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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
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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.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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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.
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To mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day
Mothers March and Rally
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 SF w All welcome
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
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"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)
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Are you joining us on April 8 at the Pentagon in a climate chaos protest codenamed "Operation Disarmageddon?" It has been decided that affinity groups will engage in nonviolent autonomous actions. Do you have an affinity group? Do you have an idea for an action?
So far these are some of the suggested actions:
Send a letter to Sec. of War Robert Gates demanding a meeting to disclose the Pentagon's role in destroying the planet. He will ignore the letter, so a delegation would then go to the Metro Entrance to demand a meeting.
Use crime tape around some area of the Pentagon. The idea of crime/danger taping off the building could be done just outside the main Pentagon reservation entrance (intersection of Army/Navy) making the Alexandria PD the arresting authority (if needed) and where there is no ban on photography. Hazmat suits, a 'converted' truck (or other vehicle) could be part of the street theater. The area where I am thinking is also almost directly below I-95 and there is a bridge over the intersection - making a banner drop possible. Perhaps with the hazmat/street closure at ground level with a banner from above. If possible a coordinated action could be done at other Pentagon entrances and / or other war making institutions.
A procession onto the Pentagon reservation, without reservations, and set up a camp on one of the lawns surrounding The Pentagon. This contingent would reclaim the space in the name of peace and Mother Earth. This contingent would plan to stay there until The Pentagon is turned into a 100% green building using sustainable energy employing people who work for peace and the abolishment of war and life-affirming endeavors.
Bring a potted tree to be placed on the Pentagon's property to symbolize the need to radically reduce its environmental destructiveness.
Since the Pentagon is failing to return to the taxpayers the money it has misappropriated, "Foreclose on the Pentagon."
Banner hanging from a bridge.
Hand out copies of David Swanson's book WAR IS A LIE. Try to deliver a copy to Secretary of War Robert Gates.
Have short speeches in park between Pentagon and river; nice photo with Pentagon in background.
Die-in and chalk or paint outlines of victim's bodies everywhere that remain after the arrest to point to where real crimes are really being committed.
Establish command center, Peacecom? Paxcom? Put several people in white shirts and ties plus a few generals directing their armies for "Operation Disarmageddon."
Make the linkage between the tax dollars going to the Pentagon and war tax resistance. Use the WRL pie chart and carry banners "foreclose on war" and "money for green jobs not war jobs."
Hold a rally with representative speakers before going to the Pentagon Reservation. This would be an opportunity to speak out against warmongering and the Pentagon's role in destroying the environment.
As part of "Operation Disarmageddon," we will take a tree and plant it on the reservation. Our sign reads, "Plant trees not landmines."
Use crime tape on Army/Navy Drive to declare the Pentagon a crime scene. Do street theater there as well. Other affinity groups could go to selected entrances.
Establish a Peace Command Center at the Pentagon. Hold solidarity actions at federal buildings and corporate offices.
What groups have you contacted to suggest joining us at the Pentagon? See below for those who plan to be at the Pentagon on April 8 and for what groups have been contacted.
Kagiso,
Max
April 8, 2011 participants
Beth Adams
Ellen Barfield
Tim Chadwick
Joy First
Jeffrey Halperin
Malachy Kilbride
Max Obuszewski
David Swanson
April 8 Outreach
Beth Adams -- Earth First, Puppet Underground, Emma's Revolution, Joe Gerson-AFSC Cambridge, Code Pink(national via Lisa Savage in Maine), Vets for Peace, FOR, UCC Justice & Witness Ministries, Traprock, Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, (National-INt'l) Vets for Peace and WILPF, Pace e Bene, Christian Peace Witness & UCC Justice & Witness (Cleveland).
Tim Chadwick -- Brandywine, Lepoco, Witness against Torture, Vets for Peace (Thomas Paine Chapter Lehigh Valley PA), and Witness for Peace DC.
Jeffrey Halperin -- peace groups in Saratoga Spring, NY
Jack Lombardo - UNAC will add April 8 2011 to the Future Actions page on our blog, and make note in upcoming E-bulletins, but would appreciate a bit of descriptive text from the organizers and contact point to include when we do - so please advise ASAP! Also, we'll want to have such an announcement for our next print newsletter, which will be coming out in mid-December.
Max Obuszewski - Jonah House & Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore
Bonnie Urfer notified 351 individuals and groups on the Nukewatch list
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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.
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Labor Beat: No Concessions Emergency Meeting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaFrWNi2gM0
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Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
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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
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Charlie Sheen on 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PviXgj-yS5Y
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18th dead baby dolphin washes ashore in Northern Gulf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFeuSNszSg&feature=player_embedded
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[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
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Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TmSNPpzkWc
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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.
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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
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Protesters weather major snowstorm in Wausau, Wisconsin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7enVDAr1IY&feature=player_embedded
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[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
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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.
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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
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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
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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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/
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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
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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
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Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
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Supermax Prison Cell Extraction - Maine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=player_embedded
Warning, this is an extremely brutal video. What do you think? Is this torture?
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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw
police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summ
Protestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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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
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart #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.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network. December 22, 2010
The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.
We need your help in pressing the following demands:
End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.
Quantico Base Commander
Colonel Daniel Choike
3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-2707 (phone)
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)
Background
In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.
Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."
Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."
In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."
In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.
What can you do?
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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KOREA: Emergency Response Actions Needed
The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.
As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:
NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White House
In Many Cities - Federal Buildings
Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.
China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.
The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.
On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.
UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:
15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!
UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.
The United National Antiwar Committee, www.UNACpeace.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alive
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap
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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
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Rallies for Labor, in Wisconsin and Beyond
"The largest unions have said they would agree to the benefit changes that Mr. Walker is seeking. State officials have said that the resulting cut in take-home pay could be 6 to 8 percent for the typical state worker. But for many lower-income state workers, the proposal would mean cuts in take-home pay of more than 10 percent."
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27rally.html?ref=us
2) Governors Look for Means to Cope With Budgets
By ROBERT PEAR
February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/politics/27governors.html?ref=us
3) Libyan Chaos Stirs Global Panic Over Oil Supplies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/02/27/business/AP-EU-Libya-Oil-Chaos.html?src=busln
4) Leaving Children Behind
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp
5) Protests in Oman Spread
"Governments in several gulf countries have announced reforms and financial assistance in recent days in an attempt to curb public anger amid calls for huge demonstrations on March 4 on social networking sites. In Oman, protest organizers set up a Facebook page, called "March 2 Uprising for Dignity and Freedom" to urge demonstrations across the country beginning on Wednesday and continuing until their demands are met. The page has attracted more than 2,300 users."
By NADA BAKRI
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/middleeast/01oman.html?ref=world
6) Return of Aristide to Haiti Appears to Have Stalled
By POOJA BHATIA and DAMIEN CAVE
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/americas/28haiti.html?ref=world
7) Afghan Team Says NATO Killed Civilians in Strikes
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28afghan.html?ref=world
8) A Right Without a Remedy
New York Times Editorial
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01tue1.html?hp
9) Unintended, but Sound Advice
By BOB HERBERT
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
10) Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions
By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01poll.html?hp
11) U.S. Readies Military Options on Libya
By MARK LANDLER and THOM SHANKER
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/africa/01military.html?ref=world
12) Ohio Set to Vote on Ending Public Union Rights
"Other critics of the governor's proposal say the fiscal problems could be eased by increasing taxes on the state's highest earners and corporations." [Ya think?...bw]
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02states.html?ref=us
13) Oil Drilling to Resume in the Gulf's Deep Waters
[IN SPITE OF DEAD BABY DOLPHINS WASHING ASHORE ALONG THE GULF, THE IRRATIONAL QUEST FOR PROFITS OVER THE GOOD OF HUMANITY AND THE GLOBE RESUMES...BE]
By JOHN M. BRODER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/business/energy-environment/01drill.html?ref=us
14)West Virginia: Mine Official Accused of Lying
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01brfs-MINEOFFICIAL_BRF.html?ref=us
15) How Can We Aid Libya's Freedom Movement?
John Riddell
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 472
March 1, 2011
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/472.php#continue
16) Resolution on Wisconsin and the Fight Against
Union-Busting and For No Concessions For Workers
[for a copy of this resolution on SF Labor Council letterhead, in pdf format, please write to
17) Gathering Firewood, 9 Afghan Boys Killed by NATO Helicopters
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp
18) Feeling Budget Pinch, States Cut Insurance
By KEVIN SACK
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/health/policy/02pennsylvania.html?ref=us
19) Wisconsin Budget Would Slash School and Municipal Aid
By MONICA DAVEY and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02wisconsin.html?ref=us
20) Wisconsin: The End of Obama-ism
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
March 2, 2011
http://blackagendareport.com/content/wisconsin-end-obama-ism
21) 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
22) 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
23) 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
24) 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
25) 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
26) Broke Town, U.S.A.
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
March 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06Muni-t.html?ref=business
27) On March 2 at Laney College, Oakland, Alameda Sheriffs Attack LGBTQI Student
Via Email
28) 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
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1) Rallies for Labor, in Wisconsin and Beyond
"The largest unions have said they would agree to the benefit changes that Mr. Walker is seeking. State officials have said that the resulting cut in take-home pay could be 6 to 8 percent for the typical state worker. But for many lower-income state workers, the proposal would mean cuts in take-home pay of more than 10 percent."
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27rally.html?ref=us
MADISON, Wis. - With booming chants of "This will not stand!" at least 70,000 demonstrators flooded the square around the Wisconsin Capitol on Saturday in what the authorities here called the largest protest yet in nearly two weeks of demonstrations.
It was a call heard in sympathy protests that drew thousands of demonstrators to state capitals and other cities from Albany to the West Coast.
The protesters were rallying against a proposal by Wisconsin's new Republican governor, Scott Walker, that would strip the state's public employee unions of nearly all their bargaining power and impose sizable take-home pay cuts by diverting more of their paychecks to finance health care and pension plans.
"We've had bargaining for 50 years, and he wants to end it in a week," Al Alt, who has taught school for four decades in Waukesha, Wis., said as he paused on a bench after marching around the Capitol with other protesters.
A spokesman for the Madison police, Joel DeSpain, who provided the crowd estimate, said there had been no arrests during the rally.
The demonstrators in Madison were loud but peaceful, according to the Madison police.
But there was unease and confusion over the fate of the hundreds of people who have spent every night in the hallways, stairwells and public areas of the Capitol and have become the heart of the protest movement. State officials have said they would be evicted on Sunday afternoon.
"There will be no more sleeping over in the Capitol" beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jodi Jensen, a senior official at the Department of Administration, the state agency that includes the Capitol police, said in an interview.
After that, she said, the building would be open during normal daily hours and closed at night. She said the decision was made because of health and safety concerns and that Mr. Walker did not influence the move as far as she knew.
Some union officials and protesters said the evictions could lead to conflict. "It's a bit confusing," said Alex Hanna, co-president of the Teaching Assistants' Association.
Later, Jim Palmer, the leader of a large law enforcement union, said that he had been told that the Capitol Police were backing away from the eviction plan.
