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FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE!
In a recent New York Daily News Poll the question was asked:
Should Army pfc Bradley Manning face charges for allegedly stealing classified documents and providing them for WikiLeaks?
New York Daily News Poll Results:
Yes, he's a traitor for selling out his country! ...... 28%
No, he's a hero for standing up for what's right! ..... 62%
We need to see more evidence before passing judgment.. 10%
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/05/2011-03-05_wikileaks_private_loses_his_underwear.html?r=news
Sign the Petition:
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
Stand with Bradley!
A 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Manning faces decades in prison for allegedly leaking a video of a US helicopter attack that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians to the website Wikileaks. Among the dead were two working Reuters reporters. Two children were also severely wounded in the attack.
In addition to this "Collateral Murder" video, Pfc. Manning is suspected of leaking the "Afghan War Diaries" - tens of thousands of battlefield reports that explicitly describe civilian deaths and cover-ups, corrupt officials, collusion with warlords, and a failing US/NATO war effort.
"We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," noted Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. While the President was referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Pfc. Manning's alleged actions are just as noteworthy. If the military charges against him are accurate, they show that he had a reasonable belief that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on a crisis of conscience.
After nearly a decade of war and occupation waged in our name, it is odd that it apparently fell on a young Army private to provide critical answers to the questions, "What have we purchased with well over a trillion tax dollars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?" However, history is replete with unlikely heroes.
If Bradley Manning is indeed the source of these materials, the nation owes him our gratitude. We ask Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John M. McHugh, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General George W. Casey, Jr., to release Pfc. Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him.
http://standwithbrad.org/
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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.
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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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ACTION ALERT: March 23 is National Call-In Day to Demand Malalai Joya Visa
Nearly a week after former Afghan Parliamentarian and acclaimed human rights activist Malalai Joya was denied a U.S. visa, a national network of activists is calling on everyone across the country to demand that the State Department let Ms. Joya in.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
On Wednesday March 23, call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department at 202-647-5291 between 9 am to 5 pm Eastern Standard Time. Press "1" and leave a comment stating that you are outraged at Malalai Joya's exclusion from the U.S. and that you would like the State Department to immediately grant Ms. Joya an emergency appointment and visa at any U.S. Embassy she has applied.
BACKGROUND:
Joya was due to enter the U.S. on March 19th for three weeks of events spanning over a dozen states to promote the paper-back edition of her book A Woman Among Warlords. She was turned down for her visa application on the basis of "living underground" and being "unemployed." Afghan activists who criticize their government are routinely forced to live underground due to the risks to their lives, and the vast majority of Afghan women are unemployed. Ms. Joya has come to the U.S. at least 4 times before since 2006. She was listed last November by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, and this month by the Guardian newspaper as one of the top 100 women activists and campaigners in the world. Joya faces incredible security threats - she has survived at least 4 assassination attempts leading her to live underground.
The reasons for Ms. Joya's exclusion is most likely politically based - her outspoken opposition to the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan now resonates with a majority of Americans and her 2011 tour would have potentially drawn the biggest audiences yet. The ACLU has called the increased phenomenon of denying visas to international activists and intellectuals, as "ideological exclusion." On Friday March 19, nine U.S. representatives and Senators including Jim McDermott, John Kerry, and Bernie Sanders, wrote to the U.S. Embassy urging them to reconsider their decision. To date there has been no official response that we know of.
Currently Ms. Joya is at an undisclosed location. American officials have privately responded that she ought to apply at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and that she would likely be granted a visa from there. However, Ms. Joya faces grave risks to her life in Afghanistan and is unable to move freely and openly there - a fact that U.S. authorities seem ignorant of. Additionally when she was forced out of the Afghan parliament by U.S.-backed warlords in 2007, a ban on her travel from Afghanistan was issued, which is still in effect.
The United States should grant Malalai Joya a visa immediately from any U.S. Embassy.
It is an insult to her and all Afghan women that she has been excluded from attending her speaking events in the U.S. and it is a travesty that Americans are denied the right to hear directly from her about the Afghan war.
Click here to find out what else you can do to help Malalai Joya be allowed into the U.S.: http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1258
Click here for our press release about Malalai Joya's visa denial: http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1255
Check our website www.afghanwomensmission.org for updates and more information.
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Emergency demonstrations to say
"Stop the bombing of Libya"
San Francisco, California
Wednesday, March 23
5 p.m.
New Federal Building
7th and Mission Sts.
Demonstrations will take place across the country between Wednesday, March 23 and Saturday, March 26. Please see below for details.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2969 Mission St.
415-821-6545
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UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC) NEXT MEETING TO BUILD APRIL 10TH
SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 2011, 11:00 A.M.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street
(Between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
The demonstration Saturday, March 19 marking the eighth anniversary of the war on Iraq at U.N. Plaza, sponsored by ANSWER, in San Francisco, took place in spite of the pouring rain. It was amazing to see so many people brave this torrent of wet weather--about 1800 people in all--who gathered to protest the wars at home and abroad.
We have to continue our fight and keep the pressure ongoing and building. Please come to the UNAC meeting Sunday, March 27 at 11L00 A.M. to build for another bi-coastal demonstration on April 10th in San Francisco and April 9th in New York. Our goal is to build an ongoing movement to oppose the wars and plan more actions against them. Please join us.
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SAVE THE DATE! APRIL 4, 2011
WE ARE ONE APRIL 4
END THE $$$ GREED
RALLY AND MARCH:
3:00 P.M., MEET AT UNION SQUARE
6:00 P.M., JUSTIN HERMAN PLAZA
Organized by San Francisco Labor Council.
For more information call: 415-440-4809
Visit: Visit www.we-r-1.org/
Details to follow.
San Francisco Labor Council Resolution - Unanimously adopted 3/14/2011
Resolution in Support of April 4, 2011
No Business as Usual
Solidarity Actions
Whereas, the San Francisco Labor Council Executive Committee is calling for a mobilization in San Francisco on April 4, 2011 against union-busting and the budget cuts;
Therefore be it Resolved, that in the event that a Council affiliate votes to engage in an industrial action on April 4, the San Francisco Labor Council will call on all its affiliates with fax blast, e-mail, phone etc. to support such action by engaging, wherever possible, in work stoppages, sick-outs and any other solidarity actions.
Resolution adopted March 14, 2011 by unanimous vote of the regular Delegates Meeting of the Council, meeting in San Francisco, California.
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CWA ANNOUNCES NATIONWIDE DAY OF ACTION APRIL 4
http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/cohen_announces_nationwide_day_of_action_april_4
'We Have the Opportunity to Plan and Build Something Enormous'
The voice of the labor movement and its allies will roar louder than ever on April 4, the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when "it will not be business as usual at workplaces and communities across this nation," CWA President Larry Cohen said Wednesday.
Speaking to 10,000 CWA members on a nationwide phone call, Cohen said the AFL-CIO Executive Board had adopted his proposal for "movement-wide dramatic action" to honor King and the workers fighting for their rights today.
King was shot to death while he was in Memphis to support 1,300 striking city sanitation workers. "Their fight was about recognition, respect and dignity," Cohen said. "Dr. King called it a moral struggle for an economic outcome, much like the fights in the states and at the bargaining table and in every one of our organizing drives."
Cohen urged CWA locals and members to begin brainstorming ideas and making plans for April 4, challenging them and all Americans to "create events at every workplace in America."
It could be as simple as everyone wearing red that day, having workers meet outside and march into work together or standing up at noon and shouting, "Workers rights are human rights!" Cohen said.
Other ideas include candlelight vigils in parks, meetings of church congregations, rallies at statehouses and protests in front of corporate offices. Cohen said CWA locals and activists will receive an e-mail shortly asking them to submit their ideas and plans, and another town hall-style phone call will be held in advance of the events.
King's murder while fighting for city workers spurred public organizing drives across the United States. Cohen said there is no better way to honor that and King than by doing what he would do, "create a new movement for economic justice."
"We need to combine offense and defense," Cohen said. "We need to take it to every workplace, union and non union, private and public sector. We have an opportunity to plan and build something enormous."
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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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Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Song (with lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTafZRecy2k&feature=email&tracker=False
Worker's Song Lyrics
Artist(Band):Dropkick Murphys
Yeh, this one's for the workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay
Who for centuries long past for no more than your bread
Have bled for your countries and counted your dead
In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines
We've often been told to keep up with the times
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job
And with sliderule and stopwatch our pride they have robbed
[Chorus:]
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie-in-the-sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
[Chorus x3]
All of these things the worker has done
From tilling the fields to carrying the gun
We've been yoked to the plough since time first began
And always expected to carry the can
Which Side Are You On - Dropkick Murphys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKWfnO7fhQM&feature=email&tracker=False
Lyrics :
Our father was a union man
some day i'll be one too.
The bosses fired daddy
what's our family gonna do?
Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.
CHORUS:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on? (x2)
My dady was a miner,
And I'm a miner's son,
And I'll stick with the union
'Til every battle's won.
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.
Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize !
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'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNuSEZ8CDw&feature=player_embedded
Answer to Michael Moore: We ain't Gonna Play the Game No More!
By Bonnie Weinstein
info@socialistviewpoint.org
socialistviewpoint.org
The problem with Michael Moore's speech in Wisconsin March 5, 2011 is that the 14 Democratic emigres have already given away the economic security of the workers--their pay; their benefits; their vacations; their sick-days; their overtime. They have even convinced organized labor to accept the pay cuts, shorter hours--anything but unemployment, starvation and homelessness!
What noble choices the good Democrats have given to the masses of struggling working people in Wisconsin and everywhere!
In the prelude to his speech, Moore lauds those "heroic 14 Democratic" émigrés that have already given away the workers hard-won benefits and conditions for holding firm and staying away--"not one has come back!" he cheers.
Where are the rest of the Democratic politicians around the country? Where's Obama when masses of workers are being sold down the river? What about all the Democratic governors and mayors who are doing the same thing in their respective states and cities across the country. There isn't one state or city that's lavishing more on social services; on schools; on community medical centers; on healthcare--everyone everywhere EXCEPT THE TOP ONE PERCENT is being asked to give back and give up and surrender to the new middle ages--with the Democrats pretending and promising to steal a little less from workers than the Republicans! Workers can't depend upon any party that claims to represent both workers and the bosses. The jig is up!
Working people need to make democratic decisions based upon our own needs and wants and what is good for us and our families; like whether to spend trillions of OUR dollars on wars based upon lies; or on massive bailouts to corporations who have stolen and hoarded the wealth for themselves; or whether to use the fruits of our labor to pay for healthcare; schools; housing; all the things people need to live healthy, free and happy lives.
Working people produce the wealth; working people should have democratic control over that wealth and the means of production they operate to produce it.
The game of voting for one capitalist liar over another is over. It's like plea-bargaining when you are innocent. It's a lose/lose situation and certainly, the workers of the world are losing the game!
No, America is not broke. But telling workers to depend upon the capitalist electoral process, which only allows workers to vote for one capitalist representative over another, is preposterous and makes workers broke!
We workers must take that wealth that we, and we alone create, into our own hands. We can. We are the majority. And it's the only hope for creating a happy and healthy future for all of us, our children and the world. As Rosa Luxemburg said, the only choice for workers is Socialism; or else, we will continue the plunge into Barbarism!
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BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
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Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
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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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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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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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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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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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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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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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The Arab Revolutions:
Guiding Principles for Peace and Justice Organizations in the US
Please email endorsement to ekishawi@yahoo.com
We, the undersigned, support the guiding principles and demands listed in this statement. We call on groups who want to express solidarity with the Arab revolutions to join our growing movement by signing this statement or keeping with the demands put forward herewith.
Background
The long-awaited Arab revolution has come. Like a geologic event with the reverberations of an earthquake, the timing and circumstances were unpredictable. In one Arab country after another, people are taking to the street demanding the fall of monarchies established during European colonial times. They are also calling to bring down dictatorships supported and manifested by neo-colonial policies. Although some of these autocratic regimes rose to power with popular support, the subsequent division and subjugation of the Arab World led to a uniform repressive political order across the region. The Arab masses in different Arab countries are therefore raising a uniform demand: "The People Want to Topple the Regimes!"
For the past two decades, the Arab people witnessed the invasion and occupation of Iraq with millions killed under blockade and occupation, Palestinians massacred with the aim to crush the anti-Zionist resistance, and Lebanon repeatedly invaded with the purposeful targeting of civilians. These actions all served to crush resistance movements longing for freedom, development, and self-determination. Meanwhile, despotic dictatorships, some going back 50 years, entrenched themselves by building police states, or fighting wars on behalf of imperialist interests.
Most Arab regimes systematically destroyed the social fabric of civil society, stifled social development, repressed all forms of political dissent and democratic expression, mortgaged their countries' wealth to foreign interests and enriched themselves and their cronies at the expense of impoverishing their populations. After pushing the Arab people to the brink, populations erupted.
The spark began in Tunisia where a police officer slapped and spat on Mohammad Bou Azizi, flipping over his produce cart for not delivering a bribe on time. . Unable to have his complaint heard, he self-immolated in protest, igniting the conscience of the Tunisian people and that of 300 million Arabs. In less than a month, the dictator, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, was forced into exile by a Tunisian revolution. On its way out, the regime sealed its legacy by shooting at unarmed protestors and burning detention centers filled with political prisoners. Ben Ali was supported by the US and Europe in the fight against Islamic forces and organized labor.
Hosni Mubarak's brutal dictatorship fell less than a month after Tunisia's. The revolution erupted at a time when one half of the Egyptian population was living on less than $2/day while Mubarak's family amassed billions of dollars. The largest population recorded in Egyptian history was living in graveyards and raising their children among the dead while transportation and residential infrastructure was crumbling. Natural gas was supplied to Israel at 15% of the market price while the Rafah border was closed with an underground steel wall to complete the suffocation of the Palestinians in Gaza. Those who were deemed a threat swiftly met the fate of Khalid Said. 350 martyrs fell and 2,000 people were injured.
After Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan exploded in protest. Some governments quickly reshuffled faces and ranks without any tangible change. Some, like Bahrain and Yemen, sent out their security forces to massacre civilians. Oman and Yemen represent strategic assets for the US as they are situated on the straits of Hormuz and Aden, respectively. Bahrain is an oil country that hosts a US military base, situated in the Persian Gulf. A new round of US funded blood-letting of Arab civilians has begun!
Libyan dictator Qaddafi did not prove to be an exception. He historically took anti-imperialist positions for a united Arab World and worked for an African Union. He later transformed his regime to a subservient state and opened Libya to British Petroleum and Italian interests, working diligently on privatization and political repression. He amassed more wealth than that of Mubarak. In the face of the Libyan revolution, Qaddafi exceeded the brutality of Ben Ali and Mubarak blind-folding and executing opponents, surrounding cities with tanks, and bombing his own country. Death toll is expected to be in the thousands.
Qaddafi's history makes Libya an easy target for imperialist interests. The Obama administration followed the Iraq cookbook by freezing Libyan assets amounting to 30% of the annual GDP. The White House, with the help of European governments, rapidly implemented sanctions and called for no-fly zones. These positions were precipitated shortly after the US vetoed a resolution condemning the illegal Israeli colonization of the West Bank. Special operations personnel from the UK were captured by the revolutionary commanders in Ben Ghazi and sent back. The Libyan revolutionary leadership, the National Council clearly stated: "We are completely against foreign intervention. The rest of Libya will be liberated by the people ... and Gaddafi's security forces will be eliminated by the people of Libya."
Demands of the Solidarity Movement with Arab Revolutions
1. We demand a stop to US support, financing and trade with Arab dictatorships. We oppose US policy that has favored Israeli expansionism, war, US oil interest and strategic shipping routes at the expense of Arab people's freedom and dignified living.
