyan government had told her that Az Zawiyah "has been retaken by government forces".
A rebel leader in Az Zawiyah was also killed in the clashes on Friday.
"Many people were killed in Harsha, which is now occupied by them," Youssef Shagan, a rebel spokesman, told the Reuters news agency, referring to a small town just outside Az Zawiyah.
"They shot at civilians. We still control [Az Zawiyah's] central square. They are four to five kilometers away. Our army commander has been killed in Harsha. We have appointed a new one."
'Victory or death'
Friday's violence in Az Zawiyah comes amid more reports of battles between loyalist forces and anti-Gaddafi fighters in several other strategic cities.
Heavy shelling and machine gun fire has been reported near Ras Lanuf, the eastern oil port located 660km from Tripoli.
Reuters said rebels fired a sustained barrage of mortar bombs and rockets at a military base in Ras Lanuf on Friday, which was met with artillery fire from the army.
"There are lots of flames, thuds and bangs. There is the wailing of sirens and puffs of smoke in the air," a Reuters correspondent said.
The AFP news agency said at least four people were killed in the fighting.
Rebels had vowed "victory or death" as they headed towards the oil terminal, with reports that trucks of armed anti-Gaddafi fighters are heading towards the area.
"We're going to take it all, Ras Lanuf, Tripoli," Magdi, an army defector, told Reuters.
Government forces are said to be battling to regain control of rebel-held towns close to Tripoli, trying to create a buffer zone around what is still Gaddafi's seat of power.
Earlier, opposition fighters said Libyan forces carried out an air strike near a military base on the western outskirts of Ajdabiya, a town captured by the opposition, but said there was no casualties or damage.
Witnesses said a bomb was dropped on Friday and other rebel fighters say two rockets were fired at the base near the eastern town, but also missed.
Al Jazeera reporters near the town say sandstorms have hit the region, making further strikes unlikely.
But Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the eastern city of Benghazi, said she had heard reports that volunteers going to the front line of fighting were feeling "very vulnerable from the air".
Opposition protesters in the country's east have set up advanced positions 50km west of Brega, which lies in between Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte and the opposition-held port of Benghazi, and sits near ethnic fault lines between tribes loyal to the leader.
Rebel fighters, who are poorly equipped and not well trained, are also said to have pushed further west on Friday, heading along the main coastal road out of Uqayla, a village 280km from Benghazi.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Protesters converge on Iraq capital
Thousands of Iraqis take to the streets across the country to protest against corruption and unemployment.
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2011 15:03 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/03/20113492534217409.html
Thousands of people have converged on Baghdad's Tahrir, or Liberation, Square to protest against corruption and unemployment, despite a vehicle ban that forced many to walk for hours to the heart of the Iraqi capital.
Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf reported from Baghdad that the situation was heading towards a stand-off, as security forces demanded the protesters leave, blocking their route across a bridge leading to the Green Zone, where the government has its base.
Concrete blocks were set up by authorities on all of Baghdad's bridges ahead of the protests.
"What we're seeing here is a bit of a test, of how the government will respond when these people clearly want their demands to be heard," Arraf said.
The protests in Iraq are growing in size, partly because of the instability of the coalition government formed by Nouri al-Maliki, the country's prime minister, Arraf said.
Iraqis are increasingly unwilling to accept the nature of the democracy that has emerged in years after Saddam's regime was overthrown.
"This is a new democracy, it's an unusual democracy, and it's not exactly what people bargained for," she said.
"On top of that, people are looking around protests in Egypt and Tunisia ... It has shown them, particularly these young people that if they come out and demand their rights, perhaps something will happen."
The Baghdad demonstration was one of many taking place across the country on Friday, including in the port of Basra and the city of Najaf.
In the southern city of Basra, about 1,000 people gathered at the Basra provincial council building to rally against corrupt officials and poor basic services. Iraqi security forces used water cannon and batons to disperse the crowds.
Last week the protests in Basra led to the resignation of the governor. This week, protesters demanded that the provincial council step down and essential services such as water and electricity be improved.
Demonstrations have been taking place in Iraq for the past month, with protesters decrying a lack of improvement in their daily lives, eight years after the US-led invasion that ousted the late Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
'Government has failed'
The biggest of the rallies took place last Friday, when Iraqis took to the streets of at least 17 cities and towns. A total of 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded as a result of clashes on that day.
The demonstrations, inspired by revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, have concentrated on demands for improved government services, better pay and an end to corruption in Iraq.