"Now it sounds like they are going to let people stay," said Mr. Palmer, whose union, the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, has 11,000 members. The police, he said, might only ask for people to "voluntarily comply" with requests to leave the building. He added that his union and other labor leaders had urged their members to comply with whatever the police asked.
"We don't want anything to happen to create a blemish on what has been a model for civil discourse," Mr. Palmer said. The Capitol Police referred all inquiries to the Department of Administration.
Two protesters, Alexandra and Alison Port, twins who attend the University of Wisconsin, were turned away Saturday because they were carrying sleeping bags as they tried to enter the Capitol. If people are evicted Sunday, the twins said, the protesters will circle the building holding hands.
Mr. Walker's plan is far from the only proposal to curb union power, and crowds of teachers, firefighters and other public workers held rallies Saturday in cities from Albany and Miami to Olympia, Wash.
"This is a national issue," Jim Goodnow, who attended the demonstration in Miami, where about 150 people rallied at Bayfront Park. Many of them said they were concerned that Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, might try to strip away the few protections that unions have in Florida. A bill in the Legislature would block union dues from being automatically deducted from paychecks.
Still, the revolt in Wisconsin has become the main stage for arguments on both sides. Mr. Walker and other Republicans say the changes are necessary to put the state back on solid financial footing and to prevent wide-scale layoffs.
The protesters and Wisconsin's Democratic leaders - including 14 state senators who are hiding out in Illinois to prevent a vote on Mr. Walker's proposal - say the bill is an attempt to use fiscal problems to deal a crippling blow to the unions that are traditional Republican opponents.
Democrats from the Indiana House of Representatives also remained sequestered in Illinois on Saturday to avoid being forced by the State Police to attend a legislative session on a bill that would limit unions.
Although the Wisconsin protests have been peaceful, they have also reflected a strong personal dislike for Mr. Walker, who was elected in November, and many of the placards criticized his relationship with Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankroll conservative causes and Republican campaigns, including Mr. Walker's race. "We will not tolerate Koch heads in Wisconsin," one said.
The largest unions have said they would agree to the benefit changes that Mr. Walker is seeking. State officials have said that the resulting cut in take-home pay could be 6 to 8 percent for the typical state worker. But for many lower-income state workers, the proposal would mean cuts in take-home pay of more than 10 percent.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Madison, Wis., and Timothy Williams from New York. Erik Bojnansky contributed reporting from Miami.
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2) Governors Look for Means to Cope With Budgets
By ROBERT PEAR
February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/politics/27governors.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Democratic governors warned Saturday that federal budget cuts could crimp a fragile economic recovery, and governors of both major parties asked the Obama administration to give them more flexibility in running education and health care programs so that they could cope.
On the first day of the National Governors Association's winter meeting here, several governors also said that they did not want any federal bankruptcy protection and that Congress should explicitly renounce the option. The mere discussion of it, they said, had increased their borrowing costs.
Democratic governors criticized the hard line against labor unions taken by Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican. But they muted the criticism, saying they wanted to preserve the bipartisan traditions of the governors' association.
The recession may officially have ended but, "we are still faced with unprecedented fiscal challenges," said Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat and the association's chairwoman. States cut $75 billion from their budgets in the last two years, but collectively face a $175 billion gap between projected spending and revenues in the next two years, Ms. Gregoire said.
As part of the fiscal stimulus package signed by President Obama in early 2009, Congress provided extra money to the states for Medicaid and schools, but that will end in a few months, a loss that Ms. Gregoire said was "not unexpected."
"We know there is no new money coming to the states," Ms. Gregoire said, but further cuts in federal grant programs could "undermine the economic recovery in our states."
Maine's new governor, Paul R. LePage, a Republican, said: "What the federal government can do for us is not money, but flexibility. We can slow down layoffs in a lot of private and public sector jobs if the states are given more flexibility."
Seconding that sentiment, Ms. Gregoire said states wanted "more flexibility in the classroom."
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a Republican, said: "If we could get Medicaid as a block grant with total flexibility to run the program as we see fit, I would be willing to take a cap on growth of 2 percent a year. Many governors feel that way." There is no cap on federal and state Medicaid spending, and anyone who meets the eligibility requirements is entitled to coverage.
The federal aid helped states survive the worst of the recession, but left a difficult legacy in some states. "The stimulus money was used to start new programs, including social service programs, and we don't have the money to continue them," Mr. LePage said. The Commerce Department reported Friday that the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the final quarter of last year, and added that spending cuts by state and local governments had apparently held back growth.
Likewise, Ms. Gregoire said Saturday, hiring by private employers has been overwhelmed by layoffs at state and local government agencies, contributing to slow growth in overall employment.
Governors said their economies were still far from vibrant.
"We are recovering, not recovered," said Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a Democrat.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, also a Democrat, said, "Unemployment remains uncomfortably high in Connecticut at a number, 9 percent, that we are simply not used to."
The governors' association signed an agreement on Saturday with provincial officials from China in hopes of building a relationship that will increase trade and create jobs here.
The confrontation between Governor Walker and state employees in Wisconsin generated a lot of discussion at the meeting.
In a pointed contrast to Mr. Walker, Ms. Gregoire said that when she negotiated with public-employee unions, they had agreed to certain sacrifices on pay and health benefits, as well as changes in their pensions.
"I believe in collective bargaining rights," she said.
Governor Barbour expressed support for Mr. Walker in his effort to curb collective-bargaining rights for public workers in Wisconsin.
"Mr. Walker is doing what he said very directly and repeatedly he was going to do," Mr. Barbour said. "I support him in it. We don't have collective bargaining in Mississippi. About half the states don't. The idea that this is some constitutional right of the public employee unions is incorrect."
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3) Libyan Chaos Stirs Global Panic Over Oil Supplies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/02/27/business/AP-EU-Libya-Oil-Chaos.html?src=busln
Filed at 8:15 a.m. EST
MADRID (AP) - Libya's oil industry is in chaos - and there's no telling when that will end.
Armed men loot equipment from oil field installations. British commandos execute secret raids in the Libyan desert to rescue stranded oil workers as security disintegrates rapidly in remote camps.
Libyan port workers, frightened of being caught up in Moammar Gadhafi's violent crackdown on protesters, fail to show up for work, leaving empty tankers floating around the Mediterranean Sea waiting to load crude.
And the European oil companies extracting Libya's black gold are operating in crisis mode, trying to get stranded expatriate workers out and safe amid conflicting information on how much oil is still being pumped and just where it all is.
That was just this week. The situation is not expected to get better in the near future.
No one knows whether Gadhafi or the rebels trying to oust him will end up controlling Africa's biggest oil reserves. Fears abound that Libya could turn into a fractured nation with competing armed groups ruling over rich and remote desert fields lying hundreds of miles (kilometers) apart from each other.
The chaos in Libya as it descends into virtual civil war has sent international oil prices skyrocketing despite a pledge from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, to ramp up exports. And that volatility is likely to continue, because it could take weeks or even months for Libyan production and exports to return to normal levels, experts said.
That has sent already over-caffinated oil traders into a frenzy that won't calm down until there's more clarity about what is happening on the ground in Libya.
The International Energy Agency reported late Friday that Libya is probably still producing about 850,000 barrels of oil daily, down from its normal capacity of 1.6 million barrels - but acknowledged the estimate is based on "incomplete, conflicting information."
Libya produces just under 2 percent of the world's oil, but its customers are overwhelmingly European. Hardest hit by the sudden oil shortage are European refiners that receive 85 percent of Libya's exports, turning the country's highly valued crude into diesel and jet fuel.
The biggest buyers are Italy, France, Germany and Spain - and Spain is so concerned it announced Friday that highway speed limits will be reduced in March in a desperate bid to cut fuel consumption.
The biggest problem facing oil companies and European consumers who depend on Libyan oil is a near-complete breakdown in solid information. Phones in Libya rarely work, Internet is intermittent, workers are fleeing and looters are grabbing what they can or pose a threat until order is restored.
While British military planes staged a daring desert rescue Saturday of 150 oil workers, hundreds of other workers were heading across the Sahara Desert in bus convoys toward the Egyptian border - a grueling trip.
One evacuee said the military plane he boarded in Libya was supposed to carry around 65 people, but quickly grew to double that.
"It was very cramped but we were just glad to be out of there," Patrick Eyles, a 43-year-old Briton, said at Malta International Airport.
Spain's Repsol-YPF oil company announced Tuesday it had suspended operations in Libya, only to find out a day later that the oil fields it operates with other firms were still producing 160,000 barrels of crude daily. Still, that was less than half of the 360,000 barrels produced before the crisis began.
Despite reports that production was still under way in the vast Saharan desert Amal fields, Libyans never before permitted to approach the oil fields under Gadhafi's reign showed up armed and took anything they could - four-wheel drive vehicles, pumps, generators. One group came with a trailer and tried to remove a huge crane, said Gavin de Salis, chairman of Britain's OPS international oil field services company.
"Nobody shot anyone," De Salis. "But people were wandering around with guns saying 'Thanks, we'll take your vehicle since you're leaving anyway.'"
Two buses arranged by De Salis' company were ferrying 117 expatriate workers toward Egypt on Sunday, a trip expected to last 24 hours or more, and he said another bus was expected to take 25 expatriates out.
Even though production appears to be limping along - with Repsol reporting that Libyan oil workers are increasingly running operations as expatriates leave - the oil isn't getting out. The 320-mile (520-kilometer) natural gas pipeline under the Mediterranean from Libya to the Italian island of Sicily has been shut down for a week, with no guidance from its owner, the Italian energy firm Eni SpA, on when it might start pumping again.
"Most Libyan ports are closed due to bad weather, staff shortages, or production outages," the IEA reported. Ports are key because Libya's crude heads abroad on tankers.
Major container ship companies have suspended deliveries or pickups from Libyan ports with no word on when shipments might resume. Tanker ships that deliver to Europe have been told to stay more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore from some Libyan ports and await information on whether they can safely dock and take on oil.
The massive oil terminal at Brega, Libya's second-largest hydrocarbon complex, was nearly deserted over the weekend, with operations scaled back almost 90 percent because employees had fled and ships were not showing up.
The Brega complex, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, collects crude oil and gas from Libya's fields in the southeast and prepares it for export. Since the crisis began Feb. 15, however, General Manager Fathi Eissa said production had dropped from 90,000 barrels of crude a day to 11,000.
With huge spherical storage containers and reservoirs rapidly filling up with oil and natural gas and no ships to take it away, production in the southern fields has been throttled back until Brega can clear some of its capacity.
The big oil companies have been mum on how the political situation may pan out, because they want to produce oil whether Gadhafi or someone else ends up in charge, and it's not worth it for them to risk alienating any of the groups vying for power, said Mohammed El-Katiri, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group risk consulting group.
In a worst-case scenario, El-Katiri predicted it could take between four to six months to for Libya's domestic unrest to ease.
"Such a scenario bodes poorly from an oil production point of view on two counts: Not only will it compromise production with Gadhafi still in power, but ongoing violence could further complicate the ability of a post-Gadhafi political order to emerge in a manner that creates a stable domestic security environment," El-Katiri said.