2. We support the people of Tunisia and Egypt as well as soon-to-be liberated nations to rid themselves of lingering remnants of the deposed dictatorships.
3. We support the Arab people's right to sovereignty and self-determination. We demand that the US government stop its interference in the internal affairs of all Arab countries and end subsidies to wars and occupation.
4. We support the Arab people's demands for political, civil and economic rights. The Arab people's movement is calling for:
a. Deposing the unelected regimes and all of its institutional remnants
b. Constitutional reform guaranteeing freedom of organizing, speech and press
c. Free and fair elections
d. Independent judiciary
e. National self-determination.
5. We oppose all forms of US and European military intervention with or without the legitimacy of the UN. Standing in solidarity with the revolution against Qaddafi, or any other dictator, does not equate to supporting direct or indirect colonization of an Arab country, its oil or its people. We therefore call for:
a. Absolute rejection of military blockades, no-fly zones and interventions.
b. Lifting all economic sanctions placed against Libya and allowing for the formation of an independent judiciary to prosecute Qaddafi and deposed dictators for their crimes.
c. Immediately withdrawing the US and NATO troops from the Arab region.
6. We support Iraq's right to sovereignty and self determination and call on the US to immediately withdraw all occupation personnel from Iraq.
7. We recognize that the borders separating Arab nations were imposed on the Arab people by the colonial agreements of Sykes-Picot and the Berlin Conference on Africa. As such, we support the anti-Zionist nature of this revolution in its call for:
a. Ending the siege and starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza
b. Supporting the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own representation, independent of Israeli and US dictates
c. Supporting the right of the Lebanese people to defend their country from Israeli violations and their call to end vestiges of the colonial constitution constructed on the basis of sectarian representation
d. Supporting the right of the Jordanian people to rid themselves of their repressive monarchy
e. Ending all US aid to Israel.
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in
______(state). I am calling _____ to demand he call off the Grand Jury
and stop FBI repression against the anti-war and Palestine solidarity
movements. I oppose U.S. government political repression and support
the right to free speech and the right to assembly of the 23 activists
subpoenaed. We will not be criminalized. Tell him to stop this
McCarthy-type witch hunt against international solidarity activists!"
If your call doesn't go through, try again later.
Update: 800 anti-war and international solidarity activists
participated in four regional conferences, in Chicago, IL; Oakland,
CA; Chapel Hill, NC and New York City to stop U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald's Grand Jury repression.
Still, in the last few weeks, the FBI has continued to call and harass
anti-war organizers, repressing free speech and the right to organize.
However, all of their intimidation tactics are bringing a movement
closer together to stop war and demand peace.
We demand:
-- Call Off the Grand Jury Witch-hunt Against International Solidarity
Activists!
-- Support Free Speech!
-- Support the Right to Organize!
-- Stop FBI Repression!
-- International Solidarity Is Not a Crime!
-- Stop the Criminalization of Arab and Muslim Communities!
Background: Fitzgerald ordered FBI raids on anti-war and solidarity
activists' homes and subpoenaed fourteen activists in Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Michigan on September 24, 2010. All 14 refused to
speak before the Grand Jury in October. Then, 9 more Palestine
solidarity activists, most Arab-Americans, were subpoenaed to appear
at the Grand Jury on January 25, 2011, launching renewed protests.
There are now 23 who assert their right to not participate in
Fitzgerald's witch-hunt.
The Grand Jury is a secret and closed inquisition, with no judge, and
no press. The U.S. Attorney controls the entire proceedings and hand
picks the jurors, and the solidarity activists are not allowed a
lawyer. Even the date when the Grand Jury ends is a secret.
So please make these calls to those in charge of the repression aimed
against anti-war leaders and the growing Palestine solidarity
movement.
Email us to let us know your results. Send to info@StopFBI.net
**Please sign and circulate our 2011 petition at http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
In Struggle,
Tom Burke,
for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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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) Multiples Worse than Chernobyl
By Stephen Lendman
Saturday, March 19, 2011
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/multiples-worse-than-chernobyl.html
2) Qaddafi Pledges 'Long War' as Allies Pursue Air Assault on Libya
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, STEVEN ERLANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/africa/21libya.html?hp
3) Progress at Japan Reactors; New Signs of Food Radiation
"Spinach from a farm in Hitachi, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the plant, contained 27 times the amount of iodine that is generally considered safe, while cesium levels were about four times higher than what is deemed safe by Japan. Meanwhile, raw milk from a dairy farm in Iitate, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, contained iodine levels that were 17 times higher than those considered safe, and milk had iodine levels that were slightly above amounts considered safe."
By HIROKO TABUCHI and NORIMITSU ONISHI
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/asia/21japan.html?hp
4) Yemeni President Fires Cabinet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/20/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Yemen.html?ref=world
5) Syrian Police Attack Marchers at Funerals
"The authorities used tear gas, but the gas seemed more toxic than ordinary tear gas, witnesses said. 'Many suffered near suffocation and paralysis symptoms,' said a witness reached by phone."
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/middleeast/20syria.html?ref=world
6)In a Tragedy, a Mission To Remember
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times TRIBUTE Ruth Sergel of the Remember the
March 19, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/in-a-tragedy-a-mission-to-remember/?ref=nyregion
7) Photos Show Soldiers With Corpse
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/asia/21spiegel.html?hp
8) Qaddafi Forces Hold Strategic Town as Allied Attacks Continue
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ELISABETH BUMILLER AND KAREEM FAHIM
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22libya.html?hp
9) New Repairs Delay Work at Crippled Nuclear Plant
"In Vienna on Monday the United Nations atomic energy chief said the nuclear crisis in Japan remained 'very serious.' In a statement, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he believed 'this crisis will be effectively overcome.' He also said that 'the agency's role in nuclear safety may need to be re-examined, along with the role of our safety standards' and that 'it is already clear that arrangements for putting international nuclear experts in touch with each other quickly during a crisis need to be improved.'"
By KEN BELSON, HIROKO TABUCHI and DAVID JOLLY
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22japan.html?hp
10) With Libya Fight, U.S. Africa Command Thrust Into a Leadership Role
By ERIC SCHMITT
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22command.html?ref=world
11) In Battle of the Bulbs, One Based on TV Tubes
By ERIC A. TAUB
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/technology/21lamp.html?ref=business
12) Let Malalai Joya speak in the United States!
Please Sign The Petition
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/letmalalaijoyaspeak/
13) Separate and Unequal
By BOB HERBERT
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?_r=1&hp
14) American Warplane Crashes in Libya as Ground Fighting Continues
"United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. 'We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed,' Mr. Sayeh told reporters. On Monday night, a United States military official responded that 'we know of no instances where this has occurred.'"
By ELISABETH BUMILLER, KAREEM FAHIM and ALAN COWELL
March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/africa/23libya.html?hp
15) At War in Libya
New York Times Editorial
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22tue1.html?hp
16) Spent Fuel Hampers Efforts at Japanese Nuclear Plant
By HIROKO TABUCHI, DAVID JOLLY and KEVIN DREW
March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/asia/23japan.html?hp
17) Court Revives Lawsuit Over Government Surveillance
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/us/22fisa.html?ref=us
18) Revisiting the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22conversation.html?ref=us
19) ACTION ALERT: March 23 is National Call-In Day to Demand Malalai Joya Visa
20) Rising Dangers
After Sendai
By RICHARD FALK
March 18 - 20, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/falk03182011.html
21) Extreme Exposure
The Danger of Spent Nuclear Fuel
By ROBERT ALVAREZ
March 21, 2011
http://counterpunch.org/alvarez03212011.html
22) Safeguarding Spent Fuel Pools in the United States
A drained spent fuel pool in the U.S. could lead to a catastrophic fire that would result in long-term land contamination substantially worse than what the Chernobyl accident unleashed.
by Robert Alvarez
Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by Institute for Policy Studies
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/21-2
23) Shell moves closer on new drilling plans for Gulf
Associated Press
March 21, 2011 4:54 PM ET
http://www.kalb.com/global/story.asp?s=14292516
24) U.S./UN/NATO Hands Off Libya!
Stop the Bombing!
NO to "No fly zones!"
Self-determination for the people of Libya!
Emergency demonstration, Wednesday March 23
Federal Bldg., 7th and Mission 5:00 pm
****** Please circulate widely ******
Two statements on Libya issued by National UNAC
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1) Multiples Worse than Chernobyl
By Stephen Lendman
Saturday, March 19, 2011
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/multiples-worse-than-chernobyl.html
In Japan, coverup and denial persist. In a March 18 press conference, Tokyo Electric's (TEPCO) spokesman claimed water-dousing lowered radiation levels from 312 microsieverts per hour to 289. However, 48 hours earlier, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts - 1,000 times stronger.
Contrary to other reports, TEPCO's spokesman also said water remains in Unit 4's cooling pool. In fact, there's none. Nothing the company says is credible.
In contrast, distinguished nuclear expert Helen Caldicott called Fukushima an unprecedented "absolute disaster," multiples worse than Chernobyl. "The situation is very grim and not just for the Japanese people. If both reactors blow then the whole of the northern hemisphere may be affected. Only one (Chernobyl) reactor blew, and it was only three months old with relatively little radiation. (Fukushima's) have been operating for 40 years, and would hold about 30 times more radiation than Chernobyl."
It killed nearly one million people and counting, according to the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). Yet the official IAEA figure was 4,000. NYAS' report said:
"This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the (IAEA) and associated (UN) agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findingins reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments."
In fact, IAEA and UN agencies lied, what's ongoing now on Fukushima to conceal the greatest ever environmental/human disaster by far. Calling it a "diabolical catastrophe," Caldicott, in fact, believes "(i)t could be much, much worse than" 30 multiples of Chernobyl. "In the northern hemisphere, many millions could get cancer." Large parts of Japan may be permanently contaminated, not safe to live in.
Adding a hopeful note, she also thinks "the nuclear industry is finished worldwide. I have said before, unfortunately, the only thing that is capable of stopping this wicked industry is a major catastrophe, and it now looks like this may be it."
In a March 16 "Destroyer of Worlds" statement, she added:
"The world is now paying - and will pay however severe Fukushima turns out to be - a grave price for the nuclear industry's hubris and the arrogance and greed that fueled their drive to build more and more reactors. What's more, having bamboozled gullible politicians, the media, and much of the public into believing that it is a 'clean and green' solution to the problem of global warming, the nuclear industry has operated facilities improperly, with little or no regard for safety regulations, and they have often done this with the connivance of government authorities."
In fact, nuclear power isn't "clean and green," nor is it safe or renewable. "It is instead 'a destroyer of worlds.' It is time the globaly community repudiated it....There is no other choice for the sake of future generations" and planet earth. Humanity has a choice - nuclear power or life itself.
On March 17, New York Times writers Norimitsu Onishi, David Sanger and Matthew Walf headlined, "With Quest to Cool Fuel Rods Stumbling, US Sees 'Weeks' of Struggle," saying:
America's "top nuclear official followed up his (day before) bleak appraisal of the grave situation at the plant, (cautioning) it would "take some time, possibly weeks" to make headway.
On March 17, Times writers David Sanger and William Broad headlined, "Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On," saying:
"....frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the troubled reactors and in the plant's spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials."
Officials are also trying to restore power with no assurance doing so can help. Explosions, fires, and extremely high heat destroyed most or all plant equipment, likely including water pumps.
An unnamed source said, "What you are seeing are desperate efforts - just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work. Right now this is more prayer than plan."
More likely, however, it's deception, trying to convince public opinion that anything can work when, in fact, it may already be too late.
On March 18, Times writers David Sanger and William Broad headlined, "Frantic Repairs Go On at Plant; Little Progress in Cooling Fuel," saying:
Radioactive "(s)team was again rising over another part of the plant, this time billowing from Reactor No. 2" that exploded on Tuesday. No explanation why was given.
Helicopter water drops failed. On Friday, military officials halted them at least for a day. Nuclear experts think they're futile. Video evidence showed most water missed its target or evaporated before reaching it. Osaka University's Professor Akira Yamaguchi said:
"7.5 tons of water has been dumped. We do not know the size of the pool, but judging from other examples it probably holds 2,000 tons. It does not mean the pool needs to be completely full, but maybe a third of the tank's capacity is needed."
America believes TEPCO "consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage."
On March 18, Al Jazeera headlined, "Japan raises nuclear alert level," saying:
Its "nuclear safety agency raise(d the) severity rating of (the) accident at Fukushima plant, signifying higher risk of radiation."
However, Al Jazeera's equating its seriousness to Three Mile Island or Chernobyl is willful deception. Fukushima is unprecedented, in unchartered territory, perhaps unstoppable. Guenther Oettinger, EU energy chief, called the site "effectively out of control, (facing) apocalypse."
Al Jazeera claimed "prevailing winds are likely to carry any contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean."
False! Radiation levels in Tokyo are dangerously high and rising. Moreover, a radiation cloud will reach California by weekend, then spread across most of North America. Downplaying the disaster's severity is scandalous and criminal. Besides dead zones and permanent environmental contamination, millions of illnesses and deaths are likely, though years will pass before accurate information is known.
Make no mistake, Japan's government/industry cabal bears full responsibility for the greatest ever environmental/human disaster, an indisputable crime. They have blood on their hands as does America, other governments, and "Destroyer of Worlds" officials that that proliferate this technology from hell. Nothing short of banning it is acceptable.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:45 AM
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2) Qaddafi Pledges 'Long War' as Allies Pursue Air Assault on Libya
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, STEVEN ERLANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/africa/21libya.html?hp
TRIPOLI, Libya - A day after American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader delivered a fresh and defiant tirade on Sunday, pledging retaliation and saying his forces would fight a long war to victory.
He was speaking in a telephone call to state television, which, apparently for security reasons, did not disclose his whereabouts. The Libyan leader has not been seen in public since the United States and European countries unleashed warplanes and missiles in a military intervention on a scale unparalleled in the Arab world since the Iraq war. On Sunday, American B-2 stealth bombers were reported to have struck a major Libyan airfield.
In a first assessment from Washington, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first day of "operations yesterday went very well," news reports said. Speaking to NBC's "Meet the Press," he said a no-flight zone over Libya to ground Colonel Qaddafi's warplanes - a prime goal of the attacks - was "effectively" in place and that a loyalist advance on the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi had been halted.
Despite those major setbacks, Colonel Qaddafi said his forces on the ground would win in the end. And he repeated an assertion made on Saturday that he had opened military depots to his supporters and the Libyan people were now fully armed. Instead of an image of the Libyan leader, state television showed a statue of a golden fist clutching a crumpled American fighter plane, a monument to an American strike on his compound in 1986.
Speaking of a "long war," Colonel Qaddafi said: "We will not leave our land and we will liberate it."
"We will fight you if you continue your attacks on us," he Qaddafi said. "Those who are on the land will win the battle," he declared, warning without explanation that "oil will not be left to the United States, France and Britain."
The mission to impose a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone was portrayed by Pentagon and NATO officials as under French and British leadership.
But the Pentagon said that American forces took the lead in the initial campaign to knock out Libya's air defense systems, firing volley after volley of Tomahawk missiles from nearby ships against missile, radar and communications centers around Tripoli, the capital, and the western cities of Misurata and Surt.
Early on Sunday, the sound of antiaircraft fire and screaming fighter jets echoed across Tripoli, punctuated by heavy explosions. Muhammad Zweid, secretary of the Libyan Parliament, said the intervention had "caused some real harm against civilians and buildings." But he declined to specify which civilian buildings or locations were hit. And other officials took pains on Saturday to show reporters a group of civilians they portrayed as volunteers who had flocked to Mr. Qaddafi's compound to shield him from the attacks.