"Our country is lost and for the last eight years the government has failed to offer services for people. Thousands of youths are without jobs," Bahjat Talib, who joined the protest in Baghdad, said.
He said he walked from the vast slum in eastern Baghdad called Sadr City through eight checkpoints to get to the square.
Talib said he had to tell security forces that he was going to work or they would refuse to let him pass.
He was one of about 500 demonstrators in Liberation Square, surrounded by what appeared to be even more security forces.
"People will continue demonstrating until there is reform because the government has been built on a sectarian basis," said Faisal Hamid, a pensioner who walked to Tahrir Square from the nearby neighbourhood of Karrada.
Strict security measures
The Iraqi government, worried the demonstrations may spiral out of control, have taken strict measures that appear designed to limit the number of demonstrators who come out.
Late Thursday, they imposed a vehicle ban in the capital so many of the protesters were forced to walk for miles. Similar vehicle bans were in place in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and the southern city of Basra.
Side streets leading up to the square were blocked with security vehicles and helicopters buzzed overhead in Baghdad.
Before those protests, Iraqi officials tried to discredit the demonstrations by saying they were being backed by supporters of Saddam and al-Qaeda. The warnings seemed designed to keep people away and paint those who did take part in a bad light.
Ammar Ziad, a finance ministry employee who was protesting at Tahrir Square, on Friday, rejected the claims.
"We are not Baathists, we are just Iraqis asking for simple rights like services," he said.
Demonstrators this Friday took measures to protect themselves, showing the distrust many feel toward the security forces.
Kamil al-Assadi, a resident of Sadr City, formed a committee checking demonstrators entering the square because they were worried the security forces might plant people in the crowd to create problems.
"We do not trust the Iraqi security forces and formed a committee to check the demonstrators to make sure that no one is carrying a knife or any kind of weapon who aims at creating any problems during the demo," he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Friday Prayers Again Lead to Protests in Mideast
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/world/middleeast/05unrest.html?hp
In what has become something of a weekly appointment for displaying disaffection with unresponsive governments across the Arab world, thousands poured into the streets across the region after noon prayers on Friday. There were only scattered reports of violence outside of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's harsh crackdown on demonstrators in Libya.
Some protests - in Yemen and Bahrain - stepped up pressure on leaders who have appeared increasingly vulnerable in the weeks since demonstrators toppled the governments of Tunisia and Egypt. Others, in Iraq and Egypt, were pushing their governments for change. In Iraq demonstrators are demanding better government services; in Egypt, they were pressuring the new military leaders to speed up democratic changes.
There was violence at a protest in northern Yemen, where a Shiite rebel group said that the military fired artillery on peaceful protesters in the northern city of Harf Sufyan, hitting dozens of people. The protest, by Houthi rebels, attracted thousands of people and was passing near a military base when the shelling occurred, said Abu Hashem, a spokesman for the group. He said the number of dead and wounded could not be immediately determined.
But the government offered a different account, saying the rebels attempted to storm the base and that three people had been killed in the resulting firefight.
Houthi rebel leaders said they wanted to link the Friday demonstration to broad antigovernment protests that have broken out in cities across Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Yemeni government has been engaged in a war with the Houthi rebels since 2004, and despite a ceasefire between the two sides declared last February, there have been sporadic clashes between the government and the rebels, who control much of the north. The conflict remains far from being resolved and has the potential to further destabilize Yemen, which also faces a secessionist movement in the south.
In Cairo, organizers mounted a large demonstration in Tahrir Square a day after Egypt's ruling military council answered a longstanding demand of the protest movement by forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. Protesters in the square, the epicenter of the antigovernment protests that toppled the government just weeks ago, celebrated the new prime minister, Essam A. Sharaf, while also continuing to press for faster and more substantive changes to promote democracy.
To the east of Saudi Arabia, thousands of Shiite protesters in Bahrain converged on the state television headquarters outside the capital, Manama, on Friday, The Associated Press reported. The latest protest came a day after brief clashes between groups of Sunnis and Shiites in the town of Hamad that again highlighted the sectarian divisions that have been driving demonstrations in the tiny Persian Gulf nation.
The majority Shiite population there has been protesting for weeks against its Sunni monarchy led by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.
Security forces in Iraq dispersed hundreds of protesters with water cannons and batons in the southern city of Basra as thousands more gathered in several provincial capitals, Reuters reported.