Repsol's chairman, Antonio Brufau, told reporters he would get his last expatriate workers out using bicycles if necessary - and El-Katiri said oil companies won't send them back in until they know it's safe. De Salis said some expatriates could return without a functioning central government but only if local security situations improve.
Leaving oil fields deserted in Libya creates even more security problems. In Nigeria, opportunistic villagers, rebels or pirates often tap pipelines in a dangerous bid to steal fuel, leaving many killed or maimed in accidents and pipelines compromised by sabotage.
About the only positive sign for Libya's oil future is that experts believe both Gadhafi and the rebels want to restart suspended oil operations as quickly as possible because they covet Libya's oil wealth.
"For Gadhafi, the money helps because he can keep on paying his militias and mercenaries to keep them fighting and loyal," El-Katiri said.
The rebels, meanwhile, don't want to alienate Western governments that depend on Libyan oil, he said, and also need money to be strong enough "to resist attacks by Gadhafi."
Paul Schemm in Brega, Libya; Chris Kahn and Jon Fahey in New York and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report.
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4) Leaving Children Behind
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp
Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it's still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don't yet know how far they're willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there's no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.
And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America's children.
Now, politicians - and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians - always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation's children. Back during the 2000 campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush, touting the "Texas miracle" of dramatically lower dropout rates, declared that he wanted to be the "education president." Today, advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face.
In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.
Consider, as a case in point, what's happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America's political future happens first.
Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you're in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state's rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.
But here's the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
But wait - how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way - they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.
It's not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder - and many business people in Texas do - how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.
But things are about to get much worse.
A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his "tough conservative decisions" had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry's re-election, reality intruded - funny how that happens - and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it's worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)
So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state's leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.
But you'd be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state's children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state's already low payments to providers - raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.
The really striking thing about all this isn't the cruelty - at this point you expect that - but the shortsightedness. What's supposed to happen when today's neglected children become tomorrow's work force?
Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we're leaving our children, remember what's happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be "Lose the future."
Ross Douthat is off today.
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5) Protests in Oman Spread
"Governments in several gulf countries have announced reforms and financial assistance in recent days in an attempt to curb public anger amid calls for huge demonstrations on March 4 on social networking sites. In Oman, protest organizers set up a Facebook page, called "March 2 Uprising for Dignity and Freedom" to urge demonstrations across the country beginning on Wednesday and continuing until their demands are met. The page has attracted more than 2,300 users."
By NADA BAKRI
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/middleeast/01oman.html?ref=world
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Demonstrators blocked roads and clashed with police on Monday in Oman, the normally quiet oil-rich country along the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, as three-day-old protests calling for political reforms and better living conditions spread to Muscat, the capital.
In the northeast port city of Sohar, where the protests originated, demonstrators blocked roads to the port, Oman's second biggest, and an industrial area that includes a refinery and an aluminum factory, according to two witnesses in Sohar and news agencies. They also set a supermarket on fire and clashed with the police. Protesters have also been camped out for three days in the city's main square, called Kurra Ardiyah Roundabout, despite efforts by police and army to push them out, a resident in Sohar said by e-mail.
Television images showed a small number of protesters also gathered in Muscat; the demonstrations there appeared peaceful.
In an attempt to ease tensions, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, who has ruled for four decades since seizing power from his father, sent delegates on Monday to Sohar to negotiate with the protesters, but the outcome of those meetings remained unclear. He also promised to give more powers to the legislative council, according to ONA, the state news agency.
The clashes on Monday came a day after a deadly clash between protesters and police in Sohar. Reuters, citing a local doctor, said that six people had died on Sunday, but there were conflicting accounts about the precise toll. ONA said Sunday that two protesters had died but revised it to one on Monday.
On Sunday, protesters held banners demanding better pay, lower prices and the abolition of all taxes. They are also calling for an end to corruption and the trial of all ministers, according to residents there.
Shortly after the violence, Sultan Qaboos gave orders on Sunday to create 50,000 jobs, ONA reported. He also ordered that the equivalent of $386 a month be given every job seeker.
Governments in several gulf countries have announced reforms and financial assistance in recent days in an attempt to curb public anger amid calls for huge demonstrations on March 4 on social networking sites.
In Oman, protest organizers set up a Facebook page, called "March 2 Uprising for Dignity and Freedom" to urge demonstrations across the country beginning on Wednesday and continuing until their demands are met. The page has attracted more than 2,300 users.
At the same time, some in Oman say that they were not challenging the rule of Sultan Qaboos but would like simply to improve their living conditions. "The Omanis love the Sultan and respect and consider him a father to them," one commenter on the Facebook page. "This is only about a few demands and not a coup against the Sultan."
Another said in a Facebook post: "We don't live in fear. All we want are jobs, better salaries and economic reforms."
J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.
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6) Return of Aristide to Haiti Appears to Have Stalled
By POOJA BHATIA and DAMIEN CAVE
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/americas/28haiti.html?ref=world
PORT AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Three weeks after the Haitian government gave a diplomatic passport to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's exiled former president, his planned return appears to have stalled amid unresolved security and logistical concerns.
Mr. Aristide's longtime lawyer, Ira Kurzban of Miami, accused the United States and France of interfering with his client's efforts to go home, while in Port-au-Prince, the mood at Mr. Aristide's refurbished residence has been dampened.
"We were sure President Aristide would be here by now," said one of the caretakers, Cerdene Blanc, 35. "Personally, I'll never stop believing he will return, but I don't know when anymore."
Determining when or if Mr. Aristide might return from his exile in South Africa continues to be difficult. American officials have clearly stated that they oppose efforts to bring him back before Haiti's March 20 runoff election, arguing that Mr. Aristide's presence would create instability - a charge his supporters deny. They see Mr. Aristide, a former Catholic priest, as Haiti's conscience, a true democratic leader, who could pressure the government and international donors to help the poor.
Nonetheless, international opposition is a concern, according to Mr. Kurzban, because all commercial flights from South Africa fly through countries allied with the United States.
"The idea that Aristide can simply get on a plane and come back to Haiti ignores the fact that he's not just a Haitian citizen returning home," Mr. Kurzban said. "There are security concerns and powerful governments that have already expressed a desire to keep him out of the country."
In the midst of such vague diplomacy, however, it is not clear whether a private flight would be held on the ground by the South African authorities, or if it would be allowed to land in Haiti. While Haiti's top officials - including the president and prime minister - have said Mr. Aristide had the right to return, they have failed to outline specific plans for it, especially in terms of security.
A letter to the Foreign Ministry from Mr. Kurzban requesting that Haiti work with South Africa to ensure Mr. Aristide's return has received no response. And last Thursday and Friday, several Haitian officials either refused to talk about Mr. Aristide or insisted that other issues were more important.
"This country needs to be rebuilt and that needs to be the priority right now," said Alice Blanchet, a special advisor to Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
Some supporters, acknowledging disappointment, have even begun to think that it might be better for Mr. Aristide to wait. That may mean trying to return under a new president who would be less friendly that the current president, René Préval. But Patrick Elie, a political activist who has served in the Aristide and Préval governments, blamed Aristide's own political organization, Fanmi Lavalas, for failing to build widespread support and to "prepare the return of somebody who is a living symbol."
Echoing the concerns of many, he added, "I won't sit back and let him become a martyr."
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7) Afghan Team Says NATO Killed Civilians in Strikes
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28afghan.html?ref=world
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan investigators said Sunday that they were convinced that NATO forces killed 65 civilians in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan this month, a charge that, if true, would be one of the worst civilian casualty episodes of the war.
NATO officials, who are still investigating the claims, have insisted that the people killed were insurgents.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the United Nations are also investigating and have not completed their reports, which typically are the most thorough investigations and are perceived as impartial.
"It's difficult for us to speak at this stage or verify any fact," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, of the commission. "We have had experiences that civilian casualties were underreported and ISAF," the NATO-led coalition, "was not very quick to report correct numbers, but we also have seen instances in which communities are being threatened by the Taliban so they exaggerate the numbers and sometimes they have false stories. So we need to be careful."
He added that the overall trend since Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal took over as NATO commander here in 2009 had been for NATO to acknowledge civilian casualties.
Since the attack on the night of Feb. 17 in the mountain valleys of Ghaziabad district in eastern Kunar Province, an insurgent-held area, there have been conflicting reports of what happened. Most members of the government's investigating committee did not go to the village where the attack took place because the area is too dangerous.
Based on reports from tribal elders and survivors, the government team concluded that NATO had fired on civilians. "Basically, as soon as the villagers heard the shooting and planes roaring overhead, they all struggled to take refuge in an old trench that was used by the mujahedeen during jihad" against the Russians, said Shahzada Massoud, the Afghan leader of the investigation and special adviser for tribal affairs to President Hamid Karzai.
Mr. Karzai's office issued a statement saying that the delegation had paid compensation to the families of the bombing victims and requested a further investigation to determine ways to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.
Another member of the investigation team, a former member of Parliament, Shuja ul-Mulk, did go to the village and came back with a slightly different report. Although he also says he believes that the casualties were civilians, he said he counted 27 graves and gave a different breakdown for the numbers of men, women and children. He described frightened villagers who, when they heard the helicopters coming, ran outside for fear they would be bombed in their houses. They went to hide in the Soviet-era trenches and were bombed as they hid, he said.
"Those who succeeded in reaching the trenches were killed when the trench collapsed after it was hit by rockets or bombs being fired from coalition helicopters," he said. "Those who were on their way to the trench were killed by rockets or bullets. I visited the trench. I saw old, dried blood. I saw women and children's garments. I saw blood-stained walls of the trench. I saw pieces of blankets and cotton from the quilts the villagers wrapped themselves in because of the cold weather."
However, the discrepancy in how many graves Mr. Mulk saw versus the number of people the government reported had been killed points to some of the difficulties in assessing civilian casualties. It can be difficult to tell whether graves are new or old, or recently dug up to appear fresh, human rights organizations said. The same is true of blood stains. Similarly, the number of graves often does not correspond to the number of bodies, since there can be several bodies in a grave.
NATO, in its initial public statements last week, said that video of the assault showed armed men meeting and then dispersing on a mountainside. A NATO spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, said that he saw no sign that civilians or civilian houses were attacked, although he did not rule out the possibility of civilian casualties.
NATO has acknowledged that seven to nine civilians were wounded.
Admiral Smith also said that NATO had recorded conversations among the militants discussing the idea of reporting civilian casualties to the local authorities so that they would ask NATO to stop shooting.
The NATO videos and sound recordings have not been played to reporters, making any inferences difficult to assess independently. The Afghan investigators did not see or hear the recordings, Mr. Shahzada said.
In Kandahar on Sunday, at least eight people were killed, two of them police officers, when a bomb exploded in the midst of a dogfight, a favorite spectator sport in the area and one that attracts many local commanders and police officers. The bomb is believed to have been set by the Taliban, who banned dogfighting when they controlled the government.