In the rebel-held east, Benghazi seemed quiet after fighting on Saturday that inspired a panicky exodus by thousands of residents. Hundreds of cars streamed back into the city from towns further east on Sunday, finding long fuel lines, and barricades of debris on main roads. A tire repair store and a butcher shop had reopened, but most shops were shuttered.
Earlier, President Obama, speaking during a visit to Brazil, reiterated promises that no American ground forces would be used.
"I am deeply aware of the risks of any military action, no matter what limits we place on it," he said. "I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice, and it's not a choice that I make lightly. But we can't stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy."
China, which, like Russia, abstained from the United Nations Security Council vote authorizing the strikes, said Sunday it regretted the attacks and urged a return to stability, news reports said.
As a buildup of Western airpower continued at bases in the Mediterranean on Sunday, the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé said, "The operations will continue in the days to come, until the Libyan regime accepts the U.N. resolution," Asked if the military operation was meant to remove Colonel Qaddafi from power, he said: "No. The plan is to help Libyans choose their future."
The strikes came with heavy historical references, almost eight years to the day after America and its allies began bombing Baghdad in March 2003, and nearly 25 years after the night in April 1986 when President Ronald Reagan ordered American warplanes to strike at Tripoli to avenge a terrorist bombing in Berlin.
The campaign began with French warplanes, which started their attacks even before the end of an emergency meeting among allied leaders in Paris on Saturday. The officials, reacting to news that Colonel Qaddafi's forces were attacking the rebel capital, Benghazi, despite international demands for a cease-fire, said they had no choice but to defend Libyan civilians and opposition forces .
But there were signs of disagreement among the allies in Paris. Some diplomats said that French insistence on the meeting had delayed military action against Colonel Qaddafi's forces before they reached Benghazi, a charge that French officials denied.
Benghazi residents interviewed by telephone reported a relentless artillery barrage before government tanks entered the city from the west on Saturday morning. There was heavy fighting in the city center, and pro-Qaddafi snipers could be seen on the building that the rebel council used as a foreign ministry, not far from the courthouse that is the council's headquarters.
"Our assessment is that the aggressive actions by Qaddafi forces continue in many places around the country," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after the Paris meeting. "We saw it over the last 24 hours, and we've seen no real effort on the part of the Qaddafi forces to abide by a cease-fire, despite the rhetoric."
Western leaders acknowledged, though, that there was no endgame beyond the immediate United Nations authorization to protect Libyan civilians, and it was uncertain that even military strikes would force Colonel Qaddafi from power.
Many of the leaders who were in Paris had called for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and it may be that military intervention will lead to negotiations with the opposition for the colonel and his family to leave - or, at the least, buys time for the rebels to regroup.
There are risks, though. One widely held concern is the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority, opening the door for Islamic extremists to begin operating in a country that had been closed to them. The operation may also present a double standard: While the West has taken punitive action against Libya, a relatively isolated Arab state, the governments in Bahrain and Yemen have faced few penalties after cracking down on their own protest movements.
The main barrage of missile strikes began around 2 p.m. Eastern time, when the United States Navy fired cruise missiles that struck Libya roughly an hour later, Vice Adm. William Gortney told reporters in Washington. He said the Pentagon had not yet assessed the damage that the missiles had caused and would not be able to do so until dawn broke in Libya.
The missile strikes were the start of what Admiral Gortney called a "multiphase operation," given the code name Odyssey Dawn, to create a no-fly zone that would allow coalition aircraft to fly over Libya without the risk of being shot down. He would not say whether American aircraft would be involved in enforcing the no-fly zone, but he said that no American aircraft were directly over Libya on Saturday afternoon.
Admiral Gortney cast the United States as the "leading edge" among coalition partners in the opening phase of the attack. But in keeping with Mr. Obama's and Mrs. Clinton's emphasis that the administration was not driving the efforts to strike Libya, the admiral and other Pentagon officials repeated that the United States would step back within days and hand over command of the coalition to one of its European allies.
The United States has at least 11 warships stationed near Tripoli, including three submarines - the Scranton, the Florida and the Providence - and the destroyers the Stout and the Barry. All five fired cruise missiles on Saturday, the Navy said. Other coalition ships in the Mediterranean included 11 from Italy and one each from Britain, Canada and France. The Danish Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it had deployed six F-16 warplanes to bases in Sicily and there were reports of aircraft from Canada and Spain moving to Mediterranean bases.
In a report whose accuracy could not be verified, Libyan state TV Sunday morning quoted the armed forces command as saying 48 people had been killed and 150 injured.
In Paris, the emergency meeting included the prime ministers or foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy, Qatar, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Mrs. Clinton for the United States.
Amr Moussa, who recently resigned as secretary general of the Arab League to run for president of Egypt, was present, along with the league's incoming leader, Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister of Iraq. Also attending were the European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Mr. Ban of the United Nations.
But no African representatives attended. The African Union chief, Jean Ping, instead traveled to Mauritania for a meeting with the continent's leaders who sought to mediate a peaceful end to the Libyan crisis.
The United States, France and Britain had insisted that at least some Arab governments be involved in the Libyan operation, at least symbolically, to remove the chance that Colonel Qaddafi would portray the military action as another Western colonial intervention in pursuit of oil. But there was no sign that any Arab military would explicitly take part.
The initial French air sorties, which were not coordinated with other countries, angered some of the leaders in Paris, according to a senior diplomat from a NATO country. Information about the movement of Colonel Qaddafi's troops toward Benghazi had been clear on Friday, but France blocked any NATO agreement on airstrikes until the Paris meeting, the diplomat said, suggesting that the flights could have begun before government forces reached the city.
But Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said that there had been no delay because of the Paris meeting and no political decision to make the no-fly zone a NATO operation, which Paris has opposed from the start.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Tripoli, Libya; Steven Erlanger from Paris; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from eastern Libya, Steven Lee Myers from Paris, Jackie Calmes from Brasília, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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3) Progress at Japan Reactors; New Signs of Food Radiation
"Spinach from a farm in Hitachi, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the plant, contained 27 times the amount of iodine that is generally considered safe, while cesium levels were about four times higher than what is deemed safe by Japan. Meanwhile, raw milk from a dairy farm in Iitate, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, contained iodine levels that were 17 times higher than those considered safe, and milk had iodine levels that were slightly above amounts considered safe."
By HIROKO TABUCHI and NORIMITSU ONISHI
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/asia/21japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Japan appeared to make moderate progress in stabilizing some of the nuclear reactors at the stricken power plant on Sunday, but at the same time disclosed new signs of radioactive contamination in agricultural produce and livestock.
Two out of the six damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are now under control in a state known as "cold shutdown" after engineers restored emergency water pumps using diesel generators.
The reactors, Nos. 5 and 6, had already been shut down before last week's historic earthquake and tsunami, posing less of a risk than the other reactors at the plant. But their cooling systems were knocked out, and the fuel rods left inside the reactor started to heat up, together with spent fuel rods stored in a separate storage pool.
"We are getting closer to bringing the situation under control," Tetsuro Fukuyama, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, said of the entire plant late Sunday.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, had appeared to suffer a serious setback as officials said that pressure buildup at the ravaged No. 3 reactor would require the venting of radioactive gases. The reactor contains a highly toxic fuel that includes reclaimed plutonium. This announcement came after an all-out mission Saturday to cool the reactor by firefighters, who doused the it with 2,400 tons of water over 14 hours.
But at a news conference a few hours later, officials from the power company said that the pressure had stabilized and that they had canceled the release of gases, which would have heightened worries about a wider contamination among the population. They said they were unsure what had caused the pressure to rise, highlighting the uncertainty engineers must still grapple with at Fukushima.
Steven Chu, the United States secretary of energy, conveyed an optimistic assessment of the situation in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," saying that "with each passing hour, each passing day things are more under control." Japanese technicians trying to limit the spread of radiation "are making very good progress," he said.
Discussing the impact of leaking radiation to the United States, Mr. Chu said Americans were "in no danger" and that "it's unlikely they will be exposed to danger."
In Japan, however, radiation contamination appears to be spreading. The government said Sunday that it is barring all shipments of milk from Fukushima Prefecture and all shipments of spinach from Ibaraki Prefecture, after finding new cases of above-normal levels of radioactive elements in milk and several vegetables.
Higher-than-normal levels were detected in milk from 4 of 37 dairy farms in Fukushima, said Yoshifumi Kaji, the director of the food safety department's inspection and safety division at Japan's Health Ministry. Levels higher than deemed safe were also found in spinach grown in the neighboring Tsukuba Prefecture, as well as canola and chrysanthemum greens in two more prefectures.
The substances found were iodine 131 and cesium 137, two of the more dangerous elements that are feared to have been released from the plants in Fukushima. Iodine 131 can be dangerous to human health, especially if absorbed through milk and milk products, because it can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer. Cesium 137 can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer.
Mr. Fukuyama stressed that though the readings were above levels deemed normal, they posed no immediate health risks.
"At current levels, I would let my children eat the spinach and drink the water" from Fukushima, he said. His children did not drink much milk, he added.
None of the produce found to be contaminated have been shipped to market, he said, but he admitted that contaminated-but-untested produce could have slipped through.
Spinach from a farm in Hitachi, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the plant, contained 27 times the amount of iodine that is generally considered safe, while cesium levels were about four times higher than what is deemed safe by Japan. Meanwhile, raw milk from a dairy farm in Iitate, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, contained iodine levels that were 17 times higher than those considered safe, and milk had iodine levels that were slightly above amounts considered safe.
While challenges with the nuclear facility and radiation contamination persist, stories of individual dramas continued to emerge in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. On Sunday, two people were reported to have been found alive, nine days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.
An 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson were found under the debris of their home in Ishinomaki City, about 30 miles northeast of the city of Sendai, according to Miyagi Prefecture police officials and the public broadcaster NHK.
The boy, identified as Jin Abe, crawled out of the debris of the family home and was found by local police, who called rescuers to free his grandmother, Sumi Abe, NHK reported. Both were hospitalized, but details of their condition were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, the National Police Agency on Sunday raised the official death toll to more than 8,100 from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami that slammed into the country's northeastern coast on March 11. The final toll is now expected to reach nearly 20,000. At a news conference, police officials in Miyagi, the prefecture hit hardest by the tsunami, said they expected the final toll there alone to exceed 15,000.
The nuclear plant itself remains a hazardous place to work. At least 25 workers and five members of the Self-Defense Force have been exposed to unsafe amounts of radiation, according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company. At least 20 workers and four self-defense soldiers have been injured, and two workers remain missing.
Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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4) Yemeni President Fires Cabinet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/20/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Yemen.html?ref=world
SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Yemen's president has fired his entire Cabinet amid escalating protests demanding his ouster.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh is facing a monthlong popular uprising against him that has turned increasingly bloody in the past few days as security troops opened fire on demonstrators in the capital and in the country's south. Around 100 people have been killed so far in the unrest.
The president's office issued a statement Sunday saying he was firing his Cabinet. The announcement came after members of Saleh's own tribe called on him to step down, robbing the U.S.-backed leader of vital support.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Tens of thousands of people joined a funeral procession Sunday for protesters killed by government gunmen and the Yemeni president's own tribe called on him to step down, robbing the embattled U.S.-backed leader of vital support.
Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations and its human rights minister resigned to protest the crackdown, further undermining President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Experts said the president's dwindling influence was likely to either accelerate his departure or force him to resort to greater violence to retain power.
Saleh appeared to shy away from more force for the moment, disbanding police and special forces around Sanaa University, which has been the center of the deadly crackdown, and replacing them with a largely unarmed force.
"From now on, we will be controlling the entrances and exits of the square by orders from the supreme military command," said Lt. Col. Mohammed Hussein.
Friday was the bloodiest day of the monthlong uprising against Saleh, and government snipers killed more than 40 protesters. The violence drew condemnation from the U.N. and the United States, which backs his government with hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to battle a potent al-Qaida offshoot based in Yemen's mountainous hinterlands.
Some of the country's most important religious leaders joined in the call for Saleh's resignation.
"This is definitely in my view now entering into some form of an end game," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center.
Yemen's most powerful tribe, its opposition parties and masses of young protesters have now united in calls for Saleh's departure, Shaikh said, calling that a dire sign for the president's ability to retain power.
"The disparate elements of what can be called the oppsiton have now coalesced around the demand for him to step down," Shaikh said. "This is now a very powerful, irrestible coalition."
Mohammad al-Sabri, an opposition spokesman, told The Associated Press that the opposition will under no circumstances agree to a dialogue with Saleh after the crimes his regime has committed.
"The president must understand that the only way to avoid more bloodshed and strife in this country is for him to leave. Nobody will have any regrets about him," he said.
People living in apartment buildings around the square tossed down flowers at Sunday's funeral procession. Electricity was cut off for about three hours in Yemen's major cities, and activists accused the government of trying to block people from seeing television coverage of the march. Cell service was also interrupted.
Massive crowds flooded into the Sanaa University square and solidarity demonstrations were held across the country in regions including Aden, Hadramawt, Ibb, Al-Hudaydah, Dhamar and Taiz.
"We hail with all respect and observance, the position of the people at the (Sanaa University) square," Sheik Sadiq al-Ahmar, head of Saleh's Hashed tribe, said in a joint statement with the religious leaders issued after a meeting at his home late Saturday.
Opposition parties taking part in the procession said they had have changed their position from demands for political reforms to calls for Saleh's removal.
"Our only choice now is the removal of the regime soon. We stand by the people's demand," opposition leader Yassin Said Numan told The Associated Press.
Human Rights Minister Huda al-Ban said she was stepping down to protest the government's "horrible, coward and perfidious crime." And a Foreign Ministry official told The Associated Press that UN Ambassador Abdullah Alsaidi had sent in his letter of resignation.
Health Minister Abdul-Karim Rafi told reporters the killing of protesters was "a crime unacceptable by logic or could be justified."
He said 44 protesters were killed and 192 wounded, 21 critically.
Prosecutor-General Abdullah al-Ulty said that 693 protesters were hurt and some bodies have not yet been identified.
Mohammed Naji Allaw, a lawyer and activist, said the government offering money to victims' families to not cooperate with the investigation, and was pressuring them not to participate in the funeral procession.
_____
Michael Weissenstein in Cairo contributed to this report.
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5) Syrian Police Attack Marchers at Funerals
"The authorities used tear gas, but the gas seemed more toxic than ordinary tear gas, witnesses said. 'Many suffered near suffocation and paralysis symptoms,' said a witness reached by phone."
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/middleeast/20syria.html?ref=world
DAMASCUS, Syria - More than 20,000 people marched Saturday in the southern Syrian town of Dara'a in funerals for protesters killed in demonstrations the day before, and the police used truncheons and tear gas to disperse the mourners.
Protests broke out in four cities on Friday, a rare event in a police state that brutally represses dissent. At the largest one, a march of several thousand people in Dara'a, a police crackdown killed six people.
The funeral procession on Saturday became a protest in its own right, with marchers calling for more freedoms and an end to Syria's longstanding emergency law, witnesses said. They chanted, "The people want an end to corruption," and, "The blood of our martyrs won't be forgotten." They repeated the demands made in the march on Friday: that the mayor and a local security chief should be fired for their role in arresting of a group of children two weeks ago for writing protest graffiti.
"We know they used tear gas and excessive force with the protesters," said Razan Zaitouneh, a prominent human rights lawyer in Damascus. No reporters or activists have been allowed into the city, which remains closed, and communications with the city have been cut, she said.
The authorities sent a delegation of Dara'a elders, including the mufti of the city, to try to calm the situation and negotiate with the citizens, according to Mazen Darwish, head of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression.