And for the first time, Saudi Arabia braced for Friday protests as a Facebook page called for a "day of anger" in an eastern city. On Thursday, young Shiite men had attempted to mount a small protest in the country's oil-rich eastern province, demanding the release of a prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Tawfic al-Amer, who has called for greater rights for the county's minority Shiites. But security forces who outnumbered the protesters quickly swooped in, dispersing the crowd and arresting several people, according to witnesses.
Laura Kasinof contributed reporting
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Egypt's Generals Struggle in New Role
"'The military understands it is not business as usual - but the question is on the range of change and the extent of change,' said Samer Soliman, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. 'The major challenge for the military now is to convince the population to wait.'"
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/world/middleeast/04egypt.html?ref=world
CAIRO - Egypt's ruling military council answered a longstanding demand of the protest movement by forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq on Thursday, but the fitful pace of change has left all sides more anxious than ever about the rocky transition ahead.
Borrowing a tactic from the youth movement that toppled President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces first announced the resignation by posting three terse lines on its Facebook page.
The generals were evidently trying to head off another huge weekly demonstration Friday on Tahrir Square by naming a new prime minister the day before.
"The military understands it is not business as usual - but the question is on the range of change and the extent of change," said Samer Soliman, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. "The major challenge for the military now is to convince the population to wait."
The new prime minister is Essam A. Sharaf, a highway engineering professor with a Ph.D. from Purdue University who served as minister of transportation in 2004. The fact that he lasted only one year as minister and that he came to Tahrir Square weeks ago with a group of Cairo University professors to chant against Mr. Mubarak endeared him to the protesters. When he returned Friday to address demonstrators in the square, pushing for continued political change, people celebrated him.
But the reputation the military won for supporting the demonstrators is beginning to tarnish.
"I always trusted them, but today it is not a question of trust," said Hossam Eissa, a law professor at Ain Shams University. "You cannot appoint a prime minister by asking a few groups of five or six people who come say, 'We are from Tahrir Square and we think these names are O.K.' There is too much ad lib."
This nation of more than 80 million people is groping its way ahead partly because it has no real laws to cope with the change. The generals suspended the Constitution, but they still refer to it as Egyptians try to rebuild a civil society decimated by 60 years of authoritarian rule. Tunisia, the only other Arab country where the rebellion has succeeded in overthrowing a dictator, faces similar problems.
"The military chose to rule in the Mubarak style," said one senior Egyptian political figure, speaking anonymously so as not to harm his own interaction with the generals. "They are micro-managing. We say it is time for new parties, and they say we cannot have them because there is no committee to approve them."
Political activists give the military high marks for edging away from its previously closed ways. Three Supreme Council generals broke precedent by appearing on a popular talk show. One, Gen. Mohamed al-Assar, the deputy defense minister, even called Mr. Mubarak's overthrow "the greatest revolution in the history of Egypt."
Aside from their Facebook announcements - the change of government on Thursday was Message No. 26 - the council sends frequent text messages to cellphones. "The military is aware of the demands of the people, but wants to underline the need for the return of normal life to Egypt," read one on Thursday.
When the army promised transparency, it meant it would announce decisions after it made them rather than not at all, observed one Western diplomat.
But it has made some missteps. Soldiers beat protesters and burned down the suddenly reconstituted tent camp in Tahrir Square last Friday, the backlash prompting the Supreme Council to issue an apology (Message No. 24). Soldiers were photographed destroying some walls in the vicinity of a Coptic monastery, again prompting a sheepish explanation about illegal structures (Message No. 13). Finally it has come under harsh criticism for using the military courts to try protesters - with some sentenced after 10 minutes, human rights groups said.
Bit by bit, the once-hidden military is being dragged into Egyptian daily life to a degree that makes them uncomfortable, many analysts said.
"What they are finding out is that this period of transition requires much more of them than perhaps they initially thought," said one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The opposition had demanded Mr. Shafiq's resignation from the moment Mr. Mubarak appointed him in January. He apparently sealed his fate with an arrogant outburst on a television talk show Wednesday night, saying, among other things, that the secret police could be renamed rather than disbanded.
The demonstrators camping again in Tahrir Square said that they would stay until the new government guaranteed some timetable to meet their demands.
"They cut off the head, but the body is still moving," said Dr. Mohamed Abdel Gaffar, 26, who runs - the medical tent.
Mr. Sharaf was one of two names protest leaders said they put forward, and they planned to call off the demonstration next Friday to thank the military.
"We have to let them breathe so they can work," said Nasser Abdel Hamid, a 28-year-old engineer who was among a small group of those who met with the generals last Sunday.