"For the last few months, dogfighting took place here in this field," said Agha Jan, a tribal elder. "But today the police were all around and some old police commanders were attending the festival and police were securing the area, so Taliban knew that the police commanders were at the dogfight, so that's why it was targeted."
It was the second time that the Taliban attacked a dogfight in Kandahar Province. The last time, in 2008, at least 80 people died.
In Kabul, Parliament elected Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, a compromise candidate, to be speaker. He is a little known lawmaker from the minority Uzbek ethnic group who represents Kunduz Province, in the north of the country.
He is widely considered to be loyal to the party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord, according to people in Kunduz. His election ends a five-month period since the parliamentary election in September in which the body had been unable to meet because it had not elected a speaker.
However Mr. Ibrahimi's election may not break the stalemate because Parliament remains split between supporters of the former speaker, Yunus Qanooni, a Tajik, and supporters of a Pashtun warlord, Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf. The two men, who had nearly tied for the post in previous elections, agreed not to run in order to end the standoff. But it remains unclear whether Mr. Ibrahimi has enough support from either camp to move the body forward.
On Sunday, two NATO service members died, one after an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan and the other in a roadside bomb explosion in southern Afghanistan, according to a NATO statement.
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Kunduz.
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8) A Right Without a Remedy
New York Times Editorial
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01tue1.html?hp
In a landmark case three years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who are not American citizens have "the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus." It gives them the right to have a federal judge decide promptly whether their detention is illegal and, if so, order their release because the United States controls the place they are held. The 5-to-4 decision in what is known as the Boumediene case was a repudiation of the Bush strategy of imprisoning the detainees outside American territory so the Constitution would not apply. Or so many thought.
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the only circuit where detainees can challenge their detention, has dramatically restricted the Boumediene ruling. In its hands, habeas is no longer a remedy for the problem the Boumediene majority called "arbitrary and unlawful restraint."
The sole recourse is for the Supreme Court, once again, to say what the Constitution requires judges to do in habeas cases. Fortunately, a case is at hand for the justices to do so in an appeal from the District of Columbia Circuit. In the Kiyemba case recently, five Uighur, or Chinese Muslim, detainees filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of their petition for it to restore the power of federal trial judges to free them.
This appeal in no way threatens national security. The government has admitted that the Uighurs are not enemies, let alone enemy combatants. Refugees from China, they were mistakenly imprisoned during the Afghanistan war and sent to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. Other Uighurs accepted release to the island of Palau, 500 miles from the Philippines, but these five declined the offer because they have no connection to the island.
The appeal is about judicial power and the duty to use it. In 2008, a District of Columbia trial judge ordered the government to bring the Uighurs to his court to resolve how they should be released. The appeals court ruled that the judge lacked authority to free them in the United States because the "political branches" have "exclusive power" to decide which non-Americans can enter this country.
Judge Raymond Randolph of the District of Columbia Circuit wrote the key Kiyemba opinion. The Uighurs' brief says, "The constant in this case is the court of appeals' refusal to apply, or even acknowledge," the Boumediene ruling.
Judge Randolph also wrote the opinion for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Supreme Court overturned in Boumediene. In a speech called "The Guantanamo Mess" last fall, he said that the justices were wrong to do so and all but expressed contempt for the holding. As the basis for the speech's title, he compared the justices who reached it to characters in "The Great Gatsby." "They were careless people," he read. "They smashed things up ... and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
In Kiyemba and related cases, however, it is Judge Randolph and others on the District of Columbia Circuit who are making the mess. Respected lawyers say they are subverting the Supreme Court and American justice. Of 140 challenging their detentionsin the face of this hostility, dozens who should have been freed will likely remain in prison.
Alexander Hamilton called "arbitrary imprisonments" by the executive "the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." In Boumediene, Justice Anthony Kennedy stressed that habeas is less about detainees' rights, important as they are, than about the vital judicial power to check undue use of executive power.
The appellate court has all but nullified that view of judicial power and responsibility backed by Justice Kennedy and the court majority. The Supreme Court should remind the appellate court which one leads the federal judicial system and which has a solemn duty to follow.
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9) Unintended, but Sound Advice
By BOB HERBERT
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01herbert.html?hp
In Lewis Powell's now-famous memo to America's business community, which felt beleaguered in the political environment of 1971, the future Supreme Court justice stressed the importance of organizing.
"Strength lies in organization," he wrote, "in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations."
Powell's memo points to the reason why there is such an effort now not just to extract concessions from public employee unions to help balance state budgets, but to actually crush those unions, to deprive them once and for all of the crucial and fundamental right to bargain collectively.
When you talk to the workers who are hurting most in this epic downturn, they are overwhelmingly out there on their own. No one has their back. The corporate community and the politicians who do their bidding know better than anyone else that workers who are not organized are most often helpless. They have no leverage. They cannot demand raises or health and retirement benefits or paid vacations or sick leave. They cannot negotiate shorter hours or better working conditions. It's the boss's way or the highway.
It's not just pocketbook issues but the dignity of American workers that is at stake in the confrontations in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere. These confrontations are about so much more than the right of public employees to bargain collectively, as important as that is. This most recent assault on labor is part of an anti-worker movement that has been on the march for decades. Jobs have been shipped overseas. Workers have been denied their rightful share of productivity gains. Wages have been depressed and benefits in many, many instances have disappeared.
It's true that states are facing serious fiscal problems, crises in some cases, but a much bigger threat to America as we've known it is the increasing inability of hard-working men and women to earn enough to maintain a middle class standard of living, even as the corporate sector is thriving. The economic lives of the poor and an ever-widening portion of the middle class have become maddeningly insecure as the wealth of the society has been funneled, increasingly and unconscionably, to those at the top.
There was no net job creation during the first 10 years of the 21st century, and median incomes fell during that period, an abysmal record unmatched by any similar period in the modern post-World War II era.
I have long believed that virtually all workers should be organized, whether they were actually in a union or not. The man or woman who goes home after a long shift with barely enough to pay bills and nothing put away for an emergency, and who knows that he or she could be terminated at any moment for any reason, is subject to a permanent state of anxiety. There should be someone, some group or organization, to turn to for advice and support.
Unemployed workers who show up fully qualified to apply for a job only to be told that the prospective employer will not even consider someone who is already out of work should not have to feel that there is absolutely no alternative, that it is impossible to fight back. American workers should not be treated as if they don't matter.
Working America is a pro-worker advocacy organization affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that has signed up millions of nonunion members in an effort to increase the organized reach of workers. Much more organizing, on myriad fronts, is desperately needed.
Millions of Americans throughout the country are facing extreme economic hardship. The Community Service Society in New York City does an annual survey of low-income residents. Twenty-seven percent of respondents to its most recent survey said they had lost a job; 26 percent had had their hours, wages or tips reduced; 23 percent said they had often skipped meals because they did not have enough money to buy food; and 26 percent said they had been unable to fill a needed prescription because of a lack of money or insurance.
One of the saddest things I've read in The New York Times recently was a comment by Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, who said that he views the current hostility toward unions by members of the general public as a sign of the erosion of the aspirational nature that has for so long characterized Americans. "It shows a hopelessness," he said. "It used to be, 'You have something I don't have; I'll go to my employer to get it, too. Now I don't see any chance of getting it. I don't want to be the lowest one on the totem pole, so I don't want you to have it either.' "
Lewis Powell's advice to the corporate community in 1971 is - though he certainly never intended it to be - the best advice I can think of for workers today who are fighting to hold off the tide of lower living standards. It is not a struggle that can possibly be won alone.
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10) Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions
By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01poll.html?hp
As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Labor unions are not exactly popular, though: A third of those surveyed viewed them favorably, a quarter viewed them unfavorably, and the rest said they were either undecided or had not heard enough about them. But the nationwide poll found that embattled public employee unions have the support of most Americans - and most independents - as they fight the efforts of newly elected Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to weaken their bargaining powers, and the attempts of governors from both parties to cut their pay or benefits.
Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.
Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled - including just over half of Republicans - said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either "about right" or "too low" for the work they do.
When it came to one of the most debated, and expensive, benefits that many government workers enjoy but private sector workers do not - the ability to retire early, and begin collecting pension checks - Americans were closely divided. Forty-nine percent said police officers and firefighters should be able to retire and begin receiving pension checks even if they are in their 40s or 50s; 44 percent said they should have to be older. There was a similar divide on whether teachers should be able to retire and draw pensions before they are 65.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Feb. 24-27 with 984 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all adults. Of those surveyed, 20 percent said there was a union member in their household, and 25 percent said there was a public employee in their household.
Tax increases were not as unpopular among those surveyed as they are among many governors, who have vowed to avoid them. Asked how they would choose to reduce their state's deficits, those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes, 22 percent chose decreasing the benefits of public employees, 20 percent said they would cut financing for roads and 3 percent said they would cut financing for education.
The most contentious issue to emerge in the recent labor battles has been the question of collective bargaining rights. A proposal by Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin to weaken them sent Democratic state lawmakers out of state to prevent a vote, flooded the Capitol in Madison with thousands of protesters and sparked a national discussion about unions.
The poll found that an overwhelming 71 percent of Democrats opposed weakening collective bargaining rights. But there was also strong opposition from independents: 62 percent of them said they opposed taking bargaining rights away from public employee unions.
Phil Merritt, 67, a retired property manager from Crossville, Tenn., who identifies himself as an independent, explained in a follow-up interview why he opposed weakening bargaining rights for public workers. "I just feel they do a job that needs to be done, and in our country today if you work hard, then you should be able to have a home, be able to save for retirement and you should be able to send your kids to college," he said. "Most public employees have to struggle to do those things, and generally both spouses must work."
The one group that favors weakening those rights, by a slim majority, was Republicans. Warren Lemma, 56, an electrical contractor from Longview, Tex., said states did not have the money to pay for many benefits that state workers enjoy.
"Retirement benefits should not be taken away from those about to retire, but the system should be changed for the people starting to teach just now," said Mr. Lemma, a Republican. "And the only way the system will change is to do something about unions and their control, and the only way to do that is to take away collective bargaining."
The poll found that 45 percent of those surveyed said they believed that governors and state lawmakers who are trying to reduce the pay or benefits of public workers were doing so to reduce budget deficits, while 41 percent said they thought they were doing so to weaken unions' power.
Although cutting the pay or benefits of public workers was opposed by people in all income groups, it had the most support from people earning over $100,000 a year. In that income group, 45 percent said they favored cutting pay or benefits, while 49 percent opposed it. In every other income group, a majority opposed cutting pay or benefits: Among those making between $15,000 and $30,000, for instance, 35 percent said they favored cutting pay or benefits, while 60 percent opposed it.
Labor unions, including private sector labor unions, are seen as less influential now than they were three decades ago. The poll found that 37 percent of those surveyed believe that labor unions have "too much influence" on American life and politics, while 48 percent said they had the "right amount" or "too little" influence. In a 1981 poll, by contrast - soon after President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers - 60 percent of those surveyed said unions had "too much influence." Of course, union membership has declined since then.
Marina Stefan contributed reporting.