One Dara'a resident said the delegation members "don't represent us."
The resident, who, like others, refused to be identified for fear of repercussions, said, "They would never represent the families of those killed."
The funeral procession left the central mosque of Dara'a after noon prayers and lasted three hours before returning to the center of town. As the mourners tried to march to Al Mahata district of Dara'a, confrontations started with the security services. The authorities used tear gas, but the gas seemed more toxic than ordinary tear gas, witnesses said.
"Many suffered near suffocation and paralysis symptoms," said a witness reached by phone.
The Interior Ministry has established a committee to "investigate the unfortunate events that happened in Dara'a," according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. "All those proved responsible, or those who committed any offense would be held accountable."
Thirty-two people who were arrested in a small protest in the capital on Wednesday said they would go on a hunger strike until their release.
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6) In a Tragedy, a Mission To Remember
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times TRIBUTE Ruth Sergel of the Remember the
March 19, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/in-a-tragedy-a-mission-to-remember/?ref=nyregion
"I GREW up with this story, and I've always wanted to do something about it," Ruth Sergel said. "It's like a black hole in your heart."
In 2004, Ms. Sergel started doing something about the story she grew up with: the Triangle Waist Company fire, which killed 146 garment workers in 1911, almost all of them Jewish and Italian immigrants. She had just read a book about the fire, to distract herself from worrying about the premiere of a short film she had directed at the the Tribeca Film Festival.
At the end of the book, "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America," was a list of names and addresses of the victims, and Ms. Sergel was moved to discover that many had lived within blocks of her apartment on East Third Street. Eager to do something about the story that had created a black hole in her heart, she hit upon what she called "the schmaltziest idea."
On March 25, the anniversary of the fire, she and a few dozen friends put her idea into action: they divided up the names and addresses, and fanned out across the Lower East Side, the East Village and Little Italy, armed with sidewalk chalk. In front of each building where a victim had lived, they chalked a name, age and cause of death - in white, green, pink and purple, often with drawings of flowers, tombstones or a triangle. They chalked, "Pauline Horowitz, Age 19, Lived at 58 St. Marks Pl., Died March 25, 1911, Triangle Factory Fire." And "Albina Caruso, Age 20, Lived at 21 Bowery, Died March 25, 1911, Triangle Factory Fire."
That first year, they chalked 140 names, plus the word "unidentified" six times, in front of the old factory building, just east of Washington Square.
"After you chalk one or two names, something starts to happen," said Ms. Sergel, 48, an artist who cobbles a living from grant to grant. "Chalking helps reveal a hidden geography of the city. If there are two victims across the street from each other, you wonder, 'Did they walk to work together? Did their families console each other?' The whole rest of the year you associate those buildings with that person."
Year by year, the chalking project has multiplied, attracting mothers and daughters, teachers and schoolchildren, and, increasingly, the descendants of Triangle victims. This year, it is one of more than 100 events scheduled to commemorate the centennial of the fire. Ms. Sergel has helped organize many of the events as head of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, which she founded in 2008.
Marjori Ingall CHALKING Josie Ingall paid tribute in 2009 to a Triangle victim.
Workers United, the union that descended from the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, is the chief sponsor of the main ceremony, which is expected to draw around 10,000 people to the former factory site on Friday. Ms. Sergel's coalition is coordinating concerts, plays, readings, exhibitions and processions. It is urging firehouses and churches to ring their bells at 4:45 p.m. Friday, the minute the first alarm was sounded for the Triangle fire. On the coalition's Web site, there is an interactive map of the victims' addresses and an "open archive" where people can post photographs related to the fire.
"What's important to us isn't just abstract histories, but things that are grounded in the personal and the tangible," Ms. Sergel said. "Our role is to shift from just collecting stories and broadcasting them to creating opportunities for conversation."
The daughter of Judith Treesberg, a poet and artist, and Christopher Sergel, a playwright whose adaptations of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Winesburg, Ohio" were Broadway hits, Ms. Sergel grew up in Lower Manhattan. After majoring in political science at Swarthmore College, she worked as a camera assistant on several films and then directed some shorts, including "Bruce," about a dancer with cerebral palsy, and "Belle," about an 86-year-old retiree. In 2008, she earned a master's degree in interactive media from New York University. Last fall, she married a Swiss dramaturge she met at a dance technology center.
As a teenager, Ms. Sergel read a book about the Triangle fire, but she says she still does not quite understand her fascination with the fire or with what she calls "communal memory." Perhaps it was that her stepfather, Nathan Farb, was a photographer, forever capturing images of the past. Or maybe it stems from growing up a block away from Washington Market, the city's main produce market until it was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the World Trade Center. Now, of course, both the market and the towers that replaced it are left to communal memory.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ms. Sergel helped the photographer Gilles Peress and others compile a collection of images for an exhibition and a book. Then came "Voices of 9/11," in which she recorded 550 family members and survivors telling their memories of that day.
James Estrin/The New York Times The view from the ninth floor of the former Triangle building.
"It's not meant for theater," she said. "It's not a film. It's a people's archive."
Ms. Sergel has dwelled deeply on the parallels between the Triangle fire and 9/11. "The truth is that so much of it is absolutely arbitrary about who survived and who didn't," she said. "So much depended on which floor you were on. Especially in Tower One, if you were above a certain floor, you were not going to get out. If you were below, you were going to get out.
"In the Triangle fire, if you were on the eighth floor or 10th floor, most were able to get out. If you were on the ninth floor, you were often stuck."
The factory fire, started by a cigarette, began on the eighth floor. Most workers there escaped by the stairs, and those on the 10th ran to the roof after being alerted by someone on the eighth. But the workers on the ninth floor did not receive an alert, and when the fire roared onto their floor, many were trapped by a locked exit door, a fire escape that collapsed and an elevator that broke down after several people jumped down the shaft. Desperate to escape the flames, many on the ninth floor leaped to their deaths. The Fire Department's tallest ladders reached only the sixth floor, and the factory did not have automatic sprinklers, even though they were available at the time.
Ms. Sergel's coalition has grown from half a dozen historians, artists and preservationists to more than 200 individuals and organizations. It has a budget of $60,000, including a $30,000 grant from a foundation connected to the garment workers' union. "When I told her she had won it, she was in a grocery store," recalled May Chen, a retired garment workers' official who nominated Ms. Sergel's group for the grant. "She told me, 'I can finally afford to buy the food I need.' "
Ms. Sergel is intense, earnest and culturally enterprising. In her current role, in addition to connecting artists, educators, union workers and city officials on Triangle-related matters, she is forever updating the coalition's Web site and posting items on Facebook and Twitter, like this tidbit last month, "Please check out this beautiful piece by Eileen Nevitt, granddaughter of Annie Sprinsock, who survived the fire."
"Ruth sometimes describes herself as the Facebook of the Triangle centennial," said Sherry Kane, a Workers United official who is helping to plan the commemoration. "She thought she'd do a few little Facebook things, but it became a 24-hour-a-day job."
Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times Ruth Sergel with a map of the victims' addressses.
While Workers United sponsors ceremony every year on the anniversary, Ms. Sergel "has broadened it to the art world and to young people," Ms. Chen said. "I was moved by her asking, 'Why did this particular incident of workers dying spark the imagination?' "
Annie Lanzillotto, a self-described rock poet who has participated in the chalking commemoration for the past four years, recalled once encountering several immigrant workers on a break outside a Chinese restaurant.
"They were sitting on the stoop out front, and I asked them to move their feet," said Ms. Lanzillotto, 47, of Yonkers. "They asked me what I was doing, and I told them what happened here 100 years ago. A 16-year-old girl, Rosie Grasso, who used to live here, had died in a fire. It really registered with them.
"You're making the history and the dead of New York visible for the living."
Historians generally see the fire as a watershed event because it led to far-reaching changes in factory regulations on safety. The victims' cause has been embraced by many groups, including Jews, Italians, unions, feminists and immigrant advocates. One of Ms. Sergel's favorite quotations comes from Gabriel García Márquez: "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." Certainly, she said, the Triangle fire was colossally sad. But the huge protests and push for change that followed it were, she said, "invigorating."
"In the wake of tragedies like Triangle or 9/11, my sense is there are actually quite wonderful things that come out and radiate from that," she said. "There's an immediate dropping of day-to-day falseness. You become much more compassionate and humane toward each other in those moments.
"It's incumbent upon us if we're going to commemorate the fire," she added, "to commemorate the spirit of action that grew out of the fire."
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7) Photos Show Soldiers With Corpse
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/asia/21spiegel.html?hp
SEATTLE (AP) - Der Spiegel, the German news organization, published photographs Sunday showing two American soldiers in Afghanistan posing with the corpse of an Afghan civilian they are accused of murdering.
The photos were among several seized by Army investigators looking into the deaths of three unarmed Afghans last year. Five soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle, have been charged with murder and conspiracy. Because of their content, the photos were placed under a strict order limiting their release. It is unclear how Der Spiegel obtained them.
One shows a key defendant, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, grinning as he lifts a corpse's head by the hair. Der Spiegel identified the body as that of Gul Mudin, whom Specialist Morlock claims to have killed with Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes in Kandahar Province. Another shows Private Holmes, of Boise, Idaho, lifting the same corpse by the hair.
"Today Der Spiegel published photographs depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army," the Army said in a statement released by Col. Thomas Collins. "We apologize for the distress these photos cause."
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8) Qaddafi Forces Hold Strategic Town as Allied Attacks Continue
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ELISABETH BUMILLER AND KAREEM FAHIM
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22libya.html?hp
TRIPOLI, Libya - After a second night of American and European strikes by air and sea against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces, European nations on Monday rejected Libyan claims that civilians had been killed. Pro-Qaddafi forces were reported, meanwhile, to be holding out against the allied campaign to break their hold on the ground while enforcing a no-fly zone.
Rebel fighters trying to retake the eastern town of Ajdabiya said they were driven back on Monday by rocket and tank fire from government loyalists still controlling entrances to the city. Dozens of fightersretreated to a checkpoint around 12 miles north of the Ajdabiya, and said at least eight others had been killed during the day's fighting, including four who had been standing in a bloodied pickup truck that the fighters showed to reporters.
There were conflicting reports about whether the allies had attacked loyalist forces in the town. While planes had been heard overhead, the rebel fighters said there appeared to have been no attack on the pro-Qaddafi forces holding the entrance to Ajdabiya on the coastal highway leading north to Benghazi. Ajdabiya is a strategically important town that has been much fought over, straddling an important highway junction and acting as a chokepoint for forces trying to advance in either direction.
The retreat from Ajdabiya appeared to have thrown the rebels into deep disarray, with one commander at the checkpoint trying to marshal the opposition forces, using a barely functioning megaphone, but few of the fighters heeding his exhortations.
In the western city of Misurata, forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi were still at large and were using civilians from nearby towns as human shields, Reuters reported. But there was no immediate confirmation of that report.
As the allied air campaign went forward, it faced growing criticism around the world, notably from Russia and China, which both abstained from voting on the United Nations resolution. "In general, it reminds me of a medieval call for a crusade," Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Monday, after criticizing the allies on Monday for "indiscriminate use of force."
On the eve of a visit from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Mr. Putin called the resolution "deficient and flawed," saying, "It allows everyone to undertake any actions in relation to a sovereign government."
A commentary in China's state-run People's Daily said the Western actions violated international law and courted unforeseen disaster. "It should be seen that every time military means are used to address crises, that is a blow to the United Nations Charter and the rules of international relations," the article read in part.
On Sunday a vital Arab participant in the agreement expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The former chairman of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was calling for an emergency league meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab world, and particularly Libya.
"What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," he said, referring to Libyan government claims that allied bombardment had killed dozens of civilians. But on Monday, Mr. Moussa spoke of the allied actions in more measured tones, saying, "We respect the Security Council's resolution and we have no conflict with the resolution, especially as it confirms that there is no invasion or occupation of Libyan territory."
As the assault unfolded late Sunday, an explosion thundered from Colonel Qaddafi's personal compound in Tripoli, and a column of smoke rose above it, suggesting that the allied forces may have struck either his residence there or the nearby barracks of his personal guards. Unnamed Western officials were quoted in various news reports as saying the building was a military command and control center.
Journalists taken by the Qaddafi government to visit the site shortly after the blast said they saw a bomb-damaged building that appeared to be an administrative center rather than a military barracks or a Qaddafi residence, although the exact nature of the facility could not be definitively confirmed. No casualties were reported, though the government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, called it "a barbaric bombing."
Asked about the explosion, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said in a Washington news conference that the United States was not trying to kill the Libyan leader. "At this particular point I can guarantee that he's not on a targeting list," he said, saying that the United States military was working to weaken his military capacity rather than remove him.
In London, the Defense Ministry said on Monday that British Tornado aircraft that had flown 1,500 miles from a base in eastern England overnight aborted their mission at the last minute after "further information came to light that identified a number of civilians within the intended target area. As a result, the decision was taken not to launch weapons. This decision underlines the U.K.'s commitment to the protection of civilians." The ministry did not identify the specific target, but officials indicated that the Tornados' sortie was part of an effort, reinforced by cruise missiles fired from a British submarine in the Mediterranean, to strike at air defense systems.
The planes were to have struck their target at around midnight, British time - the early hours of the morning in Libya.
Britain also made clear that it placed no store in a Libyan announcement on Sunday night of a second cease-fire. "We and our international partners are continuing operations in support of the United Nations Security Council resolution" authorizing the attacks, the Defense Ministry said. In an interview on British radio, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the allies would judge Colonel Qaddafi "by his actions not his words."
"They have to be observing a real cease-fire" before the air and sea attacks would stop, he said.
In Paris, an official said France had no information that civilians had been killed in the air assaults. François Baroin, a government spokesman, told a French television channel that French commanders were not aware of any information relating to civilian deaths.
Rebel forces, battered and routed by loyalist fighters just the day before, began to regroup in the east on Sunday as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles back west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Benghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces on Saturday. There was evidence, too, that the allies were striking more targets in and around Tripoli, the capital. More explosions could be seen or heard near the city center, where an international press corps was kept under tight security constraints. Recurring bursts of antiaircraft guns and a prolonged shower of tracers arced over the capital on Sunday night.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, spoke about how allied forces had grounded Colonel Qaddafi's aircraft and worked to protect civilians - both objectives stated by the United Nations Security Council in approving the military mission. "We hit a lot of targets, focused on his command and control, focused on his air defense, and actually attacked some of his forces on the ground in the vicinity of Benghazi," Admiral Mullen told Fox News.
But the campaign may be balancing multiple goals. President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and British and French leaders have also talked of a broader policy objective - that Colonel Qaddafi must leave power. In his comments on Sunday, Admiral Mullen suggested that objective lay outside the bounds of the military campaign, saying on NBC that Colonel Qaddafi's remaining in power after the United States military accomplished its mission was "potentially one outcome."
Mr. Gates, on a flight to Russia, said he was concerned about that possible result. Though he praised the mission's "successful start," he cautioned that a partitioned Libya, with rebels holding the east and Colonel Qaddafi the West, could bring trouble. "I think all countries probably would like to see Libya remain a unified state," Mr. Gates said. Gen. Carter F. Ham, who as the head of the United States Africa Command is overseeing the operation, said in an e-mail on Sunday that "the initial strikes have had, generally, the effects we sought. Fixed air defense sites, particularly the longer-range systems, appear to no longer be operating."
The American and French militaries both said that Qatar would join the military operation, which would be the first Arab military force to explicitly sign on. But there were no details on what role the Qatar forces would take.