Lacking the legal tools needed to build a democracy, some political groups want the military to delay new parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Those elections are to be followed by a presidential election in August.
The fear is that the two organizations with previous experience, the Muslim Brotherhood and elements of the disbanded National Democratic Party, Mr. Mubarak's political machine, will win large shares of the vote.
One proposal, designed to prevent the military from becoming entrenched while extending the stability it provides, is to appoint a presidential committee of two civilians and a general who would run the country for six months to a year until all parties are ready for elections.
Other parties are divided; a group of leftist, secular Egyptians cannot decide whether to form one party or two - one socialist, one free-market. Seasoned figures are telling them two parties would dilute the secular vote. The Muslim Brotherhood wants early elections because it expects to do well. But it is showing signs of cracking along generational lines, with the young active in Tahrir demanding a greater voice.
Liam Stack and Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 4, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Egyptian protesters had endorsed the Egyptian military's choice for prime minister the day before he was named. The protesters did not endorse Mr. Sharaf.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Libya's Hidden Wealth May Be Next Battle
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/business/global/04sovereign.html?ref=world
LONDON - As the battle for Libya rages on, the struggle over control of the country's sovereign wealth fund and its $70 billion in assets has just begun.
With a sizable pot of ready cash and stakes in a few elite European companies - including the British publisher Pearson and the Italian soccer club Juventus - the fund served as an emphatic calling card for its founder, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan ruler who was once regarded as the reformer in the family.
Established in 2006, the fund was used by Mr. Qaddafi in an effort to make the case that Libya was ready to open itself to the West. It helped draw into Mr. Qaddafi's orbit a range of powerful figures, including the Rothschild family, Prince Andrew of Britain, the former European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, the cream of corporate society in Italy and the American private equity investors Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone and David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.
The United States said it intended to freeze any Libyan Investment Authority's assets controlled by American institutions, though no specific bank or asset had been publicly identified. In Britain, officials say the fund will be prevented from selling and repatriating its assets, which include, in addition to its Pearson stake, a small portfolio of commercial real estate holdings in London.
But what remains unclear is to what extent the $50 billion or so of cash and liquid securities in the fund, which operated under the indirect control of Mr. Qaddafi, is accessible to the regime of his father, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Virtually all of Libya's riches come from oil, and while the country may well be sitting on a cash mountain, deploying those sums in international markets to buy arms or pay outside fighters is likely to be very difficult.
People who worked closely with the fund said that its inner workings were largely a mystery as bureaucratic inertia and lack of investment expertise kept it from being more active. It made its first outside investments only in 2008. Most of the money is probably held in Libya or in other banks in the Middle East outside of the reach of sanctions.
"There was no backup, no staffing and no system - and everyone wanted to have a cut of the action," said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya. "It would be wrong to say that it failed, but it has not succeeded, either."
To a degree, Mr. Miles argued, the fund's experience mirrors that of Seif Qaddafi's reform agenda as a whole. "He did not have the professional knowledge and backup to do what he said he was going to do," Mr. Miles said, "and there is a question of how truly committed he was to reform."
While bankers say that some of the cash pool is probably being managed by the investment banks that so aggressively wooed the fund in its early days, they say it is also likely that the bulk of the assets have been kept in Libya's liquidity-rich banking system - a reflection of the country's long experience with Western-imposed sanctions.
In addition to the fund, Libya's central bank has reserves of about $110 billion, giving it a net cash position of about 160 percent of the nation's annual gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Ever since his "rivers of blood speech" last month, in which Mr. Qaddafi first expressed his family's determination to stay in power at all cost, his once-wide circle of acquaintances has shrunk drastically.
In Britain, friendship has turned to revulsion.
Marjorie Scardino, the chief executive of Pearson, which publishes The Financial Times and The Economist, said the company was uncomfortable with Libya's 3 percent stake. The company has frozen the position and will not pay a dividend to the fund.
In the British Parliament, the opposition Labour Party has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to remove Prince Andrew from his position as a worldwide promoter of British business interests because of his reported ties to Mr. Qaddafi.
In Italy, where the fund was more heavily invested, in part because of the longstanding ties dating from Italy's colonization of Libya, the response has been more measured. Andrea Agnelli, chairman of Juventus, has said that he was not worried about the 7 percent stake that has been tied to one of Mr. Qaddafi's brothers, Al-Saadi, a former professional soccer player in Libya.