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11) U.S. Readies Military Options on Libya
By MARK LANDLER and THOM SHANKER
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/africa/01military.html?ref=world
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the administration was conferring with allies about imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. Such a move would likely be carried out only under a mandate from the United Nations or NATO, but Mrs. Clinton's blunt confirmation that it was under consideration was clearly intended to ratchet up the pressure on Colonel Qaddafi and his dwindling band of loyalists.
"Qaddafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay," Mrs. Clinton told reporters after a special meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. "No option is off the table," she said, adding "that of course includes a no-fly zone."
But officials in Washington and elsewhere said that direct military action remained unlikely, and that the moves were designed as much as anything as a warning to Colonel Qaddafi and a show of support to the protesters seeking to overthrow his government.
Speaking in Geneva, Mrs. Clinton said the United States was sending two teams of aid workers to Libyan border regions with Tunisia and Egypt, where tens of thousands of refugees are massing in a desperate flight from Libya's strife-torn cities. The administration has set aside $10 million for emergency relief.
As part of a potential military role in the humanitarian effort, Pentagon officials said that military aircraft and ships were being ordered to move into position closer to the Libyan coast. The Navy has an aircraft carrier strike group - with ample planes and helicopters - and an amphibious landing vessel, with Marines and helicopters, in the nearby Red Sea.
"As part of our contingency planning to provide the president flexibility on a full range of options regarding Libya, we are repositioning forces in the region," said Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
The coordinated statements were part of a rapidly accelerating Western response to the bloody clashes between rebels and loyalists of Colonel Qaddafi. Administration officials said they were held back until Friday because of fears that the Libyan government might take its diplomats and other Americans there hostage.
Now, with most Americans safely out of the country, senior administration officials are demanding Colonel Qaddafi's immediate resignation and ridiculing his claims that he enjoys the support of his people. Working with European allies, the administration has rolled out a battery of measures to seek to peel away senior officials and military commanders who remain loyal to the Libyan strongman.
In addition to a no-fly zone, designed to prevent the Libyan Air Force from attacking its citizens, options under review include using military transports to deliver food and medicine, or evacuating Libyans who want to leave the country.
But there are clear risks to involving the military, officials said, especially if the effort is led by the United States.
Privately, American officials said any United States military presence could undermine the legitimacy of the Libyan revolt as an internal, grass-roots movement. Qaddafi supporters - and even those across the Arab world who do not like the dictator - could denounce American action as being only about oil.
A NATO operation could produce a similar backlash, given the bitter residue of European colonialism in North Africa. In meetings at NATO and the United Nations, European officials have resisted military action, officials said.
"Should NATO get involved in a civil war to the south of the Mediterranean?" said Prime Minister François Fillon of France. "It is a question that at least merits some reflection before being launched."
Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said his country would not endorse any foreign military intervention. An Egyptian official noted that the use of Egyptian forces was wholly a decision for the military, which controls the country.
Indeed, there is an element of gunboat diplomacy to the talk of military action. Besides reassuring protesters, a senior American official said, the naval vessels and warplanes could be used as a show of force to embolden members of Colonel Qaddafi's military to turn on him. The announcement of American military planning could have an impact even without carrying out any operations, the official said.
The Treasury Department's move against Colonel Qaddafi's wealth was more concrete. Hours after President Obama signed an executive order on Friday freezing assets belonging to the Qaddafi family and other Libyan government entities, an unspecified number of American financial institutions cut off access to some $30 billion, including Libya's oil-enriched sovereign wealth funds.
"This is the largest blocking under any sanctions program ever," said David Cohen, the acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. The $30 billion is separate from Libyan government money being blocked by European countries and banks under separate orders, he said, and it speaks to the vast holdings Colonel Qaddafi acquired in more than four decades in power.
Britain and Switzerland had already frozen Libyan assets, and the European Union announced further sanctions on Monday, including an embargo on the sales of arms and police equipment, and a visa ban for Libyan officials. Those measures go beyond the sanctions passed by the United Nations on Saturday, though the Security Council also referred Colonel Qaddafi to the International Criminal Court for an investigation into possible war crimes.
In Washington, Mr. Obama met with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to reinforce the sense of international consensus. Afterward, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, delivered a blistering denunciation of Colonel Qaddafi from the White House briefing room.
Citing an interview the Libyan leader gave Monday to Christiane Amanpour of ABC News and others, Ms. Rice said, "When he can laugh in talking to American and international journalists while he is slaughtering his own people, it only underscores how unfit he is to lead and how disconnected he is from reality."
Pentagon officials said the United States would seek an international mandate for action, most likely from the United Nations or NATO. There is no appetite for assigning ground troops to any mission, officials said.
But the scope and pacing of planning under way is a substantial increase from just a week ago, when officials said that the most likely military action would come from European countries like Italy or France.
Officials said the administration had realized that only the American military was equipped to lead across a range of options to halt the violence. "This has been a fast-moving scenario, with the violence really accelerating over recent days," one Pentagon official said.
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger from Paris, Steven Lee Myers from Geneva, Helene Cooper from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from Cairo.
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12) Ohio Set to Vote on Ending Public Union Rights
"Other critics of the governor's proposal say the fiscal problems could be eased by increasing taxes on the state's highest earners and corporations." [Ya think?...bw]
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02states.html?ref=us
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio Senate is expected on Thursday to consider a revised version of a bill to end collective bargaining for public-sector workers, and union members gathering outside the Statehouse here Tuesday morning said they were bracing for the worst.
"This is going to get passed and people will sit back and say, 'What happened?' " said Mark Horton, a retired firefighter who is treasurer of the Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters. "Once it's done, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle."
Unlike similar legislation in Wisconsin, which exempts police officers and firefighters, the Ohio bill includes them - and is controversial for that reason.
But Republicans say the legislation that seeks to eliminate long-held union prerogatives are part of broader austerity measures intended to reduce crippling budget deficits, of which public employee pensions have played a growing role.
Mr. Horton said rhetoric suggesting that unions were overpaid and pampered was unfair.
"The upper class has done a great job of pitting the middle class against itself," he said. "I get a pension of $3,700 a month. If someone thinks I'm riding high on the hog, that's just not the case."
In Wisconsin, the political divide was expected to only widen on Tuesday as Gov. Scott Walker prepared to announce his budget proposal, which is expected to cut $1 billion in aid to local government over two years.
By early Tuesday, critics of Mr. Walker were already gathering, as they have for two weeks, outside the Capitol. Security was tight, and only some people were allowed to enter. Mr. Walker, a Republican whose proposal to cut collective bargaining rights for public workers and increase their pension and health care contributions has set off a firestorm here, will present his budget in the state Assembly chambers. Some Democrats were already predicting that the cuts in his new budget might lead to still more protests, more disagreement, more of a split in this state's Republican-dominated Capitol.
In his two-week-long standoff with Democrats and state employee unions, Mr. Walker has pressured 14 Democratic state senators, who have fled the state, to return to deal with what he says are important fiscal deadlines that would otherwise pass this week and harm the state.
But the Democrats are staying put, in Illinois, to avoid a quorum and thus stall a proposal by Mr. Walker that would strip public employee unions of nearly all their collective bargaining powers, allow publicly owned power plants to be sold with what critics say is little guarantee of fair value, and give the governor's appointees what public health advocates describe as expansive new powers to limit health care coverage for lower-income residents.
"One day left to save the state $165 million," said the governor's office on Monday, announcing the latest deadline.
If Democrats do not return by Tuesday, taxpayers would lose an option to save that money through a "refinancing," the governor's office said, citing the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that conducts budget analysis.
The bureau's director, Bob Lang, did not return a call Monday. Nor did the governor's office.
But the assertion that taxpayers are on the verge of losing $165 million appeared nowhere in the analysis of the bill.
According to that analysis, which the bureau completed two weeks ago, the bill calls for restructuring $165 million in debt. Instead of paying the debt off in May, it would mean new debt would be issued, deferring the repayments. The restructuring would increase debt payments over the next two years by almost $30 million in principal and interest.
The Tuesday deadline appeared to be based on another analysis by the bureau that suggested that for the restructuring to happen, the state would have to order it done at least two weeks before March 16.
But nowhere in either analysis does it suggest that taxpayers would otherwise lose $165 million - just that the state would not be able to push back the repayment of that amount to a later date. The debt would still be owed, and taxpayers would still be on the hook.
As the dispute continued, about 60 protesters remained in the Capitol around the clock. Although the authorities had said over the weekend that they would remove all protesters by Sunday night, they decided to let those inside remain. But on Monday they blocked additional demonstrators from entering, prompting Democrats to accuse Mr. Walker's administration of trying to silence opponents of his bill.
The governor also says the state will have to begin the process of laying off 1,500 employees later this week. This is also the Democrats' fault, Mr. Walker says.
Their "failure to return to work and cast their votes will lead to more painful and aggressive spending cuts in the very near future," the governor's office said in the statement.
But to the Democrats leading the opposition in the Senate, the deadlines - and the premise for the governor's bill - are largely phony.
Instead, the Democrats say, the governor is trying to inflate a crisis to make fundamental changes in the way the state works. Most of his bill has little to do with current budget issues.
"These are the first steps he needs to take to privatize the state," said State Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the 14 Democrats.
Mr. Erpenbach expressed frustration that the governor had not done more to acknowledge that the state's major public employee unions had agreed to sizable cuts in workers' take-home pay - 6 percent to 8 percent on average - by diverting more of their paychecks to pay for health care and pension plans.
"He's not being honest," Mr. Erpenbach said. "Piece by piece, public employees will be shown the door and then replaced by private contractors with no accountability."
Another Democratic senator, Chris Larson, called the governor's bill a "Trojan horse" whose "sleeper provisions" would allow the power plants theoretically to be sold "for a buck." He said the governor had a history of using scare tactics during political disputes.
Other critics of the governor's proposal say the fiscal problems could be eased by increasing taxes on the state's highest earners and corporations.
But the governor has not backed down, and the Democrats in the Senate are still in Illinois.
Sabrina Tavernise reported from Columbus, Ohio, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Madison, Wis. Monica Davey contributed from Madison.
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13) Oil Drilling to Resume in the Gulf's Deep Waters
[IN SPITE OF DEAD BABY DOLPHINS WASHING ASHORE ALONG THE GULF, THE IRRATIONAL QUEST FOR PROFITS OVER THE GOOD OF HUMANITY AND THE GLOBE RESUMES...BE]
By JOHN M. BRODER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/business/energy-environment/01drill.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Interior Department said Monday that it had approved the first new deepwater drilling permit in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP explosion and spill last spring, a milestone after a period of intense uncertainty for industry and a wholesale remaking of the nation's system of offshore oil and gas regulation.
Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said that Noble Energy had been granted permission to resume drilling in 6,500 feet of water off the coast of Louisiana.
Work on the well was suspended, along with virtually all other drilling activity in water deeper than 5,000 feet, immediately after the Deepwater Horizon accident last April 20. The disaster killed 11 rig workers and spewed nearly five million barrels of oil into the ocean.
Still, there was no indication that drilling in the gulf would return anytime soon to levels preceding the BP well blowout.