The Americans, working with the British, French and others, flew a wider array of missions than the day before, when Navy cruise missile barrages were their main weapons. They deployed B-2 stealth bombers, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets and Harrier attack jets flown by the Marine Corps striking at Libyan ground forces, air defenses and airfields. Navy electronic warplanes, EA-18G Growlers, jammed Libyan radar and communications. British pilots flew many of the bombing missions, and French, British and American planes all conducted ground attacks near Benghazi, American commanders said.
Admiral Gortney said that allied strikes against Colonel Qaddafi's forces had been "very effective." But he warned that coalition forces had not hit Libyan mobile surface-to-air missile batteries and that shoulder-launched missiles, called Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems, or Manpads, also remained. Near Misurata, the last major Western city held by the rebels, B-2 bombers destroyed aircraft shelters at an airfield, the admiral said. A rebel spokesman within the besieged city, giving his name as Muhammad, said allied airstrikes had destroyed a military convoy coming to reinforce the troops encircling the city. But he said that Saturday night's strikes had done little to stop the Qaddafi forces from shelling the city and its port, blowing up two power stations. A rebel who said he was a doctor said seven had died and the city was without water or power.
Libyan officials and state television have said that dozens of Libyan civilians were killed in the air attacks. But an Indonesian newscaster, Andini Effendi, reported Sunday that she was able to visit two Tripoli hospitals after the airstrikes early on Sunday and found no influx of casualties, only empty ambulances. Libyan officials promised Sunday to bring foreign journalists to a funeral for civilians killed in the attacks. But the funeral turned out to be more of a pro-Qaddafi political rally, and the true number of dead remained a mystery.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Tripoli, Libya, Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya. Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell from Paris, Clifford J. Levy from Moscow and Julia Werdigier from London.
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9) New Repairs Delay Work at Crippled Nuclear Plant
"In Vienna on Monday the United Nations atomic energy chief said the nuclear crisis in Japan remained 'very serious.' In a statement, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he believed 'this crisis will be effectively overcome.' He also said that 'the agency's role in nuclear safety may need to be re-examined, along with the role of our safety standards' and that 'it is already clear that arrangements for putting international nuclear experts in touch with each other quickly during a crisis need to be improved.'"
By KEN BELSON, HIROKO TABUCHI and DAVID JOLLY
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Efforts to stabilize the crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima stalled on Monday when engineers found that crucial machinery at one reactor requires repair, a process that will take two to three days, government officials said.
A team of workers trying to repair another reactor, No. 3, was evacuated in the afternoon after gray smoke rose from it, said Tetsuro Fukuyama, deputy chief cabinet secretary. But no explosion was heard and the emission ended by 6 p.m., NHK, the national broadcaster, said.
In a separate incident the broadcaster cited the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency as saying white smoke was coming from the building housing Reactor No. 2, where machinery needs repairs. Significantly higher levels of radiation have not been detected around the two reactors, Mr. Fukuyama said.
The United States State Department, meanwhile, said it would offer potassium iodide to its staff members and dependents in the Tokyo region and to the north on Honshu, Japan's main island and the site of the troubled power station, as a precaution against a possible radiation release. In a travel warning posted online, the State Department advised against taking the compound "at this time," and urged consultation with the United States government before consuming it.
Hundreds of employees from the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, worked through the weekend to connect a mile-long high-voltage transmission line to the No. 2 unit in hopes of restarting a cooling system that would help bring down the temperature in the reactor and spent fuel pool.
After connecting the transmission line on Sunday engineers found on Monday that they still did not have enough power to fully run the systems that control the temperature and pressure in the building that houses the reactor, officials from the Japanese nuclear safety agency said.
Engineers were also trying to repair the ventilation system in the control room that is used to monitor conditions in the No. 1 and No. 2 units. When that work is completed, possibly on Monday, it will allow the power company, also known as Tepco, to begin cleansing the air in the control room so that workers can eventually re-enter and begin using equipment inside to monitor conditions in the two reactor units.
Workers were also trying to connect a separate power cable to Reactor No. 4 by late afternoon on Monday.
Firefighters from Tokyo doused Reactor No. 3 overnight, and fire trucks from the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the American Army spent two hours on Monday morning spraying water on Reactor No. 4.
The nuclear safety agency also said that some of the water used to douse the damaged reactors had reached the ocean nearby, and that officials were investigating radiation levels in the water. Trace amounts of radioactive material were also reported to have been found on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.
Separately, residents of Iitate village, about 30 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, were ordered not to drink tap water after high levels of radioactive elements were detected in the water supply, said Takashi Hashiguchi, a Health Ministry official. Residents were told that they are still able to use tap water for other tasks, such as washing their hands or taking a bath, he said.
The order came a day after the government barred all shipments of milk from Fukushima Prefecture and shipments of spinach from Ibaraki Prefecture after finding new cases of above-normal levels of radioactive elements in milk and several crops.
Abnormal levels were also found in spinach from Tochigi and Gunma prefectures to the west, canola from Gunma Prefecture and chrysanthemum greens from Chiba Prefecture, south of Ibaraki.
A spokesman for the World Health Organization said on Monday that the discovery of radiation in food was a more serious problem than the organization first expected, Reuters reported. Peter Cordingley, a Manila-based spokesman for the organization, said there was no evidence that contaminated food from Fukushima Prefecture had reached the export market.
But, he added, "it's a lot more serious than anybody thought in the early days when we thought that this kind of problem can be limited to 20 to 30 kilometers," according to Reuters.
In Vienna on Monday the United Nations atomic energy chief said the nuclear crisis in Japan remained "very serious." In a statement, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he believed "this crisis will be effectively overcome." He also said that "the agency's role in nuclear safety may need to be re-examined, along with the role of our safety standards" and that "it is already clear that arrangements for putting international nuclear experts in touch with each other quickly during a crisis need to be improved."
The food contamination and delays in repair work at the Fukushima plant are two of the challenges facing Japan since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck the country's northeast coast on March 11. Rescue teams on Monday were still searching through communities devastated by the tsunami.
NHK said Monday that the official death toll had been raised to more than 8,600. But the final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000. On Sunday police officials in Miyagi, the prefecture hit hardest by the tsunami, said they expected the toll there alone to exceed 15,000.
More than 13,000 people are listed as missing.
The World Bank, meanwhile, citing private and Japanese government estimates, said the cost of the disaster could range from $122 billion to $235 billion, or 2.5 to 4 percent of gross domestic product and that it would hurt Japan's growth through 2011.
Norimitsu Onishi contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
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10) With Libya Fight, U.S. Africa Command Thrust Into a Leadership Role
By ERIC SCHMITT
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/africa/22command.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - When the United States Africa Command was created four years ago, it was the military's first "smart power" command. It has no assigned troops, no headquarters in Africa itself, and one of its two top deputies is a seasoned American diplomat.
Indeed, the command, known as Africom, is designed largely to train and assist the armed forces of 53 African nations and to work with the State Department and other American agencies to strengthen social, political and economic programs in the region including improving H.I.V. awareness in African militaries and removing land mines.
Now the young, untested command and its new boss, Gen. Carter F. Ham, find themselves at their headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, setting aside public diplomacy talks and other civilian-military duties to lead the initial phase of a complex, multinational shooting war with Libya.
"Are they up to the task?" said Kenneth J. Menkhaus, an Africa specialist at Davidson College in North Carolina. "So far, I'd say yes. Down the road, though, if it gets messier, it'll test the capacity of Africom. This is certainly a baptism by fire."
The command has faced difficulties in its first few years. Initial statements about its mission and scope of activity alarmed some African leaders and State Department officials, who feared the Pentagon was trying to militarize diplomacy and development on the continent. These concerns forced the command to set up its headquarters in Germany.
Congressional critics have warned that the command is understaffed and poorly resourced for challenges that include countering fighters with an affiliate of Al Qaeda in North Africa, Islamic extremists in Somalia, drug traffickers in West Africa, and armed rebels in Congo. Other congressional officials cast doubt on the command's ability to gauge progress in its programs.
"Africom is generally not measuring long-term effects of activities," concluded a report issued last July by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. "Without assessing activities, Africom lacks information to evaluate their effectiveness, make informed future planning decisions, and allocate resources.
Military officials say General Ham's arrival three weeks ago to replace Gen. William E. Ward, who retired, will inject new dynamism into the command and its 1,500-member headquarters staff. More than 1,000 other troops are conducting training, security assistance or other temporary duties in Africa at any given time.
General Ham, 59, a native of Cleveland, is one of the Army's stars, having risen from private to four-star commander in a 38-year career. He has commanded troops in northern Iraq, overseen military operations at the Pentagon's Joint Staff, and help lead reviews into the fatal shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., and the Defense Department's "don't ask, don't tell policy."
The son of a Navy PT boat officer in World War II, General Ham enlisted in the Army in 1973 as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. After earning his officer commission, he served as an adviser to a Saudi Arabian National Guard brigade, commanded the Army's storied First Infantry Division, and, until his current assignment, led all Army forces in Europe, when he worked closely with many of the same European allies now engaged in the Libya operation.
"He's inclusive and a great team builder," said Lt. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, who earlier this month succeeded General Ham in the Army's European command. "He's not only a great soldier who studies his profession, he's the kind of normal guy you can drink a beer with."
Perhaps General Ham's most wrenching tour was commanding American forces in northern Iraq as the insurgency was strengthening there. On Dec. 21, 2004, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a dining hall at a military base in Mosul, killing 22 people, including 18 Americans. General Ham arrived on the scene shortly after the explosion.
When he returned to Fort Lewis, Wash., a few months later, he sought help for post-traumatic stress, received counseling from a chaplain and later publicly discussed his treatment. "You need somebody to assure you that it's not abnormal," General Ham told USA Today. "It's not abnormal to have difficulty sleeping. It's not abnormal to be jumpy at loud sounds."
General Ham's willingness to speak openly about his personal combat stress sent shock waves through a service in which seeking help has often been seen as a sign of weakness.
That plain-spoken attitude has earned plaudits from top Defense Department officials.
"During our 'don't-ask, don't tell' review, he was our conscience and our center of gravity," said Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel and co-author with General Ham of the department's report on the effects of allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military. "I always made sure never to get out ahead of him."
For the time being, General Ham will oversee the American side of the Libya operations, briefing President Obama and his top security aides from Stuttgart, as he did on Sunday, and providing broad guidance and direction to the mission's tactical commander, Adm. Samuel J. Locklear 3rd, who is in the Mediterranean aboard a command ship, the Mount Whitney.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Sunday that the United States would turn control of the Libya military operation over to a coalition _ probably headed either by the French and British or by NATO _ "in a matter of days." But the American military would continue to fly missions.
General Ham, in an email message on Sunday, said plans for the change in command are already underway. "It's fairly complex to do that while simultaneously conducting operations," he said. "But we'll figure it out."
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11) In Battle of the Bulbs, One Based on TV Tubes
By ERIC A. TAUB
March 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/technology/21lamp.html?ref=business
As the nation shifts from standard incandescent light bulbs to higher-efficiency versions, one company believes it has a product for consumers dissatisfied with the alternatives: the harsh light of compact fluorescents and the high price of LED lamps.
This week, the Vu1 Corporation, based in New York, will begin shipping a lamp that uses a new technology borrowed from an old product, a picture tube TV.
The Vu1 lamp, available as a 65-watt-equivalent reflector lamp, creates light the same way a TV picture tube creates images. It fires a stream of electrons at phosphors coating the inside of the globe. The company calls the technology electron stimulated luminescence.
The light is akin in color to a regular light bulb's output, which is important because many consumers complain about an unpleasant glare from compact fluorescent light bulbs, or C.F.L.'s. As with C.F.L.'s, the Vu1 bulb uses less energy than a standard bulb, in this case 19.5 watts to create the equivalent of a 65-watt lamp. The company says it will last 10,000 hours at full brightness, compared with a 1,000-hour life typical for regular bulbs, and is fully dimmable.
The new lamp, which will initially be sold only on the company's Web site, vu1.com, costs $19.95. But the introductory price will drop to $15 within 12 months, according to the company's chief executive, Philip Styles, and then to $12 six months after that. That's a considerably higher upfront cost than that of a standard light bulb of around $1.50, or a C.F.L., which can be found in many communities at a utility-subsidized price of around 50 cents.
LED lamps are more expensive, but they use less electricity. Based on lifespan and power consumption, an LED lamp costs less than a Vu1 lamp. Philips sells a 60-watt-equivalent LED A-lamp, the type used in standard sockets, for $40. It uses 12 watts of power and is expected to last 25,000 hours before it loses half of its brightness.
Still, consumers choose lamps not on their final cost, but on their purchase price. "The mistake with C.F.L.'s was that they were sold based solely on cost," not on their light quality, said Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center at University of California, Davis. "It's a national tragedy. We should have solved this by now."
LED lamps are as efficient at creating light as its C.F.L. equivalents, according to Jim Brodrick, the Energy Department's solid-state lighting program manager, without the downsides inherent in C.F.L.'s: mercury pollution, poor dimming and undesirable light color. Mr. Brodrick said that LED lamps currently under development were twice as efficient as C.F.L.'s.
But, he said, "there is not as much price drop as we'd like."
That is about to change, said William D. Watkins, chief executive of Bridgelux, a manufacturer of LED components based in Livermore, Calif.
"Due simply to manufacturing scale, we'll see a $10 LED lamp in 12 months," Mr. Watkins said. "When C.F.L.'s hit $10, the market opened up."
Bridgelux, which booked $30 million in revenue last year and expects to triple that in 2011, is seeking to cut the cost of LED lamps drastically by manufacturing the components using silicon rather than other materials. "In two to three years, we'll drive the cost of LED lamps to $5," Mr. Watkins said.
The privately held Vu1 is manufacturing the lamps, which will include a standard A-lamp equivalent in a few months, in the Czech Republic.
As with many start-ups, the company is experiencing growing pains. Vu1's product has been postponed several times, and Mr. Styles accepts stock in lieu of his agreed-upon $240,000 annual salary, as did his predecessor in 2010. A number of other unpaid employees and consultants received company stock. But in February, Vu1 raised $2.2 million through a private placement.
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12) Let Malalai Joya speak in the United States!
Please Sign The Petition
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/letmalalaijoyaspeak/
We, the undersigned, call on the US State Department to grant a visa to Malalai Joya for entry to the United States. We protest the denial of a travel visa to Joya, an acclaimed women's rights activist and former member of Afghanistan's parliament. Ms. Joya, who was named one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2010, was set to begin a three-week US tour to promote an updated edition of her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
We agree with Joya's publisher at Scribner, Alexis Gargagliano, who said, "We had the privilege to publish Ms. Joya, and her earlier 2009 book tour met with wide acclaim. The right of authors to travel and promote their work is central to freedom of expression and the full exchange of ideas." Joya's memoir has been translated into over a dozen languages, and she has toured widely including Australia, the UK, Canada, Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands in support of the book over the past two years.
Malalai Joya's voice is one that must be heard in the United States. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, government officials put forward their concern for the rights of Afghan women as a central justification for the invasion. Today, we have the opportunity for an Afghan woman to speak to American audiences about the present and future of her people. We call upon the State Department to grant Malalai Joya a visa so that she can contribute her much needed, but rarely heard perspective to a timely discussion about the US' involvement in Afghanistan.
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13) Separate and Unequal
By BOB HERBERT
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?_r=1&hp
One of the most powerful tools for improving the educational achievement of poor black and Hispanic public school students is, regrettably, seldom even considered. It has become a political no-no.
Educators know that it is very difficult to get consistently good results in schools characterized by high concentrations of poverty. The best teachers tend to avoid such schools. Expectations regarding student achievement are frequently much lower, and there are lower levels of parental involvement. These, of course, are the very schools in which so many black and Hispanic children are enrolled.