Unicredit, the Italian bank that is 7 percent owned by the Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Central Bank, has merely said it is monitoring the situation.
The investment authority was established in 2006 just as Libya and Mr. Qaddafi in particular, were making a concerted attempt to rejoin the community of nations.
Mercer, a consulting firm, was called in to provide technical advice, and Mr. Qaddafi made use of his connections at the London School of Economics, where he was working on his doctorate, to recruit further expertise, including Howard Davies, the school's director, to serve as an adviser to the fund.
Mr. Davies said he regretted his involvement with the fund and was no longer connected with it. He said he had taken no fee and had not offered advice on specific investments. The London School of Economics said late Thursday that Mr. Davies had resigned as director and that it had commissioned an inquiry into the school's relationship with Libya and Mr. Qaddafi.
Providing the intellectual launching pad for not just the fund but also for Mr. Qaddafi's fanciful dream to remake Libya as an entrepreneurial hub for the region to rival Dubai was a paper he commissioned from Michael Porter, the international competitiveness expert at Harvard University, which extolled Libya's potential and its system of "popular democracy."
"We were there because the country seemed ready to reform," Mr. Porter said in response to a question about his involvement in Libya. "And Seif was the key reform driver. It became clear that the conservatives had blocked the reformers and I ended my personal involvement in 2007."
The fund's nominal head is Muhammad H. Layas, perhaps Libya's most experienced international banker. He has had a leadership role in institutions including the Libyan Arab Foreign Bank, the only bank allowed to conduct international business during the imposition of United Nations sanctions against Libya; British-Arab Commercial Bank, a London-based wholesale bank now majority owned by Libya; and the Arab Banking Corporation, a Bahrain-based bank also majority controlled by Libya.
But while he was the titular head, bankers who have had dealings with the fund say that the real power was wielded by Mustafa Zarti, a close friend of Mr. Qaddafi whose title is deputy chief executive.
Brash and with an "in-your-face" style, according to people who dealt with him, Mr. Zarti went to school with Mr. Qaddafi in Austria. He is also his partner in a tuna farming enterprise, R. H. Marine Services, on the west coast of Libya.
Bankers who dealt with Mr. Zarti said he fancied himself quite a deal maker - very much taken with glossy Wall Street names like Goldman Sachs - and was known for his impulsive and unsuccessful investment decisions, like investing in Royal Bank of Scotland before it was bailed out.
In 2008, as the fund began to get off the ground, Mr. Zarti attracted the attention of foreign bankers, so much so that at his wedding in Tripoli in 2009, two of private equity's biggest investors, Mr. Schwarzman of Blackstone and Mr. Rubenstein of Carlyle, were invited and attended as guests.
Peter Rose, a spokesman for Blackstone, said Libya had not invested in any of the company's funds. Christopher W. Ullman of Carlyle said that the company did not comment on the identity of its investors.
While Mr. Qaddafi largely kept his distance from day-to-day operations, he would on occasion swoop in to authorize an investment, like its stake in Rusal, the aluminum producer controlled by the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska.
By early 2010, the fund was sitting on $50 billion in cash and securities, according to Mr. Layas.
In an interview in his office in Tripoli a little more than a year ago, Mr. Layas said that the bankers were well aware of the billions in cash available to Libya's fund but that he was never tempted to invest overseas at the level and scale of other funds, like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Indeed, he suggested that the scars from decades of sanctions were still deeply felt. "Sanctions have made us very conservative," he said. "And it is the opinion of the leader that as we build our reserves that we keep most of them with the central bank."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Trial Against U.S. Contractor Starts in Cuba
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/04/world/americas/AP-CB-Cuba-Detained-American.html?ref=world
Filed at 12:00 p.m. EST
HAVANA (AP) - A U.S. government contractor went on trial in Cuba on Friday in a case sure to have a profound impact on relations between the Cold War enemies.
Alan Gross faces a possible 20-year sentence for "acts against the integrity and independence" of Cuba. The 61-year-old Maryland native was working for the Bethesda-based Development Associates International on a USAID-program that promotes democracy when he was arrested in December 2009.
His family, and U.S. and company officials, say he was bringing communications equipment to Cuba's 1,500-strong Jewish community. Cuban Jewish groups deny having anything to do with him, and there was speculation some Cuban Jewish leaders would testify against him.
Gross's wife, Judy, and lawyer Peter J. Kahn arrived by foot at the courthouse in a converted residential mansion in Havana's once-prosperous 10 de Octubre neighborhood. American consular officials also arrived at the court as observors. They did not speak to reporters, who were kept some distance away across a narrow street.