Mr. Bromwich made clear that each new permit would be closely reviewed on a well-by-well basis and that the old system of rapid approvals of drilling permits had been permanently changed. Noble Energy said it expected to resume drilling by late March.
Approval of the Noble Energy application comes as oil prices are rising in response to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and many in Congress and in industry are complaining of burdensome rules that are thwarting the development of domestic energy resources.
The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, plans to testify before Congress this week in defense of his department's budget and is certain to face harsh questioning about why it has taken so long to resume drilling in the gulf.
Judge Martin Feldman, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recently ordered the Obama administration to move quickly on permits for new deepwater wells in the gulf, saying that the continuing delays were "increasingly inexcusable."
But in a conference call with reporters, Mr. Bromwich said that there were "absolutely no politics associated with the approval of this application." He also said that the decision to grant Noble Energy the drilling permit was not a response to Judge Feldman's order; he said the department disagreed with the ruling and was preparing a legal response.
It is not clear how quickly federal regulators will move to on the six pending deepwater drilling permits or how soon the normal flow of applications will resume after a nearly yearlong halt to deepwater activity.
"We are taking these applications to drill as they come in," Mr. Bromwich said. "Industry has been waiting for signals that in fact deepwater drilling will be allowed to resume and many will take this as that signal."
"I have no idea how quickly new applications to drill will be filed," he added. "I have no idea how long it will take to approve the next one or the next one after that or the next one after that."
Mr. Bromwich noted that Noble's permit was the first in deep water since the BP accident but that 37 shallow-water applications had been approved over the last 10 months.
The decision was cautiously welcomed by the oil industry.
Gary Luquette, president of Chevron's North America exploration and production, called the permit "a step in the right direction." But he added, "It is time for the government to clear the backlog of deepwater drilling permit applications so industry can create the energy, jobs and economic growth our nation needs so badly."
Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, said the industry was seeking clarity on the pacing of additional permits. "A permit for any well prohibited by the moratorium represents progress," he said. "The question now is how quickly will they proceed to approve other permits that are awaiting approval."
Mr. Hunt said that six deepwater permits were awaiting federal approval and that the industry could put 33 projects back in operation if companies could obtain permits.
At least six rigs affected by the drilling moratorium, imposed last June, have left the gulf to drill elsewhere.
Mr. Bromwich said that Noble had met new safety and environmental rules that were put in place after the spill and had a contract with a company that was capable of capping a blowout and handling a discharge of as much as 69,000 barrels a day - roughly the same volume of oil that leaked from the crippled BP well for nearly three months.
The emergency well-capping system will be furnished by the Helix Well Containment Group, which Mr. Bromwich said was capable of meeting the government's spill response requirements for the Noble Energy well.
Mr. Salazar and Mr. Bromwich were briefed in Houston on Friday by Helix executives and representatives of another group developing a new oil spill response system. The second group, a consortium of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP, has developed a system meant to cap a well in up to 8,000 feet of water and collect 60,000 barrels of spilled oil a day.
The consortium is also working on a second system that by the end of the year will be capable of operating in up to 10,000 feet and contain 100,000 barrels a day.
Randall B. Luthi, former director of offshore drilling regulation at the Interior Department and now president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a drillers' trade group, said the approval came at a critical moment. "With all the world-complicating factors, including rising oil prices, political turmoil in the Middle East and the loss of jobs in the Gulf of Mexico, this decision offers hope," he said.
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, sounded a less magnanimous note. "This slow-moving process continues to stifle domestic production and puts thousands of jobs at risk in the gulf and around the country," he said.
Senator Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who has pressed the administration to begin issuing deepwater permits at a steady clip, called the permit "long overdue," adding "I hope that this permit is the first of many to come, and I will continue to use every lever at my disposal to ensure that it is."
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14) West Virginia: Mine Official Accused of Lying
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01brfs-MINEOFFICIAL_BRF.html?ref=us
The security chief of a Massey Energy Company subsidiary has been indicted on federal charges that he obstructed the investigation of a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners at the company's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, federal prosecutors said Monday. Hughie Stover, 60, is accused of lying to an F.B.I. agent and a federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspector. He is also accused of ordering an employee to dispose of thousands of pages of security documents from the mine. Mr. Stover was the head of security at Performance Coal, the Massey subsidiary that operates the mine.
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15) How Can We Aid Libya's Freedom Movement?
John Riddell
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 472
March 1, 2011
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/472.php#continue
The brutal massacres of civilians in Libya at the order of the country's dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, have shocked the world. His air force has carried out air strikes against unarmed civilians. On February 25, Gaddafi followers aimed murderous fire on anti-government protests in his last stronghold, Tripoli. The government declares its intention of reconquering the country in civil war.
What can we in Canada do to end the killings?
On February 26, the United Nations Security Council voted for sanctions against the Libyan regime, including an arms embargo and the freezing of assets of Gaddafi and his family. These measures are hardly more than cosmetic, serving to polish up great-power credentials.
Four days earlier, the New Democratic Party called for stronger action, advocating that Canada press the United Nations to "establish a no-fly zone in Libya's airspace." The "no-fly" proposal conjures up the vision of a protective hand stretched over Libya's troubled skies. But as Robert Dreyfuss commented in the Nation February 23, it is a dangerous idea.
"A no-fly zone is worthless unless the United States is prepared to back it up with overwhelming military force," Dreyfuss says. In other words, U.S. fighters would invade Libyan airspace and shoot down any aircraft they find there. A no-fly zone is an act of war.
We know the logic of such actions from Iraq, where a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone was an initial step toward a murderous all-out assault. Significantly, few calls for military intervention have been heard from Libya, a symptom of the imperialists' lack of influence in an insurgent movement that seems mindful of the need to protect national sovereignty.
Solidarity
Nor were such calls made when Libyan-Canadians and their supporters rallied in Vancouver and Toronto February 26. Some of the signs carried by the 500 Toronto protesters read, "No Libyan blood for Libyan oil," "Freedom for the Arab world; kick out dictators." Actions took place in at least seven other cities.
A statement by the Toronto Arab Solidarity Committee (TASC), organizer of the action there, commented, "It is imperative that no military intervention is undertaken under the pretext of protecting the Libyan people... Decisions to support Libyans must be based on the demands of Libyans themselves and not on the agendas of international alliances." TASC consists of about a dozen Arab-Canadian organizations as well as Toronto Stop the War Coalition. Similar actions took place in seven other cities.
Derrick O'Keefe, an organizer of the Vancouver action and co-chair of the Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA), said the CPA "wanted to make clear that we would strongly warn against ... any kind of NATO military intervention." Sending in NATO "would be like calling the arsonist to put out the fire," O'Keefe told this writer. He pointed to the example of Iraq, where "the oil fields were protected while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed."
Some writers have suggested that concern with intervention is misplaced. "We don't believe, truly, that NATO is going to invade Libya," write Santiago Alba Rico and Alma Allende in Rebelión. Raising this spectre "has the effect of entangling and blurring the anti-imperialist camp." The authors enumerate the Gaddafi regime's many recent services to imperialism, including its active participation in George Bush's "war on terror" and setting up "concentration camps where thousands of Africans headed for Europe are held." Alba Rico and Allende have their facts right but draw the wrong conclusion.
In an earlier period, the imperialist powers were at odds with the Gaddafi government, vilifying and harassing it. Indeed, in 1986 the British and U.S. governments carried out a brutal airstrike against the country, in which 60 Libyans were killed and 40 aircraft destroyed. But those days ended long ago. In recent years, the Gaddafi regime has been on the best of terms with the NATO powers.
Canadian Complicity
Canada has long been complicit in supporting the Gaddafi regime - in fact, Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin has been building a $275-million jail in Tripoli.
According to U.S. State Department cables revealed by Wikileaks, Petro-Canada paid Gaddafi and his cronies a $1-billion "signing bonus" to obtain rights to extract Libyan oil for 30 years. These rights now belong to Suncor, one of Canada's largest energy companies.
It is not the Gaddafi regime that worries Stephen Harper and his allies, but a revolutionary people's movement aiming to overthrow the dictatorship. To the NATO powers, that spells "instability" and an insecure oil supply. If they intervene, it will be in an attempt to quell the insurgent movement and reassert control in the guise of a new client regime. And Gaddafi's murderous war against his people, if it continues, offers the NATO powers an opening for such an intervention.
As the British Stop the War Coalition notes, "Such interference over the last century is the root of the region's troubles.... The future of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and all the other states facing popular uprisings must be determined by the people of these countries alone."
So far, the Libyan protesters have showed great courage and resourcefulness, winning control over a large part of the country.
The Libyan insurgents have not yet enjoyed the political freedom to chart a new course for their country. The immediate results of their struggle are unpredictable. But the broader significance of their movement is already clear. It forms part of the great rising of Arab peoples, whose aims are democracy, human rights, popular sovereignty, and a chance to struggle for social justice.
Their victory in this difficult struggle would give a mighty impetus to the movements for liberation throughout the region.
The Arab revolution has already changed the course of history. It is this great uprising, not the initiatives of Canadian and allied governments, that points toward a better future for the Arab peoples and the world. The Libyan and other Arab insurgents deserve our full support. •
John Riddell is a Toronto-based activist and co-editor of Socialist Voice, where this article first appeared.
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16) Resolution on Wisconsin and the Fight Against
Union-Busting and For No Concessions For Workers
[for a copy of this resolution on SF Labor Council letterhead, in pdf format, please write to
WHEREAS,
- Hundreds of thousands of union members in Wisconsin and across the country have mobilized to kill Governor Scott Walker's "Budget Repair Bill," which, in the name of balancing the state budget and erasing a $3.6 billion deficit that public-sector workers did not create, would effectively destroy public sector unions in Wisconsin and gut the benefits of 200,000 Wisconsin public sector employees while increasing their health-care costs.
- Statistics show that state employees on average earn less than those in the private sector with comparable education and experience, and that they have often taken modest or no wage increases to continue to build retirement security for themselves and their families.
- Similar bills are being proposed in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other states -- all with the aim of dismantling public sector workers' collective-bargaining rights, busting their unions, privatizing public services, and imposing massive cuts and concessions in terms of jobs, wages and benefits.
- All these bills are seeking to blame and punish working people for budget crises that originated not from workers -- both union and non-union -- but from corporate greed: As USW President Leo Gerard told a Rally for Wisconsin at the union's headquarters in Pittsburgh on Feb. 24, "The people who do the work are not the problem. The problem is the political system that has given tax breaks to the rich and the ultra-rich. The pension mess in America wasn't caused by workers having gold-plated pensions. It was caused by Wall Street taking the gold out of our pensions."
- The total states' budget deficits, estimated at $124 billion, are rising because of the lack of jobs, leading to major tax revenue falloff, and because of huge tax breaks for the wealthy and loopholes for the corporations.
- Unionists and their community allies are marching in Wisconsin and throughout the nation to demand an end to union-busting and the budget cuts, following the lead of the South Central Federation of Labor in Wisconsin and of National Nurses United Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, who, in a recent article in the Huffington Post, wrote, "Working people did not create the recession or the budgetary crisis facing federal, state and local governments -- and there can be NO more concessions, period."