Breaking up these toxic concentrations of poverty would seem to be a logical and worthy goal. Long years of evidence show that poor kids of all ethnic backgrounds do better academically when they go to school with their more affluent - that is, middle class - peers. But when the poor kids are black or Hispanic, that means racial and ethnic integration in the schools. Despite all the babble about a postracial America, that has been off the table for a long time.
More than a half-century after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling, we are still trying as a country to validate and justify the discredited concept of separate but equal schools - the very idea supposedly overturned by Brown v. Board when it declared, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality.
"Ninety-five percent of education reform is about trying to make separate schools for rich and poor work, but there is very little evidence that you can have success when you pack all the low-income students into one particular school," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who specializes in education issues.
The current obsession with firing teachers, attacking unions and creating ever more charter schools has done very little to improve the academic outcomes of poor black and Latino students. Nothing has brought about gains on the scale that is needed.
If you really want to improve the education of poor children, you have to get them away from learning environments that are smothered by poverty. This is being done in some places, with impressive results. An important study conducted by the Century Foundation in Montgomery County, Md., showed that low-income students who happened to be enrolled in affluent elementary schools did much better than similarly low-income students in higher-poverty schools in the county.
The study, released last October, found that "over a period of five to seven years, children in public housing who attended the school district's most advantaged schools (as measured by either subsidized lunch status or the district's own criteria) far outperformed in math and reading those children in public housing who attended the district's least-advantaged public schools."
Studies have shown that it is not the race of the students that is significant, but rather the improved all-around environment of schools with better teachers, fewer classroom disruptions, pupils who are more engaged academically, parents who are more involved, and so on. The poorer students benefit from the more affluent environment. "It's a much more effective way of closing the achievement gap," said Mr. Kahlenberg.
About 80 school districts across the country are taking steps to reduce the concentrations of poverty in their schools. But there is no getting away from the fact that if you try to bring about economic integration, you're also talking about racial and ethnic integration, and that provokes bitter resistance. The election of Barack Obama has not made true integration any more palatable to millions of Americans.
I favor integration for integration's sake. This society should be far more integrated in almost every way than it is now. But to get around the political obstacles to school integration, districts have tried a number of strategies. Some have established specialized, high-achieving magnet schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, which have had some success in attracting middle class students. Some middle-class schools have been willing to accept transfers of low-income students when those transfers are accompanied by additional resources that benefit all of the students in the schools.
It's difficult, but there are ways to sidestep the politics. What I think is a shame is that we have to do all of this humiliating dancing around the perennially uncomfortable issue of race. We pretend that no one's a racist anymore, but it's easier to talk about pornography in polite company than racial integration. Everybody's in favor of helping poor black kids do better in school, but the consensus is that those efforts are best confined to the kids' own poor black neighborhoods.
Separate but equal. The Supreme Court understood in 1954 that it would never work. But our perpetual bad faith on matters of race keeps us trying._
Roger Cohen is off today.
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14) American Warplane Crashes in Libya as Ground Fighting Continues
"United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. 'We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed,' Mr. Sayeh told reporters. On Monday night, a United States military official responded that 'we know of no instances where this has occurred.'"
By ELISABETH BUMILLER, KAREEM FAHIM and ALAN COWELL
March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/africa/23libya.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Ground fighting raged in Libya on Tuesday and an American fighter jet crashed overnight in the first known setback for the international coalition attacking forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
After three days of strikes authorized by the United Nations Security Council, however, disputes within the allied coalition over the future of the mission seemed unresolved, while China added its voice to demands by opponents of the intervention for an immediate cease-fire.
According to the United States military, an F-15E Strike Eagle warplane went down late Monday "when the aircraft experienced equipment malfunction." The aircraft, normally based in England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base in northeastern Italy when it crashed. "Both crew members ejected and are safe," an American statement said.
A photograph shows its charred wreckage surrounded by onlookers in the middle of what looked like an empty field.
American officials said on Monday that military strikes to destroy air defenses and establish a no-fly zone over Libya had nearly accomplished their initial objectives, and that the United States was moving swiftly to hand command to allies in Europe.
But divisions persisted on Tuesday over how the campaign should continue and under whose command.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has said responsibility for the no-fly zone would be transferred to NATO. But France objected to that, with its foreign minister, Alain Juppé, saying: "The Arab League does not wish the operation to be entirely placed under NATO responsibility. It isn't NATO which has taken the initiative up to now."
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday that the United Nations should be the umbrella for a solely humanitarian operation in Libya, Reuters reported, insisting that his country, a NATO ally, "will never ever be a side pointing weapons at the Libyan people." The dispute raised concerns that American plans to hand over command of the operation could be delayed by disputes among its partners over who should take control.
The White House released a statement Tuesday saying that President Obama had called Mr. Erdogan and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to impress upon them the need for "a broad-based international effort, including Arab states," in the military campaign in Libya.
Outside the Western alliance, divisions seemed to deepen on Tuesday, with China joining Brazil and Russia in calling for a cease-fire, while India said there should be no foreign presence in Libya. India, Brazil, Russia, China and Germany abstained from the United Nations vote last week that authorized the intervention.
American, British and French warplanes have been flying sorties since Saturday, stalling a ground attack by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east and hitting targets including air defenses, an airfield and part of Colonel Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli.
But the firepower of more than 130 Tomahawk cruise missiles and attacks by allied warplanes have not yet succeeded in accomplishing the more ambitious demands by the United States - repeated by President Obama in a letter to Congress on Monday - that Colonel Qaddafi withdraw his forces from embattled cities and cease all attacks against civilians.
Ahmed Khalifa, a rebel spokesman in Benghazi, said on Tuesday that there was still heavy fighting in the western rebel-held cities of Misurata and Zintan, which have been under siege by pro-Qaddafi troops for weeks. Government snipers and artillery in Misurata killed 40 people and wounded 189, he said, adding that rebel fighters were "combing" the city for Colonel Qaddafi's troops. "Snipers are everywhere in Misrata, shooting anyone who walks by while the world is still watching," a doctor in Misurata told The Associated Press. "The situation is going from bad to worse. We can do nothing but wait. Sometimes we depend on one meal per day."
Government shelling of Zintan had demolished a mosque, Mr. Khalifa said, adding that Colonel Qaddafi's talk of a cease-fire was "meaningless." He said that the allied airstrikes "did in fact prevent further death and destruction."
"The front lines are still very fluid," he said, saying there was no movement in the standoff between rebel fighters and Qaddafi forces in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. The rebel fighters are no match for the firepower of the pro-Qaddafi forces dug in around the city, which rests firmly in their control. But a correspondent for the Guardian, a British daily, said he had heard loud explosions around the city and had to "assume coalition aircraft are attacking Qaddafi forces around Ajdabiya."
State television in Libya said on Tuesday that there had been more attacks by what it called the "crusader enemy," Reuters reported, but the broadcaster struck a defiant tone, saying, "These attacks are not going to scare the Libyan people."
But the airstrikes seemed to have emboldened the citizens of Tripoli, the capital city that is considered a pro-Qaddafi stronghold. On an officially supervised visit to the Old City on Tuesday, foreign reporters who work under close government scrutiny said people seemed noticeably readier to voice criticism.
Almost within earshot of official minders, one person approached a reporter to say, "It will be a beautiful country once we change the system." But no one wanted to be identified by name in a city where retribution has long been the price of rare dissent. "They have killed a lot of people here. People here are very afraid," one Libyan said. Referring to official shows of support for Colonel Qaddafi, he said, "This is not the real Libya."
Pentagon officials are eager to extract the United States from a third armed conflict in a Muslim country as quickly as possible. But Qaddafi forces were holding out against the allied military campaign. Rebel fighters trying to retake Ajdabiya said their advance was halted on Monday by tank and rocket fire from government loyalists still controlling entrances to the city. Dozens of fighters fell back to a checkpoint about 25 miles north of Ajdabiya, in Zueitina.
By the early afternoon, the fighters said at least eight of their confederates had been killed in the day's fighting, including four who were killed when a tank shell struck their pickup truck.
In the western city of Misurata, forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi were still at large and were using civilians as human shields, Reuters reported, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
At the Pentagon, officials said that the intensive American-led assault unleashed over the weekend was a classic air campaign, chosen by Mr. Obama among a range of military options, which was intended to have coalition aircraft in the skies above Libya within days and without fear of being shot down. "You don't do that piecemeal," a United States military official said. "You do it all at once, and you do it as fast as you can."
The targets included radar installations, fixed and mobile antiaircraft sites, Libyan aircraft and hangars, and other targets intended to make it safe for allied aircraft to impose the no-fly zone. They also included tanks and other ground forces engaged with the rebels around the country, reflecting the broader aim of pushing Colonel Qadaffi's forces to withdraw from disputed cities. Communications centers and at least one Scud missile site were also struck.
Explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli on Monday in a third straight night of attacks there against Colonel Qadaffi's forces.
Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the United States Africa Command, who is in charge of the coalition effort, said that there would be strikes on Colonel Qaddafi's mobile air defenses and that some 80 sorties - only half by the United States - were flown on Monday.
General Ham also said he had "full authority" to attack the regime's forces if they refused to comply with President Obama's demands that they pull back from Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zawiya.
In Santiago, Chile, Mr. Obama restated that the United States would soon turn over full responsibility to the allies to maintain the no-fly zone. He also sought to distinguish the stated goals of the United Nations-authorized military operation - protecting Libyan civilians, establishing a no-flight zone and forcing Colonel Qaddafi's withdrawal from the cities - with his own administration's demand, not included in the United Nations resolution, that Colonel Qaddafi had to leave office.
"It is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go," Mr. Obama said at a news conference with the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera. "And we've got a wide range of tools in addition to our military effort to support that policy." Mr. Obama cited economic sanctions, the freezing of assets and other measures to isolate the regime in Tripoli.
United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. "We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed," Mr. Sayeh told reporters.
On Monday night, a United States military official responded that "we know of no instances where this has occurred."
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Contributing reporting were David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli, Libya; Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker from Washington; Steven Erlanger from Paris; Clifford J. Levy from Moscow; and Julia Werdigier from London.
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15) At War in Libya
New York Times Editorial
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22tue1.html?hp
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has long been a thug and a murderer who has never paid for his many crimes, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The United Nations Security Council resolution authorized member nations to take "all necessary measures" to protect civilians and was perhaps the only hope of stopping him from slaughtering thousands more.
The resolution was an extraordinary moment in recent history. The United Nations, the United States and the Europeans dithered for an agonizingly long time and then - with the rebels' last redoubt, Benghazi, about to fall - acted with astonishing speed to endorse a robust mandate that goes far beyond a simple no-fly zone. More extraordinary was that the call to action was led by France and Britain and invited by the Arab League.
American commanders on Monday claimed success in attacking Libyan air defenses and command and control operations. Over the weekend, there were strikes against Libyan aircraft on the ground, forces headed toward Benghazi and even Colonel Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli. Colonel Qaddafi remained defiant and announced plans to arm one million loyalists. He gathered women and children as human shields at his compound. On Monday, his forces drove rebels back from the strategically important town Ajdabiya.
There is much to concern us. President Obama correctly agreed to deploy American forces only when persuaded that other nations would share the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law. The United States is already bogged down in two wars. It can't be seen as intervening unilaterally in another Muslim nation. But even with multinational support, it should not have to shoulder the brunt of this conflict.
After endorsing a no-flight zone 10 days ago - a move that allowed the Security Council resolution to go forward - the Arab League is sending mixed messages. This military operation requires the Arab states to reaffirm support for the coalition and contribute their own arms, forces and cash. Qatar made a commitmment: four fighter jets. Colonel Qaddafi will find it easier to dig in his heels if he thinks the region is divided.
There has been unsettling dissonance from the allies, too. The operation was portrayed as led by France and Britain. Yet the Americans - which have the ships and cruise missiles to take out Libyan air defenses - are actually directing this phase. They say command will soon shift, but it's not certain if that will put NATO, France or Britain in charge. A permanent alternate command needs to be established as soon as practical and the broadest possible coalition must be engaged.
We also have questions about the objective. President Obama has said Colonel Qaddafi has lost legitimacy and must go. He also insisted the military aim is only to protect civilians and American ground troops will not be deployed. We hope he sticks to those commitments. There are enormous questions: What will the United States and its allies do if the rebels cannot dislodge Colonel Qaddafi? At a minimum, they must be ready to maintain indefinite sanctions on the regime while helping the rebels set up a government, should they actually win. Mr. Obama should have brought Congress more into the loop on his decision, and must do so now.
There is no perfect formula for military intervention. It must be used sparingly - not in Bahrain or Yemen, even though we condemn the violence against protesters in both countries. Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism. If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world.
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16) Spent Fuel Hampers Efforts at Japanese Nuclear Plant
By HIROKO TABUCHI, DAVID JOLLY and KEVIN DREW
March 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/world/asia/23japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Workers at Japan's ravaged nuclear power plant on Tuesday renewed a bid to bring its command centers back online and restore electricity to vital cooling systems but an overheating spent fuel pool hampered efforts and raised the threat of further radiation leaks.
The storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi Power Station's No. 2 Reactor, which holds spent nuclear fuel rods, was spewing steam late Tuesday, forcing workers to divert their attention to dousing the reactor building with water. If unchecked the water in the pool could boil away, exposing the fuel rods and releasing large amounts of radiation into the air.
"We cannot leave this alone and we must take care of it as quickly as possible," Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters.
Workers have now connected power cables to all six reactors at the plant though some of the machinery, including the water pumps that cool the reactors, might be damaged, officials said, requiring more repair work. On Tuesday Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, said power had been turned on in Reactor No. 3 but only for lights, not the cooling system.
The cooling systems at all of the reactors were knocked out by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and power was first restored to units 5 and 6. They were offline before the quake but like the other four reactors have pools of spent fuel rods.
Another major effort was underway to restore full power and resume operations at the plant's central command centers, which will make it easier for workers to monitor heat and water levels at the reactors. Recovery efforts have been hindered by difficulties in gauging readings of crucial data, forcing officials to work off aerial photos and speculation.
Workers also continued pumping water into three reactors using fire hoses to keep them from overheating, while firefighters aimed streams of water at their spent fuel pools through gaps in the buildings housing the reactors, blown out in a series of explosions that rocked the site last week.
In Vienna, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency complained about a lack of information from the Japanese authorities, Reuters reported.
"We have not received validated information for some time related to the containment integrity of unit 1," the official, Graham Andrew, said. "So we are concerned that we do not know its exact status." He also said the agency lacked data about the temperatures of the pools holding spent fuel rods at the No. 1, 3 and 4 reactors.
Separately, the Kyodo news agency reported that the I.A.E.A. had detected radiation levels 1,600 times above normal about 12 miles from the plant. The government has ordered people to evacuate a 12-mile radius around the plant and told those 12 to 18 miles away to stay indoors.
The crisis has raised fears about the spread of contamination of the environment and local food supply. The government has announced that traces of radioactive elements have been found in vegetables and raw milk from farms around the plant, prompting a government ban on shipments from those areas.
Elevated levels of radioactive iodine and cesium have also been detected in the seawater near Fukushima, and the government is testing seafood as a precaution, Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said Tuesday. Government officials and health experts stress, however, that the doses are low and do not pose an immediate threat to human health.
Also on Tuesday the public broadcaster NHK, citing the government's Science Ministry, reported that radiation levels surpassing 400 times the normal level had been detected in soil about 25 miles from the Fukushima plant.