The trial - closed to the media - is expected to be over in a day or two, with a verdict announced immediately thereafter. Sentencing, should Gross be convicted, would likely come about two weeks later.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. government is "deeply concerned" about Gross's fate.
"He has been unjustly jailed for far too long," she said. "We call on the government of Cuba to release him and unconditionally allow him to leave Cuba and return to his family, to bring an end to his long ordeal."
The proceedings offer Cuba a chance to highlight Washington-backed democracy-building efforts like the one Gross was working on, which Havana says are designed to topple the government.
Washington spends more than $40 million a year on the programs, with USAID controlling most of that and doling out the work to subcontractors.
Development Associates International, or DAI, was awarded a $4.5 million contract for the program in which Gross was involved, and Gross reportedly was paid more than a half-million dollars himself, despite the fact he spoke little Spanish and had no history working in Cuba. Gross traveled to the island several times over a short period on a tourist visa, apparently raising Cuban suspicions.
The programs have also been criticized repeatedly in congressional reports as being wasteful and ineffective. In March 2010, Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, of California - both longtime critics of Washington's 48-year trade embargo on Cuba - temporarily held up new funding in the wake of Gross' arrest. The money has begun flowing again, though U.S. officials say DAI is no longer part of the program.
A senior congressional aide with knowledge of the USAID programs told The Associated Press the Cuba effort - which was ramped up under the Bush Administration with the goal of promoting "regime change" on the island - was on autopilot by the time President Barack Obama took office.
"Neither the State Department nor USAID knew who all of these people were or what they were doing in the name of the US government and with US taxpayer money," he said, adding that oversight was insufficient to tell whether the programs were effective.
He said the contractors themselves designed and evaluated the programs and determined whether they were doing a good job.
"They had the mandate, the money, and political advocates in Congress," he said.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the programs with the media, said that "to this day" it is not clear who Gross was working with in Cuba.
Cuban authorities have not spoken publicly about their case against Gross. But a video that surfaced days before the charges were announced indicates prosecutors will likely argue that the USAID programs amount to an attack on the island's sovereignty.
Judy Gross has appealed to Cuba to release her husband on humanitarian grounds, noting that the couple's 26-year-old daughter Shira is suffering from cancer and that Gross's elderly mother is also very ill.
On a blog she started to track her cancer treatment, Shira Gross asks followers to keep her father in their thoughts.
"G-d listens to our prayers, so please pray for his release," she wrote in an entry posted Thursday.
Many observers do see a way forward that would get Gross back to his family, and avoid a standoff between Havana and Washington.
As recently as January, a senior U.S. State Department official said she had been given signals by the Cuban government that Gross would be sent home soon following a trial. American officials were taken aback when - a few weeks later - prosecutors said they were seeking a 20-year jail term.
Phil Peters, a longtime Cuba expert who is vice president of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said he saw Cuba freeing Gross soon, despite the fact prosecutors are seeking such a stiff sentence.
"The odds are the guy is going to get convicted, that's not hard to predict," he said. "But I don't believe that the Cuban government has an interest in holding him in jail for the long term."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Wisconsin Protesters Leave Capitol After Judge's Ruling
By MONICA DAVEY
March 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/us/05wisconsin.html?ref=us
CHICAGO - For the first time in more than two weeks, protesters did not wake up on Friday morning inside the Wisconsin Capitol, which has become the focal point of a battle over plans to strip collective bargaining rights and benefits from public employees in the state.
A judge ordered a small group of protesters who had been staying overnight in the building - and had set up a virtual town inside it, complete with food and medical stations - to leave. But the judge, John Albert, of Dane County Circuit Court, also ordered state officials by next week to end the limits they had placed on access to the building in recent days after protesters had filled the place to show their dismay over Gov. Scott Walker's plan to significantly curtail collective bargaining rights.
The final protesters left by about 10 p.m. Thursday, law enforcement officials said, and no arrests were reported. But the limits on access to the building, which is ordinarily open and has no screening process for entry, continued to be a point of great dismay for many.
On Thursday night, a lawmaker was barred from entering the building and tackled by law enforcement authorities. In a video, replayed on a local television station, WISN-TV, Nick Milroy, a Democratic member of the state Assembly, could be seen being wrestled to the ground, then holding out identification and telling officers that he was trying to retrieve personal items from his office.