- The Obama administration is proposing $1.1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years -- cuts that are further crippling cash-strapped states and dismantling countless programs that provide assistance to low-income people.
- On Feb. 2, 2011, the AFL-CIO reported that there are now 27 million people in this country who are unemployed or in need of full-time work (in Wisconsin alone 55,000 factories have been closed over the past 10 years);
- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, in his address at the National Press Club on Jan. 19, 2011, affirmed that, "[w]e have a jobs crisis which after three years is still raging, squeezing families, devastating our poorest communities and stunting the futures of young adults. Yet politicians of both parties tell us that we can -- and should -- do nothing."
- The AFL-CIO has gone on record demanding that the federal government create millions of jobs by taxing Wall Street, and demanding that there be no cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while arguing that the best way to fight the deficit is to create jobs.
- Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together have cost $1.05 trillion and with projected future costs, the total will exceed $5 trillion, and what the United States will spend in 2011 on Afghanistan alone would cover all of the state budget deficits combined, with money left over for other needs.
- Wall Street and the corporations are sitting on more than $2 trillion in federal bailout funds, refusing to invest them to create jobs in the United States as they seek more profitable investments in offshore and other speculative ventures.
- The Federal Reserve reported in August 2010 that it had loaned $9 trillion to financial institutions in the bailouts since 2008. This includes loans to all kinds of financial institutions, not just banks, but insurance companies, mutual funds, investment banks, and finance companies. Also on the list were failing foreign banks.
- There is plenty of funding available if we change our priorities.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT,
- The San Francisco Labor Council supports the struggle waged by labor and its allies in Wisconsin against the union-busting and the budget cuts, and urges the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to get behind the call issued by NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro to mobilize against any and all concessions in every state across the country.
- The San Francisco Labor Council calls on the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to organize massive demonstrations in major cities across the country to demand that the federal government bail out the cash-strapped states through one or more of the following: a national mass public works program to put 27 million people back to work now; taxing Wall Street and raising taxes on the rich and on corporations; a major and systematic reduction in the Pentagon budget, with funds redirected to create jobs and meet human needs; and/or the repossession of improperly used federal bailout funds that are sitting idly in the Wall Street coffers.
- The San Francisco Labor Council -- given the immediacy of the crisis facing the states across the country -- calls on the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to demand that the federal government press the Federal Reserve to provide a $1 trillion "bridge loan" to the public pension funds that are in extreme stress and to launch an Emergency National Jobs Creation Program. If the Fed can loan $9 trillion to Wall Street and the banks, including foreign banks, that caused the recent financial meltdown, it can extend immediately a $1 trillion "bridge loan" to fund an historic jobs creation program and a public pension fund stress relief plan. This $1 trillion "bridge loan" would also not raise the U.S. budget deficit by a penny, as it would be used to jump-start the economy and would be repaid once the new tax revenue inflows come in.
- The San Francisco Labor Council will send this resolution for concurrence to the California Labor Federation and to the national AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.
Resolution respectfully submitted by:
- Alan Benjamin (OPEIU Local 3)
- Conny Ford (OPEIU Local 3)
- Denis Mosgofian, (GCC Local 4N, IBT)
- Ann Robertson (California Faculty Association)
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17) Gathering Firewood, 9 Afghan Boys Killed by NATO Helicopters
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SANGAR RAHIMI
March 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.
The boys, who were 9 to 15 years old, were attacked on Tuesday in what amounted to one of the war's worst cases of mistaken killings by foreign-led forces. The victims included two sets of brothers. A 10th boy survived.
The NATO statement, which included an unusual personal apology by the commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said the boys had been misidentified as the attackers of a NATO base earlier in the day. News of the attack enraged Afghans and led to an anti-American demonstration on Wednesday in the village of Nanglam, where the boys where from. The only survivor, Hemad, 11, said his mother had told him to go out with other boys to collect firewood because "the weather is very cold now."
"We were almost done collecting the wood when suddenly we saw the helicopters come," said Hemad, who, like many Afghans, has only one name. "There were two of them. The helicopters hovered over us, scanned us and we saw a green flash from the helicopters. Then they flew back high up, and in a second round they hovered over us and started shooting. They fired a rocket which landed on a tree. The tree branches fell over me and shrapnel hit my right hand and my side."
The tree, Hemad said, saved his life by covering him so that he could not be seen by the helicopters, which. he said, "shot the boys one after another."
General Petraeus pledged to investigate the attack and to take disciplinary action if appropriate.
"We are deeply sorry for this tragedy and apologize to the members of the Afghan government, the people of Afghanistan and, most importantly, the surviving family members of those killed by our actions," he said. "These deaths should have never happened."
It was the third incident in two weeks in which the Afghan government has accused NATO of killing civilians. NATO strongly disputes one of those reports, but another - the killing of an Afghan Army soldier and his family in Nangahar Province on Feb. 20 - was also described as an accident.
The attack on the boys occurred high in the mountains outside Nanglam in the Pech Valley of Kunar Province. American troops are preparing to close their bases in the valley in the next several weeks, in part because their presence has vexed the locals, who would prefer to be left alone. The area is poor, and the only major road was built to service Forward Operating Base Blessing, according to local residents.
A rocket attack on the base on Tuesday led to a helicopter search for the insurgents responsible, the NATO statement said. The base is surrounded by mountains and is the frequent target of Taliban fighters, who shoot down on it from the rocky heights.
The helicopters "returned fire at the assessed point of origin with indirect and aerial fire," the NATO statement said. "Regrettably there appears to have been an error in the handoff between identifying the location of the insurgents and the attack helicopters that carried out subsequent operations."
Villagers - who heard the gunfire in the mountains and worried when the children did not return home - went to look for them. The boys had been out since the morning, local people said.
"As soon as we heard about the attack on the village's children, all the village men rushed to the mountains to find out what really happened," said Ashabuddin, a shopkeeper from Manogai, a nearby village, whose nephew Khalid was among those killed.
"Finally we found the dead bodies. Some of the dead bodies were really badly chopped up by the rockets," he said. "The head of a child was missing. Others were missing limbs."
"We tried to find the body pieces and put them together. As it was getting late, we brought down the bodies in a rope bed. We buried them in the village's cemetery," Ashabuddin added. "The children were all from poor families; otherwise no one would send their sons up to the mountains despite the known threats from both insurgents and Americans."
Khalid, 14, was the only male in the family, Ashabuddin said. "He was studying in sixth grade of the orphanage school and working because his father died four years ago due to a long -term sickness. His father was a day laborer. He has 13 sisters and two mothers. He was the sole breadwinner of the family. I don't know what would happen to his family to his sisters and mothers. They are all female and poor."
President Hamid Karzai, who was in London for an official visit, condemned the attack "in the strongest terms possible."
Calling it a "ruthless." he questioned whether the Western goals of combating terrorism and securing Afghanistan could be achieved if civilians continued to die.
More than 200 people gathered in Nanglam on Wednesday to protest the boys' deaths, witnesses said. Waving white flags, they shouted "Death, death to America" and "Death to Obama and his colleagues and associates."
A New York Times employee in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, contributed reporting..
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18) Feeling Budget Pinch, States Cut Insurance
By KEVIN SACK
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/health/policy/02pennsylvania.html?ref=us
EASTON, Pa. - Ken Kewley woke up Tuesday without health insurance for the first time in nearly nine years.
So did most of the 41,467 other Pennsylvanians who had been covered by adultBasic, a state-subsidized insurance program for the working poor that Gov. Tom Corbett shut down on Monday in one of the largest disenrollments in recent memory.
Mr. Corbett, a Republican elected in November, has said the program he inherited is not sustainable with Pennsylvania facing a $4 billion budget shortfall. He blames his predecessor, Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, for not keeping the plan solvent. His administration notified beneficiaries in late January that their coverage would expire Feb. 28.
For Mr. Kewley, 57, an abstract artist in this gritty town in the Lehigh Valley, it meant the end of the coverage that made possible an aortic valve replacement last May. While the life-saving procedure cost about $85,000, he said he had paid only $915 out of pocket.
The state has pointed Mr. Kewley toward other options, but the coverage would be less comprehensive and the premiums far higher than the $36 he had been paying each month. Now any minor symptom, like a mild pinch in his chest, prompts a devil's calculation about whether he can afford to have it checked.
When he noticed such discomfort on Tuesday morning, he broke into a cold sweat, felt his stomach tightening and experienced "a sense of impending doom," he said. For the moment, Mr. Kewley is trying to convince himself it is just a pulled muscle.
"It's a worry, and it's draining," he said, seated in the home studio where he applies bold acrylics to landscapes of the sloping hillsides nearby. "It's always present in my mind so it's hard to come up here and do my work."
Pennsylvania is one of several destitute states seeking to help balance budgets by removing adults from government health insurance programs.
Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, recently removed 17,500 adults covered under Basic Health, a state-financed plan for the working poor. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, proposes to remove up to 250,000 childless adults who have been insured by her state's Medicaid program under a decade-long agreement with the federal government.
Medicaid, which is financed jointly by state and federal governments, primarily covers low-income children, parents and the disabled. Most states do not now offer coverage to childless adults, but starting in 2014, the new federal health care law will require them to expand Medicaid to insure adults earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level.
Former Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican, started Pennsylvania's adultBasic program in 2001 to cover those who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private insurance.
Originally supported with national tobacco litigation proceeds, the policies were made available to adults who earned up to twice the federal poverty level (which would be $21,780 this year).
When the tobacco money started to dwindle, Mr. Rendell negotiated a deal with the state's four nonprofit Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurers, which had been accumulating large surpluses. The Blues agreed to contribute to the plan to show they were fulfilling the charitable obligation that accompanies their tax-exempt status. The agreement expired on Dec. 31.
Over six years, the Blues provided $542.7 million to the plan, and $356.5 million more to other state health programs. They agreed last year to add $51 million to help maintain coverage through the fiscal year, which ends in June. It was not nearly enough.
The program's revenue streams have never met more than a fraction of its demand, which has soared in the economic downturn. When the program closed, 505,000 people were on its waiting list, nearly seven times as many as in early 2007.
In an interview, Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Governor Corbett, called the program's closing "unfortunate," and then quickly blamed Mr. Rendell. He said the former governor had pledged to find $56 million to sustain the plan as part of last year's deal with the Blues, but never did.
Donna Cooper, who was Mr. Rendell's secretary of policy and planning, and the senior official in those negotiations, called Mr. Harley's assertion "just wild."
"That is patently untrue," said Ms. Cooper, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "That commitment was never made."
Mr. Corbett met with the Blue Cross plans, but did not persuade them to make additional contributions. "My understanding is that the Blues were not willing to continue," Mr. Harley said. "They fulfilled all their obligations under the law."
The Obama administration rejected the state's request to allow refugees from adultBasic to qualify immediately for the high-risk insurance pool authorized under the federal health law. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, responded that she could not waive the law's requirement that applicants be uninsured for six months.