In the NHK report, a Gunma University professor said that radiation released by iodine-131 had been found to be 430 times the level normally detected in soil in Japan and that released by cesium-137 was 47 times the normal levels. The professor, Keigo Endo, said that there was no immediate health risk but that the radiation levels would require monitoring.
The nuclear crisis has also overshadowed the monumental task in Japan of providing aid to hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the quake and tsunami.
More than 237,000 people remain living in temporary shelters, NHK reported.
The Japanese Red Cross has from 300 to 350 people assigned to medical teams working in the disaster zone, said a spokesman, Francis Markus. The organization is still scaling up its relief operations but planning is already under way to help with recovery and reconstruction efforts, Mr. Markus said.
"Right now, people need hot showers daily, they need better sanitation systems," he said.
Medical teams are treating large numbers of cases of hypothermia and pneumonia, Mr. Markus said, as well as illness from swallowing polluted water. Doctors also are treating conditions tied to Japan's comparatively older population, like diabetes and high blood pressure. The need for medicine is constant, Mr. Markus said.
"One doctor in the field described the situation of receiving more medicine as pouring water in the desert," he said.
Unseasonably cold weather has added to the daily struggle for refugees and relief workers. Local forecasters are predicting overnight temperatures this week to hover around freezing in the prefectures hardest hit by the tsunami, in the northeast, as a cold front moves into the region.
On Tuesday, the government raised the official death toll upward to 9,079, and said more than 12,600 were missing, although officials cautioned there could be overlap between the figures. The final death toll is likely to reach 18,000, the government has said.
The economy has also taken a battering. Honda and Toyota both said they would suspend domestic auto production until at least this weekend because of the difficulty of procuring parts.
Cosmo Oil said Monday that it had finally extinguished the dramatic fires at its Chiba refinery, north of Tokyo, that raged after the quake. But the 220,000- barrel-a-day facility, one of the country's biggest, will be out of commission for some time.
Hiroko Tabuchi and David Jolly reported from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.Norimitsu Onishi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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17) Court Revives Lawsuit Over Government Surveillance
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/us/22fisa.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Civil libertarians opposed to the government's expanded wiretapping powers were bolstered Monday after an appellate court reinstated a lawsuit challenging an eavesdropping law passed by Congress in 2008.
In one of the few remaining lawsuits on the issue, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups charged that the expanded surveillance powers granted by Congress were unconstitutional and illegal. A Federal District Court judge in Manhattan had thrown out the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs failed to show they were actually spied upon and therefore did not have legal standing to sue. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit disagreed, allowing the lawsuit to move forward.
It found that the groups challenging the wiretapping law, including lawyers and journalists communicating with people overseas who might fall under terrorism investigations, had a reasonable fear that their international calls and e-mail would be monitored by the government.
While the appeals court did not rule on the merits of the case, the groups bringing the case said they were glad to be able to bring the legal substance of their challenge to court.
"I have always thought that we had a very strong argument," said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. "The new law allows the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' communication, and it makes the Fourth Amendment altogether irrelevant."
The law, known as the FISA Amendments Act, followed a furious debate over the legality of President George W. Bush's secret eavesdropping program. In amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress gave covert agencies greater leeway to monitor international communications without direct court oversight.
As a presidential candidate at the time, Senator Barack Obama opposed the broadening of executive power, but he angered some liberal supporters by reversing his position and voting for the measure.
The Justice Department, which could seek a rehearing in the Second Circuit to prevent the case from returning to the district court, had no comment Monday.
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18) Revisiting the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
March 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22conversation.html?ref=us
Until a year ago, the marine scientist Samantha Joye studied a fairly obscure natural phenomenon: the seepage of oil from undersea deposits into deepwater environments. Then, in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon accident, she felt compelled to turn her attention to an unnatural phenomenon: oil spills.
It was her research group that went into the Gulf of Mexico immediately after the spill, in April 2010, and found those famous plumes of oil and natural gas. Now Dr. Joye, 45, of the University of Georgia, directs a team seeking to understand the long-term effects on the chemistry and creatures of the gulf.
We spoke for two hours last month in Washington, where she lectured at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and then again on the telephone last week. An edited version of the two conversations follows:
Q. How did you first learn of the Deepwater Horizon spill?
A. I was at home in Georgia, nursing a back injury. Several of my colleagues, however, were actually near to the explosion. I'm a member of the Gulf of Mexico Hydrates Research Consortium, which studies deepwater environments. As it happened, our group - which includes oceanographers from several regional universities - has a study site only 10 miles north of BP's Macondo rig.
On the evening of the explosion, April 20, we had people there. When the sun came up the next morning, they saw this huge plume of smoke 10 miles away and also many boats screaming toward the BP rig. Soon, the Coast Guard instructed them to leave the area because it had set up an "off-limits" zone. My colleagues sent out e-mails describing everything they'd witnessed.
Q. How did you feel as you read these messages?
A. Sick to my stomach. From what they reported, and after seeing photographs of the fire in newspapers, I got worried about a blowout. This rig was tapping into a gassy undersea reservoir - it was, in fact, 40 percent gas, which made a blowout a real possibility.
But the Coast Guard was saying everything was fine. At first they claimed there was no leak at all. Then it was a mere 1,000 barrels a day, which was soon revised to 5,000. Scientists I knew who do remote satellite sensing were telling me the spill was at least five to 10 times higher than the reported rates.
As it happened, our group had a long-planned mapping cruise in the gulf scheduled for May 5. I called our project manager and suggested we use the opportunity to retask and gather baseline data on the spill - a time zero.
BP had a lot of ships out there taking measurements. But as far as I could tell, there were no independent academic scientists doing it. Our group would end up going to the gulf five times between May and December, collecting data. The National Science Foundation came through with emergency funding.
Q. And what did you find?
A. Well, I didn't find. My back was still messed up. I was home for the first cruise, staying close to the ship via the Internet. It was my colleagues Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi and Arne Diercks from University of Mississippi who discovered these oil and gas plumes, which contained about 90 percent methane gas. The rest of it was other gases and a small amount of oil. These underwater plumes were big: 3 to 5 kilometers wide and 10 to 20 kilometers long. Plus, they moved! They traveled at a speed of about three kilometers a day.
Q. What was the significance of finding them?
A. It added a new and unexpected aspect to the blowout. Till then, the official story was that the oil was coming up from the well to the surface where, presumably, it was evaporating and dispersing - either naturally or through chemicals. The possibility of gas wasn't much discussed. The discovery of the plumes meant a significant aspect of the spill was unrecognized and, to that point, unevaluated.
Q. When did you get to sea?
A. For the second cruise. Late May. The very first thing we did was to locate those plumes. That took two days. They were moving fast. We were chasing an invisible phenomenon that was 1,000 meters below our belts. Not easy to do. Unless you put your instruments down on the right spot, you're not going to find anything.
However, we did find them. And once we did, we analyzed their chemistry. By tracking them back toward the BP well and testing along the way, we showed they had originated there. The closer you got to the leaking well, the stronger the gas concentrations.
Q. How did the government react to your discovery?
A. They said we were - essentially - nuts. The plumes were denied for a long time. We were essentially accused of exaggerating and being bad scientists because we had talked to the press before publishing a paper.
Q. Aside from the plumes, what did your group find?
A. We were able to document the impact of the leak on the seafloor. In the places we sampled, it was devastating. Often you saw this oily mucus, blanketing everything. There are these bacteria in the sea that eat oil. When their oil-laden waste gets heavy, it falls to the floor. And it must have been falling like a blizzard for months, because it covered the sediment.
Typically, the seafloor is teeming with invertebrates sticking out - little animals with tubes, with shells, anything that filter-feeds. Well, the tubes were still there, but the animals were dead. I suspect they were suffocated when the oily waste rained down on them. The things that could run away, the fish, did. Yet even some of the mobile fauna - when we'd find them - were discolored and slow. Usually you poke a crab and it takes off running. These guys would just sort of sit there and look at you like they were dazed and confused.
Q. How would you characterize the seafloor?
A. A graveyard.
Q. In recent weeks, a large number of dead baby porpoises have been washing up along the gulf shoreline. Do you think these deaths are linked to the oil spill?
A. I am not a marine biologist. But if pregnant dolphins were exposed to oil, their embryos may have been harmed. Alternatively, the pregnant females may have eaten fish that contained oil-derived toxins. Or their food stocks may have been diminished by the spill and there may have been malnutrition causing miscarriages. Given the timing of the blowout and these deaths, it seems reasonable to suspect a link.
Q. Have you been to your old study site?
A. We were there in December. It looked very different. We saw a lot of dead animals, not just invertebrates but sea fans and corals. And there were a lot of exposed mounds of ice crystals of gas on the bottom, and there was a lot of carbonate on the bottom as well. And everything was covered with this layer of brownish slime. Everything. It looked like spider webs in an old house - it didn't look normal.
The animals weren't acting normal. Behaviorally, they weren't doing what they should. There was this one rock that had all these crabs on it. The crabs were just reaching into the air, and they had their claws out. I'd never seen that before. These crabs just didn't look healthy. They were black instead of orange; they had barnacles all over their body. You'd poke them and they didn't run away.
Q. Did the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989 give us any information that was helpful?
A. I think we learned a lot. But our memories were short.
There were a lot of things said then - that we were going to develop better technologies for removing oil from the surface. Essentially, when this happened, we were dealing with the same technologies. Nothing changed. It was all the same. So we were really woefully unprepared because we didn't take that lesson seriously. And I hope we take this lesson seriously.
Q. When you read the news reports last past week from Japan, what were your feelings?
A. It's odd that you would ask me this - I've been thinking about it. No one can prevent earthquakes. That's up to Mother Nature.
However, building nuclear power plants on an island adjacent to an active tectonic zone is inherently dangerous. Likewise, deepwater drilling into gas-overcharged sediments is dangerous. For me, both of these disasters are a very loud plea for green energy.
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19) ACTION ALERT: March 23 is National Call-In Day to Demand Malalai Joya Visa
Nearly a week after former Afghan Parliamentarian and acclaimed human rights activist Malalai Joya was denied a U.S. visa, a national network of activists is calling on everyone across the country to demand that the State Department let Ms. Joya in.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
On Wednesday March 23, call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department at 202-647-5291 between 9 am to 5 pm Eastern Standard Time. Press "1" and leave a comment stating that you are outraged at Malalai Joya's exclusion from the U.S. and that you would like the State Department to immediately grant Ms. Joya an emergency appointment and visa at any U.S. Embassy she has applied.
BACKGROUND:
Joya was due to enter the U.S. on March 19th for three weeks of events spanning over a dozen states to promote the paper-back edition of her book A Woman Among Warlords. She was turned down for her visa application on the basis of "living underground" and being "unemployed." Afghan activists who criticize their government are routinely forced to live underground due to the risks to their lives, and the vast majority of Afghan women are unemployed. Ms. Joya has come to the U.S. at least 4 times before since 2006. She was listed last November by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, and this month by the Guardian newspaper as one of the top 100 women activists and campaigners in the world. Joya faces incredible security threats - she has survived at least 4 assassination attempts leading her to live underground.
The reasons for Ms. Joya's exclusion is most likely politically based - her outspoken opposition to the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan now resonates with a majority of Americans and her 2011 tour would have potentially drawn the biggest audiences yet. The ACLU has called the increased phenomenon of denying visas to international activists and intellectuals, as "ideological exclusion." On Friday March 19, nine U.S. representatives and Senators including Jim McDermott, John Kerry, and Bernie Sanders, wrote to the U.S. Embassy urging them to reconsider their decision. To date there has been no official response that we know of.
Currently Ms. Joya is at an undisclosed location. American officials have privately responded that she ought to apply at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and that she would likely be granted a visa from there. However, Ms. Joya faces grave risks to her life in Afghanistan and is unable to move freely and openly there - a fact that U.S. authorities seem ignorant of. Additionally when she was forced out of the Afghan parliament by U.S.-backed warlords in 2007, a ban on her travel from Afghanistan was issued, which is still in effect.
The United States should grant Malalai Joya a visa immediately from any U.S. Embassy.
It is an insult to her and all Afghan women that she has been excluded from attending her speaking events in the U.S. and it is a travesty that Americans are denied the right to hear directly from her about the Afghan war.
Click here to find out what else you can do to help Malalai Joya be allowed into the U.S.: http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1258
Click here for our press release about Malalai Joya's visa denial: http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1255
Check our website www.afghanwomensmission.org for updates and more information.
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20) Rising Dangers
After Sendai
By RICHARD FALK
March 18 - 20, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/falk03182011.html
After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was in the West, especially the United States, a short triumphal moment, crediting American science and military prowess with bringing victory over Japan and the avoidance of what was anticipated at the time to be a long and bloody conquest of the Japanese homeland. This official narrative of the devastating attacks on these Japanese cities has been contested by numerous reputable historians who argued that Japan had conveyed its readiness to surrender well before the bombs had been dropped, that the U.S. Government needed to launch the attacks to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that it had this super-weapon at its disposal, and that the attacks would help establish American supremacy in the Pacific without any need to share power with Moscow.
But whatever historical interpretation is believed, the horror and indecency of the attacks is beyond controversy. This use of atomic bombs against defenseless densely populated cities remains the greatest single act of state terror in human history, and had it been committed by the losers in World War II surely the perpetrators would have been held criminally accountable and the weaponry forever prohibited. But history gives the winners in big wars considerable latitude to shape the future according to their own wishes, sometimes for the better, often for the worse.
Not only were these two cities of little military significance devastated beyond recognition, but additionally, inhabitants in a wide surrounding area were exposed to lethal doses of radioactivity causing for decades death, disease, acute anxiety, and birth defects. Beyond this, it was clear that such a technology would change the face of war and power, and would either be eliminated from the planet or others than the United States would insist on possession of the weaponry, and in fact, the five permanent member of the UN Security Council became the first five states to develop and possess nuclear weapons, and in later years, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have developed nuclear warheads of their own. As well, the technology was constantly improved at great cost, allowing long-distance delivery of nuclear warheads by guided missiles and payloads hundreds times greater than those primitive bombs used against Japan.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were widespread expressions of concern about the future issued by political leaders and an array of moral authority figures. Statesmen in the West talked about the necessity of nuclear disarmament as the only alternative to a future war that would destroy industrial civilization. Scientists and others in society spoke in apocalyptic terms about the future. It was a mood of 'utopia or else,' a sense that unless a new form of governance emerged rapidly there would be no way to avoid a catastrophic future for the human species and for the earth itself.
But what happened? The bellicose realists prevailed, warning of the distrust of 'the other,' insisting that it would be 'better to be dead than red,' and that, as in the past, only a balance of power could prevent war and catastrophe. The new balance of the nuclear age was called 'deterrence,' and it evolved into a dangerous semi-cooperative security posture known as 'mutual assured destruction,' or more sanely described by its acronym, MAD. The main form of learning that took place after the disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to normalize the weaponry, banish the memories, and hope for the best. The same realists, perhaps most prominently, John Mearsheimer, even go so far as to celebrate nuclear weaponry as 'keepers of the peace,' for them the best explanation for why the Soviet Union-United States rivalry did not result in World War III.
Such nuclear complacency was again in evidence when in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a refusal to propose at that time the elimination of nuclear weaponry, and there were reliable reports that the U.S. Government actually used its diplomatic leverage to discourage any Russian disarmament initiatives that might expose the embarrassing extent of this post-deterrence, post-Cold War American attachment to nuclearism. This attachment has persisted, is bipartisan in character, is shared with the leadership and citizenry of the other nuclear weapons states to varying degrees, and is joined to an anti-proliferation regime that hypocritically treats most states (Israel was a notable exception) that aspire to have nuclear weapons of their own as criminal outlaws subject to military intervention.