Officials from Mr. Walker's administration have said that limiting access to the building was needed for "safety and security" after protesters began filling it, and chanting, drumming and staying over.
On Thursday, local police and government officials reported that live ammunition - so far unexplained - had been found outside on the grounds of the Capitol and inside a nearby city and county government building. Officials said damage inside the Capitol, in part from hundreds of anti-Walker signs now taped all over the marble, was expected to be in the millions of dollars.
State workers, meanwhile, were bracing for possible layoffs. Mr. Walker, a Republican who has held office for two months, said that he would begin issuing layoff warnings to unions representing 1,500 state employees on Friday if his bill to cut workers' benefits and bargaining rights remained at an impasse in the Legislature.
Republican leaders in the Senate, where the bill has been stalled since Senate Democrats left the capital two weeks ago to block a vote, passed a provision on Thursday that they said allowed law enforcement officers to detain the missing Democratic senators if they were seen anywhere in Wisconsin and take them to Madison.
Both measures - the layoff notices and the direction to arrest missing senators - were aimed at increasing the pressure on Democrats, who hold a minority in the Senate and oppose the bill. But the efforts also significantly raised the stakes in a fight that has grown into a national referendum on unions and public workers and has spread to Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere.
In Wisconsin, some expressed outrage at the treatment of Representative Milroy, and no one in either party seemed eager to consider the images that now appeared possible: hundreds of ordinary workers getting word that they would soon be out of work, and senators arriving at the Capitol in handcuffs. Still, no one in either party seemed willing to budge.
"No one is going to come back today," said Fred Risser, one of the Senate's 14 Democrats who left the capital last month after realizing that the cuts to collective bargaining were likely to pass the Senate, but that no vote could be taken without at least 20 members - and thus at least one Democrat - in attendance.
Mr. Risser rejected the notion that Senate Republicans had the right to send law enforcement authorities after him and his colleagues with a "contempt of the Senate" finding and criticized other measures, like daily fines of $100, expected to start Friday, that the Senate Republicans have placed on the Democrats.
In Indiana on Thursday, Republican leaders who find themselves in a similar standoff over legislation approved a still higher fine, $250-a-day, against Democrats who have left the state to block votes from occurring.
All along, Mr. Walker has said that the cuts to the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers are desperately needed to close the state's budget gaps. Without the savings he had assumed would be made immediately with the bill's passage through increases in pension and health care costs for workers, Mr. Walker said Thursday that he had no choice but to begin issuing layoff warnings to unions, to be followed in 15 days by layoff notices to the 1,500 state workers.
It was not clear exactly who would be likely to receive such notices, but Cullen Werwie, a spokesman for the governor, said workers at mental health institutions and correctional facilities would be exempt.
The actual layoffs would not take effect for about a month, officials said. Some Democrats discounted them as an empty, needless threat - one that could be just as quickly rescinded - to increase pressure on Democratic senators to return for a vote.
Last week, Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, representing 98,000 public school employees, has criticized Mr. Walker's consideration of layoffs as manipulative. She said no layoffs were necessary because 1,200 state employees have retired over the past week and more than 4,500 other state employees have filed applications for retirement over the past six weeks.
Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Harvard Says It Will Allow the R.O.T.C. to Return
By KATIE ZEZIMA
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/education/04rotc.html?ref=us
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Nearly 40 years after Harvard expelled the Reserve Officers Training Corps program from its campus, university officials announced Thursday that they would officially recognize the Naval R.O.T.C.
Harvard was among several prominent colleges that banned the R.O.T.C. amid the movement against the Vietnam War. More recently, the program drew criticism on campuses because of the armed forces' policy on gay men and lesbians in the military. Now, two months after President Obama signed a repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, some colleges are inviting R.O.T.C. back.
Harvard will formally recognize Naval R.O.T.C. in an agreement to be signed Friday by the university president, Drew Gilpin Faust, and the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus.
"Our renewed relationship affirms the vital role that the members of our Armed Forces play in serving the nation and securing our freedoms, while also affirming inclusion and opportunity as powerful American ideals," Dr. Faust said in a statement.
Since the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," presidents of other universities have publicly expressed interest in bringing back the R.O.T.C., which has units on more than 300 campuses nationwide.
Under the agreement, Harvard will finance the Naval R.O.T.C. program and provide access to athletic fields, classrooms and office space.
Harvard students have been allowed to participate in the program, but they had to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to train. That arrangement is expected to continue.
Harvard's program will not go into effect until the "don't ask, don't tell" repeal is effective, which will be 60 days after the president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of defense certify that policies and regulations are in place and military readiness will not be affected.