In Harrisburg, the state capital, Democratic legislators proposed to keep the program alive by seeking $25 million each from the Blues and the state, and by nearly doubling premiums. The Republicans, who control both houses of the General Assembly, have expressed no support.
"At the end of the day, the Blues are not willing to do it," said Senator Jay Costa Jr., the minority leader, "and the administration is not willing to put the strong arm on them to get them to participate in the way that Governor Rendell did."
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans continue to run substantial surpluses, rising to a cumulative $5.6 billion in 2009 from $3.5 billion in 2002, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a research group that advocates for low-income families.
But the insurers say their obligation to pay for a state program has ended. "Our support to adultBasic was always a temporary financing mechanism," said Aaron Billger, a spokesman for Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the largest of the state's plans. "We have long told the state that it was unsustainable."
As the program's shutdown loomed, many enrollees scurried to schedule doctors' appointments and procedures. Mr. Kewley had his blood checked, and asked for new prescriptions. Roseanne Davis, a mother of two from Perkasie, scheduled a hysterectomy for Monday, her final day with coverage.
Doctors had discovered a benign ovarian cyst in January, but told her it did not have to be removed immediately. "I said, let's get this done before I roll off insurance," Ms. Davis said. "Down to the last day."
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19) Wisconsin Budget Would Slash School and Municipal Aid
By MONICA DAVEY and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
March 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/us/02wisconsin.html?ref=us
MADISON, Wis. - Gov. Scott Walker, whose push to limit collective bargaining rights and increase health and pension costs for public workers has set off a national debate, proposed a new budget for Wisconsin on Tuesday that called for deep cuts to state aid to schools and local governments, provoking a new wave of fury.
Mr. Walker, a Republican, called for no tax or fee increases, but cuts of $1.5 billion to items like the schools and local governments - the preferable choice, he said, for solving a deficit expected to arise in the two-year budget period that begins in July.
Mr. Walker presented his fiscal plan under extraordinarily tense circumstances: the sound of hundreds of protesters screaming "Recall! Recall!" and pounding drums outside the Capitol could be heard clearly inside the Assembly chamber, where lawmakers, the State Supreme Court and other dignitaries had gathered for what is customarily a formal occasion peppered with etiquette and tradition.
Even as Mr. Walker spoke, many protesters who have crammed the Capitol over the past two weeks were barred from entering the building. This led to a court fight - still unresolved - over whether Mr. Walker's administration was permitted to limit access to the Capitol, which usually sits open. Scores of law enforcement officers took up posts all over the building, requesting proof of identification and barring those without invitations from entering the Assembly chamber.
"This is a reform budget," Mr. Walker said to standing ovations from Republican lawmakers, who hold majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, and stony silence from the Democrats, who wore beneath their suit jackets bright orange T-shirts that read, "Fighting for Working Families!"
Showing no sign of noticing the cacophony outside the chamber, Mr. Walker went on, "It is about getting Wisconsin working again - and to make that happen, we need a balanced budget that works - and an environment where the private sector can create 250,000 jobs over the next four years."
Mr. Walker's budget proposal served to underscore the size of the political divide that has only grown wider here in recent weeks, ever since Mr. Walker proposed diminishing collective bargaining rights for public workers, a notion that his budget proposal is, in essence, staked upon.
Democrats here - some of whom could be seen shaking their heads during portions of Mr. Walker's address - described the level of cuts, to schools in particular, as devastating, even inhumane, to ordinary families. Some said they feared the cuts might result in the layoffs of teachers, and that public schools might find themselves crammed - perhaps to as many as 60 children in a single classroom in some cases.
"There is going to be an annihilation of education in this state," said Representative Tamara Grigsby, a Democrat.
But Republicans suggested that the budget plan itself was but one more piece of evidence that public sector workers needed to pay more for their health and pension benefits and that collective bargaining on matters beyond wages could no longer be afforded.
"This is the only way to get there," said Senator Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican majority leader. Union leaders here have said they will agree to take cuts in their paychecks for pension and health care costs, but Mr. Walker contends that the prospect of collective bargaining itself creates too many unknowns - particularly for local governments now left to expect less state revenue - to solve the current level of budget troubles.
Mr. Walker's plan would cut about 8 percent from aid to schools, and called for local school districts to be further limited in how much they can raise in property taxes. He suggested major cuts to local governments, which would be restricted in how they could raise property taxes to make up for the losses. Mr. Walker's budget, meanwhile, proposes some tax breaks, including cuts for those who invest in Wisconsin companies.
No one here disputes that Wisconsin faces a serious fiscal problem, but there is wide disagreement over the severity of the crisis and whether increases in revenues, as well as cuts, might be needed. Among the nation's deficit-troubled states, Wisconsin is neither the worst off nor the most fortunate. Mr. Walker has described the expected budget deficit for the coming two years at $3.6 billion, among the largest in state history, while others contend the woes have been exaggerated.
"It's like trying to fix a small leak in your roof by burning your house down," said Brian Austin, a police union leader in Madison.
Mr. Walker had intended to present his future budget only after state lawmakers approved his bill to reduce collective bargaining rights for public workers. That bill, however, has hit an impasse in the State Senate, after the body's 14 Democrats fled the state in February to prevent the vote from proceeding. (The Senate's 19 Republicans hold a definitive majority in the chamber, but votes cannot be taken on fiscal bills without 20 members present.)
During his speech, Mr. Walker linked the earlier bill to his budget proposal and urged the return of the missing Senate Democrats, some of whom watched the address on television from northern Illinois, where they have been hiding out for several weeks. "If they do not, our schools face massive layoffs of teachers," Mr. Walker said. "However, if they do come back, overall savings for schools across the state will outweigh reductions, ultimately allowing schools to put more money in the classroom."
At least one of the Democratic senators met with Mr. Fitzgerald, the Republicans' leader, on Monday in Kenosha (not far from the Illinois border), but no one seemed close to compromise by Tuesday evening. Mr. Fitzgerald said he had no intention of withdrawing the provision to reduce collective bargaining, and Senator Timothy Cullen, a Democrat who attended the meeting, said no Democrats were planning to return for such a vote as the bill stood now.
"Would we all like to go home? Yes," Mr. Cullen said in a telephone interview. "What there's unanimity about in our caucus is that nobody is going to be the 20th vote."
Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago, and Steven Greenhouse from Washington.
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20) Wisconsin: The End of Obama-ism
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
March 2, 2011
http://blackagendareport.com/content/wisconsin-end-obama-ism
Herr Gov. Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, has let the other jack-boot drop with proposals for an additional $1.6 billion in cuts to schools and local governments, an assault designed to drive the most basic public services either out of existence or towards privatization through strangulation. The mostly white-bread state now stares at the prospect of 60-student classrooms, like the nonfunctional regime that is to be imposed on children in Detroit under a Democratic state administration. Democratic governors in New York, California and elsewhere are no doubt reveling in the carnage wrought by their GOP brethren in America's uniparty system, whose depredations expand the political space for their own jihads against the public sector and its unions.
Wisconsin is, in a sense, near-ideal terrain for a showdown with the Tea Party brand of Republicanism. The actors in the drama are overwhelmingly white, putting the raw class nature of capital's aggressions in stark relief. With relatively few Black scapegoats to complicate the issue, white folks must confront the bare facts of the way late-stage capitalism tramples ordinary people as it careens from crisis to crisis.
Or, maybe not. White supremacy is a dynamic ideology that has always been central to the domestic functions of American Exceptionalism, distorting not just race relations but all other social relations, as well. Once the foundational Nigger has been invented and given life in the public mind, with all his purported logic-bending and society-polluting defects, his characteristics can be imputed to other targeted groups - a ready-made demonization kit. Public employees in general and teachers in particular now find themselves Niggerized as lazy featherbedders, no-count malingerers, fellow travelers with welfare queens and other human malignancies that must be excised so that the free market can work its wonders.
"With relatively few Black scapegoats to complicate the issue, white folks must confront the bare facts of the way late-stage capitalism tramples ordinary people as it careens from crisis to crisis."
If the white masses can convince themselves that they don't deserve to be Niggerized - and that neither do Black and brown folks - then they may eventually summon the clarity of mind to defeat the two-percent minority that is systematically dismantling the public sphere. This would be something new under the American sun.
The advent of a genuinely new phenomenon, a Black U.S. president, has served to objectively strengthen the hand of raging capital by neutralizing the Black half of progressive America and obscuring the face of Wall Street's offensive, in which Barack Obama is a key player. Left activist Ben Manski, of Wisconsin Wave, says students and other protesters don't want Obama to intervene in the fight with Gov. Walker and the GOP legislature because of the president's cuts in Pell Grants and a whole range of social supports. Their instincts are good. There is every reason to believe that, if Obama where to go beyond the bromides he dispensed to governors at the White House, this week, he would tell Wisconsin's Democratic senators, huddled in Chicago to avoid giving Republicans a quorum: "I know that you guys have been enjoying my fair city, but it's time to go home and sit down and work things out across party lines. We must overcome partisan politics." In an instant, the solid Democratic front would collapse, and the GOP would get its quorum.
Obama has undermined public school teachers as Republican George Bush never could, elevating charterization of the nation's public schools to national policy under a Democratic administration. As education writer Richard D. Kahlenberg pointed out in the Washington Post, last week, Obama "applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island." He embraced Washington, DC's former schools superintendent Michelle Rhee, a darling of privatizers in both wings of the American uniparty, and hosted the anti-public education propaganda film "Waiting for Superman" at the White House.
"Win or lose, the battle in Wisconsin and other looming confrontations with the triumphalist Right must produce a politics that is not tethered to Democratic Party structures."
We await the First Black President's next capitulation to Republicans on Capital Hill - an inevitability, since he has accepted the basic premises of Wall Street rule: that budget deficits are the greatest threat to economic well-being; tax cuts to corporations are necessary for economic recovery and growth; public workers wages and rights must be curtailed (he unilaterally froze their pay for two years); and war spending, except at the margins, is inviolable.
In principle, there is no difference between corporate Democrat Obama and corporate Republicans - it is only a matter of degree. And the degrees of separation grow fewer by the day.
The GOP is all but certain to win the U.S. Senate in 2012, sealing its hold on the legislative branch. We will either have a Republican in the White House or another dreadful term of Barack Obama, who will by that time have helped move the bar even farther to the Right, where his comfort zone lies. That's why, win or lose, the battle in Wisconsin and other looming confrontations with the triumphalist Right must produce a politics that is not tethered to Democratic Party structures.
Obama-ism, rather than providing the new Democratic dispensation that delusional progressives and masses of Blacks imagined, is a straight-line path to defeat. The uniparty system is a corporate trap, and reliance on the ballot box, where money rules as never before, cannot possibly galvanize a direct action movement that will be the people's only defense in a post-2012 environment.
It is a time to fashion new weapons, and bring back old ones.
The good news is, financial capitalism is dying. The bad news is, it wants to bring us all down with it - and is, so far, succeeding.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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21) 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.
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22) 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.
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23) 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."
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24) 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.
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25) 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.
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26) 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)
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27) 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
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28) 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.
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