Here is the lesson that applies to present: the shock of the atomic attacks wears off, is superseded by a restoration of normalcy, which means creating the conditions for repetition at greater magnitudes of death and destruction. Such a pattern is accentuated, as here, if the subject-matter of disaster is clouded by the politics of the day that obscured the gross immorality and criminality of the acts, that ignored the fact that there are governmental forces associated with the military establishment that seek maximal hard power, and that these professional militarists are reinforced by paid cadres of scientists, defense intellectuals, and bureaucrats who build careers around the weaponry, and that this structure is reinforced in various ways by private sector profit-making opportunities. These conditions apply across the board to the business of arms sales.
And then we must take account of the incredible 'Faustian Bargain' sold to the non-nuclear world: give up a nuclear weapons option and in exchange get an unlimited 'pass' to the 'benefits' of nuclear energy, and besides, the nuclear weapons states, winking to one another when negotiating the notorious Nonproliferation Treaty (1963) promised in good faith to pursue nuclear disarmament, and indeed general and complete disarmament. Of course, the bad half of the bargain has been fulfilled, even in the face of the dire experiences of Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), while the good half of the bargain (getting rid of the weaponry) never gave rise to even halfhearted proposals and negotiations (and instead the world settled irresponsibly for managerial fixes from time to time, known as 'arms control' measures that were designed to stabilize the nuclear rivalry of the U.S. and Soviet Union (now Russia). Such a contention is confirmed by the presidential commitment to devote an additional $80 billion for the development of nuclear weapons before the Senate could be persuaded to ratify the New START Treaty in late 2010, the latest arms control ruse that was falsely promoted as a step toward disarmament and denuclearization. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with arms control, it may reduce risks and costs, but it is not disarmament, and should not presented as if it is.
It is with this background in mind that the unfolding Japanese mega-tragedy must be understood and its effects on future policy discussed in a preliminary manner. This extraordinary disaster originated in a natural event beyond human reckoning and control. An earthquake of unimaginable fury, measuring an unprecedented 9.0 on the Richter Scale, unleashing a deadly tsunami that reached a height of 30 feet, and swept inland in the Sendai area of northern Japan to an incredible distance up to 6 kilometers. It is still too early to count the dead, the injured, the property damage, and the overall human costs, but we know enough by now to realize that the impact is colossal, that this is a terrible happening that will be permanently seared into the collective imagination of humanity, perhaps the more so, because it is the most visually recorded epic occurrence in all of history, with real time video recordings of its catastrophic 'moments of truth.'
But this natural disaster that has been responsible for massive human suffering has been compounded by its nuclear dimension, the full measure of which remains uncertain at this point, although generating a deepening foreboding that is perhaps magnified by calming reassurance by the corporate managers of nuclear power in Japan, as well as by political leaders, including the Naoto Kan who understandably wants to avoid causing the Japanese public to shift from its current posture of traumatized witnessing to one of outright panic. There is also a lack of credibility based, especially, on a long record of false reassurances and cover ups by the Japanese nuclear industry, hiding and minimizing the effects of a 2007 earthquake in Japan, and actually lying about the extent of damage to a reactor at that time and on other occasions.
What we need to understand is that the vulnerabilities of modern industrial society accentuate vulnerabilities that arise from extreme events in nature. There is no doubt that the huge earthquake/tsunami constellation of forces was responsible for great damage and societal distress, but its overall impact has been geometrically increased by this buying into the Faustian Bargain of nuclear energy, whose risks, if objectively assessed, were widely known for many years. It is the greedy profit-seekers, who minimize these risks, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or Fukushima or on Wall Street, and then scurry madly at the time of disaster to shift responsibilities to the victims that make me tremble as I contemplate the human future. These predatory forces are made more formidable because they have cajoled most politicians into complicity and have many corporatized allies in the media that overwhelm the publics of the world with steady doses of misinformation.
The reality of current nuclear dangers in Japan are far stronger than these words of reassurance that claim the risks to health are minimal because the radioactivity are being contained to avoid dangerous levels of contamination. A more trustworthy measure of the perceived rising dangers can be gathered from the continual official expansions of the evacuation zone around the Dai-ichi reactors from 3 km to 10 km, and more recently to 18 km, coupled with the instructions to everyone caught in the region to stay indoors indefinitely, with windows and doors sealed. We can hope and pray that the four explosions that have so far taken place in the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex of reactors will not lead to further explosions and a full meltdown in one or more of the reactors. Even without a meltdown the near certain venting of highly toxic radioactive steam to prevent unmanageable pressure from building up due to the boiling water in the reactor cores and spent fuel rods is likely to spread risks and bad effects. It is a policy dilemma that has assumed the form of a living nightmare: either allow the heat to rise and confront the high probability of reactor meltdowns or vent the steam and subject large numbers of persons in the vicinity and beyond to radioactivity, especially should the wind shift southwards carrying the steam toward Tokyo or westward toward northern Japan or Korea.
We know that throughout Asia alone some 3,000 new reactors are either being built or have been planned and approved. We know that nuclear power has been touted in the last several years as a major source of energy to deal with future energy requirements, a way of overcoming the challenge of 'peak oil' and of combating global warming by some decrease in carbon emissions. We know that the nuclear industry will contend that it knows how to build safe reactors in the future that will withstand even such 'impossible' events that have wrought such havoc in the Sendai region of Japan, while at the same time lobbying for insurance schemes to avoid such risks. And we know that governments will be under great pressure to renew the Faustian Bargain despite what should have been clear from the moment the bombs fell in 1945: This technology is far too unforgiving and lethal to be managed safely over time by human institutions, even if they were operated responsibly, which they are not. It is folly to persist, but it is foolhardy to expect the elites of the world to change course, despite this dramatic delivery of vivid reminders of human fallibility and culpability. We cannot hope to control the savageries of nature, although even these are being intensified by our refusal to take responsible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but we can, if the will existed, learn to live within prudent limits even if this comes to mean a less materially abundant and an altered life style. The failure to take seriously the precautionary principle as a guide to social planning is a gathering dark cloud menacing all of our futures.
Let us fervently hope that this Sendai disaster will not take further turns for the worse, but that the warnings already embedded in such happenings, will awaken enough people to the dangers on this path of hyper-modernity so that a politics of limits can arise to challenge the prevailing politics of limitless growth. Such a challenge must include the repudiation of a neoliberal worldview, insisting without compromise on an economics based on needs and people rather than on profit margins and capital efficiency. Advocacy of such a course is admittedly a long shot, but so is the deadly utopian realism of staying on the nuclear course, whether it be with weapons or reactors. This is what Sendai should teach all of us!
Richard Falk is a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer, and appointee to two United Nations positions on the occupied Palestinian territories.
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21) Extreme Exposure
The Danger of Spent Nuclear Fuel
By ROBERT ALVAREZ
March 21, 2011
http://counterpunch.org/alvarez03212011.html
The spent fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex are exposed to the open sky and might be draining. The radioactive dose rates coming off the pools appear to be life-threatening. Lead-shielded helicopters trying to dump water over the pools/reactors could not get close enough to make much difference because of the dangerous levels of radiation.
If the spent fuel is exposed, the zirconium cladding encasi ng the spent fuel can catch fire releasing potentially catastrophic amounts of radiation, particularly cesium-137 (Here's an article I wrote in January 2002 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about spent fuel pool dangers.)
In October 2002, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, serving at that time as her state's attorney general, organized a group letter to Congress signed by her and 26 of her counterparts across the nation. In it, they requested greater safeguards for reactor spent-fuel pools. The letter urged "enhanced protections for one of the most vulnerable components of a nuclear power plant its spent fuel pools." It was met with silence.
In January 2003, my colleagues and I warned that a drained spent fuel pool in the U.S. could lead to a catastrophic fire that would result in long-term land contamination substantially worse than what the Chernobyl accident unleashed. An area around the Chernobyl site roughly half the size of New Jersey continues to be considered uninhabitable.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear energy industry strongly disagreed. Congress then asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to referee this dispute.
In 2004, after the NRC tried unsuccessfully to suppress its report, the NAS panel agreed with our findings. The Academy panel stated that a "partially or completely drained pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment."
Over the past 15 years, NRC has become too co-dependent on the industry it regulates. This has a lot to do with Congress, the nuclear industry lobby and its large amounts of money, which successfully rolled back the post Three Mile Island regulatory reforms of the early 19080s.. NRC is now much more dependent on industry self-reporting, much like what happened with the SEC and the banking industry before the economic collapse.
U.S. reactors are each holding at least four times as much spent fuel as the individual pools at the wrecked Daiichi nuclear complex in Fukushima. According to the Energy Department, about 63,000 metric tons of spent fuel has been generated as of this year, containing approximately 12.4 billion curies. These pools contain some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet. Merely 14 percent of U.S. spent fuel is in dry storage.
At this stage it's critical that:
* The NRC hold off on renewing operating licenses for nuclear reactors, given our newfound certainty that many sites in earthquake zones could experience greater destruction than previously assumed.
* The NRC promptly require reactor owners to end the dense compaction of spent fuel, and ensure that at least 75 percent of the spent fuel in pools operating above their capacity be removed and placed into dry, hardened storage containers on site, which are more likely to withstand earthquakes.
In our 2003 study, we estimated that it would take about 10 years to do this with existing technology, at an expense of $3.5 to $7 billion.
Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary from 1993 to 1999. www.ips-dc.org
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22) Safeguarding Spent Fuel Pools in the United States
A drained spent fuel pool in the U.S. could lead to a catastrophic fire that would result in long-term land contamination substantially worse than what the Chernobyl accident unleashed.
by Robert Alvarez
Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by Institute for Policy Studies
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/21-2
As this photograph shows, the spent fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex are exposed to the open sky and might be draining. The radioactive dose rates coming off the pools appear to be life-threatening. Lead-shielded helicopters trying to dump water over the pools/reactors could not get close enough to make much difference because of the dangerous levels of radiation.
If the spent fuel is exposed, the zirconium cladding encasing the spent fuel can catch fire - releasing potentially catastrophic amounts of radiation, particularly cesium-137. Here's an article I wrote in January 2002 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about spent fuel pool dangers.
In October 2002, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire - serving at that time as her state's attorney general-organized a group letter to Congress signed by her and 26 of her counterparts across the nation. In it, they requested greater safeguards for reactor spent-fuel pools. The letter urged "enhanced protections for one of the most vulnerable components of a nuclear power plant - its spent fuel pools." It was met with silence.
In January 2003, my colleagues and I warned that a drained spent fuel pool in the U.S. could lead to a catastrophic fire that would result in long-term land contamination substantially worse than what the Chernobyl accident unleashed. An area around the Chernobyl site roughly half the size of New Jersey continues to be considered uninhabitable.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear energy industry strongly disagreed. Congress then asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to referee this dispute.
In 2004, after the NRC tried unsuccessfully to suppress its report, the NAS panel agreed with our findings. The Academy panel stated that a "partially or completely drained pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment."
U.S. reactors are each holding at least four times as much spent fuel as the individual pools at the wrecked Daiichi nuclear complex in Fukushima. According to the Energy Department, about 63,000 metric tons of spent fuel has been generated as of this year, containing approximately 12.4 billion curies. These pools contain some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet. Merely 14 percent of U.S. spent fuel is in dry storage.
At this stage it's critical that:
* The NRC hold off on renewing operating licenses for nuclear reactors, given our newfound certainty that many sites in earthquake zones could experience greater destruction than previously assumed.
* The NRC promptly require reactor owners to end the dense compaction of spent fuel, and ensure that at least 75 percent of the spent fuel in pools operating above their capacity be removed and placed into dry, hardened storage containers on site, which are more likely to withstand earthquakes.
In our 2003 study, we estimated that it would take about 10 years to do this with existing technology, at an expense of $3.5 to $7 billion.
(c) 2011 Institute for Policy Studies
Robert Alvarez
Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999.
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23) Shell moves closer on new drilling plans for Gulf
Associated Press
March 21, 2011 4:54 PM ET
http://www.kalb.com/global/story.asp?s=14292516
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Federal regulators have put oil giant Shell one step closer to final approval to drill three new exploratory deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the project 130 miles off the Louisiana coast meets strict safety and environmental requirements.
Shell Offshore Inc., a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, proposes to drill three exploratory wells in roughly 2,950 feet of water.
What was announced Monday was an intermediate step and not final approval to drill. A drilling permit will be required for that.
A moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf imposed after last year's BP oil spill was lifted Oct. 12, but the government has only recently begun issuing permits again for previously suspended activities.
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24) U.S./UN/NATO Hands Off Libya!
Stop the Bombing!
NO to "No fly zones!"
Self-determination for the people of Libya!
Emergency demonstration, Wednesday March 23
Federal Bldg., 7th and Mission 5:00 pm
****** Please circulate widely ******
Two statements on Libya issued by National UNAC
Protest demonstrations in cities around the world to demand an immediate end to the U.S./UN/NATO war against Libya have been called by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) and other coalitions. Northern California UNAC urges everyone to attend the emergency demonstration initiated by the ANSWER Coalition on Wednesday, March 23 at 5:00 pm at the new Federal Building, 7th Street and Mission in San Francisco.
Save the Date!!!
All Out Against U.S. Wars Abroad and at Home!
April 10, Dolores Park, 18th and Dolores, SF
Assemble: 11 am. Rally: 12 Noon March: 1:30 pm
(See pdf flyer below.)
Two statements on Libya issued by National UNAC
Issued Thursday evening, March 17, 2011
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNACpeace.org) calls for emergency day-after demonstrations in every location in the US tomorrow, Friday, March 18th, and Saturday, March 19, to protest the UN Security Council vote (10 for and 0 against, 6 abstentions) authorizing military action against Libya.
France has indicated it is ready to launch air strikes within hours, and all day media reports have said the US and Britain as well as other powers could strike as soon.
Obama has made clear his strategy now is not primarily imposition of a no fly zone but rather air strikes on Libyan government forces and personnel, which will inevitably claim many civilian casualties.
The utter hypocrisy and cynicism of this declaration of war is best seen by the lack of any response to the U.S.-equipped Saudi attack on Bahrain and the brutal repression of the unarmed movement that is underway now.
It is important to note that the U.S. Government stopped all action, even a UN resolution, against the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2008 or the bombardment and attempted invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
Therefore, we are sure that the US-promoted UN Security Council resolution will not be used to defend the movement for democracy and dignity in the Arab world, but to establish a military presence antagonistic to genuine self-determination in all the nations in which the masses are mobilizing.
UNAC says NO air strikes!
NO no-fly zone!
NO imperialist military intervention of any kind against Libya!
US/UN/NATO hands off Libya and Bahrain!
Forward to building massive antiwar demonstrations on April 9 &10.
UNAC's original (February 24, 2011) statement on U.S. threat to bomb Libya
United National Antiwar Committee, UNACpeace.org Statement on Libya
At great risks to their lives, activists organizing to oppose oppressive, dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have inspired us by their courage and determination. We ruefully acknowledge past and continuing U.S. support for dictatorships and military rule in the region. We recognize that the U.S. has been directly involved in supplying weapons and other forms of support to regimes that have committed atrocious human rights abuses against civilians.
Conscious of our responsibility to stop the United States from further manipulations that would interfere with movements on behalf of true democratic developments in other countries, UNAC calls for an immediate halt to U.S. intervention in regions and countries where mass mobilizations are challenging oppressive regimes.
We have seen the horrific consequences of U.S./UN imposed economic sanctions against Iraq, as well as the consequences of U.S./UN operation of "no-fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq, prior to the U.S. Shock and Awe attacks and invasion.
We therefore oppose any form of U.S. military or economic intervention in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and other countries where movements are rising in opposition to dictatorships and military rule.
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