The university is in discussions with other branches of the military about reintroducing R.O.T.C. programs, officials said.
"N.R.O.T.C.'s return to Harvard is good for the university, good for the military, and good for the country," Secretary Mabus said in a statement.
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said Harvard's decision should be impetus for the repeal to become effective.
"This announcement should be incentive for the Pentagon that repeal should be in place before kids return to Harvard and other campuses this fall," Mr. Sarvis said. "We welcome the return of R.O.T.C. on more college campuses."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Democrats Open Talks by Offering $6.5 Billion More in Cuts
[I.e., who can cut the most from those with the least and get away with it!...bw]
By CARL HULSE and JACKIE CALMES
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/us/politics/04congress.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - As they opened negotiations with Republicans over budget cuts, the White House and Congressional Democrats on Thursday offered to trim an additional $6.5 billion from current spending, a figure far short of the Republican goal of cutting agency budgets by $61 billion.
The gap between the opening Democratic bid and the cuts already approved by the new House majority illustrated the difficulty the two parties faced in reaching a compromise before the March 18 expiration of a two-week budget bill even with more participation by the White House.
To test support for the competing plans and lay the groundwork for a compromise, officials said that Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, planned to allow debate and votes on the proposals next week to demonstrate that both parties would need to make concessions in any agreement on financing the government through Sept. 30.
The plan to push the spending dispute onto the Senate floor emerged after a high-level meeting presided over by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Congressional participants - Speaker John A. Boehner; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader; Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader; and Mr. Reid - had no comment after the hourlong session, leaving it to Mr. Biden, who issued a short statement.
"We had a good meeting, and the conversation will continue," Mr. Biden said.
Before the session, White House officials disclosed that they were willing to accept an additional $6.5 billion in cuts, on top of $4 billion in reductions enacted in a short-term budget bill earlier this week.
Gene Sperling, the chief White House economic adviser, said, "We've made clear that we are willing to cut spending further if we can find common ground on cuts that we can all agree would help reduce the deficit without harming the economy in the short term or harming our long-term competitiveness."
But even before the negotiating session began, Republicans said the new figure proposed by the White House in consultation with Congressional Democrats was inadequate, particularly given the pressure Republican leaders are under from their rank and file to not give ground from the $61 billion in cuts.
In assembling the proposed cuts, Democrats combed through the bill passed by the House looking for programs that had also been singled out by the White House or Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Among the initiatives to lose financing under the Democratic plan, officials said, are a variety of agricultural programs, Federal Emergency Management Agency grants, a Federal Bureau of Investigation construction program, a Great Lakes restoration effort and a wildfire suppression program. The Democratic plan would also reduce spending on embassy maintenance, cut $227 million from information technology efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs and pare back some economic development efforts.
Mr. Sperling agreed in part with Republicans that cutting spending can help the economy recover by signaling that the government is getting its finances in order, even as it costs some jobs in the short term under either side's proposed level of cuts. But the White House portrayed the Republican cuts as deep enough to threaten the economy.
"There can be confidence benefits in showing that you are starting the path of getting your fiscal house in order," Mr. Sperling said. But cuts on the scale of the House Republicans' package, he added, would have a "negative impact for the immediate economy" that offsets any benefits.
In planning to bring the competing spending bills to a vote in the Senate, party leaders expect to show that neither the Democratic plan nor the Republican plan has the support to clear the Senate, forcing both sides to give ground. The Senate vote could be particularly helpful, aides said, in showing the 87 new Republican members of the House that the $61 billion in cuts cannot survive, giving the leadership leverage in pushing for a compromise that can pass.
Earlier Thursday, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said she welcomed a chance to vote on the House plan and discuss its wide-ranging cuts.
"I think the American people need to look at what's going on with my Republican friends who are in charge of the House of Representatives," she said. "We all know we need to reduce the deficit, but we also know the right way to do it."
The interim spending bill passed by the Senate and signed by the president on Wednesday extends through March 18, giving Congress and the administration two weeks to strike a deal to finance the government through Sept. 30, pass another short-term measure or see parts of the government shut down.
Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican and the majority leader, said Thursday that if lawmakers were unable to reach a deal, House Republicans would continue to pursue cuts through temporary budget bills.
"Our intention is to continue to go forward reducing spending at the rate of $2 billion a week until we can see some signal from the Senate that they are serious about cutting spending," Mr. Cantor said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment