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Note: CHANGE OF TIME & VENUES EVENING OF APRIL 4th 'WE ARE ONE'! Changes forwarded by Connie Ford Secretary-Treasurer OPEIU Local 3 415 647-7776
'WE ARE ONE' RALLY
MONDAY APRIL 4th
LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO
4:45pm~
Meet at 555 California
Bank of America Building
6:00pm~
Rally at Federal Reserve Building route map will be forwarded MONDAY 3/28/11
Speakers include:
Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO
Eva Paterson
with the Equal Justice Society and the California Civil Rights Coalition
For additional information or questions, please contact Amber Parrish Baur at (415) 440-4809 x 16.
SUPPORTED BY:
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL
for more information call 415.440.4809 x 16
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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
Resolution passed by the San Francisco Labor Council in support of April 10:
Rally and March: The Wars Against Working People at Home and Abroad April 10th
Whereas the wealthy and corporations now in control of our country continue to take more, while we get less, continue to destroy our environment, exploit our labor and reduce our services for ever-increasing profits, using half of our Federal tax dollars for military purposes, and our youth, under an economic draft, as cannon fodder to invade and occupy other countries, and
Whereas, the price of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya is creating a permanent war economy draining the US of trillions of dollars that could be used for jobs, education, and social services, draining funds at the state and local level, while providing a convenient excuse for draconian cuts in services and extreme austerity measures resulting in the decimation of collective bargaining agreements now being carried out in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and other states.
Therefore be it resolved that the San Francisco Labor Council join the Bay Area Chapter of US Labor Against War, and hundreds of social justice organizations, nation-wide, calling for an immediate end to these wars, and endorsing the bi-coastal marches and rallies occurring on April 9th in New York City and April 10th in San Francisco, sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee.
Submitted by Tom Lacey, OPEIU, Local 3, Alan Benjamin, OPEIU, Local 3, Ann Robertson, California Faculty Association, Tom Edminster, UESF, Local 61*, David Welsh, NALC, Local 214, Kathy Lipscomb, Retired, SEIU, Rodger Scott, AFT, Local 2121, Shane Hoff, UTU, Local 1741*
* for identification purposes only
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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4/2 SF Rally to Stop ARBORETUM FEE
Rally to Stop
ARBORETUM FEE
Saturday April 2nd, 2011
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Strybing Arboretum Main Gate
(9TH AVE & LINCOLN WAY)
Save this Public Garden from
Permanent Fees, Gates and ID Checks
On April 6, 2011, the Budget Committee of the Board of Supervisors will be making
a crucial decision on the future of the Arboretum non-resident fee,
either free admissions for all or a permanent non-resident fee.
We ask you to SUPPORT ordinance 110113, sponsored by Supervisor Avalos, Mirkarimi, Mar, Kim and Campos who seek to use Prop N tax revenues as a sustainable solution to support a free public garden and end the non-resident fee.
We ask you to OPPOSE ordinance 110225 sponsored by Mayor Lee for a permanent fee.
After 7 months the fee has been a failure. Only $54,800 out of a promised $250,000 has been collected. Moreover, attendance, based on Rec & Park figures, has declined sharply, with
non-resident visitors down 70% and resident visitors down 36% from pre-fee estimates.
WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO:
(1) Forward this electronic flyer to your members and friends.
(2) Go to our WEBSITE, and call and send letters to the supervisors listed ;
(3) Attend the April 6 Budget Committee hearing on the two fee ordinances.
SPEAKERS
QUINTIN MECKE, ASSY. AMMIANO's STAFF
SUPERVISOR ROSS MIRKARIMI
SF LABOR COUNCIL VICE PRESIDENT CONNY FORD
KEEP ARBORETUM FREE .ORG
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First Organizing Meeting for May 1st Demonstration
Call out to individuals and groups to participate in organizing for International Workers' Day 2011
Saturday, April 2, 1-3pm
Redstone Building
2940 16th St. (between Mission and South Van Ness Sts.), San Francisco
Across the country, working people- employed and unemployed- are facing vicious assaults by the corporate rulers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. Immigrant workers-documented and undocumented- are facing a rise in racism and anti-immigrant hatred carried out by these same politicians and their discriminatory laws. But all working people are standing up to say, "Enough is Enough!" The workers can show the world, just as in Egypt, that unity is the force that can change history.
Join community activist, immigrant rights groups, labor groups, and social-justice groups to organize for May 1st 2011- International Workers' Day
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, April 3, 2011, 1:00 P.M.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street
(Between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
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Note: CHANGE OF TIME & VENUES EVENING OF APRIL 4th 'WE ARE ONE'! Changes forwarded by Connie Ford Secretary-Treasurer OPEIU Local 3 415 647-7776
'WE ARE ONE' RALLY
MONDAY APRIL 4th
LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO
4:45pm~
Meet at 555 California
Bank of America Building
6:00pm~
Rally at Federal Reserve Building route map will be forwarded MONDAY 3/28/11
Speakers include:
Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO
Eva Paterson
with the Equal Justice Society and the California Civil Rights Coalition
For additional information or questions, please contact Amber Parrish Baur at (415) 440-4809 x 16.
SUPPORTED BY:
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL
for more information call 415.440.4809 x 16
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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ENDING THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
An Evening with MALALAI JOYA
When: Saturday April 9th, 2011
6-7 pm reception/light food
7-9 pm program
Where: Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist
corner of 15th and Julian (btw Mission & Valencia) San Francisco
with music by Kaylah Marin
$10-25 (no one turned away)
wheelchair accessible (wheelchair entrance on 15th Street)
Malalai Joya has been called the "bravest woman in Afghanistan." She was the youngest member elected to the Afghan Parliament but was suspended for denouncing the warlords and the US/NATO war and occupation. She continues to speak out despite death threats and assassination attempts.
Join us as she talks about the situation in Afghanistan and why it's essential that US/NATO troops leave immediately.
Her book, "A Woman Among Warlords," with a new afterward about the war under Obama, is now in paperback and will be available for purchase.
For more information: or if you want to endorse: sfjoya@gmail.com
Endorsed by (partial list): American Friends Service Comm • ANSWER/SF • Arab Resource Organizing Center • BAYAN • Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace • Bay Area Women in Black • Black Alliance for Just Immigration • Black Women Stirring the Waters • Buddhist Peace Fellowship • California Women's Agenda • Catalyst Project • Code Pink/Women for Peace • Courage to Resist • Eastside Arts Alliance • Ecumenical Peace Institute • Freedom Archives • Global Exchange • Grandmothers Against the War • Haiti Action Committee • International Action Center • International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network • International Socialist Organization • KPFA Women's Magazine •LAGAI • Middle East Children's Alliance • National Radio Project/ Making Contact • Priority Africa Network • Queers Undermining Israeli Terror • Radical Women • San Francisco Women In Black • Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF • UNAC • War Resisters League/West • Women for Genuine Security • WILPF/ Berkeley /East Bay • WILPF/ Santa Cruz) • Veterans For Peace Chapter 69
•Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SFUNAC • War Resisters League/West • Women for Genuine Security • WILPF/ Berkeley /East Bay • WILPF/ Santa Cruz) • Veterans For Peace Chapter 69
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Atomic Mom at the Los Angeles Women's International Film Festival
Atomic Mom, a feature length documentary by M.T. Silvia, will screen on Saturday, April 9th @ 7:30pm at the Roxie Theater at 3117 16th Street San Francisco, CA 94103 in the San Francisco International Women's Film Festival.
Media Contact:
M.T. Silvia
mtsilvia@atomicmom.org
510-541-0413
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -
Atomic Mom weaves an intimate portrait of a complex mother-daughter relationship within an obscure - but important - moment in American history.
As the only female scientist present during atomic detonations in the Nevada desert, Pauline Silvia, the filmmaker's mother, undergoes a crisis of conscience. After a long silence and prompted by her daughter, she finally reveals grim secrets of working in the U.S. atomic testing program.
In our present moment of Wikileaks, Pauline is a similar whistle-blower having been cowed by the silencing machine of the US military for decades. In an attempt to reconcile with her own mother's past, her daughter, filmmaker M.T. Silvia, meets Emiko Okada, a Hiroshima survivor trying to reconcile her own history in Japan. The film follows these survivors, each on a different end of atomic warfare, as they "meet" through the filmmaking process, and as they, with startling honestly, attempt to understand the other.
With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the footage of the devastation is hauntingly familiar to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Japan experiences its second nuclear crisis, Atomic Mom illustrates how we are all downwind of this story.
Atomic Mom invites viewers to confront American nuclear history in a completely new way and will inspire dialogue about human rights, personal responsibility, and the possibility - and hope - of peace.
More info at http://www.atomicmom.org
M.T. Silvia is an independent filmmaker. Her first documentary Picardy Drive (2002, Documentary, 57min) aired on KQED's ImageMaker series, FreeSpeechTV and airs yearly during the holidays on Oakland's KTOP. She has worked professionally in the film industry for over twenty years at both Skywalker Sound and Pixar Animation Studios. Among many mainstream film and CD credits, she has also worked on several independent films.
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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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Please announce, forward, share, come
For the Beauty of the Earth
Good Friday, Earth Day & the Bomb
The Cross in the Midst of Creation
Rev. Sharon Delgado, preaching
Liturgical dance led by Carla DeSolaa
April 22, 6:45 a.m.
Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory
Vasco Road & Patterson Pass Road, Livermore
Livermore Lab was founded to develop the hydrogen bomb, and new weapons of mass destruction are still designed there. For more than 25 years, people of faith and others concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons have gathered on Good Friday outside the Livermore Laboratory.
This year Good Friday and Earth Day coincide. We will hear from Sharon Delgado, a longtime advocate for peace, justice and the environment, a United Methodist clergywoman, founder of interfaith Earth Justice Ministries, and author of Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization.
We will be led in dance by Carla DeSola a nationally recognized teacher of liturgical dance, presently teaching at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and through the Center for the Arts, Religion & Education.
After the service we will walk about one-half mile to the main gate, where there will be opportunity for nonviolent witness. Please bring banners, puppets and other visuals for the walk to the gate.
We invite your participation in this event, your financial support, and, if available, your organization's co-sponsorship
Information, downloadable flyer etc at http://www.epicalc.org/ email to epicalc@lmi.net
Surface mail to EPI PO Box 9334, Berkeley, CA 94702
Write or email us if you can help or want to participate in some way. Please spread the word.
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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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BOB MARLEY - WAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zaNwyhXn0&playnext=1&list=PLA467527F8DD7DE1F
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Frederick Alexander Meade on The Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vqzfEYo6Lo
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Chernobyl 25 years on -- The Big Cover-Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9URUQvGE9g&feature=player_embedded
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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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REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ALERT:
San Francisco Health Center/PLANNED PARENTHOOD - San Francisco, CA
1650 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
IS BEING PICKETED DAILY BY RIGHT TO LIFE DEMONSTRATORS CARRYING GIANT SIGNS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CLINIC INTIMIDATING PATIENTS!
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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) Uranium Processor Still Optimistic About Nuclear Industry
By IAN AUSTEN
March 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/energy-environment/26uranium.html?ref=business
2) Gold Mines, a City's Pride, Leave Toxic Legacy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
"When it rains in the shantytown of Tudor Shaft, the streets pool with orange water that smells like vinegar. Experts say the water contains radioactive minerals and has killed all aquatic life in a nearby river."
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/business/AP-AF-South-Africa-Minings-Toxic-Legacy.html?src=busln
3) U.S Sets Up Special Prisons For Muslim/Arab Prisoners
By Sherwood Ross
March 26, 2011
Countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/ross270311.htm
4) Rich District, Poor District
New York Times Editorial
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/opinion/27sun1.html?hp
5) Unrest in Syria and Jordan Poses New Test for U.S. Policy
By MARK LANDLER
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/middleeast/27diplomacy.html?hp
6) Higher Levels of Radiation Found at Japan Reactor Plant
By DAVID JOLLY, HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/world/asia/28japan.html?hp
7) Japanese Rules for Nuclear Plants Relied on Old Science
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and JAMES GLANZ
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/asia/27nuke.html?ref=world
8) Huge Rally in London Protests Budget Cuts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/world/europe/AP-EU-Britain-Protest.html?ref=world
9) F.B.I. Casts Wide Net Under Relaxed Rules for Terror Inquiries, Data Show
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27fbi.html?ref=us
10) It's Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know
By NOAM COHEN
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?ref=business
11) Thousands March Streets of LA for Organized Labor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/27/business/AP-US-LA-Labor-Rally.html?src=busln
12) More Obstacles Impede Crews in Japan Nuke Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/business/AP-AS-Japan-Earthquake.html?src=busln
13) Japan Fears Nuclear Reactor Is Leaking Contaminated Water
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29japan.html?hp
14) Syrian Forces Confront Protesters, Witnesses Say
By REUTERS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/03/28/world/middleeast/international-us-syria.html?hp
15) Afghan Elite Borrowed Freely From Kabul Bank
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29kabulbank.html?hp
16) N.Y. Budget Deal Cuts Aid to Schools and Health Care
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and THOMAS KAPLAN
"...the budget did not include an extension of a temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy New Yorkers....Mr. Cuomo persuaded legislative leaders to agree to a year-to-year cut of more than $2 billion in spending on healthcare and education, historically the two largest drivers of New York's budget."
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/nyregion/28budget.html?hp
17) U.S. Consumer Spending Rose 0.7% in February
"Consumer spending rose for an eighth straight month in February as households tapped savings to cover higher food and energy prices."
By REUTERS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/economy/29econ.html?ref=business
18) Hundreds of thousands protest against nuclear energy across Germany
Author: Nicole Goebel (dpa, dapd, AFP, epd)
Editor: Kyle James
Nuclear Power
March 26, 2011
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14945340,00.html
19) At U.S. Nuclear Sites, Preparing for the Unlikely
By JOHN M. BRODER, MATTHEW L. WALD and TOM ZELLER Jr.
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/29threat.html?hp
20) Five US peace demonstrators sentenced to prison
Associated Press
March 28, 2011
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20110328/55c4b111-c81d-463e-b9f8-bff54ee680bc
21) The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
22) U.S. Gives Its Air Power Expansive Role in Libya
By ERIC SCHMITT
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29military.html?hp
23) Japan Tries to Stem Leak of Radioactive Water
By HIROKO TABUCHI
March 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/asia/30japan.html?hp
24) Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags
[This is legal grand theft on a massive scale....bw]
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and CATHERINE RAMPELL
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/29shrink.html?hp
25) Marine Life Faces Threat From Runoff
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and WILLIAM J. BROAD
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29safety.html?ref=world
26) Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks
By MICHAEL COOPER
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/politics/29michigan.html?ref=us
27) Justices Deny New Appeal by Convict in Georgia
By ADAM LIPTAK
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29teacher.html?ref=us
28) Maine: Labor Mural Is Moved to Undisclosed Location
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29brfs-LABORMURALIS_BRF.html?ref=us
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1) Uranium Processor Still Optimistic About Nuclear Industry
By IAN AUSTEN
March 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/energy-environment/26uranium.html?ref=business
OTTAWA - On the same day earlier this month that the Canadian company Cameco, a global leader in uranium mining and processing, gathered its executives from around the world for a strategic planning session, news broke of Japan's staggering earthquake.
The accompanying tsunami, they learned, had swamped a Cameco customer: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Suddenly, this strategy meeting would be anything but routine.
"We had kind of a fortuitous convergence," said Gerald W. Grandey, the chief executive of Cameco, which held the meeting near its headquarters in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Fortuitous, but not fortunate - for Cameco or the rest of the uranium industry, whose products fuel the world's nuclear power plants.
Over the last five years, uranium miners and processors - and their stock prices - have generally benefited from the assumption that rising energy demand in developing countries, and global concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, were creating a new appreciation for nuclear power industry.
Shares of Cameco had reached a recent high of $43.14 in mid-February, reflecting a steady rise from a low of $16 in October 2008. But since the tsunami, shares of Cameco have closed as low as $30.82, and closed Friday at $31.17.
Unusually rich ore deposits, particularly at Cameco's main deep-rock mine in northern Saskatchewan, help make it a low-cost producer. Uranium mining requires costly robotic systems and other measures to protect workers and the environment from radiation.
Cameco produces about 16 percent of the world's uranium supply and dominates the market, along with Areva, a French company with 17 percent of production, and the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, which also holds a 16 percent share. But compared with those more diversified companies, Cameco is essentially a pure-play uranium producer.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns that power plant, is not only a buyer of nuclear fuel from Cameco, among other suppliers. Tepco, as it is known, also holds a small stake in a Canadian mine that Cameco plans to open in 2013 as part of its goal to double production by 2018, which would make it the global leader in uranium.
Right now, most of the rest of the world is pausing to assess the future of its nuclear power programs. In Germany, a market for Cameco, Chancellor Angela Merkel has temporarily shut down seven nuclear plants and suspended a program for extending the life of aging reactors. And Italy, has suspended a plan to resume its nuclear power program, which it had stopped after the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl.
But for all that, Mr. Grandey said this week that he was still optimistic about the long-term future of nuclear power. He says he thinks the nuclear renaissance is only taking a temporary pause.
"Even with Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and now Fukushima, nuclear still has an impeccable safety record," Mr. Grandey said in an interview. "There will be in time - I'm looking five, seven years - a rapid acceleration of nuclear building putting us back on track to where we would have been, absent Fukushima."
Not everyone, of course, shares Mr. Grandey's optimism, or his assessment of the industry's safety record. But there is no question that Cameco's future depends largely on the world's appetite for processed uranium after Fukushima.
Even if there is a global pullback on developing new power plants, Cameco has something of a cushion with its current customers. The company generally has multiyear contracts with utilities that require them to pay for fuel even if they do not accept delivery. (The company has suspended some contract terms for Tokyo Electric and another Japanese utility with reactors in the heavily damaged north, Tohoku Electric Power. Long-term Japan accounts for about 18 to 20 percent of Cameco's contracted sales.)
Farther out, Mr. Grandey bases his optimism on the inexorable rise in energy demand by developing economies like China and India, which have both indicated that they do not plan to curtail their ambitious rollout of new nuclear plants though they will proceed with a greater sense of caution. Fossil fuels, whether for environmental issues, supply constraints or price uncertainties, simply cannot meet the world's needs, he said.
"It will take us six months a year to digest and learn the lessons of Fukushima," he said. "After we digest the lessons learned, I think we'll get back on the path of nuclear construction."
Joshua M. Pearce, a professor of mechanical and engineering at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, said that such analysis omitted an important factor.
"This is not the 1950s when there was just nuclear and fossil fuels," he said, noting that alternative energy sources like solar and wind had become increasingly viable.
Professor Pearce was a co-author of a recent academic paper about indirect subsidies to nuclear power plants. He estimates that insurance liability caps granted to the American nuclear power industry, for example, produce an annual indirect subsidy of $33 million for every reactor in the United States.
He said that the liability costs to the Japanese government arising from Fukushima Daiichi, while still impossible to estimate, were presumably large, and might make other governments see that offering subsidies to renewable energy sources might be a comparative bargain.
Tony Ward, who heads Ernst & Young's power and utility practice in London, agrees that the current crisis will focus new attention on wind and solar power, particularly in China, which has already heavily invested in renewable energy technologies.
But Mr. Ward points to a significant limit to renewable energy as an alternative to nuclear. "The supply chain is not sufficiently deep to provide the sheer scale of capacity that is sufficient," he said.
For Mr. Ward, one potential long-term change for Cameco stemming from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is the issue of spent fuel storage - which has been a big source of the trouble at that plant. He expects governments to reassess the economics of reprocessing nuclear waste into new fuel rather than allowing its continued storage.
But Cameco's Mr. Grandey, voicing optimism, insists that the nuclear industry's image will suffer no long-term harm.
"The numbers that are questioning safety have gone up but that's inevitable," Mr. Grandy said. "But it certainly can't be described as a mass change in attitude toward nuclear."
He added: "I think the public also understands that these are 35- and 40-year-old plants. So like airplanes that occasionally fall out of the sky, or like other industrial activities that experience disasters, every industry learns and improves."
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2) Gold Mines, a City's Pride, Leave Toxic Legacy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
"When it rains in the shantytown of Tudor Shaft, the streets pool with orange water that smells like vinegar. Experts say the water contains radioactive minerals and has killed all aquatic life in a nearby river."
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/business/AP-AF-South-Africa-Minings-Toxic-Legacy.html?src=busln
RANDFONTEIN, South Africa (AP) - When it rains in the shantytown of Tudor Shaft, the streets pool with orange water that smells like vinegar. Experts say the water contains radioactive minerals and has killed all aquatic life in a nearby river.
Tudor Shaft takes its name, and its troubles, from an abandoned gold mine.
It's just a fraction of the toxic but long-overlooked legacy of South Africa's most famous industry. Mining accounts for 17 percent of everything South Africa produces, and the country is the world's fourth biggest exporter, sitting on a mother lode that runs for miles from Johannesburg into the countryside.
Social campaigners, preoccupied first with overthrowing apartheid and then with raising living standards for a badly neglected black majority, are now waking up to the environmental cause. The effects of mining are the focus of parliamentary debate and newspaper stories. But no one is yet taking responsibility or funding a cleanup that would probably put a dent in profits.
Johannesburg literally sits on a gold mine. Flat-topped heaps of mined earth are backdrops to skyscrapers and bridges. FNB Stadium, the main arena in last year's World Cup soccer tournament, sits at the foot of a mine dump. Johannesburg's amusement park is called Gold Reef City and features a ride that plunges into a mine shaft.
The city of 3.2 million grew out of the gold bonanza discovered in the early 1900s. Nowadays, whenever a mining company removes one of the 270 dumps around Johannesburg to reprocess the waste, heritage advocates complain that the city is losing a piece of its patrimony.
The worst environmental effects are felt in places like Tudor Shaft, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the city. Here, Patrick Mkoyo's children run barefoot, their feet tinted orange from contaminated sand. He says they sometimes come home with rashes or breathing difficulties.
"They are not OK here, but I don't have a choice; I have no other place to stay," says Mkoyo, 35, as he stirs a family lunch of cornmeal porridge in his immaculately kept shack.
The doctors tell him they don't know what is causing the children's medical problems. But Chris Busby, a professor from Northern Ireland's University of Ulster, thinks he has the likely answer.
In December he tested the soil around Mkoyo's shack and found it contained at least 32 times the amount of radioactivity allowed by government regulators. Busby prepared the report for the Federation for Sustainable Environment, a private Johannesburg group working to bring the toxic water issue to public attention.
According to Terence McCarthy, a minerals professor at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, radioactivity comes from uranium traces in mined rock which lies in dumps until rain flushes it into the ground and river systems.
Acidic water dissolves and liquefies metals in the mining rock, including uranium, says Anthony Turton, a professor of environmental management at University of the Free State. Liquefied uranium, toxic and radioactive, flows out of the mines, he says.
The water can be so acidic that it eliminates river wildlife, Turton says.
The problem hasn't yet reached Johannesburg itself, but one mining basin in the city has already overflowed, and one of the next to overflow is under the city center, experts say.
Aside from Tudor Shaft, other parts of the city's outskirts are feeling the damage of toxic mine water, entering rivers and communities at an increasing rate with heavy rain in recent months, says Mariette Liefferink, chief executive of the Federation for Sustainable Environment, a private group. Yellow-tinted grass, orange mud and lifeless rivers plague sections of western Johannesburg, as well as Soweto, one of South Africa's largest townships.
No studies have been done on how exposure to the water affects health, Liefferink says, but scientific reports have documented its destructive effects on the ecosystem, soil and water.
Peter Cronshaw, a mineral economics consultant for Tegritas Financial Services, said the cost of a cleanup would accelerate South Africa's already declining mining industry, particularly for smaller companies, but it wouldn't affect the global gold industry. The country's diminishing supply of gold means an increasing number of derelict mines.
South Africa produced 206 of the 2,652 metric tons of gold mined globally in 2010, says Philip Newman, the research director of London-based GFMS Ltd., which researches precious metals. Its production ranks fourth behind China, Australia and the U.S.
While abandoned mines everywhere produce toxic runoff, the problem is most threatening in South Africa, Turton says. Johannesburg, unlike most mining cities, is densely populated and an economic hub. On top of that, Turton says, the mining industry in South Africa has gone largely unregulated.
The apartheid rulers relied on the steady stream of income from booming gold prices to offset international economic sanctions over the treatment of blacks. "There's been little oversight from government, and mining companies have done nothing about it - for 120 years they've had a party," Turton said.
Environmental NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, got off to a late start on mining because past governments, while aware of toxic mine water's impact, sought to keep the public in ignorance, he said.
"Under apartheid, there was absolutely no tolerance of any NGO activity at all," Turton said. "When there was activity, it had to do very much with bringing down the apartheid state."
Now, the post-apartheid government is under pressure to hold companies accountable, while the companies deny responsibility.
"Most of the toxic water that flows into rivers come from abandoned mine sites which have no owners and thus the responsibility to put into place water pollution control measures lie with the state," says Nikisi Lesufi, senior executive of the Chamber of Mines, an industry group.
Cronshaw, the consultant, says most gold mining companies don't even have titles to the mines that are the source of toxic water.
"The mining companies say: These mines were here long before we were and they weren't our mines; our companies are subsidiaries. The government allowed them to do this, therefore it has got to sort it out," Cronshaw says.
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., the South African mining giant, says it expects the government will "lead the process of national coordination" on handling toxic water and that the company already contributes to pumping water from one defunct shaft outside of Johannesburg. In a statement, spokesman Alan Fine said AngloGold mine dumps do not contain much groundwater.
Mining company Anglo American tracks water quality and is devising a national water-cleansing strategy for itself, spokesman Pranill Ramchander said in an e-mail.
In the U.S., mine companies have been under tight regulation for decades. R. Larry Grayson, professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State University, recalls that a U.S. mine he worked at in the 1970s was fined $10,000 on the spot because of one dead fish found.
Sputnik Ratau. the government's spokesman on water and environmental affairs, says dangerous mine waste is a "high priority," but acknowledges it was not given serious attention until the government set up a committee to study the issue in September.
"Acid mine drainage is toxic water, and if it flows into rivers, it obviously contaminates rivers and underground waters, which become not a healthy source of drinking for humans, animals, plants - all living organisms," he said.
"Because the necessary steps were not taken from day one," Ratau said, South Africans "are now reaping what you would call the misfortune of the benefit that we had from the legacy of mining in this country."
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3) U.S Sets Up Special Prisons For Muslim/Arab Prisoners
By Sherwood Ross
March 26, 2011
Countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/ross270311.htm
If you think the U.S. Bureau of Prisons(BOP) couldn't possibly make its prisons more inhumane no matter how hard it tried, you are wrong. It has created CMUs, or Communications Management Units, where the "management" part consists of denying inmates virtually all communication with their families and the outside world. In its Terre Haute, Ind., facility, the BOP is concentrating Arab/Muslim inmates and limiting them to mailing one six-page letter per week, making one 15-minute phone call per month, and receiving only one 60-minute visit per month.
Word of the restrictive new facilities came to light when Rafil Dhafir, an American doctor born in Iraq (and convicted of sending money to a charity he founded there and other non-violent crimes,) claimed he was imprisoned in Terre Haute as part of "a nationwide operation to put Muslims/Arabs in one place so that we can be closely monitored regarding our communications." Subsequent inquiries showed that Dhafir had a case. While Muslims make up just six percent of the federal prison population, 18 of 33 prisoners at Terre Haute, or 55%, are Muslim, and 23 of 36, or 64%, at Marion, Ill., are Muslim.
BOP's actions have been challenged legally by the Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR) which, The Nation magazine reports in its March 28th issue, contends inmates are being shifted to these facilities "based on their religion and/or perceived political beliefs." Author Alia Malek writes, "The extreme nature of the (BOP's) restrictions also raises the issue of cruel and unusual punishment," forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. CCR also says the CMUs impede the free speech and association rights of family members. The BOP insists that these inmates must communicate in English, another punitive barrier, and it now denies them any physical contact with their families. Thus, prisoners cannot kiss their wives or children and can only talk with them in a crabbed room through a Plexiglass wall using a tapped telephone that records their conversations.
Prisoners in the two CMUs are not being punished because of any terrorist acts. "The vast majority of these folks are there due to entrapment or material support convictions," says CCR attorney Rachel Meeropol, who has communicated with most of them. These are "terrorism-related convictions that do not involve any violence or injury." One example, Malek writes, is Yassin Aref, who simply witnessed a loan in a plot "planned by an FBI informant." Other examples include officers of the Holy Land Foundation(HLF), a U.S.-based Islamic charity that sent funds to programs administered by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Ghassan Elashi, co-founder of HLF, is behind bars for funding schools and social welfare programs in the Occupied Territories.
The Terre Haute CMU was opened during the Bush regime in 2006 and Marion followed it two years later. Both openings circumvented "the usual process federal agencies normally follow that subjects them to public scrutiny and transparency," Malek noted. She quotes William Luneburg, former chair of the American bar Association's administrative law practice section as terming the BOP action "grossly irregular" and arguably illegal. "It is not a normal thing for agencies legally bound by the APA(Administrative Procedure Act) to propose some new program, to start through the public rule-making process and then basically not complete it, and then to decide to go ahead and do it on their own." Adds David Shapiro, of the ACLU's Prison Project, "Essentially these CMUs are being operated in the absence of any rules or policies that authorize them." Shapiro said the ACLU hoped "When Obama came into office...that the use of CMUs would be revisited..."(As Clarence Darrow once told a judge, "Your Honor has the right to hope.")
One wonders if there is anyone inside the Bureau of Prisons who has a care for the impact of the CMU regulations on prisoners' families. Christy Visher, professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, is quoted by The Nation as saying, "Contact visits where you can hold a child on your lap or touch your wife are very important." What's more, she says, "The lack of connection to family make it harder to think of a plan for post-release, and if they have no hope for life after release, then they're less likely to be making behavior change."
Nobody asked me, but behavior modification needs to begin with the Bureau of Prisons. It has apparently established a new kind of detention facility without observing the legal rules for so doing, concentrated prisoners inside based on their religion, and grossly reduced their right to communicate with their families and the outside world. As for the New Testament phrase attributed to Jesus Christ by Matthew (25:36), "I was in prison and ye came to me," the BOP is going to make that as tough as possible to fulfill for the families of Muslim inmates
(Sherwood Ross is a public relations consultant for worthy causes who also runs the Anti-War News Service, of Coral Gables, FL. To contribute to this work or contact him, email sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
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4) Rich District, Poor District
New York Times Editorial
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/opinion/27sun1.html?hp
To balance New York State's budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to cut a record $1.5 billion from the $23 billion budget for grades K-12.
The cuts would scarcely affect wealthy districts that rely primarily on local taxes to support lavishly appointed schools. But they would be catastrophic for impoverished rural districts that have been starved of state aid for decades and are still reeling from cuts levied last year when David Paterson was governor. Already struggling to furnish even basic course offerings, the poorest districts would need to cannibalize themselves to keep the doors open and the lights on.
The fundamental inequity of the cuts, as currently proposed, can be seen in how they would affect two of the state's school districts: Ilion in the economically depressed Mohawk Valley, and Syosset, a wealthy town in Long Island's Nassau County.
ILION
CURRENT BUDGET 2010-2011: $25 MILLION
NUMBER OF STUDENTS: 1,600
CUOMO PROPOSED CUT: $1.1 MILLION
The system is one of the poorest in the state. More than a third of its 1,600 students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches, and that figure would no doubt be higher if some families whose children need free lunches to eat nutritiously were not too ashamed to apply for it.
Impoverished districts like Ilion, which has an eroding tax base and relies on the state for more than three-quarters of its budget, were supposed to fare better after a 2006 court ruling that ordered the state to give each district enough money to provide every child with a "sound basic education."
Under a new formula created by the Legislature, some of the poorest districts were promised as much as an 80 percent increase. The increases were to be phased in over four years in steadily larger amounts. Ilion, which had been promised a 35 percent increase, got a modest boost in the first two years. But then the state ran into fiscal trouble; funding was kept flat in 2009 and cut in 2010. Like many other poor districts, Ilion retrenched. It laid off teachers and backed down from plans to expand its course offerings.
Thanks to an ambitious school building program carried out by the state, Ilion's low-rise brick high school is in great shape and indistinguishable from similar buildings even in wealthier communities. The course offerings tell another story. The school offers only one foreign language, Spanish, and is unlikely to offer any others until and if the economic climate improves. As a result, a transfer student who was seeking a third year of French has had to take the course online.
The school offers only four of the possible 34 Advanced Placement courses, which allow students to earn college credit in high school. The Advanced Placement course in biology was particularly hard won: school officials said they had to "steal nickels here and there" to buy microscopes and other material necessary to run the course, which is certified and overseen by the College Board.
Under the Cuomo administration's proposal, Ilion would be asked to absorb a new $1.1 million cut, on top of the $450,000 cut it took last year. That would not even come to a rounding error in the state's richest districts. But for Ilion, whose budget is about $25 million, the new cut, combined with the $1.3 million the district is obligated to pay for raises, benefits and other costs, produces a deficit of about $2.4 million.
Mr. Cuomo has left the impression that school districts like Ilion could weather cuts by tightening their belts and winning pay freezes through negotiations with their employees. A pay freeze would save Ilion only $600,000, leaving a huge deficit of $1.8 million. The district could save money in the long term by getting teachers to contribute more to their health care costs. But that will not happen, if at all, until the current contract expires next year.
Moreover, pension expenses, which will cost the district more than $1 million this year - and about 2.5 percent more next year - are locked in by the State Constitution, which makes it illegal to reduce benefits for workers already enrolled in the system. Proposals that would create less expensive pension plans for future employees will take decades to produce significant savings.
Ilion is seeking to save money by merging with three districts nearby. But the results of a merger feasibility study will not be known until the fall. The only short-term way for Ilion to cut costs is to lay off teachers while savaging academic programs that are already inadequate.
SYOSSET
CURRENT BUDGET 2010-2011: $188 MILLION
NUMBER OF STUDENTS: 6,600
CUOMO PROPOSED CUT: $1.4 MILLION
Meanwhile, prospects remain bright in affluent districts like Syosset in Nassau County, which has a rich local tax base and, according to the most recently available statistics, gets only about 12.6 percent of its budget from the state. The district's course catalog runs more than 130 pages. It offers students Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Latin, American Sign Language and Mandarin Chinese. College-bound students, which is to say, just about everyone at the high school, have access to a dazzling array of almost 30 Advancement Placement classes that include different levels of calculus, physics, economics, environmental science, music theory and studio art.
Signs outside the low-rise building that houses the high school proudly proclaim that the United States Department of Education has cited Syosset High for the excellence of its academic programs and that the system's arts education program was ranked first in the nation in 2002. Whereas most Ilion students end up at local community colleges, Syosset launched nearly all of its graduating seniors into four-year colleges last year. A significant number of them enrolled in schools like Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Cornell.
The district could easily raise enough through local taxes to support its entire $188 million budget. Despite its lavish programs and a budget more than seven times that of Ilion, Syosset would get roughly the same cut under the Cuomo plan, about $1.4 million.
Districts like Syosset also benefit from loopholes in the state funding formula that drive hundreds of millions of dollars each year toward wealthy and moderate-income school systems that could do without it.
The most obvious of these is the so-called high-tax aid provision that reimburses wealthy and moderate-income districts that tax themselves heavily to fund high-end school programs. By state estimates, this provision inflates the school budget by about $200 million per year. Another provision that deliberately underestimates the poverty levels in the poorest districts has cost those districts millions in aid. Yet another provision that allows districts in wealthy areas to have a larger portion of basic education funding covered by the state siphons off even more money.
No one should begrudge wealthy districts like Syosset their wonderful course offerings. But the state must do more to improve and better fund public schooling in economically depressed parts of upstate New York.
Governor Cuomo has made revitalizing these areas a priority. But the region stands little chance of attracting high-skill jobs if its schools are allowed to deteriorate. Instead of swallowing the Cuomo proposal whole, the Legislature should fashion a fair system that cuts out the givebacks to the wealthy while driving more money toward the starving, poorer districts that so desperately need it. By helping those districts survive tough times, the state is also looking out for its own best interest.
This is part of a series about the fiscal crisis in New York State and in other states around the country. You can read all of these articles at: nytimes.com/fiscalcrisis.
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5) Unrest in Syria and Jordan Poses New Test for U.S. Policy
By MARK LANDLER
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/middleeast/27diplomacy.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Even as the Obama administration defends the NATO-led air war in Libya, the latest violent clashes in Syria and Jordan are raising new alarm among senior officials who view those countries, in the heartland of the Arab world, as far more vital to American interests.
Deepening chaos in Syria, in particular, could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement, several analysts said. It could also alter the American rivalry with Iran for influence in the region and pose challenges to the United States' greatest ally in the region, Israel.
In interviews, administration officials said the uprising appeared to be widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The new American ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, has been quietly reaching out to Mr. Assad to urge him to stop firing on his people.
As American officials confront the upheaval in Syria, a country with which the United States has icy relations, they say they are pulled between fears that its problems could destabilize neighbors like Lebanon and Israel, and the hope that it could weaken one of Iran's key allies.
The Syrian unrest continued on Saturday, with government troops reported to have killed more protesters.
With 61 people confirmed killed by security forces, the country's status as an island of stability amid the Middle East storm seemed irretrievably lost.
For two years, the United States has tried to coax Damascus into negotiating a peace deal with Israel and to moving away from Iran - a fruitless effort that has left President Obama open to criticism on Capitol Hill that he is bolstering one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.
Officials fear the unrest there and in Jordan could leave Israel further isolated. The Israeli government was already rattled by the overthrow of Egypt's leader, Hosni Mubarak, worrying that a new government might not be as committed to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
While Israel has largely managed to avoid being drawn into the region's turmoil, last week's bombing of a bus in Jerusalem, which killed one person and wounded 30, and a rain of rocket attacks from Gaza, have fanned fears that the militant group Hamas is trying to exploit the uncertainty.
The unrest in Jordan, which has its own peace treaty with Israel, is also extremely worrying, a senior administration official said. The United States does not believe Jordan is close to a tipping point, this official said. But the clashes, which left one person dead and more than a hundred wounded, pose the gravest challenge yet to King Abdullah II, a close American ally.
Syria, however, is the more urgent crisis - one that could pose a thorny dilemma for the administration if Mr. Assad carries out a crackdown like that of his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, who ordered a bombardment in 1982 that killed at least 10,000 people in the northern city of Hama. Having intervened in Libya to prevent a wholesale slaughter in Benghazi, some analysts asked, how could the administration not do the same in Syria?
Though no one is yet talking about a no-fly zone over Syria, Obama administration officials acknowledge the parallels to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Some analysts predicted the administration will be cautious in pressing Mr. Assad, not because of any allegiance to him but out of a fear of what could follow him - a Sunni-led government potentially more radical and Islamist than his Alawite minority government.
Still, after the violence, administration officials said Mr. Assad's future was unclear. "Whatever credibility the government had, they shot it today - literally," a senior official said about Syria, speaking on the condition that he not be named.
In the process, he said, Mr. Assad had also probably disqualified himself as a peace partner for Israel. Such a prospect had seemed a long shot in any event - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown no inclination to talk to Mr. Assad - but the administration kept working at it, sending its special envoy, George J. Mitchell, on several visits to Damascus.
Mr. Assad has said that he wants to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel. But with his population up in arms, analysts said, he might actually have an incentive to pick a fight with its neighbor, if only to deflect attention from the festering problems at home.
"You can't have a comprehensive peace without Syria," the administration official said. "It's definitely in our interest to pursue an agreement, but you can't do it with a government that has no credibility with its population."
Indeed, the crackdown calls into question the entire American engagement with Syria. Last June, the State Department organized a delegation from Microsoft, Dell and Cisco Systems to visit Mr. Assad with the message that he could attract more investment if he stopped censoring Facebook and Twitter. While the administration renewed economic sanctions against Syria, it approved export licenses for some civilian aircraft parts.
The Bush administration, by contrast, largely shunned Damascus, recalling its ambassador in February 2005 after the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of involvement in the assassination, a charge it denies.
When Mr. Obama named Mr. Ford as his envoy last year, Republicans in the Senate held up the appointment for months, arguing that the United States should not reward Syria with closer ties. The administration said it would have more influence by restoring an ambassador.
But officials also concede that Mr. Assad has been an endless source of frustration - deepening ties with Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah; undermining the government of Saad Hariri in Lebanon; pursuing a nuclear program; and failing to deliver on promises of reform.
Some analysts said that the United States was so eager to use Syria to break the deadlock on Middle East peace negotiations that it had failed to push Mr. Assad harder on political reforms.
"He's given us nothing, even though we've engaged him on the peace process," said Andrew J. Tabler, who lived in Syria for a decade and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "I'm not saying we should give up on peace talks with Israel, but we cannot base our strategy on that."
The United States does not have the leverage with Syria it had with Egypt. But Mr. Tabler said the administration could stiffen sanctions to press Mr. Assad to make reforms.
Other analysts, however, point to a positive effect of the unrest: it could deprive Iran of a reliable ally in extending its influence over Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
That is not a small thing, they said, given that Iran is likely to benefit from the fall of Mr. Mubarak in Egypt, the upheaval in Bahrain, and the resulting chill between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
"There's much more upside than downside for the U.S.," said Martin S. Indyk, the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. "We have an interest in counterbalancing the advantages Iran has gained in the rest of the region. That makes it an unusual confluence of our values and interests."
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6) Higher Levels of Radiation Found at Japan Reactor Plant
By DAVID JOLLY, HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/world/asia/28japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Sharply elevated radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex on Sunday raised the possibility of spreading contamination and forced an evacuation of a part of one of the buildings at the damaged plant, but Japanese utility officials later called the readings a mistake.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that water seeping out of the crippled No. 2 reactor building into the adjacent turbine building contained levels of radioactive iodine 134 that were about 10 million times the level normally found in water used inside nuclear power plants. An official of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant, later Sunday night said that the measurement may have been inaccurate.
"There is a suspicion that the reading for iodine 134 is too high, so we are redoing our tests," said the spokesman, Takeo Iwamoto. He said that the utility would re-administer tests for all substances detected in the water at the No.2 reactor's turbine building, and update readings "as soon as possible."
Mr. Iwamoto said he could not provide any details on what could have gone wrong with the tests. "We are very sorry for the inconvenience," he said. He could not say by how much readings were thought to be in error.
Scientists are closely watching levels of iodine 134 and some other isotopes, which could indicate that nuclear fission had restarted in the one of the reactors very recently and signify a far worse crisis. At this point, there is no confirmation that is the case. In addition, isotopic measurements can often take hours or even days to retest and confirm.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy director-general of the Japanese nuclear safety agency, said that radioactive iodine in seawater just outside the plant had risen to 1,850 times the usual level on Sunday, up from 1,250 on Saturday.
"Radiation levels are increasing and measures need to be taken," he said, but added that he did not think there was need to worry about high levels of radiation immediately escaping the plant.
Sunday's developments came after the world's chief nuclear inspector said that Japan was "still far from the end of the accident" that struck the plant. Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledged that the authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them and end the crisis.
Mr. Amano, taking care to say that he was not criticizing Japan's response under extraordinary circumstances, said, "More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident."
More than two weeks after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, he cautioned that the nuclear emergency could still go on for weeks, if not months, given the enormous damage to the plant.
Asked by a journalist Sunday at a news conference what was the company's projected timeline for emerging from the crisis, Sakae Muto, a vice president for Tokyo Electric Power, "We don't have a concrete schedule."
Mr. Muto declined to answer a journalist's question about a possible worst-case scenario, saying: "The important thing is to keep cooling the reactor and prevent the current situation from getting worse."
The company reported the high radiation in the turbine building of the No. 2 unit, a Tokyo Electric official said, after a worker attempting to measure radiation levels of the water puddles saw the reading on his dosimeter jump beyond 1,000 millisieverts, the highest reading. The worker left the scene immediately, he said.
The Japanese government's top spokesman, Yukio Edano, told an afternoon press briefing Sunday that it appeared the radioactive puddles had developed when the No. 2 unit's fuel rods were exposed to air, but that "we don't at this time believe they are melting. We're confident that we are able to keep them cool."
The higher levels may have suggested a leak from the reactor's fuel rods - from either the suppression chamber under the rods or various piping - or even a breach in the pressure vessel that houses the rods, the Japanese nuclear regulator said earlier.
Michiaki Furukawa, a nuclear chemist and board member of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a Tokyo-based watchdog, said the higher reading would have made recovery work at the reactor difficult. He said exposure to 1,000 millisieverts an hour of radiation would induce nausea and vomiting, while levels between 3,000 to 5,000 millisieverts an hour could be lethal.
Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University, said that at the sharply elevated levels of radiation, workers would be able to remain on site for only about 15 minutes before health considerations required them to leave, further complicating work.
Mr. Nishiyama, of the Japanese nuclear safety agency, said that it was likely that radiation was leaking from the pipes or the suppression chamber, and not directly from the pressure vessel, because water levels and pressure in the vessel were relatively stable.
Tokyo Electric said its analysis of the water in the No. 2 unit had identified radioactive isotopes of cesium, iodine, cobalt, molybdenum, technetium, barium and lanthanum. The company has not yet been able to determine the source of the leak.
Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator for 13 years, said that if the company had discovered the discovery of extremely high levels of radioactive iodine, it would not necessarily mean new problems at the reactor.
Gaseous iodine is among the first materials released when fuel rods rupture, because the iodine accumulated under pressure during the months that the fuel rods were undergoing fission, he said. The release of the iodine does not necessarily mean that the fuel rods are actually melting, which would result in the release of a wider range of radioactive materials.
It is not easy for any liquid to travel from the reactor building to the adjacent turbine building. There are only two pipes that connect them, and they have many valves along them that should have closed automatically after the earthquake and before the tsunami arrived.
The Japanese government's top spokesman, Yukio Edano, told an afternoon press briefing Sunday that it appeared the radioactive puddles had developed when the No. 2 unit's fuel rods were exposed to air, but that "we don't at this time believe they are melting. We're confident that we are able to keep them cool."
All Sunday, the government and company officials fielded questions from the Japanese media about whether plutonium might have escaped from one of the damaged facilities. Mr. Edano said the area around the reactors was being tested for plutonium, but "this is not an easy process." He said that if the presence of plutonium was confirmed, "we will take measures depending on the situation."
The I.A.E.A. cited information from Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office Sunday that Tokyo Electric had begun pumping water out of some of the turbine buildings at the Fukushima plant.
Workers were pumping water from the No. 1 unit turbine to its main condenser and were making preparations to do the same at the No. 2 unit, the I.A.E.A. said, noting that a main condenser's function in a nuclear power plant is to condense and recover steam that passes through the turbine. The company also was considering ways to remove water from the turbine buildings of the No. 3 and No. 4 units, the agency said.
The No. 5 and No. 6 units are thought to be out of harm's way.
Separately, the I.A.E.A., citing data from the Japanese authorities, reported that two of three workers who were exposed to radioactive water last Thursday suffered "significant skin contamination over their legs."
"The Japanese authorities have stated that during medical examinations carried out at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture, the level of local exposure to the workers' legs was estimated to be between 2 and 6 sieverts," the I.A.E.A. said on its Web site.
"While the patients did not require medical treatment, doctors decided to keep them in hospital and monitor their progress over coming days."
Mr. Edano, the government spokesman, said he understood that the injured workers would be released from the hospital on Monday.
Japan's National Police Agency said on Sunday that the death toll from the quake and tsunami had risen to 10,668 persons, with 16,574 still missing.
Meanwhile, radiation in the Tokyo water supply continued to diminish on Sunday, the authorities said. At two of three monitoring stations operated by the municipal waterworks bureau, there was no radiation detected. At a third, the level was 27 becquerels per kilogram, well below the maximum recommended limits for both infants and adults.
The elevated levels of radiation at and around the Fukushima plant will require careful monitoring of seafood in Japan, said Kimberlee J. Kearfott, a professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan.
"It is extremely important that seafood be carefully monitored," she said in an e-mail. "This is because many of the radionuclides are concentrated in the environment," she added. "For example, iodines are concentrated in kelp (a Japanese food, seaweed) and shrimp.
"Iodines, cesium and strontium are concentrated in other types of seafood," she continued. "Fish can act like tea or coffee presses. When you push down the plungers, the grounds all end up on one side. In this case, that is the fish."
David Jolly and Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Ayasa Aizawa, Ken Ijichi and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo, and William J. Broad from New York.
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7) Japanese Rules for Nuclear Plants Relied on Old Science
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and JAMES GLANZ
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/asia/27nuke.html?ref=world
TOKYO - In the country that gave the world the word tsunami, the Japanese nuclear establishment largely disregarded the potentially destructive force of the walls of water. The word did not even appear in government guidelines until 2006, decades after plants - including the Fukushima Daiichi facility that firefighters are still struggling to get under control - began dotting the Japanese coastline.
The lack of attention may help explain how, on an island nation surrounded by clashing tectonic plates that commonly produce tsunamis, the protections were so tragically minuscule compared with the nearly 46-foot tsunami that overwhelmed the Fukushima plant on March 11. Offshore breakwaters, designed to guard against typhoons but not tsunamis, succumbed quickly as a first line of defense. The wave grew three times as tall as the bluff on which the plant had been built.
Japanese government and utility officials have repeatedly said that engineers could never have anticipated the magnitude 9.0 earthquake - by far the largest in Japanese history - that caused the sea bottom to shudder and generated the huge tsunami. Even so, seismologists and tsunami experts say that according to readily available data, an earthquake with a magnitude as low as 7.5 - almost garden variety around the Pacific Rim - could have created a tsunami large enough to top the bluff at Fukushima.
After an advisory group issued nonbinding recommendations in 2002, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant owner and Japan's biggest utility, raised its maximum projected tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi to between 17.7 and 18.7 feet - considerably higher than the 13-foot-high bluff. Yet the company appeared to respond only by raising the level of an electric pump near the coast by 8 inches, presumably to protect it from high water, regulators said.
"We can only work on precedent, and there was no precedent," said Tsuneo Futami, a former Tokyo Electric nuclear engineer who was the director of Fukushima Daiichi in the late 1990s. "When I headed the plant, the thought of a tsunami never crossed my mind."
The intensity with which the earthquake shook the ground at Fukushima also exceeded the criteria used in the plant's design, though by a less significant factor than the tsunami, according to data Tokyo Electric has given the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, a professional group. Based on what is known now, the tsunami set off the nuclear crisis by flooding the backup generators needed to power the reactor cooling system.
Japan is known for its technical expertise. For decades, though, Japanese officialdom and even parts of its engineering establishment clung to older scientific precepts for protecting nuclear plants, relying heavily on records of earthquakes and tsunamis, and failing to make use of advances in seismology and risk assessment since the 1970s.
For some experts, the underestimate of the tsunami threat at Fukushima is frustratingly reminiscent of the earthquake - this time with no tsunami - in July 2007 that struck Kashiwazaki, a Tokyo Electric nuclear plant on Japan's western coast.. The ground at Kashiwazaki shook as much as two and a half times the maximum intensity envisioned in the plant's design, prompting upgrades at the plant.
"They had years to prepare at that point, after Kashiwazaki, and I am seeing the same thing at Fukushima," said Peter Yanev, an expert in seismic risk assessment based in California, who has studied Fukushima for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department.
There is no doubt that when Fukushima was designed, seismology and its intersection with the structural engineering of nuclear power plants was in its infancy, said Hiroyuki Aoyama, 78, an expert on the quake resistance of nuclear plants who has served on Japanese government panels. Engineers employed a lot of guesswork, adopting a standard that structures inside nuclear plants should have three times the quake resistance of general buildings.
"There was no basis in deciding on three times," said Mr. Aoyama, an emeritus professor of structural engineering at the University of Tokyo. "They were shooting from the hip," he added, making a sign of a pistol with his right thumb and index finger. "There was a vague target."
Evolution of Designs
When Japanese engineers began designing their first nuclear power plants more than four decades ago, they turned to the past for clues on how to protect their investment in the energy of the future. Official archives, some centuries old, contained information on how tsunamis had flooded coastal villages, allowing engineers to surmise their height.
So seawalls were erected higher than the highest tsunamis on record. At Fukushima Daiichi, Japan's fourth oldest nuclear plant, officials at Tokyo Electric used a contemporary tsunami - a 10.5-foot-high wave caused by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960 - as a reference point. The 13-foot-high cliff on which the plant was built would serve as a natural seawall, according to Masaru Kobayashi, an expert on quake resistance at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan's nuclear regulator.
Eighteen-foot-high offshore breakwaters were built as part of the company's anti-tsunami strategy, said Jun Oshima, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. But regulators said the breakwaters - mainly intended to shelter boats - offered some resistance against typhoons, but not tsunamis, Mr. Kobayashi said.
Over the decades, preparedness against tsunamis never became a priority for Japan's power companies or nuclear regulators. They were perhaps lulled, experts said, by the fact that no tsunami had struck a nuclear plant until two weeks ago. Even though tsunami simulations offered new ways to assess the risks of tsunamis, plant operators made few changes at their aging facilities, and nuclear regulators did not press them.
Engineers took a similar approach with earthquakes. When it came to designing the Fukushima plant, official records dating from 1600 showed that the strongest earthquakes off the coast of present-day Fukushima Prefecture had registered between magnitude 7.0 and 8.0, Mr. Kobayashi said.
"We left it to the experts," said Masatoshi Toyoda, a retired Tokyo Electric vice president who oversaw the construction of the plant. He added, "they researched old documents for information on how many tombstones had toppled over and such."
Eventually, experts on government committees started pushing for tougher building codes, and by 1981, guidelines included references to earthquakes but not to tsunamis, according to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That pressure grew exponentially after the devastating Kobe earthquake in 1995, said Kenji Sumita, who was deputy chairman of the government's Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan in the late 1990s.
Mr. Sumita said power companies, which were focused on completing the construction of a dozen reactors, resisted adopting tougher standards, and did not send representatives to meetings on the subject at the Nuclear Safety Commission.
"Others sent people immediately," Mr. Sumita said, referring to academics and construction industry experts. "But the power companies engaged in foot-dragging and didn't come."
Meanwhile, the sciences of seismology and risk assessment advanced around the world. Although the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has come under severe criticism for not taking the adoption of those new techniques far enough, the agency did use many of them in new, plant-by-plant reviews, said Greg S. Hardy, a structural engineer at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger who specializes in nuclear plant design and seismic risk.
For whatever reasons - whether cultural, historical or simply financial - Japanese engineers working on nuclear plants continued to predict what they believed were maximum earthquakes based on records.
Those methods, however, did not take into account serious uncertainties like faults that had not been discovered or earthquakes that were gigantic but rare, said Mr. Hardy, who visited Kashiwazaki after the 2007 quake as part of a study sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute.
"The Japanese fell behind," Mr. Hardy said. "Once they made the proclamation that this was the maximum earthquake, they had a hard time re-evaluating that as new data came in."
The Japanese approach, referred to in the field as "deterministic" - as opposed to "probabilistic," or taking unknowns into account - somehow stuck, said Noboru Nakao, a consultant who was a nuclear engineer at Hitachi for 40 years and was president of Japan's training center for operators of boiling-water reactors.
"Japanese safety rules generally are deterministic because probabilistic methods are too difficult," Mr. Nakao said, adding that "the U.S. has a lot more risk assessment methods."
The science of tsunamis also advanced, with far better measurements of their size, vastly expanded statistics as more occurred, and computer calculations that help predict what kinds of tsunamis are produced by earthquakes of various sizes. Two independent draft research papers by leading tsunami experts - Eric Geist of the United States Geological Survey and Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California - indicate that earthquakes of a magnitude down to about 7.5 can create tsunamis large enough to go over the 13-foot bluff protecting the Fukushima plant.
Mr. Synolakis called Japan's underestimation of the tsunami risk a "cascade of stupid errors that led to the disaster" and said that relevant data was virtually impossible to overlook by anyone in the field.
Underestimating Risks
The first clear reference to tsunamis appeared in new standards for Japan's nuclear plants issued in 2006.
"The 2006 guidelines referred to tsunamis as an accompanying phenomenon of earthquakes, and urged the power companies to think about that," said Mr. Aoyama, the structural engineering expert.
The risk had received some attention in 2002, when a government advisory group, the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, published recommended tsunami guidelines for nuclear operators.
A study group at the society, including professors and representatives from utilities like Tokyo Electric, scrutinized data from past tsunamis, as well as fresh research on fault lines and local geography, to come up with the guidelines, according to a member of the study group who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the situation.
The same group had recently been discussing revisions to those standards, according to the member. At the group's last meeting, held just over a week before the recent tsunami, researchers debated the usefulness of three-dimensional simulations to predict the potential damage of tsunamis on nuclear plants, according to minutes from those meetings. "We took into account more than past data," the member said. "We tried to predict. Our objective was to reduce uncertainties."
Perhaps the saddest observation by scientists outside Japan is that, even through the narrow lens of recorded tsunamis, the potential for easily overtopping the anti-tsunami safeguards at Fukushima should have been recognized. In 1993 a magnitude 7.8 quake produced tsunamis with heights greater than 30 feet off Japan's western coast, spreading wide devastation, according to scientific studies and reports at the time.
On the hard-hit island of Okushiri, "most of the populated areas worst hit by the tsunami were bounded by tsunami walls" as high as 15 feet, according to a report written by Mr. Yanev. That made the walls a foot or two higher than Fukushima's bluff.
But in a harbinger of what would happen 18 years later, the walls on Okushiri, Mr. Yanev, the expert in seismic risk assessment, wrote, "may have moderated the overall tsunami effects but were ineffective for higher waves."
And even the distant past was yielding new information that could have served as fresh warnings.
Two decades after Fukushima Daiichi came online, researchers poring through old records estimated that a quake known as Jogan had actually produced a tsunami that reached nearly one mile inland in an area just north of the plant. That tsunami struck in 869.
Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo, and James Glanz from New York. Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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8) Huge Rally in London Protests Budget Cuts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/world/europe/AP-EU-Britain-Protest.html?ref=world
LONDON (AP) - More than 250,000 people took to London's streets to protest the toughest spending cuts since World War II - one of the largest demonstrations since the Iraq war - as riot police clashed with a small groups. More than 200 people were arrested.
Although most of Saturday's demonstration was peaceful, clashes continued into the night as dozens of protesters pelted officers with bottles and amonia-filled lightbulbs. Groups set several fires and smashed shop windows near tourist landmarks such as Trafalgar Square.
Teachers, nurses, firefighters, public sector workers, students, pensioners and campaign groups all took part in Saturday's mass demonstration.
"They shouldn't be taking money from public services. What have we done to deserve this?" said Alison Foster, a 53-year-old school teacher. "Yes, they are making vicious cuts. That's why I'm marching, to let them know this is wrong."
Britain is facing 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) of public spending cuts from Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government as it struggles to slash the country's deficit. The government has already raised sales tax, but Britons are bracing for big cuts to public spending that are expected next month.
Treasury chief George Osborne has staked the government's future on tough economic remedies after Britain spent billions bailing out banks. Some half a million public sector jobs will likely be lost, about 18 billion ($28.5 billion) axed from welfare payments and the pension age raised to 66 by 2020.
Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan Police confirmed more than 250,000 people had marched peacefully, but said around 500 caused trouble.
Hundreds were arrested and police expected that number to rise. Dozens were injured, and several were admitted to hospitals for a range of problems, including shortness of breath and broken bones. Five police officers were also injured.
The demonstration began in the afternoon. Police said one small group of protesters broke away from the main march, scuffling with police officers and attempting to smash windows on two of London's main shopping streets. Others threw objects at the posh Ritz Hotel in nearby Piccadilly.
The protesters, shouting "Welfare not Warfare!" outnumbered the police. Some attacked police officers with large pieces of wood. A handful of bank branches were damaged when groups threw paint and flares at buildings.
Still, the day's protest otherwise had a carnival feel with music, big screen TVs and performers in Hyde Park, one of London's biggest public gardens.
The TUC, the main umbrella body for British unions, says it believes the cuts will threaten the country's economic recovery, and has urged the government to create new taxes for banks and to close loopholes that allow some companies to pay less tax.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said he regretted the sporadic violence.
"I don't think the activities of a few hundred people should take the focus away from the hundreds of thousands of people who have sent a powerful message to the government today," he said. "Ministers should now seriously reconsider their whole strategy after today's demonstration. This has been Middle Britain speaking."
Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, likened the march to the suffragette movement in Britain and the civil rights movement in America. "Our causes may be different but we come together to realize our voice."
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9) F.B.I. Casts Wide Net Under Relaxed Rules for Terror Inquiries, Data Show
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27fbi.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Within months after the Bush administration relaxed limits on domestic-intelligence gathering in late 2008, the F.B.I. assessed thousands of people and groups in search of evidence that they might be criminals or terrorists, a newly disclosed Justice Department document shows.
In a vast majority of those cases, F.B.I. agents did not find suspicious information that could justify more intensive investigations. The New York Times obtained the data, which the F.B.I. had tried to keep secret, after filing a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
The document, which covers the four months from December 2008 to March 2009, says the F.B.I. initiated 11,667 "assessments" of people and groups. Of those, 8,605 were completed. And based on the information developed in those low-level inquiries, agents opened 427 more intensive investigations, it says.
The statistics shed new light on the F.B.I.'s activities in the post-Sept. 11 era, as the bureau's focus has shifted from investigating crimes to trying to detect and disrupt potential criminal and terrorist activity.
It is not clear, though, whether any charges resulted from the inquiries. And because the F.B.I. provided no comparable figures for a period before the rules change, it is impossible to determine whether the numbers represent an increase in investigations.
Still, privacy advocates contend that the large number of assessments that turned up no sign of wrongdoing show that the rules adopted by the Bush administration have created too low a threshold for starting an inquiry. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has left those rules in place.
Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the volume of fruitless assessments showed that the Obama administration should tighten the rules.
"These are investigations against completely innocent people that are now bound up within the F.B.I.'s intelligence system forever," Mr. German said. "Is that the best way for the F.B.I. to use its resources?"
But Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau's general counsel, said the numbers showed that agents were running down any hint of a potential problem - including vigilantly checking out potential leads that might have been ignored before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Recognize that the F.B.I.'s policy - that I think the American people would support - is that any terrorism lead has to be followed up," Ms. Caproni said. "That means, on a practical level, that things that 10 years ago might just have been ignored now have to be followed up."
F.B.I. investigations are controlled by guidelines first put in place by Attorney General Edward H. Levi during the Ford administration, after the disclosure that the bureau had engaged in illegal domestic spying for decades. After the Sept. 11 attacks, those rules were loosened by Attorney General John Ashcroft and then again by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.
Some Democrats and civil liberties groups protested the Mukasey guidelines, contending that the new rules could open the door to racial or religious profiling and to fishing expeditions against Americans.
In 2006, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had each month been flooding the bureau with thousands of names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses that its surveillance and data-mining programs had deemed suspicious. But frustrated agents found that virtually all of the tips led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
When the Mukasey guidelines went into effect in December 2008, they allowed the F.B.I. to use a new category of investigation called an "assessment." It permits an agent, "proactively or based on investigative leads," to scrutinize a person or a group for signs of a criminal or national security threat, according to the F.B.I. manual.
The manual also says agents need "no particular factual predication" about a target to open an assessment, although the basis "cannot be arbitrary or groundless speculation." And in selecting subjects for such scrutiny, agents are allowed to use ethnicity, religion or speech protected by the First Amendment as a factor - as long as it is not the only one.
An assessment is less intensive than a more traditional "preliminary" inquiry or a "full" investigation, which requires greater reason to suspect wrongdoing but also allows agents to use more intrusive information-gathering techniques, like wiretapping.
Still, in conducting an assessment, agents are allowed to use other techniques - searching databases, interviewing the subjects or people who know them, sending confidential informers to infiltrate an organization, attending a public meeting like a political rally or a religious service, and following and photographing people in public places.
In March 2009, Russ Feingold, then a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, asked the F.B.I. how many assessments it had initiated under the new guidelines and how many regular investigations had been opened based on information developed by those assessments.
In November 2010, the Justice Department sent a classified letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee answering Mr. Feingold's question. This month, it provided an uncensored copy of the same answer to The Times as a result of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
F.B.I. officials said in an interview that the statistics represented a snapshot as of late March 2009, so the 11,667 assessment files were generated over a roughly four-month period. But they said they believed that agents had continued to open assessments at roughly the same pace since then.
Some aspects of the statistics are hazy, officials cautioned.
For example, even before the December 2008 changes, the bureau routinely followed up on low-grade tips and leads under different rules. But that activity was not formally tracked as an "assessment" that could be easily counted and compared.
F.B.I. officials also said about 30 percent of the 11,667 assessments were just vague tips - like a report of a suspicious car that included no license plate number. Such tips are entered into its computer system even if there is no way to follow up on them.
Finally, they said, it is impossible to know precisely how many assessments turned up suspicious facts. A single assessment may have spun off more than one higher investigation, and some agents may have neglected to record when such an investigation started as an assessment.
Ms. Caproni also said that even though the F.B.I. manual says agents can open assessments "proactively," they still must always have a valid reason - like a tip that is not solid enough to justify a more intensive level of investigation but should still be checked out.
But Mr. German, of the A.C.L.U., said that allowing agents to initiate investigations without a factual basis "seems ripe for abuse." He added, "What they should be doing is working within stricter guidelines that help them focus on real threats rather than spending time chasing shadows."
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10) It's Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know
By NOAM COHEN
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?ref=business
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.
But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.
The results were astounding. In a six-month period - from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.
Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse - an unprecedented one, privacy experts say - of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones. Unlike many online services and Web sites that must send "cookies" to a user's computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit "record."
"We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone," said Sarah E. Williams, an expert on graphic information at Columbia University's architecture school. "We don't even know we are giving up that data."
Tracking a customer's whereabouts is part and parcel of what phone companies do for a living. Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted.
"At any given instant, a cell company has to know where you are; it is constantly registering with the tower with the strongest signal," said Matthew Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who has testified before Congress on the issue.
Mr. Spitz's information, Mr. Blaze pointed out, was not based on those frequent updates, but on how often Mr. Spitz checked his e-mail.
Mr. Spitz, a privacy advocate, decided to be extremely open with his personal information. Late last month, he released all the location information in a publicly accessible Google Document, and worked with Zeit Online, a sister publication of a prominent German newspaper, Die Zeit, to map those coordinates over time.
"This is really the most compelling visualization in a public forum I have ever seen," said Mr. Blaze, adding that it "shows how strong a picture even a fairly low-resolution location can give."
In an interview from Berlin, Mr. Spitz explained his reasons: "It was an important point to show this is not some kind of a game. I thought about it, if it is a good idea to publish all the data - I also could say, O.K., I will only publish it for five, 10 days maybe. But then I said no, I really want to publish the whole six months."
In the United States, telecommunication companies do not have to report precisely what material they collect, said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specializes in privacy. He added that based on court cases he could say that "they store more of it and it is becoming more precise."
"Phones have become a necessary part of modern life," he said, objecting to the idea that "you have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century."
In the United States, there are law enforcement and safety reasons for cellphone companies being encouraged to keep track of its customers. Both the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration have used cellphone records to identify suspects and make arrests.
If the information is valuable to law enforcement, it could be lucrative for marketers. The major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for.
Verizon, for example, declined to elaborate other than to point to its privacy policy, which includes: "Information such as call records, service usage, traffic data," the statement in part reads, may be used for "marketing to you based on your use of the products and services you already have, subject to any restrictions required by law."
AT&T, for example, works with a company, Sense Networks, that uses anonymous location information "to better understand aggregate human activity." One product, CitySense, makes recommendations about local nightlife to customers who choose to participate based on their cellphone usage. (Many smartphone apps already on the market are based on location but that's with the consent of the user and through GPS, not the cellphone company's records.)
Because of Germany's history, courts place a greater emphasis on personal privacy. Mr. Spitz first went to court to get his entire file in 2009 but Deutsche Telekom objected.
For six months, he said, there was a "Ping Pong game" of lawyers' letters back and forth until, separately, the Constitutional Court there decided that the existing rules governing data retention, beyond those required for billing and logistics, were illegal. Soon thereafter, the two sides reached a settlement: "I only get the information that is related to me, and I don't get all the information like who am I calling, who sent me a SMS and so on," Mr. Spitz said, referring to text messages.
Even so, 35,831 pieces of information were sent to him by Deutsche Telekom as an encrypted file, to protect his privacy during its transmission.
Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile, Mr. Spitz's carrier, wrote in an e-mail that it stored six months' of data, as required by the law, and that after the court ruling it "immediately ceased" storing data.
And a year after the court ruling outlawing this kind of data retention, there is a movement to try to get a new, more limited law passed. Mr. Spitz, at 26 a member of the Green Party's executive board, says he released that material to influence that debate.
"I want to show the political message that this kind of data retention is really, really big and you can really look into the life of people for six months and see what they are doing where they are."
While the potential for abuse is easy to imagine, in Mr. Spitz's case, there was not much revealed.
"I really spend most of the time in my own neighborhood, which was quite funny for me," he said. "I am not really walking that much around."
Any embarrassing details? "The data shows that I am flying sometimes," he said, rather than taking a more fuel-efficient train. "Something not that popular for a Green politician."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 26, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated Malte Spitz's partner in the mapping project. He worked with Zeit Online, not Die Zeit. Zeit Online is a sister publication of Die Zeit.
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11) Thousands March Streets of LA for Organized Labor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/27/business/AP-US-LA-Labor-Rally.html?src=busln
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Thousands of union leaders and workers marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, vowing and shouting that they would fight for organized labor in California after recent union setbacks in Wisconsin.
Between 5,000 and 8,000 people, led by a group of Teamsters and including nurses, electricians, teachers and longshoremen, marched in the afternoon protest that began at Staples Center and ended with a rally at Pershing Square, according to police estimates.
One of several rallies around the country, the downtown event had some uniquely Hollywood elements - rallying workers included unionized actors and screenwriters.
The marchers, many of whom were brought in by school bus from as far away as San Diego, carried signs reading "Stop the war on workers" and "We stand with Wisconsin workers."
Speakers including Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa, Maria Elena Durazo from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and Fire Fighters of Wisconsin President Mahlon Mitchell roused the crowd at the rally, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Tom Morello, guitarist for the band Rage Against the Machine, performed.
Mahlon shouted at the rally that the battle in Wisconsin is a "direct attack" on all unions and the entire American middle class.
"An injury to one is an injury to all!" he shouted, and warned that similar policies could be instituted in cash-strapped California.
"This is more than just about union-busting, this is about busting the middle class, and this is about future elections as well," Mahlon told KCAL-TV after the speech.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a bill earlier this month stripping most public workers of collective bargaining rights, but it was facing legal challenges.
___
Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com
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12) More Obstacles Impede Crews in Japan Nuke Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/26/business/AP-AS-Japan-Earthquake.html?src=busln
TOKYO (AP) - Mounting problems, including incorrect radiation figures and a shortage of storage tanks, stymied emergency workers Sunday as they tried to nudge Japan's stricken nuclear complex back from the edge of disaster.
Workers are struggling to remove radioactive water from the tsunami-ravaged nuclear compound and restart the regular cooling systems for the dangerously hot fuel.
The day began with company officials reporting that radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal, a spike that forced employees to flee the unit. The day ended with officials saying the huge figure had been miscalculated and offering apologies.
"The number is not credible," said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. "We are very sorry."
While the water is contaminated with radiation, officials are unsure about the actual levels. They planned to take another sample, but Kurita did not know when the results would be known.
Officials acknowledged there was radioactive water in all four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex's most troubled reactors, and that airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour, four times the limit deemed safe by the government.
Those high airborne readings - if accurate - would make it very difficult for emergency workers to get inside to pump out the water.
Officials say they still don't know where the radioactive water is coming from, though government spokesman Yukio Edano earlier said some is "almost certainly" seeping from a damaged reactor core in one of the units.
The discovery late last week of pools of radioactive water has been a major setback in the mission to get the crucial cooling systems operating more than two weeks after a massive earthquake and tsunami.
The magnitude-9 quake off Japan's northeast coast on March 11 triggered a tsunami that barreled onshore and disabled the Fukushima plant, complicating a humanitarian disaster that is thought to have killed about 18,000 people.
A top TEPCO official acknowledged it could take a long time to clean up the complex.
"We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take," TEPCO Vice President Sakae Muto said, insisting the main goal now is to keep the reactors cool.
Workers have been scrambling to remove the radioactive water from the four units and find a place to safely store it. Each unit may hold tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive water, said Minoru Ogoda of Japan's nuclear safety agency.
Safety agency officials had been hoping to pump the water into huge, partly empty tanks inside the reactor that are designed to hold condensed water.
Those tanks, though, turned out to be completely full, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Meanwhile, plans to use regular power to restart the cooling system hit a roadblock when it turned out that cables had to be laid through turbine buildings flooded with the contaminated water.
"The problem is that right now nobody can reach the turbine houses where key electrical work must be done," Nishiyama said. "There is a possibility that we may have to give up on that plan."
Despite Sunday's troubles, officials continued to insist the situation had at least partially stabilized.
"We have somewhat prevented the situation from turning worse," Edano told reporters Sunday evening. "But the prospects are not improving in a straight line and we've expected twists and turns. The contaminated water is one of them and we'll continue to repair the damage."
The protracted nuclear crisis has spurred concerns about the safety of food and water in Japan, which is a prime source of seafood for some countries. Radiation has been found in food, seawater and even tap water supplies in Tokyo.
Just outside the coastal Fukushima nuclear plant, radioactivity in seawater tested about 1,250 times higher than normal last week - but that number had climbed to 1,850 times normal by the weekend.
Nishiyama said the increase was a concern, but also said the area is not a source of seafood and that the contamination posed no immediate threat to human health.
Up to 600 people are working inside the plant in shifts. Nuclear safety officials say workers' time inside the crippled units is closely monitored to minimize their exposure to radioactivity, but two workers were hospitalized Thursday when they suffered burns after stepping into contaminated water. They were to be released from the hospital Monday.
A poll, meanwhile, showed that support for Japan's prime minister had risen amid the disasters.
The poll conducted over the weekend by Kyodo News agency found that approval of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Cabinet rose to 28.3 percent after sinking below 20 percent in February, before the earthquake.
Last month's low approval led to speculation that Kan's days were numbered. While the latest figure is still low, it suggests he is making some gains with voters.
About 58 percent of respondents in the nationwide telephone survey of 1,011 people said they approved of the government's handling of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but a similar number criticized its handling of the nuclear crisis.
The death toll from the disasters stood at 10,668 Sunday with 16,574 people missing, police said. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless.
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13) Japan Fears Nuclear Reactor Is Leaking Contaminated Water
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Highly contaminated water is escaping a damaged reactor at the crippled nuclear power plant in Japan and could soon leak into the ocean, the country's nuclear regulator warned on Monday.
The discovery raises the danger of further radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and is a further setback to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis as workers find themselves in increasingly hazardous conditions.
Radiation measuring 1,000 millisieverts per hour was detected in water in an overflow tunnel outside the plant's Reactor No. 2, Japan's nuclear regulator said at a news conference. The maximum dose allowed for workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts in a year.
The tunnel leads from the reactor's turbine building, where contaminated water was discovered on Saturday, to an opening just 180 feet from the sea, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
The contaminated water level is now about three feet from the exit of the vertical, U-shaped tunnel and rising, Mr. Nishiyama said.
Contaminated water was also found at tunnels leading from the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, though with much lower levels of radiation.
"We are unsure whether there is already an overflow" of the water out of the tunnel, Mr. Nishiyama said. He said workers were redoubling efforts to first remove the water from the Reactor No. 2 turbine building. Government officials have said that the water is probably leaking from broken pipes inside the reactor, from a breach in the reactor's containment vessel or from the inner pressure vessel that houses the nuclear fuel.
The nuclear safety agency also reported that radioactive iodine 131 was detected Sunday at a concentration 1,150 times the maximum allowable level in a seawater sample taken about a mile north of the drainage outlets of reactor units 1 through 4. It also said that the amount of cesium 137 found in water about 1,000 feet from plant was 20 times the normal level, roughly equal to readings taken a week ago.
Mr. Nishiyama said there were no health concerns because fishing would not be conducted in the evacuation-designated area within about 12 miles of the plant, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Kyodo also reported that Tokyo Electric said on Monday that plutonium had been detected in soil at five locations at the plant. The company said that the plutonium was believed to have been discharged from nuclear fuel.
The disclosure about the escaping contaminated water came as workers pressed their efforts to remove highly radioactive water from inside buildings at the plant. The high levels of radioactivity have made it harder for them to get inside the reactor buildings and control rooms to get equipment working again, slowing the effort to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools.
Workers pumped less water into the reactors Monday in an attempt to minimize the overflow of radioactive water from them, slowing down the cooling process, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the plant, said.
The company said the elevated radiation levels in the water, which flooded the turbine buildings adjacent to the reactors, were at least four times the annual permissible exposure levels for workers at the plant and 100,000 times greater than ordinarily found in water at a nuclear facility.
Alarm over the radiation levels grew last Thursday when two workers were burned around their feet and ankles after they stepped into highly radioactive water inside the turbine building of Reactor No. 3. A third worker who was wearing higher boots did not suffer the same exposure. Japanese news media reported that the three workers were released from the hospital on Monday.
Over the weekend a worker trying to measure radiation levels of the water at Reactor No. 2 saw the reading on his dosimeter jump beyond 1,000 millisieverts per hour and left the scene immediately, said Takeo Iwamoto, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power.
Under normal conditions the average amount of radiation workers at the plant are allowed to be exposed to is at most 50 millisieverts a year. In emergency situations the limit is usually raised to 100 millisieverts but it has been raised to 250 millisieverts during the crisis.
There was no evacuation of the workers stationed at Daiichi after the high radiation levels were discovered. Naoki Sunoda, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power, said that since the crisis began on March 11, 19 workers had been exposed to radiation levels of 100 millisieverts. Of the workers at the site on Monday, 381 were from Tepco and 69 from a contractor. Firefighters and members of the Japanese military have also been helping at the plant.
Despite the new problem, Mr. Sunoda said, workers on Monday were still trying to determine a way to approach the turbine building of Reactor No. 2 to extract the contaminated water.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant has been leaking radiation since a magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami struck northeastern Japan's coastline on March 11. The tsunami knocked out power to the plant's system that cools the nuclear fuel rods.
Yukio Edano, the government spokesman, said on Monday that it was too early for people to return to homes within a 12-mile radius of the plant.
"We cannot guarantee safety at the moment as the situation is still under evaluation," he said.
The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, was in Tokyo on Monday meeting with senior Japanese government officials and representatives from Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco. Mr. Jaczko reiterated that the commission is prepared to provide assistance but did not provide details.
"The unprecedented challenge before us remains serious and our best experts remain fully engaged to help Japan address the situation," he said in a statement.
Mr. Jaczko's visit came as Japan asked the French nuclear industry for help. A spokeswoman for the French nuclear power company Areva said the firm was providing support to Tepco.
"The whole French nuclear industry has received a request for help from Tepco," said Fleur Floquet-Daubigeon in Paris. "We're not sending people at this time; we are just sharing technical expertise."
"We're basically in a brainstorming phase right now," she added.
The French energy minister, Eric Besson, said the call for help had also come from the Japanese government, Reuters reported. "Japan explicitly asked EDF, Areva and France's nuclear research body (CEA) to help them," Mr. Besson said.
Areva and other French companies, including the giant state utility EDF, the world's largest operator of nuclear plants, have already provided boron, which can help choke off a nuclear reaction, gloves, measuring equipment and other gear.
Relief supplies are reaching more earthquake survivors, but low temperatures and aftershocks continue to make life miserable.
On Monday morning an aftershock with a magnitude of 6.5 off the coast of northeast Honshu triggered a tsunami alert, which was later canceled.
The public broadcaster, NHK, said the death toll from the quake and tsunami had grown to more than 10,800, while more than 16,200 remained missing. More than 190,000 people remained housed in temporary shelters, it said.
Reporting was contributed by David Jolly, Ken Ijichi and Moshe Komata in Tokyo, and Keith Bradsher in Hong Kong.
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14) Syrian Forces Confront Protesters, Witnesses Say
By REUTERS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/03/28/world/middleeast/international-us-syria.html?hp
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian forces opened fire to disperse hundreds of protesters in Deraa calling for an end to emergency laws on Monday, but demonstrators regrouped despite a heavy troop deployment, a witness said.
At least 61 people have been killed in 10 days of anti-government protests in the southern city, posing the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
Assad has yet to respond to the demonstrations, which have spread to the port city of Latakia and Hama, but Vice President Farouq al-Shara said Assad would give an important speech in the next two days.
The demonstrators in Deraa converged on a main square chanting: "We want dignity and freedom" and "No to emergency laws," the witness said. He said security forces fired in the air for several minutes, but protesters returned when they stopped.
Security forces have reduced their presence in recent days in the poor, mostly Sunni city, but residents said on Monday they had returned in strength.
"(Security forces) are pointing their machine guns at any gatherings of people in the area near the mosque," said a trader, referring to the Omari Mosque which has been a focal point of demonstrations in the city.
Abu Tamam, a Deraa resident whose house overlooks the mosque, said soldiers and central security forces occupied almost every meter outside the mosque. Another resident said snipers had repositioned on many key buildings.
"No one dares to move," he said, speaking before Monday's demonstration began.
Such demonstrations would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in Syria, where the Baath Party has been in power for nearly 50 years but now faces the wave of Arab revolutionary sentiment which has toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia.
EMERGENCY LAWS
Vice President Shara said Assad would give an important speech in the next two days that would "assure the people," according to the official news agency, SANA.
Assad has been criticized by the West and even close ally Turkey, Syria's northern neighbor, for using violence against peaceful protesters.
At home he is facing growing demands to scrap emergency law, which was imposed by the Baath Party when it took power in a 1963 coup, to release thousands of political prisoners, allow freedom of speech and assembly and curb the free reign the security apparatus has in the country of 22 million.
"I think he is not decided on whether to go on television and try to defuse the situation or choose an even more brutal crackdown route," a senior diplomat in Damascus said.
Lawyers say emergency law has been used by authorities to ban protest, justify arbitrary arrests and closed courts and give free rein to the secret police.
"I do not see Assad scrapping emergency law without replacing it with something just as bad," he added.
Assad, 45, sent in troops to the key port city of Latakia on Saturday, signaling the government's growing alarm about the ability of security forces to keep order there.
The government has said 12 people were killed in clashes between "armed elements" -- whom they blame for the violence -- citizens and security forces. Rights activists have said at least six people had been killed in two days of clashes.
State television showed on Sunday deserted streets in Latakia, littered with rubble and broken glass and two burned-out, gutted buses. Latakia is inhabited by a potentially volatile mix of Sunni Muslims, Christians and the minority Alawites who constitute Assad's core support.
Assad has pledged to look into granting greater political and media freedoms but this has failed to dampen the protest movement now in its 11th day.
In an attempt to placate protesters, authorities have freed 260 mostly Islamist prisoners. They also released political activist Diana Jawabra and 15 others arrested for taking part in a silent protest.
(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Writing by Yara Bayoumy in Beirut)
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15) Afghan Elite Borrowed Freely From Kabul Bank
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29kabulbank.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - When a brother and nephew of an Afghan vice president wanted to build up their fuel transport business, they took out a $19 million loan from Kabul Bank. When a brother of the president wanted to start a cement factory, he took out a $2.9 million loan; he also took out $7.9 million for a luxury townhouse in Dubai. When the bank's chief executive officer wanted to invest in newly built apartments in Kabul, he took almost $18 million.
The terms were hard to beat: no collateral, little or no interest. And repayment optional, at least in practice.
Those are just a few of the loans detailed in a damning internal report by Afghanistan's own Central Bank, which depicts the Afghan political elite as using Kabul Bank, the country's biggest financial institution, as their own private piggy bank.
The report both raises questions about why the authorities did not act sooner, and suggests the answers lay in the political connections of the bank's officers and shareholders - the recipients of most of the roughly $900 million in bad loans.
"Transparency and accountability were sacrificed to widespread falsifications in order to cover up the use of influence," the Central Bank's officials wrote in the Oct. 20, 2010, report, a copy of which was recently obtained by The New York Times.
"It was like a Ponzi scheme," said a Western diplomat familiar with the bank's dealings. "The bank had to keep marketing and getting more deposits to fund the loans that they weren't getting interest on."
The report also suggests that Kabul Bank's long-term finances are in far more dire shape than previously understood, which explains why the Central Bank has been discussing putting the bank into receivership. The International Monetary Fund is pressing for receivership as a condition of renewing its program with Afghanistan. Lacking that, some key donors are planning to withhold aid from the country.
Whether the government will approve the dissolution of the bank is not yet clear, but whatever its future, as the Central Bank outlines in its report, there will be high costs for the Afghan government, which will have to make good on the nonperforming loans in order to keep depositors whole.
News reports on Sunday and Monday that the Central Bank had formally decided to dissolve Kabul Bank were denied by officials at the Central Bank and at the Afghan Ministry of Finance Sunday and Monday. "In fact no decisions have been taken yet by the Central Bank and the government of Afghanistan," said Said Ishaq Allawi, an adviser to the governor of the Central Bank. "Technical issues are being discussed right now. No decision has been made on the fate of Kabul Bank."
However, an Afghan banking official did confirm that the Supreme Council of the Central Bank, its governing board, had voted in favor of dissolution of Kabul Bank, putting its assets, deposits and remaining good loans up for sale, and the rest into receivership. However, discussions are continuing within the Central Bank on implementation of that decision, and the Afghan government will have to approve the decision through a body called the Financial Disputes Resolution Commission, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to bank secrecy rules. Officials at the commission said Monday they had not yet been notified of any move to dissolve Kabul Bank, according to secretary Mahmadullah Firoz.
Mr. Allawi, the Central Bank spokesman, said the bank would have no comment on the Central Bank's internal report.
The sheer scale of the fraud and the lack of documentation about where exactly the money went appears to have initially stunned Central Bank officials. "All administrative bodies, supervisory bodies and decision-making bodies in the bank" played a role in the fraud, wrote the Central Bank's internal auditors. So did the shareholders, who knew each other personally and were involved in joint bank-financed ventures. They "engineered extensive violations and used influence" with the bank's executives, so that they would have a ready source of money, the report said.
With considerable effort and only limited support from the government, the Central Bank has belatedly tried to stem the flood of red ink. Its officials have worked hard to secure loan repayment agreements from the major borrowers and shareholders, but it has not been easy. Not all of them agreed to repayment schedules. Others disputed the full amount of their loans saying they should only have to repay a portion of the money. In some cases the loans were for businesses from which little money could be recouped even if the assets were sold off. For instance, the $98 million poured into Pamir Airways could not be repaid by selling its small fleet of aging airplanes, which are now grounded.
Those borrowers and shareholders who did sign repayment agreements, agreed to long-term installment plans that could take three to seven years to pay off. Some diplomats doubt that the borrowers will make good even on those agreements and say that only an estimated $30 million to $50 million has been repaid so far out of an estimated $700 million to $900-plus million in dubious loans. While some of those loans are being repaid with interest, the vast majority are not, according to the Central Bank report, which lists the bank's total outstanding loans as $986 million.
The interest the bank was earning on its nonperforming loans was so low that come last September, when depositors briefly made a run on the bank, it was earning "a small amount in comparison with the bank's fixed costs," the report said, suggesting that depositors' money would have to cover those costs.
Among the Central Bank's findings were that Kabul Bank's management kept two sets of books: a fake set in Kabul and a real set in Dubai at the Shaheen Currency Exchange, which was run by Sherkhan Farnood, the bank's chairman. The bank never showed the real books to the Central Bank or to outside accountants who audited the bank's books, the report said.
And even those "real" books did not include all transactions. In some cases loan recipients were concealed by multiple front men and loans were often made in the name of fictional people or fictional companies. Some loans were even given to anonymous or unknown borrowers.
In addition, bank officers handed money out to political campaigns, to artists, a sports team and influential figures, and simply used bank revenues to pay for their own life styles, the report said.
The Central Bank report gives a sense of the scale of the fraud by noting that just from February through August last year, Kabul Bank granted 101 loans without any real loan documents - for a total value of $387.1 million. This was done both to evade banking laws which limit how much money any one borrower can take from the bank, but also to make it look as if the bank had a number of interest-playing loans, when in many cases no interest was being paid at all.
Among the 18 breaches of Afghan banking law and regulations detailed in the Central Bank's report is that the bank invested directly in businesses other than banking, including an airline, a television station, numerous real estate construction ventures and gas transport. Some of those business then attempted to drive out rivals by slashing prices below the cost of the product, losing millions of dollars. For instance Pamir Airlines cut its ticket prices to Dubai so far below its costs (at one time to $50 a ticket) that no other airline could compete on price. However, it failed to drive out competitors. After a fatal plane crash killing 44 persons, Pamir was unable to compensate the victims and was recently shut down by the Afghan Civil Aviation ministry for its poor safety record.
The largest number of loans, other than those taken by the bank's chairman, Mr. Farnood, went to first vice-president Marshall Fahim's brother, Abdul Haseen Fahim. Mr. Fahim had a share in at least three companies that took loans totaling $182 million. While Mr. Fahim's had only a share in each of the companies that borrowed money, his presence, like that of Mahmoud Karzai's, helped to curtail scrutiny of the loan's validity, according to diplomats.
In an interview Mr. Fahim downplayed the significance of his loans and suggested that the bank and Mr. Farnood bore the main responsibility. "The main money is with Sherkhan," he said. Mr. Fahim said he had paid off "10 percent to 20 percent" of his loan, but did not say whether that referred to one loan, or to the total of all his loans.
He added that the government should not take over the bank. "The government should not own the bank because anything that belongs to government becomes a bureaucracy."
According to the Central Bank report Mr. Fahim agreed with another shareholder, Khalilullah Fruzi, the bank's former chief executive, to pay back $24 million he borrowed for Gas Group, one of his energy sector ventures. However, the total amount borrowed by Gas Group was at least $121 million, according to the report, leaving unclear how Kabul Bank will obtain the other $97 million. Mr. Fahim also owes a total of $40 million for a loan to the Zahid Walid Group. He has paid back $4 million and asked for a term-loan for the balance.
His third major loan was $21 million for the Kabul Oil Company, in which he had a partial ownership along with Mohammed Ismail Ghazanfar, the owner of Ghazanfar Bank; Atta Muhammad Noor, a former Northern Alliance commander and now the governor of Balkh Province; and Kamal Nabizada, a business magnate in northern Afghanistan. Mr. Ghazanfar subsequently sold his share to the Kabul Bank chairman, Mr. Farnood.
The report says that auditors doubt that the Kabul Oil Company's loan could ever be repaid because it "has no operation now in this field and has not left any moveable or immoveable assets (chattels or real estate.)" No one seems to know where the money went.
The governor of Balkh, Mr. Noor, said the business never got off the ground and that while he was a partner he never played any active role. "The business never went forward," he said. Although the Central Bank report does not mention Mahmoud Karzai, a brother of the president, as a shareholder in the company, Mr. Noor said that Mr. Karzai also had a share.
Mr. Karzai has agreed to pay back only a sliver of what he owes, according to the Central Bank report. According to the Central Bank, he borrowed a total of nearly $18 million (without interest): $5.9 million to buy real estate in Dubai; $7.2 million for his shares in Kabul bank; and $4.7 million for his "personal accounts" and shares in the Afghan Investment Company.
"As soon as the officials of the loan department in Kabul Bank and the Central bank started settlement of the accounts, he denied purchase of the real estate in Dubai and called it the personal property of Sherkhan Farnood," according to the report.
However, Mr. Karzai did pay back the money he borrowed for his personal use and has agreed to a repayment schedule for his loan for his investment in the cement company.
The International Monetary Fund and a number of Western diplomats believe that the wrongdoers must be held to account in order to restore Afghans' faith in the banking system, including criminal prosecutions. However, it is unclear that the government is committed to that level of public scrutiny of those close to the presidential palace. Still, the government's official line is that those who committed the fraud will be prosecuted. "Kabul Bank is a criminal case," said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the Afghan National Security adviser, in an interview earlier this month.
"For the interest of the financial system we have to protect the money and property of our people; in the coming days we will have more investigations; this can not be business as usual," he said.
The International Monetary Fund has suspended its program with Afghanistan because of its dismay at the handling of banking regulation and Kabul Bank in particular, which has delayed the ability of several western donors to funnel money to the Afghan government. One is the British government which has delayed $137 million in funds, and many others are expected to follow suit.
"The Afghans still do not have a solution to the Kabul Bank mess and they just don't seem to realize how serious it is," a Western diplomat said recently.
I.M.F. officials and donor countries want to see the misappropriated loans repaid out of Afghan government tax revenues -- rather than through the money it gets from donors, who finance the great majority of the country's operating budget.
Kabul Bank's biggest depositor has been the Afghan government itself, which pays military and police salaries through the bank; most of those funds are provided directly by the United States.
Rod Nordland and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul and Ray Rivera from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.
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16) N.Y. Budget Deal Cuts Aid to Schools and Health Care
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and THOMAS KAPLAN
"...the budget did not include an extension of a temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy New Yorkers....Mr. Cuomo persuaded legislative leaders to agree to a year-to-year cut of more than $2 billion in spending on healthcare and education, historically the two largest drivers of New York's budget."
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/nyregion/28budget.html?hp
Capping weeks of secretive negotiations and intense political jockeying, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and leaders of the Legislature on Sunday announced a $132.5 billion budget agreement that would cut overall spending, impose no major new taxes and begin a long-term overhaul of New York State's bloated Medicaid programs.
The agreement, five days before the March 31 budget deadline, offered the prospect of Albany's first on-time budget in five years. If enacted by lawmakers, the deal would cut the state's overall year-to-year spending for the first time in more than a decade.
While some details were not available on Sunday night, the outlines of the deal suggested that Mr. Cuomo had won a significant victory in his battle to rein in state spending and corral the unions and other special interests that have long dominated the budget process in Albany. It would also fulfill one of Mr. Cuomo's main campaign pledges: to avoid new taxes in addressing the state's financial problems.
Dashing the hopes of many Democratic lawmakers, including the bulk of the New York City delegation, the budget did not include an extension of a temporary income tax surcharge on wealthy New Yorkers, a measure that has drawn support among Democrats and even some Senate Republicans as a way to further offset Mr. Cuomo's proposed cuts in money for schools and other programs.
Mr. Cuomo persuaded legislative leaders to agree to a year-to-year cut of more than $2 billion in spending on health care and education, historically the two largest drivers of New York's budget. Over all, officials said, the budget deal would reduce year-to-year spending by about 2 percent.
For both Medicaid and education, the deal calls for a two-year appropriation instead of the traditional one year's worth of financing, locking in fixed rates of growth through Mr. Cuomo's second year in office and potentially allowing him to avoid a repeat of the battles he fought this year with teachers' unions and other special interests.
In exchange, Mr. Cuomo agreed to add $250 million - a modest amount by Albany standards - to his executive budget proposal, including more money for schools, the blind and the deaf, human services, higher education, and prescription drugs for the elderly.
Mr. Cuomo and the legislative leaders said they hoped the agreement would signal a new day of responsible budgeting and effective government in a Capitol long criticized for its gridlock and dysfunction.
"This budget brings the power back to the people," Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat elected last fall, said at a news conference at the Capitol, where he was joined by both parties' leaders in the Senate and the Assembly. "For them to see their government functioning this way, it's a new day in New York. We set out to build a new New York, and this is the first step down that road."
Mr. Cuomo succeeded in part by aggressively wielding a tool pioneered by his much-maligned predecessor, Gov. David A. Paterson: He threatened that if lawmakers missed the budget deadline, he would put his preferred cuts into an emergency spending measure, forcing them to vote for his budget or risk shutting down state government. That pressure helped drive lawmakers to the table in recent days, because refusing a deal with Mr. Cuomo would have meant giving up what scant restorations the Legislature had been able to wring from him.
Seeking to avoid the blistering attack ads from labor unions and hospitals that have pummeled past governors and weakened their hand with the Legislature, Mr. Cuomo also persuaded the state's most powerful health care interests to draft a side deal with him that gave Mr. Cuomo the broad cuts he needed in exchange for concessions that would not directly affect the budget, like a "living wage" law for home care workers.
But Mr. Cuomo also made some concessions. He agreed to abandon a cap on "pain and suffering" damages for victims of medical malpractice, a controversial measure avidly sought by the hospital industry in exchange for its support of the health care cuts but strongly opposed by Assembly Democrats. A related proposal, to establish a state fund to pay for the future medical expenses of brain-damaged infants, survived the negotiations, drawing praise from hospital executives.
Advocates for increased school aid were livid over the deal, suggesting that Mr. Cuomo's cuts - and his refusal to consider a "millionaires' tax" to offset those cuts - would hurt students. "Governor Cuomo's first budget makes heartlessly large cuts to our schools to finance tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and students in poor and middle-class districts will lose the most educationally," Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, said.
The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said he would fight to renew the income tax surcharge through a separate piece of legislation. "We still hope to convince our partners it's the right thing to do," Mr. Silver said.
The budget also did not include an extension of state rent regulations, which are set to expire in June, another issue that many Democratic lawmakers from New York City had supported.
Some details of the agreement remained unclear on Sunday. A district-by-district breakdown of school aid, with details that could trouble many rank-and-file lawmakers, would not be available until Monday, officials said. The deal also includes a cut of 3,700 prison beds but does not specify which prisons might close in the coming months.
"This budget agreement keeps our Senate Republican commitment to reduce spending, cut taxes and empower the private sector to create jobs," said Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who is the Senate majority leader.
Legislative leaders also agreed to adopt Mr. Cuomo's proposal to cut 10 percent from state agencies' budgets, including $450 million in unspecified work-force savings, which are likely to lead to layoffs. No precise number was available.
"It sounds as if the budget has been settled generally on the governor's terms, without significant new taxes," said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a research group that favors reduced government spending. "That's a real accomplishment. But with so many important details unsettled, he'll have his work cut out for him in the coming months."
The announcement Sunday came as Democrats, teachers' unions and other groups mounted a last-ditch effort to force reconsideration of the income tax surcharge and rent regulation. While lawmakers in both the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled Assembly typically vote for budget deals that their leadership helped design, some Democrats have in recent days openly discussed voting against a budget that was too austere.
"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," said State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat. "I have not seen any of the paperwork that's come out yet, so there's a lot to make an evaluation of."
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17) U.S. Consumer Spending Rose 0.7% in February
"Consumer spending rose for an eighth straight month in February as households tapped savings to cover higher food and energy prices."
By REUTERS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/economy/29econ.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Consumer spending rose for an eighth straight month in February as households tapped savings to cover higher food and energy prices.
Spending rose 0.7 percent in February after a 0.3 percent increase in January, and inflation accelerated at its fastest rate since June 2009', the Commerce Department said on Monday.
Adjusted for inflation, spending was up 0.3 percent last month after being flat the prior month.
"The data provide yet more evidence that higher prices are denting economic growth," said Paul Dales, a senior United States economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected spending to advance 0.6 percent.
After increasing at its fastest rate in four years in the final three months of 2010, consumer spending is expected to slow in the first quarter, with rising energy and food prices stealing from spending on other goods and services.
High food and energy prices pushed up overall inflation last month. The Commerce Department said the personal consumption expenditures price index rose 0.4 percent, the fastest since June 2009, after gaining 0.3 percent in January
Excluding food and energy - a core measure of inflation that is closely watched by the Federal Reserve - the index increased 0.2 percent after rising by the same margin in January.
The Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, has said high food and energy costs should prove transitory, but that the central bank was prepared to act if needed to ensure an inflation psychology does not take root.
Incomes rose 0.3 percent last month after rising 1.2 percent in January. That compared with economists' expectations for a 0.4 percent gain.
With consumption outpacing the growth in incomes, savings fell to $676.7 billion, from $710.5 billion in January.
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18) Hundreds of thousands protest against nuclear energy across Germany
Author: Nicole Goebel (dpa, dapd, AFP, epd)
Editor: Kyle James
Nuclear Power
March 26, 2011
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14945340,00.html
Over 200,000 protesters took to the streets in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg to pressure the government into abandoning nuclear energy generation. The protests add to the pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Around 210,000 demonstrators in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg vented their anger at the government's nuclear policy on Saturday, supported by Germany's umbrella union body, the DGB, as well as politicians from the opposition Greens and Social Democrats.
Alarmed by the nuclear crisis in Japan, environmental and religious groups as well as unions organized the demonstrations, which kicked off in Cologne's city center, where nearly 40,000 people turned up to support the cause.
Around 90,000 people took to the streets in Berlin while in Hamburg, organizers counted around 50,000 demonstrators and in Munich the figure was estimated at 30,000.
Organizers said they were the biggest anti-nuclear protests Germany has ever seen.
"The government must now respond with plans to switch off all atomic reactors," they insisted.
Speaking at the demonstration in Berlin, the head of the DGB union group, Michael Sommer, told the crowd: "We have to wean ourselves off nuclear energy in an orderly fashion."
"And to those in the nuclear industry and those who support atomic energy, let me say this: We've had enough of your lies, of your assurances and of your playing down of the dangers," he added.
Economics minister under pressure
Meanwhile, Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle remained under fire for comments he made last week about Berlin's nuclear policy turn-around, with Social Democrat Sebastian Edathy calling him a liar and demanding his resignation.
On Thursday, minutes surfaced of a meeting between the head of the Federation of German Industry (BDI), Werner Schnappauf, and Brüderle in which the minister described the government's decision to suspend a plan to extend the lifetimes of German nuclear reactors for three months as "not rational."
He also hinted in the document that the move was politically motivated because of two crucial elections on Sunday in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Schnappauf resigned after the document was published, whereas Brüderle insisted in parliament that he was misquoted.
Industry split
Business representatives are divided on the nuclear issue, with the head of the influential German Engineering Federation, Thomas Lindner, warning against a hasty retreat from nuclear energy.
demonstrations in BerlinBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Fukushima has made nuclear-phobic Germans even more determined
It would be pointless, he said, "if 80 percent of reactors were switched off and we have little wind and cloudy skies," he told the weekly newspaper "Euro am Sonntag," referring to nuclear opponents' calls for Germany to generate more of its power through wind turbines and solar cells.
Carmakers Volkswagen and Daimler, however, are more relaxed about the issue, according to a report in the weekly business magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
"By the time we've switched to electric cars on a large scale we will have alternative energy sources in place," VW was quoted as saying.
Radiation spreads in Japan
In Japan, radiation levels have soared in seawater near Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, officials said on Saturday.
Engineers are still struggling to stabilize the power station two weeks after it was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Tests on Friday showed levels of iodine 131 in seawater 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the coastal nuclear complex had spiked to 1,250 times higher than normal, but were not considered a threat to marine life or food safety, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
Two of the plant's reactors are now seen as safe, but the other four are volatile, emitting steam and smoke. The nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilized.
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19) At U.S. Nuclear Sites, Preparing for the Unlikely
By JOHN M. BRODER, MATTHEW L. WALD and TOM ZELLER Jr.
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/science/29threat.html?hp
WASHINGTON - American nuclear safety regulators, using a complex mathematical technique, determined that the simultaneous failure of both emergency shutdown systems to prevent a core meltdown was so unlikely that it would happen once every 17,000 years.
It happened twice in four days at a pair of nuclear reactors in southern New Jersey.
The American people, and the regulators whose job it is to protect them from a catastrophic nuclear accident, are watching the unfolding events at a complex of crippled reactors in Japan with foreboding and an overriding question: Can it happen here?
The answer - probably not - from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is meant to reassure. But as the New Jersey accidents in 1983, which did not result in a release of radiation, show, no one can predict what might upend all the computer models, emergency planning and backup systems designed to eliminate those narrow theoretical probabilities or mitigate their effects.
"We can never say that that could never happen here," said Anthony R. Pietrangelo, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main trade association. "It doesn't matter how you get there, whether it's a hurricane, whether it's a tsunami, whether it's a seismic event, whether it's a terrorist attack, whether it's a cyberattack, whether it's operator error, or some other failure in the plant - it doesn't matter. We have to be prepared to deal with those events."
Nuclear safety officers plan for every known contingency, yet there remain what Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, memorably termed the "unknown unknowns," referring to alleged links between Iraq and terrorists. The threats considered most serious by nuclear engineers are problems, and the human responses to them, that lead to a loss of power, a blackout. Lack of power to run cooling systems for the reactor core and for spent-fuel ponds led to the explosions and release of radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan.
American nuclear facilities have backup power systems, and backups to those. All plants are required to have batteries to provide power in the event of a loss of power and failure of backup generators. In the United States, 93 of the 104 operating reactors have batteries capable of providing power for four hours; the other 11 have eight-hour batteries. Fukushima had eight-hour batteries. It wasn't enough.
No single analysis can discern which nuclear power plants in the United States are most at risk for a disaster, if only because the potential threats vary widely from site to site and region to region. But the probabilities of an accident leading to damage to a reactor core have been roughly penciled out.
A 2003 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report, based on data submitted by plant owners, looked at the risk of equipment breakdowns, power failures and other factors that could lead to core damage.
It found that reactor No. 1 at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa., would appear to be at greatest risk. By the commission's calculations, such an episode would occur there roughly once every 2,227 years. By contrast, the expected frequency of a core damage accident at the Quad Cities facility in Illinois is once every 833,000 years.
But nuclear experts say that such statistics offer only an approximate view of a plant's potential vulnerability - and suggest nothing about when or where disaster might strike next.
"These sorts of big numbers can tell you which plants need to take steps first to fix general problems, or which plants might have wider margins if a problem were to occur," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and the director of the Nuclear Safety Project of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and nuclear watchdog group. "They're not going to tell you when that bad day is going to arrive."
Regulators and federal courts have discounted the likelihood of multiple crises hitting a nuclear facility at the same time. One federal judge, ruling against opponents of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo, Calif., said that the odds of an earthquake setting off a nuclear accident at the plant were negligible.
"The commission has determined that the chance of such a bizarre concatenation of events occurring is extremely small," the court said.
But the crisis at Fukushima shows that such natural catastrophes can occur. The fact that the odds of a nuclear accident are unknowable and the risks hard to measure make it in some ways more frightening than the known - and greater - risks of driving without a seat belt or breathing the fumes from a coal-burning power plant.
"People are scared of certain things. It's part of our makeup," said Robert H. Socolow, a physicist at Princeton University. "The public is more afraid of radiation than the experts who work with it every day. But this is about irreducible irrationality, if you like. We are irrational, every last one of us."
Fresh Eye on American Plants
Assurances from industry and regulators are unlikely to comfort nuclear critics and newly worried residents living in the shadow of nuclear facilities in the United States that, like the Fukushima plant, skirt known fault lines or tsunami zones, or perhaps stand in hurricane country or 100-year flood plains.
In the wake of the disaster in Japan, concerns were quickly raised, for example, at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Florida, which sits on Biscayne Bay, 24 miles south of Miami. Critics pointed to the potential for a hurricane to create a storm surge that could simultaneously sever grid power and inundate backup generators - precisely the recipe that crippled Fukushima.
In 1992, Turkey Point took a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew, causing a loss of off-site power for more than five days. Backup systems, however, allowed operators to keep the reactors cool until power could be restored. Paul Gunter, the director of the Reactor Oversight Project for the group Beyond Nuclear, which opposes nuclear energy, joined other critics in pointing to the Dresden nuclear facility in Morris, Ill., and the nearby Quad Cities plant in Cordova, both of which are north of the New Madrid seismic zone. The area registered quakes estimated to have exceeded 7.0 in magnitude in 1811 and 1812, and is known for somewhat more regular temblors of lesser intensity.
"The New Madrid fault line could generate a potentially catastrophic event if we had similar seismic activity to what happened in Japan," Mr. Gunter said. "There are a number of reactors within the impact zone."
Exelon, the operator of both facilities, said that all of its plants are designed to withstand substantial earthquakes, but argued that none - including Dresden and Quad Cities, which are hundreds of miles from the New Madrid fault line - are actually considered to be in significant earthquake zones.
Still, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last week that it would be conducting new seismic risk assessments next year at 17 plants - including Dresden.
Perhaps to the dismay of its opponents, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is not on the commission's list. The plant, on an 85-foot bluff above the Pacific Ocean, is owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Opponents redoubled their efforts when PG&E began seeking early renewal on its two 40-year licenses - chiefly on the ground that the seismic studies that underwrote the original licensing in the 1970s were inadequate, and are now sorely out of date.
A new fault line discovered in 2008, called the Shoreline Fault, runs about half a mile from the front door of Diablo Canyon.
Opponents want new seismic studies before the plant's license is renewed, but PG&E, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other experts argue that the fault poses no threat that the nuclear facility couldn't handle.
As at Diablo Canyon, fears of an earthquake near the Indian Point nuclear power facility, about 30 miles north of New York City, were stoked in 2008 when researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University discovered a pattern of small but active faults in the area, suggesting that earthquakes near the plant were more common than once thought.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has called a special meeting with federal regulators to discuss earthquake risks and preparedness at the facility. Among the concerns: how to execute an orderly evacuation of one of the most densely populated regions of the country - particularly given that the government mandates that officials plan only for a 10-mile escape radius.
With Japan's area of concern now widened to 50 miles, the American standard strikes many critics as unrealistically small.
How Risk Is Calculated
As part of its mission to ensure the safety of nuclear power, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets two goals: that the public's risk of death from acute radiation sickness from nuclear reactors should not exceed one-thousandth of the risk of accidental death from all sources, and that the risk of fatal cancer likewise should not exceed that amount.
The commission, looking at how much radiation it would take to kill people in accidents, and how much it would take to raise cancer rates, decided that reactors would meet that standard if there were meltdowns with off-site consequences only once per 100,000 years of operation.
With 104 American reactors now running, that would mean such an event once every 1,000 years or so. The commission asserts that all plants currently meet that safety standard, as demonstrated through an analysis.
The analysis looks at the chance that any piece of equipment will fail, and what other failures that might lead to, under a mathematical method called probabilistic risk assessment, Martin A. Stutzke, the commission's senior technical adviser for probabilistic risk assessment technologies, said in an interview.
To meet the government's goal, about 80 percent of the plants have made changes since the early 1990s, industry experts say. Many of the changes were to cope with new calculations of earthquake frequency and intensity. Some plants shored up water tanks outside containment buildings; some reinforced the ceilings in their control rooms to make sure they would not collapse; others reinforced cable trays or electronic equipment racks, or anchored their equipment more firmly to the floor.
"It varied tremendously from plant to plant," said Mr. Stutzke, with engineers using the probabilistic technique to identify the components that had the highest likelihood of failure combined with the most serious consequences if they did.
But while the safety goal of once in 100,000 years expresses a real number, the component failure numbers are yardsticks that may be wrong. "The numbers have tremendous uncertainty with them," he said. They could be off by a factor of 10, he said.
Earthquakes are a challenge, Mr. Stutzke said, because the historical record is so short. The Richter scale is 75 years old. For earlier records, he said, experts study old newspaper accounts - "church bells ringing, chimneys knocked over, this sort of thing," he said. Geologists also use carbon dating and other techniques to estimate the time and scale of older earthquakes.
The inherent problem, risk experts say, is that it is hard to determine the size of the worst natural hazard, said Douglas E. True, of ERIN Engineering and Research Inc., of Walnut Creek, Calif.
Engineers use historical data, add a margin for safety, and then analyze for what will go wrong first.
American reactors may be better protected than those at the Japanese plant were, because of precautions taken after Sept. 11 for a terrorist or military attack, according to industry and government officials and academic experts. American nuclear plant operators are required to have diesel fuel and pumps on site or readily available nearby to provide backup power and cooling capacity. Right after the Fukushima crisis they were ordered to check that they had the required equipment on hand and in working order.
The details are classified, but the industry has emergency supplies of pumps, hoses and generators, and the plan assumes Air Force help in moving equipment when needed.
"We have military capability that's pretty impressive, a transport system that can move big pieces of equipment very quickly," said Dale Klein, a commission chairman in the second Bush administration. If the diesel generators fail, he said, it makes no difference whether the cause was attack, tsunami or earthquake; the remedy is the same.
Another former chairman, Richard Meserve, who was in that position at the time of the 2001 attacks, said, "The challenge that we confront is that external events obviously can occur that may be larger than you expected."
The commission will not discuss the precautions it has in place to contend with such events, citing security considerations.
Alternatives Carry Risks Too
There is no simple or single way to properly weigh the risks of nuclear power against other energy sources, or other risks of modern life, said David Ropeik, an instructor at Harvard University, consultant to industry and author of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts."
"What we're afraid of determines how we behave, and sometimes those behaviors become risks in themselves," he said. He cited a study by two researchers at the University of Michigan who found that fear of flying after the Sept. 11 hijackings had caused an additional 1,018 highway deaths in just the first three months after the attacks.
Radiation is a real threat, nuclear physicists say, but not as great as many people believe it is, and not as great as other threats. Indeed, every energy source comes with dangers, from the mine or wellhead to the smokestack or tailpipe.
"One million people a year die prematurely in China from air pollution from energy and industrial sectors," said Stefan Hirschberg, head of safety analysis at the Paul Scherrer Institute, an engineering research center in Switzerland. More than 10,000 Americans a year die prematurely from the health effects of breathing emissions from coal-burning power plants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Coal mining accidents in China kill an estimated 6,000 people a year, according to China's Mining Ministry. In just the past year in the United States, the Deepwater Horizon blowout killed 11 people, the Upper Big Branch coal mine blast killed 29 and a natural gas pipeline explosion in California killed 8.
But such statistics don't alter the public's view of nuclear accidents.
Michael A. Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there is no right way to gauge risk. It is an intensely personal matter affected by a lot of factors.
"When you hear these arguments that pollution from coal plants costs so many thousands of lives compared to minimal or no deaths from nuclear accidents, that may be technically true, but it leaves a lot of people cold. It's like saying, 'Don't pay attention to the twin towers falling; more people die crossing the street,' " he said. "Experts should not say, 'Here's how you should feel about risk.' They should be saying, 'Here are the facts. You decide what matters to you.' "
Fear of radiation is a significant health threat as well. A 2006 study of survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl accident compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Bank and a number of United Nations bodies found that fear had raised stress levels and compounded health problems by increasing rates of smoking and drinking, compared with groups outside the affected zone. The study estimated that perhaps 4,000 of the 600,000 people exposed to radiation from the plant would die prematurely from radiation-related cancers, compared with 100,000 of the same population who would die from other cancers.
The biggest health impact, the study found, was psychological.
"The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date," according to the report, "Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts." "Psychological distress arising from the accident and its aftermath has had a profound impact on individual and community behavior," including a sense of fatalism and dependency that has been transferred to the next generation of people in the affected zone.
"There is no question we should be appropriately concerned about nuclear power," Mr. Ropeik said. "But 'appropriately' is the important distinction. On a continuum, there is no question in my mind that the dangers from fossil fuel burning should worry us more."
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20) Five US peace demonstrators sentenced to prison
Associated Press
March 28, 2011
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20110328/55c4b111-c81d-463e-b9f8-bff54ee680bc
TACOMA, Washington (AP) - Two priests, a nun and two women in their 60s who cut through fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor to protest submarine nuclear weapons were sentenced Monday to prison terms ranging from two to 15 months.
U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle sentenced Jesuit priest Stephen Kelly, 62, and retired teacher Susan Crane, 67, to 15 months in prison, U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Emily Langlie said.
Jesuit priest Bill Bichsel, 82, was sentenced to three months in prison and six months of home monitoring. Sister Anne Montgomery, 84, got two months in prison and four months home monitoring, and social worker Lynne Greenwald, 61, got six months in prison and 60 hours of community service.
All five defendants also were given one year of supervised release. They were ordered into custody Monday, Langlie said.
The judge praised the five defendants for their humanitarian work but said he was bound by the law to send a message that legal means must be used to bring about change, the News Tribune reported.
"Indeed, there is no indication of remorse," Settle said.
A federal jury convicted the five anti-war demonstrators of conspiracy, trespass and destruction of government property in December. They had faced up to 10 years in prison, and prosecutors recommended sentences ranging between six months and 36 months.
Court documents say the group cut through fences on Nov. 2, 2009, to reach an area near where nuclear warheads are stored in bunkers. The protesters put up banners, sprinkled blood on the ground, scattered sunflower seeds and prayed until they were arrested.
The Bangor base, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Seattle on Hood Canal, is home to 10 Ohio-class submarines, eight armed with Trident ballistic missiles and two with conventional weapons.
Prosecutors said in sentencing documents that the five trespassed into a restricted area, destroyed the Navy's property and placed themselves and others in jeopardy.
About 250 demonstrators gathered outside the federal courthouse before Monday's sentencing. Some demonstrators carried signs saying, "Blessed are the Peacemakers," according to Seattle radio station KOMO.
Kelly told KOMO before the sentencing that he was prepared to go to prison.
"I think it's really worth it. I have the solace of my conscience, as I think this is just one little step against nuclear weapons and someday we'll be free, and maybe not in my lifetime, but I have hope."
The five defendants said nuclear warheads stored at the base and on submarines there are illegal under international, national and humanitarian law, but a judge prohibited them from using international law and the lethality of nuclear weapons as a defense. The trial hinged on straightforward charges relating to trespassing and property damage.
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21) The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.
Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging "savages" and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.
Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon - part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington - left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields.
To provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot. Local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a safe haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as the soldiers of 3rd Platoon walked through the alleys of La Mohammad Kalay, they saw no armed fighters, no evidence of enemy positions. Instead, they were greeted by a frustratingly familiar sight: destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. The insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs.
While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. "The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it," one of the men later told Army investigators.
The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.
He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.
Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still.
The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun.
Mudin buckled, went down face first onto the ground. His cap toppled off. A pool of blood congealed by his head.
The loud report of the guns echoed all around the sleepy farming village. The sound of such unexpected gunfire typically triggers an emergency response in other soldiers, sending them into full battle mode. Yet when the shots rang out, some soldiers didn't seem especially alarmed, even when the radio began to squawk. It was Morlock, agitated, screaming that he had come under attack. On a nearby hill, Spc. Adam Winfield turned to his friend, Pfc. Ashton Moore, and explained that it probably wasn't a real combat situation. It was more likely a staged killing, he said - a plan the guys had hatched to take out an unarmed Afghan without getting caught.
Back at the wall, soldiers arriving on the scene found the body and the bloodstains on the ground. Morlock and Holmes were crouched by the wall, looking excited. When a staff sergeant asked them what had happened, Morlock said the boy had been about to attack them with a grenade. "We had to shoot the guy," he said.
It was an unlikely story: a lone Taliban fighter, armed with only a grenade, attempting to ambush a platoon in broad daylight, let alone in an area that offered no cover or concealment. Even the top officer on the scene, Capt. Patrick Mitchell, thought there was something strange about Morlock's story. "I just thought it was weird that someone would come up and throw a grenade at us," Mitchell later told investigators.
But Mitchell did not order his men to render aid to Mudin, whom he believed might still be alive, and possibly a threat. Instead, he ordered Staff Sgt. Kris Sprague to "make sure" the boy was dead. Sprague raised his rifle and fired twice.
As the soldiers milled around the body, a local elder who had been working in the poppy field came forward and accused Morlock and Holmes of murder. Pointing to Morlock, he said that the soldier, not the boy, had thrown the grenade. Morlock and the other soldiers ignored him.
To identify the body, the soldiers fetched the village elder who had been speaking to the officers that morning. But by tragic coincidence, the elder turned out to be the father of the slain boy. His moment of grief-stricken recognition, when he saw his son lying in a pool of blood, was later recounted in the flat prose of an official Army report. "The father was very upset," the report noted.
The father's grief did nothing to interrupt the pumped-up mood that had broken out among the soldiers. Following the routine Army procedure required after every battlefield death, they cut off the dead boy's clothes and stripped him naked to check for identifying tattoos. Next they scanned his iris and fingerprints, using a portable biometric scanner.
Then, in a break with protocol, the soldiers began taking photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. Holding a cigarette rakishly in one hand, Holmes posed for the camera with Mudin's bloody and half-naked corpse, grabbing the boy's head by the hair as if it were a trophy deer. Morlock made sure to get a similar memento.
No one seemed more pleased by the kill than Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the platoon's popular and hard-charging squad leader. "It was like another day at the office for him," one soldier recalls. Gibbs started "messing around with the kid," moving his arms and mouth and "acting like the kid was talking." Then, using a pair of razor-sharp medic's shears, he reportedly sliced off the dead boy's pinky finger and gave it to Holmes, as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.
According to his fellow soldiers, Holmes took to carrying the finger with him in a zip-lock bag. "He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out," one of his friends would later report. "He was proud of his finger."
After the killing, the soldiers involved in Mudin's death were not disciplined or punished in any way. Emboldened, the platoon went on a shooting spree over the next four months that claimed the lives of at least three more innocent civilians. When the killings finally became public last summer, the Army moved aggressively to frame the incidents as the work of a "rogue unit" operating completely on its own, without the knowledge of its superiors. Military prosecutors swiftly charged five low-ranking soldiers with murder, and the Pentagon clamped down on any information about the killings. Soldiers in Bravo Company were barred from giving interviews, and lawyers for the accused say their clients faced harsh treatment if they spoke to the press, including solitary confinement. No officers were charged.
But a review of internal Army records and investigative files obtained by Rolling Stone, including dozens of interviews with members of Bravo Company compiled by military investigators, indicates that the dozen infantrymen being portrayed as members of a secretive "kill team" were operating out in the open, in plain view of the rest of the company. Far from being clandestine, as the Pentagon has implied, the murders of civilians were common knowledge among the unit and understood to be illegal by "pretty much the whole platoon," according to one soldier who complained about them. Staged killings were an open topic of conversation, and at least one soldier from another battalion in the 3,800-man Stryker Brigade participated in attacks on unarmed civilians. "The platoon has a reputation," a whistle-blower named Pfc. Justin Stoner told the Army Criminal Investigation Command. "They have had a lot of practice staging killings and getting away with it."
From the start, the questionable nature of the killings was on the radar of senior Army leadership. Within days of the first murder, Rolling Stone has learned, Mudin's uncle descended on the gates of FOB Ramrod, along with 20 villagers from La Mohammad Kalay, to demand an investigation. "They were sitting at our front door," recalls Lt. Col. David Abrahams, the battalion's second in command. During a four-hour meeting with Mudin's uncle, Abrahams was informed that several children in the village had seen Mudin killed by soldiers from 3rd Platoon. The battalion chief ordered the soldiers to be reinterviewed, but Abrahams found "no inconsistencies in their story," and the matter was dropped. "It was cut and dry to us at the time," Abrahams recalls.
Other officers were also in a position to question the murders. Neither 3rd Platoon's commander, Capt. Matthew Quiggle, nor 1st Lt. Roman Ligsay has been held accountable for their unit's actions, despite their repeated failure to report killings that they had ample reason to regard as suspicious. In fact, supervising the murderous platoon, or even having knowledge of the crimes, seems to have been no impediment to career advancement. Ligsay has actually been promoted to captain, and a sergeant who joined the platoon in April became a team leader even though he "found out about the murders from the beginning," according to a soldier who cooperated with the Army investigation.
Indeed, it would have been hard not to know about the murders, given that the soldiers of 3rd Platoon took scores of photographs chronicling their kills and their time in Afghanistan. The photos, obtained by Rolling Stone, portray a front-line culture among U.S. troops in which killing Afghan civilians is less a reason for concern than a cause for celebration. "Most people within the unit disliked the Afghan people, whether it was the Afghan National Police, the Afghan National Army or locals," one soldier explained to investigators. "Everyone would say they're savages." One photo shows a hand missing a finger. Another depicts a severed head being maneuvered with a stick, and still more show bloody body parts, blown-apart legs, mutilated torsos. Several show dead Afghans, lying on the ground or on Stryker vehicles, with no weapons in view.
In many of the photos it is unclear whether the bodies are civilians or Taliban, and it is possible that the unidentified deaths involved no illegal acts by U.S. soldiers. But it is a violation of Army standards to take such photos of the dead, let alone share them with others. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who asked.
The collection also includes several videos shot by U.S. troops. In a jumpy, 30-minute clip titled "Motorcycle Kill," soldiers believed to be with another battalion in the Stryker Brigade gun down two Afghans on a motorcycle who may have been armed. One of the most chilling files shows two Afghans suspected of planting an IED being blown up in an airstrike. Shot through thermal imaging, the grainy footage has been edited into a music video, complete with a rock soundtrack and a title card that reads 'death zone.'
Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos - an effort that reached the highest levels of both governments. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and President Hamid Karzai were reportedly briefed on the photos as early as May, and the military launched a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib. Investigators in Afghanistan searched the hard drives and confiscated the computers of more than a dozen soldiers, ordering them to delete any provocative images. The Army Criminal Investigation Command also sent agents fanning out across America to the homes of soldiers and their relatives, gathering up every copy of the files they could find. The message was clear: What happens in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan.
By suppressing the photos, however, the Army may also have been trying to keep secret evidence that the killings of civilians went beyond a few men in 3rd Platoon. In one image, two dead Afghans have been tied together, their hands bound, and placed alongside a road. A sign - handwritten on cardboard from a discarded box of rations - hangs around their necks. It reads "Taliban are Dead." The Pentagon says it is investigating the photos, but insists that there is little more investigators can do to identify the men. "It's a mystery," says a Pentagon spokesman. "To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure they know where to take it next. All we have is two apparently dead Afghans handcuffed to each other against a mile marker. We don't know much beyond that. For all we know, those two guys may have been killed by the Taliban for being sympathizers."
But such statements suggest that the Pentagon isn't following every lead. A Stryker vehicle in the photos, for example, bears identifying marks that are clearly visible in the image. And according to a source in Bravo Company, who spoke to Rolling Stone on the condition of anonymity, the two unarmed men in the photos were killed by soldiers from another platoon, which has not yet been implicated in the scandal.
"Those were some innocent farmers that got killed," the source says. "Their standard operating procedure after killing dudes was to drag them up to the side of the highway."
Army prosecutors insist that blame for the killings rests with a soldier near the bottom of the Stryker Brigade's totem pole: Calvin Gibbs, a three-tour veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who served as a squad leader in 3rd Platoon. Morlock and five soldiers charged with lesser crimes have pleaded guilty in exchange for testifying against Gibbs, who faces life in prison for three counts of premeditated murder.
The 26-year-old staff sergeant has been widely portrayed as a sociopath of Mansonesque proportions, a crazed killer with a "pure hatred for all Afghans" who was detested and feared by those around him. But the portrait omits evidence that the Army's own investigators gathered from soldiers in Bravo Company. "Gibbs is very well-liked in the platoon by his seniors, peers and subordinates alike," Spc. Adam Kelly reported, adding that Gibbs was "one of the best NCOs I've ever had the pleasure of working with in my military career. I believe that because of his experience, more people came back alive and uninjured than would have without him having been part of the platoon." Another soldier described Gibbs as an "upbeat guy, very funny. He was one of those guys you could talk to about anything and he would make you feel better about the situation."
At six-feet-four and 220 pounds, Gibbs could certainly intimidate those around him. Growing up in a devout Mormon family in Billings, Montana, he had dropped out of high school to get an equivalency degree and enlist in the Army. He plunged into soldiering, accumulating a slew of medals in Iraq, where the line between legitimate self-defense and civilian deaths was often blurry at best. In 2004, Gibbs and other soldiers allegedly fired on an unarmed Iraqi family near Kirkuk, killing two adults and a child. The incident, which was not prosecuted at the time, is now under investigation by the Army.
Before he joined Bravo Company in November 2009, Gibbs worked on the personal security detail for one of the top commanders in Afghanistan, a controversial, outspoken colonel named Harry Tunnell. Tunnell, who at the time was the commander of 5th Stryker Brigade, openly mocked the military's approach to counterinsurgency - which emphasizes the need to win the support of local civilians - as better suited to a "social scientist." "Political correctness dictates that we cannot talk about the oppressive measures employed during successful counterinsurgency campaigns," he wrote. Tunnell also pushed his men to go after "guerrilla hunter killers," insisting that the enemy "must be attacked relentlessly."
When Gibbs left Tunnell's detail and arrived at the front, he quickly became an extreme version of a relentless attacker. After he took command, Gibbs put a pirate flag on his tent. "Hey, brother," he told a friend. "Come down to the line and we'll find someone to kill." A tattoo on his left shin featured a pair of crossed rifles offset by six skulls. Three of the skulls, colored in red, represented his kills in Iraq. The others, in blue, were from Afghanistan.
By the time Gibbs arrived, morale in the Stryker Brigade had hit rock bottom. Only four months earlier, the unit had been deployed to Afghanistan amid a chorus of optimism about its eight-wheeled armored vehicles, a technological advancement that was supposed to move infantry to the battlefield more quickly and securely, enabling U.S. troops to better strike against the Taliban. By December, however, those hopes had dissolved. The Taliban had forced the Strykers off the roads simply by increasing the size and explosive force of their IEDs, and the brigade had suffered terrible casualties; one battalion had lost more soldiers in action than any since the start of the war. Gibbs, in fact, had been brought in after a squad leader had his legs blown off by an IED.
The soldiers were bored and shellshocked and angry. They had been sent to Afghanistan as part of a new advance guard on a mission to track down the Taliban, but the enemy was nowhere to be found. "To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference between local nationals and combatants," one soldier later confessed. During the unit's first six months in Afghanistan, the Taliban evaded almost every patrol that 3rd Platoon sent out. Frustrations ran so high that when the unit came across the body of an insurgent killed by a helicopter gunship in November 2009, one soldier took out a hunting knife and stabbed the corpse. According to another soldier, Gibbs began playing with a pair of scissors near the dead man's hands. "I wonder if these can cut off a finger?" Gibbs asked.
The Pentagon's top command, rather than addressing the morale problems, actually held up the brigade as a media-worthy example of progress in the war. The month after the helicopter incident - only four weeks before the killings began - the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, paid a heavily publicized visit to the area. The military's strategy of counterinsurgency, he reminded members of 5th Stryker Brigade, required them to win hearts and minds by protecting the population. "If we're killing local civilians," he cautioned, "we're going to strategically lose."
Gibbs had a different idea about how to breathe new life into 3rd Platoon. Not long after he arrived, he explained to his fellow soldiers that they didn't have to wait passively to be attacked by the enemy's IEDs. They could strike back by hitting people in towns known to be sympathetic to the Taliban. "Gibbs told everyone about this scenario by pitching it - by saying that all these Afghans were savages, and we had just lost one of our squad leaders because his legs got blown off by an IED," Morlock recalled. Killing an Afghan - any Afghan - became a way to avenge the loss.
The members of Bravo Company began to talk incessantly about killing Afghans as they went about their daily chores, got stoned or relaxed over a game of Warhammer. One idea, proposed half in jest, was to throw candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shoot the children who came running to pick up the sweets. According to one soldier, they also talked about a second scenario in which they "would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over." Another elaborate plan involved waiting for an IED attack, then using the explosion as an excuse to kill civilians. That way, the soldiers reasoned, "you could shoot anyone in the general area and get away with it."
"We were operating in such bad places and not being able to do anything about it," Morlock said in a phone interview from the jail at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. "I guess that's why we started taking things into our own hands."
After killing the Afghan boy at La Mohammad Kalay, members of 3rd Platoon were jubilant. "They were high-fiving each other about having killed the guy," one soldier recalled. They put the corpse in a black body bag and stowed it on top of their Stryker for the ride back to FOB Ramrod. No sooner had they arrived at the base than they were recounting the tale to soldiers they barely knew.
A few hours after the shooting, during a routine checkup at the base's clinic, Holmes and Morlock bragged about having killed an insurgent to Alyssa Reilly, a fair-skinned, blond medic who was popular among the men in the unit. Reilly later paid the soldiers a social visit, and they all sat around playing spades. When it came time for their wager, Morlock and Holmes said they would bet a finger. Then they tossed the finger that Gibbs had sliced from Mudin's body on the card pile. "I thought it was gross," Reilly told investigators.
Morlock was particularly eager to volunteer the truth to his fellow soldiers, evidently unconcerned about how they would react to his having murdered an unarmed Afghan. The same evening he shot Mudin, several members of Bravo Company convened in the privacy of a Stryker vehicle for a nightcap of hashish, a common activity among the unit. Hash supplied by Afghan translators was a major part of the daily lives of many soldiers; they smoked up constantly, getting high in their vehicles, their housing units, even porta-potties. Now, in the tanklike interior of the Stryker, surrounded by its mesh of wires and periscopes and thermal-imaging computers, Morlock passed the hash and recounted the killing in detail, even explaining how he had been careful not to leave the grenade's spoon and pin on the ground, where they might have been used as evidence that a U.S. weapon had been involved in the attack. For the same reason, he'd also been careful to brush away traces of white explosive powder around Mudin's body.
Before the military found itself short of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Morlock was the kind of bad-news kid whom the Army might have passed on. He grew up not far from Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska; his sister hung out with Bristol, and Morlock played hockey against Track. In those days, he was constantly in trouble: getting drunk and into fights, driving without a license, leaving the scene of a serious car accident. Even after he joined the Army, Morlock continued to get into trouble. In 2009, a month before he deployed to Afghanistan, he was charged with disorderly conduct after burning his wife with a cigarette. After he arrived in Afghanistan, he did any drug he could get his hands on: opium, hash, Ambien, amitriptyline, flexeril, phenergan, codeine, trazodone.
As Morlock bragged about the killing, word of the murder spread back home to families and friends. Soldiers e-mailed photos to their buddies and talked about the killing during visits home. On February 14th, three months before the Army launched its investigation, Spc. Adam Winfield sent a Facebook message to his father, Chris, back in Cape Coral, Florida. A skinny, bookish 21-year-old, Winfield was pissed off at being disciplined by Gibbs. "There are people in my platoon that have gotten away with murder," he told his father. "Everyone pretty much knows it was staged. . . . They all don't care." Winfield added that the victim was "some innocent guy about my age, just farming."
During Facebook chats, Winfield continued to keep his father in the loop. "Adam told me that he heard the group was planning on another murder involving an innocent Afghanistan man," Chris Winfield, himself a veteran, later told investigators. "They were going to kill him and drop an AK-47 on him to make it look like he was the bad guy." Alarmed, the elder Winfield called the command center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and told the sergeant on duty what was going on. But according to Winfield, the sergeant simply shrugged it off, telling him that "stuff like that happens" and that "it would be sorted out when Adam got home." Tragically, commanders at the base did nothing to follow up on the report.
Back in Afghanistan, Winfield was having second thoughts about reporting the incident. He believed the killings were wrong, but he had finally earned a place in the "circle of trust" erected by Gibbs, who had started off thinking of him as too "weak" to belong to the kill team. Reversing course, he begged his father to stop contacting the Army, saying that he feared for his life. Winfield said Gibbs had warned him that if he told anyone about the murder, he would "go home in a body bag." His father agreed to keep the matter quiet.
Given the lack of response from their superiors, the soldiers of 3rd Platoon now believed they could kill with impunity - provided they planted "drop weapons" at the scene to frame their victims as enemy combatants. The presence of a weapon virtually guaranteed that a shooting would be considered a legitimate kill, even under the stricter rules of engagement the military had implemented as a key element of counterinsurgency. A drop weapon was the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. And in the chaotic war zone, they were easy to find.
The military keeps close track of the weapons and ammunition it issues to soldiers, carefully documenting every grenade exploded, every magazine expended. So Gibbs made it his business to gather "off the books" weapons through a variety of channels. He got friendly with guys in the Afghan National Police and tried to trade them porn magazines in exchange for rocket-propelled grenades; he cajoled other units to give him munitions; he scrounged for broken and discarded UXO - unexploded ordnance - until he had collected a motley arsenal of random weaponry, old frag grenades, bent RPG tails, duct-taped claymore mines, C-4, mortar rounds. His best find was a working AK-47 with a folding butt stock and two magazines, which he pulled from the wreckage of an Afghan National Police vehicle that had been blown up near the base's gate. Gibbs placed the AK-47 and the magazines in a metal box in one of the Strykers. Later, a corporal named Emmitt Quintal discovered the gun and wondered what it was doing there. As he recalled, Staff Sgt. David Bram "sat me down and explained to me that it was basically to cover our ass if anything happened."
Two weeks after the murder of Gul Mudin, something did.
It was the night of January 27th and the platoon was driving along the highway near their forward operating base. Suddenly, through their thermal imaging, they spotted a human heat signature on the side of the road - a potentially suspicious sign, since the Taliban often operate at night, using the cover of darkness to plant IEDs.
The patrol stopped 100 yards away from the man, and a handful of soldiers and an interpreter got out of their vehicles. They could see that the man was crouched down, or curled up like a ball close to the ground. As they approached, the man stood up and held his arms in front of his chest. To the soldiers, the motion was either an indication that he was cold, or that he was hiding a suicide-bomb vest.
Shouting to the man in Pashto, the soldiers illuminated him with intense, high-power spotlights and ordered him to lift up his shirt. But the man began to pace back and forth in the blinding white light, ignoring their calls. "He was acting strange," recalls a soldier. For several minutes the man shuffled around as the soldiers fired warning shots at him. The bullets skipped around him.
Then - ignoring the warnings - the man began walking toward the troops. "Fire!" someone yelled. Gibbs opened fire, followed by at least five other soldiers. In the course of a few seconds, they expended approximately 40 rounds.
The man's body lay on the ground. He turned out to be completely unarmed. According to official statements made by several soldiers, he also appears to have been deaf or mentally disabled. Above his beard, a large portion of his skull was missing, blown away by the hail of bullets. Spc. Michael Wagnon collected a piece of the skull and kept it as a trophy.
It was the team's second killing of an unarmed man in as many weeks, and the second time they violated a body. But rather than investigate the shooting, the platoon's officers concentrated on trying to justify it. When 1st Lt. Roman Ligsay radioed Capt. Matthew Quiggle, the platoon's commanding officer, and informed him that the same unit had shot an unarmed Afghan male, the captain was furious. "He strongly believed that we had illegitimately killed a local national," recalls Quintal.
Quiggle ordered Ligsay to search until they found a weapon. "Lt. Ligsay was pretty freaked out," Quintal recalls. "He was positive he was going to lose his job." For the next hour the platoon swept the area with their flashlights looking for weapons, but they couldn't find anything.
Then Staff Sgt. Bram ordered Quintal to hand him the AK-47 magazine that Gibbs had stowed in the metal box in the Stryker. A private named Justin Stoner passed it down. A few minutes later, a voice called out in the darkness. "Sir!" Bram yelled. "I think I found something."
Lt. Ligsay walked up and saw the black magazine lying on the ground. He called it in, and the platoon breathed a sigh of relief. The members of the kill team knew it was a drop magazine, but it turned the shooting into a legitimate kill.
"The incident was staged to look like he may have had a weapon," Stoner told investigators. "Basically, what we did was a desperate search to justify killing this guy. But in reality he was just some old, deaf, retarded guy. We basically executed this man."
Under the rules of engagement, however, the U.S. military still considers the man responsible for his own death. Because he ignored the platoon's warnings and moved in their direction, no one has been charged in his killing - even though the Army now knows he was gunned down by soldiers intent on shooting unarmed civilians for sport.
Within a month, according to the Army, Gibbs executed another civilian and planted a weapon on the body. It was during Operation Kodak Moment, a routine mission to photograph and compile a database of the male residents of a village called Kari Kheyl. On February 22nd, the day of the mission, Gibbs hid the AK-47 he had stolen from the Afghan National Police in a black assault pack. As the platoon made its way through the village, he went to the hut of Marach Agha, a man he suspected of belonging to the Taliban, and ordered him outside.
First Gibbs fired the AK-47 into a nearby wall and dropped the weapon at Agha's feet. Then he shot the man at close range with his M4 rifle. Morlock and Wagnon followed up with a few rounds of their own. With the scene staged to his satisfaction, Gibbs called in a report.
Staff Sgt. Sprague was one of the first to respond. Gibbs claimed that he had turned a corner and spotted the man, who had fired at him with the AK-47, only to have the rifle jam. But when Sprague picked up the Kalashnikov, it seemed to be in perfect operating condition. A short time later, as he walked down a dusty alley in the village, Sprague himself came under attack from small-arms fire. He responded instinctively by squeezing the trigger on the AK-47 - and the gun fired "with no problems at all."
Sprague reported the discrepancy to Lt. Ligsay. When the body was identified, relatives also reported that Agha was a deeply religious man who would never have taken up arms. He "did not know how to use an AK-47," they told Ligsay. Once again, however, no action was taken, nor was Gibbs disciplined.
With their commanding officers repeatedly failing to investigate, the kill team was starting to feel invulnerable. To encourage soldiers in other units to target unarmed civilians, Gibbs had given one of the "off the books" grenades he had scrounged to a friend from another battalion, Staff Sgt. Robert Stevens. "It showed up in a box on my desk," recalled Stevens, a senior medic. "When I opened the box, I saw a grenade canister, which had a grenade in it and a dirty green sock." Figuring the sock was some kind of joke, Stevens threw it away. Later, when he saw Gibbs, he mentioned getting the grenade.
"Did you get the other thing?" Gibbs asked.
"What, the sock?" Stevens said.
"No, what was in the sock," Gibbs replied.
Inside the sock, Gibbs had placed a severed human finger.
Stevens got the message. On March 10th, as his convoy was driving down Highway 1, the central road connecting Kandahar to the north, Stevens stuck his head out of his Stryker's open hatch and tossed the grenade. It detonated a few seconds later than he had anticipated, and when it blew, it thudded into the vehicle. Stevens immediately began firing at a nearby compound of huts, yelling at another platoon member to do the same. "Get the fuck up, Morgan!" he screamed. "Let's go, shoot!"
No casualties were reported from the incident, but it earned Stevens an Army Commendation Medal and a Combat Medical Badge. Stevens later admitted that he had concocted the ambush not only because he wanted to get rid of the illegal grenade but because he "wanted to hook up the guys in the company" with their Combat Infantryman Badges, 14 of which were awarded in the aftermath of the shooting. All of the awards were revoked when the Army learned the attack had been faked.
The assault staged by Stevens suggested a new way to target Afghan civilians. In addition to approaching targets on foot, Gibbs decided to use his Stryker as a shooting platform, affording greater mobility with the protection of armor. In a perverse twist, the vehicle that had proved ineffective at combating the Taliban was about to be turned on the very people it was supposed to defend.
On March 18th, during a maintenance run to Kandahar Airfield, the unit drove past a populated area of the city. According to one soldier, Gibbs opened the hatch of the moving Stryker and tossed out a grenade. As it exploded with a loud bang, shrapnel hit the Stryker. "RPG!" Gibbs shouted. "RPG!" Sgt. Darren Jones, who had discussed faking attacks with Gibbs, opened fire indiscriminately on the local residents, who frantically scrambled to avoid the incoming rounds. Gibbs raised his M4 and laid down fire as well.
There is no way to know how many, if any, casualties resulted from the fusillade. Lt. Ligsay, who was in the same Stryker with Gibbs and Jones, maintains that he mistakenly believed the attack to be genuine and ordered the convoy to keep moving. The platoon did not return to the area to conduct a battle damage assessment, and no charges were ever filed in the incident.
A few weeks later, sometime in late March or early April, members of 3rd Platoon fired on unarmed civilians twice on the same day, indicating a growing sense of their own invincibility. Five soldiers were part of a patrol in a grape field in the Zhari District when they spotted three unarmed men. According to Stevens, Gibbs ordered the soldiers to open fire, even though the men were standing erect and posed no threat. All five soldiers fired their weapons at the men, but they managed to escape unscathed. Gibbs was not pleased. "He mentioned that we needed to work on our accuracy," Stevens recalled, "because it did not appear that anyone was hurt."
That same evening, while manning a guard tower overlooking a field in the Zhari District, soldiers from 3rd Platoon were directly told not to shoot at an elderly farmer who had been granted permission to work his land nearby. Despite the warning, two soldiers reportedly shot at the farmer as if he were an armed combatant. They once again failed to hit their target, but the officer in charge was furious. "This farmer has never been a problem," he later told investigators. "He's 60 to 70 years old."
One morning that spring, Gibbs approached Morlock flashing what looked like a small metal pineapple. "Hey, man, I've got this Russian grenade," he said. Gibbs added that the weapon would be the perfect tool to fake another attack, since the Taliban were known to carry Russian explosives. Morlock liked the idea. The night before, talking with a bunch of soldiers outside their bunk rooms, he had announced that he was looking to kill another haji, a pejorative term that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan use for Muslims. One soldier who took part in the conversation dismissed it as idle talk. "I didn't really think anything of it," he told investigators, "because soldiers say stuff like that all the time."
The morning of May 2nd, the platoon was on a routine patrol in a village called Qualaday, a few miles from base. Following standard procedure, the unit's leaders entered a house to talk with a man who had previously been arrested for having an IED. That inadvertently left the rest of the platoon free to roam the village looking for targets, without having to worry about an officer's supervision.
Outside the house, Morlock was overheard instructing Winfield in how a grenade explodes, cautioning him to remain on the ground during the blast. Then the two soldiers moved off with Gibbs. Nearby, in a compound filled with children, they picked out a man with a white beard and escorted him outside. "He seemed friendly," Winfield recalled. "He didn't seem to have any sort of animosity toward us."
Gibbs turned to his men. "You guys want to wax this guy or what?" he asked. Morlock and Winfield agreed that the man seemed perfect.
Gibbs walked the Afghan to a nearby ditch and forced him to his knees, ordering him to stay that way. Then he positioned Morlock and Winfield in a prone position behind a small berm no more than 10 feet away. "To be honest," Morlock later told investigators, "me and Winfield thought we were going to frag ourselves, 'cause we were so fucking close."
With everyone in position, Gibbs took cover behind a low wall and chucked a grenade toward the Afghan. "All right, dude, wax this guy!" he shouted. "Kill this guy, kill this guy!"
As the grenade went off, Morlock and Winfield opened fire. Morlock got off several rounds with his M4. Winfield, who was armed with the more powerful SAW machine gun, squeezed off a burst that lasted for three to five seconds.
Gibbs shouted for Morlock to proceed with the next stage of the plan. "Get up there and plant that fucking grenade!"
The man lay where he had fallen. One of his feet had been blown off by the blast; his other leg was missing below the knee. Morlock ran up and dropped the Russian pineapple grenade near the dead man's hand. Gibbs walked up to the body, stood directly over it, and fired twice into the man's head, shattering the jaw.
Later, when the scene had calmed down - after soldiers had pushed away the dead man's wife and children, who were screaming, hysterical with grief, and Morlock had spun the story to the higher-ups - Gibbs took out a pair of medical shears and cut off the corpse's left pinky finger, which he kept for himself. Then, wearing a surgical glove, he reached into the dead man's mouth, pulled out a tooth and handed it to Winfield.
Winfield held the tooth for a while. Then he tossed it aside, leaving it behind on the ground at Qualaday.
This time, though, the villagers refused to be placated. The dead man, it turned out, was a peaceful cleric named Mullah Allah Dad. Two days later, the murder provoked an uproar at a districtwide council attended by Capt. Quiggle, the unit's commanding officer. The district leader launched into a blistering attack of the platoon. "He pretty much told us that we planted the grenade in order to shoot the guy," recalled 1st Lt. Stefan Moye, who escorted Quiggle to the meeting.
But the next day, instead of launching an inquiry into the platoon's behavior, Quiggle dispatched Moye to the scene of the shooting to do damage control. With Gibbs hovering nearby, the lieutenant found two elderly villagers who claimed to have seen Mullah Allah Dad with a grenade. Relieved, Moye urged them to spread the word. "This is the type of stuff that the Taliban likes to use against us and try to recruit people to fight against us," he said.
His mission accomplished, Moye left the village feeling that the platoon could return to its usual rhythms. "After that," he said, "everything was normal."
Things might have remained "normal," and the killings might have continued, if it hadn't been for what began as a trivial spat between bunkmates. Around midnight, the same evening that Moye returned from pacifying village elders, Pfc. Stoner walked into the company's tactical operations center to register a complaint. Stoner, who had helped plant the AK-47 magazine on the civilian murdered by the highway, said he was sick and tired of other soldiers in the unit using his room as "a smoke shack for hash." Worried that the lingering odor would get him busted, he had asked them to find another place to get stoned. They had refused, pausing only to remove the battery from the room's smoke detector.
"They baked the room many times until it stank constantly," Stoner said. "I was worried for my own job." Emphasizing that he wasn't a snitch, Stoner told the sergeant on duty that he didn't want to get his fellow soldiers in trouble. Then, growing emotional, he mentioned that "he and a bunch of other guys had executed a local national out on Highway 1." The sergeant didn't take the story seriously enough to report it up the chain of command. "I thought he was just upset and needed to talk to someone about the incident," he later recalled. Instead of alerting his superiors about the murder allegation, the sergeant simply assured Stoner that the matter of hash smoking in his room would be handled quietly, and that his identity would be kept confidential.
But discretion wasn't exactly the unit's strong suit. By the next day, everyone knew that Stoner had ratted them out. "Everyone began to panic," Quintal recalls. Gibbs, who didn't care for hashish, gathered members of the kill team in his room. "We need to address the situation with Stoner," he reportedly said. "Snitches get stitches."
On May 6th, Gibbs and six other soldiers descended on Stoner's room, locking the door behind them, and attacked Stoner while he was sitting on his bed. Grabbing him by the throat, they dragged him to the floor and piled on, striking him hard but taking care to avoid blows to the face that might leave visible bruises. "I've been in the Army four years," Morlock said as he pummeled Stoner in the stomach. "How could you do this to me?" Before leaving, they struck Stoner in the crotch and spit in his face.
A few hours later, Gibbs and Morlock returned to Stoner's room. As Stoner sat on his bed, still dazed from the assault, Morlock explained that the beating would not happen again, so long as Stoner kept his mouth shut "from fucking now on." If Stoner were disloyal again, Gibbs warned, he would be killed the next time he went out on patrol. "It's too easy," he added, explaining that he could hide Stoner's body in a Hesco barrier, one of the temporary structures used to fortify U.S. positions.
Then Gibbs reached into his pocket and took out a bit of cloth. Unfolding it, he tossed two severed fingers on the floor, with bits of skin still hanging off the bone. If Stoner didn't want to end up like "that guy," Morlock said, he better "shut the hell up." After all, he added, he "already had enough practice" at killing people.
Stoner had no doubt that Morlock would follow through on the threat. "Basically, I do believe that Morlock would kill me if he had the chance," he said later.
But the beating proved to be the kill team's undoing. When a physician's assistant examined Stoner the next day, she saw the angry red welts covering his body. She also saw the large tattoo across Stoner's back. In gothic type, beneath a grinning red skull flanked by two grim reapers, it read:
what if im not the hero
what if im the bad guy
Stoner was sent to talk to Army investigators. In the course of recounting the assault, he described how Gibbs had thrown the severed fingers on the floor. The investigators pressed him about how Gibbs came by the fingers. Stoner told them it was because the platoon had killed a lot of innocent people.
At that point, the investigators asked Stoner to start from the beginning. When had the platoon killed innocent people? Bit by bit, Stoner laid out the whole history, naming names and places and times.
As other members of the platoon were called in and interviewed, many confirmed Stoner's account and described the shootings for investigators. Morlock, who proved particularly gregarious, agreed to speak on videotape. Relaxed and unconcerned in front of the camera, he nonchalantly described the kills in detail.
Morlock's confession kicked off an intense search for evidence. When the Army's investigators were dispatched to FOB Ramrod, they went straight to the top of a Hesco barrier near Gibbs' housing unit. Right where Morlock said it would be, they found the bottom of a plastic water bottle containing two pieces of cloth. Inside each piece of cloth was a severed human finger. But then a strange thing happened. When investigators compared prints of the two fingers to those in the company's database, the prints didn't match up. Either the records were screwed up, which was quite possible, or there were more dead guys out there who were unaccounted for.
Last week, on March 23rd, Morlock was sentenced to 24 years in prison after agreeing to testify against Gibbs. "The Army wants Gibbs," says one defense lawyer. "They want to throw him in jail and move on." Gibbs insists that all three killings he took part in were "legitimate combat engagements." Three other low-level soldiers facing murder charges - Winfield, Holmes and Wagnon - also maintain their innocence. As for the other men in Bravo Company, five have already been convicted of lesser crimes, including drug use, stabbing a corpse and beating up Stoner, and two more face related charges. In December, Staff Sgt. Stevens was sentenced to nine months in prison after agreeing to testify against Gibbs. He was stripped to the lowest service rank - private E-1 - but over the protests of military prosecutors, he was allowed to remain in the Army.
So far, though, no officers or senior officials have been charged in either the murders or the cover-up. Last October, the Army quietly launched a separate investigation, guided by Brig. Gen. Stephen Twitty, into the critical question of officer accountability. But the findings of that inquiry, which was concluded last month, have been kept secret - and the Army refuses to say whether it has disciplined or demoted any of the commanders responsible for 3rd Platoon. Even if the commanding officers were not co-conspirators or accomplices in the crimes, they repeatedly ignored clear warning signs and allowed a lethally racist attitude to pervade their unit. Indeed, the resentment of Afghans was so commonplace among soldiers in the platoon that when Morlock found himself being questioned by Army investigators, he expressed no pity or remorse about the murders.
Toward the end of Morlock's interview, the conversation turned to the mindset that had allowed the killings to occur. "None of us in the platoon - the platoon leader, the platoon sergeant - no one gives a fuck about these people," Morlock said.
Then he leaned back in his chair and yawned, summing up the way his superiors viewed the people of Afghanistan. "Some shit goes down," he said, "you're gonna get a pat on the back from your platoon sergeant: Good job. Fuck 'em."
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22) U.S. Gives Its Air Power Expansive Role in Libya
By ERIC SCHMITT
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29military.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Even as President Obama on Monday described a narrower role for the United States in a NATO-led operation in Libya, the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
When the mission was launched, it was largely seen as having a limited, humanitarian agenda: to keep Colonel Qaddafi from attacking his own people. But the White House, the Pentagon and their European allies have given it the most expansive possible interpretation, amounting to an all-out assault on Libya's military.
A growing armada of coalition warplanes, armed with more precise information about the location and abilities of Libyan Army units than was known a week ago, have effectively provided the air cover the ragtag opposition has needed to stave off certain defeat in its de facto eastern capital, Benghazi.
Allied aircraft are not only dropping 500-pound bombs on Libyan troops, they are also using psychological operations to try to break their will to fight, broadcasting messages in Arabic and English, telling Libyan soldiers and sailors to abandon their posts and go back to their homes and families, and to defy Colonel Qaddafi's orders.
The Obama administration has been reluctant to call the operation an actual war, and it has sought to emphasize the involvement of a dozen other countries, particularly Italy, Britain and France. In his speech on Monday night, Mr. Obama, as he has in the past, portrayed the mission as a limited one, and described the United States' role as "supporting."
But interviews in recent days offer a fuller picture of American involvement, and show that it is far deeper than discussed in public and more instrumental to the fight than was previously known.
From the air, the United States is supplying much more firepower than any other country. The allies have fired nearly 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles since the campaign started on March 19, all but 7 from the United States. The United States has flown about 370 attack missions, and its allied partners have flown a similar number, but the Americans have dropped 455 precision-guided munitions compared with 147 from other coalition members.
Besides taking part in the airstrikes, the American military is taking the lead role in gathering intelligence, intercepting Libyan radio transmissions, for instance, and using the information to orchestrate attacks against the Libyan forces on the ground. And over the weekend the Air Force quietly sent three of its most fearsome weapons to the operation.
The strategy for White House officials nervous that the Libya operation could drag on for weeks or months, even under a NATO banner, is to hit Libyan forces hard enough to force them to oust Colonel Qaddafi, a result that Mr. Obama has openly encouraged.
"Certainly, the implied though not stated goal here is that the Libyan Army will decide they're fighting for a losing cause," said Gen. John P. Jumper, a retired Air Force chief of staff. "You're probably dealing with a force that may not be totally motivated to continue this for the long haul."
Ten days into the assault, the officials said that Libya's formidable integrated air defense has been largely obliterated, and that the operation was shifting to a new phase devised to put even more pressure on the country's armored columns and ground troops.
For the Americans, six tank-killing A-10 Warthogs that fire laser-guided Maverick missiles or 30-millimeter cannons arrived on the scene this weekend. The United States also deployed two B-1B bombers, as well as two AC-130 gunships, lumbering aircraft that orbit over targets at roughly 15,000 feet, bristling with 40-millimeter and 105-millimeter cannons. The gunships' weapons are so precise that they could operate against Libyan forces in cities, which so far have been off limits for fear of civilian casualties.
On Sunday, allied warships and submarines fired six Tomahawk cruise missiles at the headquarters of the Libyan 32nd Brigade, based in Tripoli and commanded by one of the Libyan leader's sons, Khamis Qaddafi. Colonel Qaddafi has used the brigade in the past for internal repression.
"This is one of Qaddafi's most loyal units and are also one of the most active in terms of attacking innocent people," Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, the director of the military's joint staff, told reporters on Monday.
Despite this increased pressure on Libya's elite forces, Admiral Gortney insisted that the military was not going beyond the mandate of the United Nations resolution.
"I would definitely not say mission creep," he said.
Over all, commanders say they are trying to create havoc among the Libyan forces, cutting off their logistic pipeline, severing their communications back to headquarters in Tripoli, and stoking fear within the ranks with round-the-clock attacks.
"You want to create confusion at the front, go in after command and control at the rear and supply lines in between and ammunition facilities anywhere that we can find them," Admiral Gortney said Monday, describing the overall effect the campaign is trying to achieve.
On Sunday, an EC-130J Commando Solo aircraft broadcast messages in English and Arabic, to warn Libyan armed forces. "Libyan sailors, leave your ship immediately," the message warned. "Leave your equipment and return to your family or your home. The Qaddafi regime forces are violating a United Nations resolution ordering the end of hostilities in your country."
Air commanders provided an example of the role of American intelligence-gathering. Air Force eavesdropping planes intercept communications from Libyan troops and relay that information to a Global Hawk drone flying high overhead. The Global Hawk zooms in on the location of armored forces and determines rough coordinates. In some cases, the drones are the first to detect moving targets. The Global Hawk sends the coordinates to analysts at a ground station, who pass the data on to the command center for targeting. The command center beams the coordinates to an E-3 Sentry Awacs command-and-control plane, which in turn directs F-16 and Harrier jets and other warplanes to their targets.
"Our message to the regime troops is simple: Stop fighting, stop killing your own people, stop obeying the orders of Colonel Qaddafi," Admiral Gortney said last week. "To the degree that you defy these demands, we will continue to hit you and make it more difficult for you to keep going."
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23) Japan Tries to Stem Leak of Radioactive Water
By HIROKO TABUCHI
March 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/asia/30japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Workers at Japan's crippled nuclear plant piled up sandbags and readied emergency storage tanks on Tuesday to stop a fresh leak of highly contaminated water from reaching the ocean, opening up another front in the battle to contain the world's worst nuclear accident in decades.
As fears of further contamination grew, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said his government was in a state of maximum alert over the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
The Japanese government said the discovery of plutonium in the soil near the plant provided new evidence that the fuel in at least one of the plant's reactors had experienced a partial meltdown. A full meltdown of the fuel rods could release huge amounts of radiation into the environment.
"There is a high possibility that there has been at least some melting of the fuel rods," said Yukio Edano, the government's chief spokesman. "That in itself is a very serious situation," he said.
"This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan" in decades, Mr. Kan said in Parliament.
Mr. Kan defended his visit to a nuclear power plant crippled by a tsunami earlier this month. Responding to questions for the first time since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit northeast Japan, Mr. Kan acknowledged that the crisis at the plant gave little cause for optimism.
Mr. Kan toured the plant the day after the tsunami, and some lawmakers have suggested his presence delayed efforts by the plant operator to immediately confront the emergency.
He said his March 12 visit was not a "political performance," the Kyodo news service reported.
"Grasping the situation at the plant at that time was extremely important," he said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is scheduled to meet the embattled prime minister on a visit to Japan Thursday, the French leader's office said. Mr. Sarkozy will travel to Japan on behalf of the Group of 20 leading world economies. Mr. Sarkozy's visit will be separate from a trip by French nuclear experts, who will consult with the operator of the Fukushima plant.
Efforts to contain the unfolding crisis at the plant, ravaged in the quake and tsunami, have focused on restoring power and restarting the cooling systems at the plant's six reactors, while keeping the nuclear fuel rods cool in the meantime with fire hoses and pumps.
But in the past days, work at the plant's most severely damaged reactors, Nos. 1 through 3, has slowed, after the discovery of highly radioactive water around and inside the reactor buildings. Last week, three workers were injured after stepping into radioactive water at Reactor No. 3. The water has now accumulated inside the turbine buildings of the three reactors and is now making its way through separate underground tunnels to openings just 200 feet from the sea, officials say.
A leak of the radioactive water, which measured more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour on the surface at Reactor No. 3, could exacerbate smaller leaks of radiation detected in the seawater around the plant. Contaminated water was also found at tunnels from the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, though with much lower levels of radiation. Officials have said that the water is likely leaking either from broken pipes inside the reactor, or from a breach in the reactor's pressure vessel, which houses the nuclear fuel.
On Tuesday, workers piled sandbags outside the opening of one tunnel in danger of overflowing near Reactor No. 1, according to the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company. They also prepared to pump water out of the turbine buildings, and to secure storage tanks to hold the highly radioactive water.
But capacity may be running out, officials said. At Reactor No. 3, for example, a 750-gallon tank inside the reactor building is already full, while a smaller tank is more than half full. "When there is no more room in the tanks," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a top official at Japan's nuclear regulator, "we will need to think of another option."
Radioactive leaks at the plant have become a growing concern. Shipments of milk, spinach and other agricultural produce were banned last week after tests showed higher-than-normal amounts of radioactive iodine 131 and cesium. Tokyo briefly advised that infants not drink tap water after the radioactive iodine was detected in the city's water supply.
Last week, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, an independent think tank in the United States, said that since the quake and its aftermath, the plant has already released far more radioactivity than the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The institute, based in Takoma Park, Maryland, said that by March 22, the Fukushima reactors had released about 2.4 million curies of iodine 131, about 160,000 times the best estimate of the amount released at Three Mile Island, and about 10 percent of the amount released in Chernobyl in 1986. Fukushima Daiichi has also released half-a-million curies of cesium-134 and cesium-137, which have longer half lives, also about 10 percent the amount released in Chernobyl.
"While the releases are still considerably below Chernobyl, they have already reached a level that could affect the region around the site for a prolonged period," Arjun Makhijani, the institute's president, said in a statement.
Concerns over the leaks took on an added urgency late Monday, as Tokyo Electric Power announced it had found traces of plutonium in the plant's soil. The plutonium levels detected were not a risk to humans, but the development added urgency to regain control of the plant, Mr. Edano said Tuesday.
It was unknown where the plutonium had come from. The reactors could be a source, and tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which ended in 1980, left trace amounts of plutonium around the world. The highest levels in the soil were found about 500 yards from the most heavily damaged reactors, the company said.
All the reported readings are within the safe range of plutonium levels in sediment and soil given by the United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. But Tokyo Electric Power said the highest reading was more than three times the level found in Japan compared with the average during the past 20 years.
The challenge now, Mr. Edano said, is to keep pumping enough water to ensure that fuel rods do not overheat while at the same time trying to minimize the overflow of contaminated water.
All three kinds of nuclear fuel at the complex could leak plutonium. Reactor No. 3 is fueled partly by mixed oxide fuel, or mox, which is made from plutonium and uranium. Most reactor fuel is uranium.
Mr. Nishiyama, who is deputy director general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that while the detected plutonium levels were low, they pointed to the gravity of the crisis at the complex. Plutonium is a heavy element and not easily dispersed, he said, so higher levels outside the reactor suggested a wider leak.
"This detection from the soil speaks to the importance and seriousness of the situation," Mr. Nishiyama said.
The government's official death toll from the quake and tsunami rose above 11,000 on Tuesday, with more than 17,000 listed as missing.
Reporting was contributed from Tokyo by Ayasa Aizawa, Ken Ijichi and Moshe Komata, and Kevin Drew in Hong Kong.
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24) Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags
[This is legal grand theft on a massive scale....bw]
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and CATHERINE RAMPELL
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/29shrink.html?hp
Chips are disappearing from bags, candy from boxes and vegetables from cans.
As an expected increase in the cost of raw materials looms for late summer, consumers are beginning to encounter shrinking food packages.
With unemployment still high, companies in recent months have tried to camouflage price increases by selling their products in tiny and tinier packages. So far, the changes are most visible at the grocery store, where shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less.
For Lisa Stauber, stretching her budget to feed her nine children in Houston often requires careful monitoring at the store. Recently, when she cooked her usual three boxes of pasta for a big family dinner, she was surprised by a smaller yield, and she began to suspect something was up.
"Whole wheat pasta had gone from 16 ounces to 13.25 ounces," she said. "I bought three boxes and it wasn't enough - that was a little embarrassing. I bought the same amount I always buy, I just didn't realize it, because who reads the sizes all the time?"
Ms. Stauber, 33, said she began inspecting her other purchases, aisle by aisle. Many canned vegetables dropped to 13 or 14 ounces from 16; boxes of baby wipes went to 72 from 80; and sugar was stacked in 4-pound, not 5-pound, bags, she said.
Five or so years ago, Ms. Stauber bought 16-ounce cans of corn. Then they were 15.5 ounces, then 14.5 ounces, and the size is still dropping. "The first time I've ever seen an 11-ounce can of corn at the store was about three weeks ago, and I was just floored," she said. "It's sneaky, because they figure people won't know."
In every economic downturn in the last few decades, companies have reduced the size of some products, disguising price increases and avoiding comparisons on same-size packages, before and after an increase. Each time, the marketing campaigns are coy; this time, the smaller versions are "greener" (packages good for the environment) or more "portable" (little carry bags for the takeout lifestyle) or "healthier" (fewer calories).
Where companies cannot change sizes - as in clothing or appliances - they have warned that prices will be going up, as the costs of cotton, energy, grain and other raw materials are rising.
"Consumers are generally more sensitive to changes in prices than to changes in quantity," John T. Gourville, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School, said. "And companies try to do it in such a way that you don't notice, maybe keeping the height and width the same, but changing the depth so the silhouette of the package on the shelf looks the same. Or sometimes they add more air to the chips bag or a scoop in the bottom of the peanut butter jar so it looks the same size."
Thomas J. Alexander, a finance professor at Northwood University, said that businesses had little choice these days when faced with increases in the costs of their raw goods. "Companies only have pricing power when wages are also increasing, and we're not seeing that right now because of the high unemployment," he said.
Most companies reduce products quietly, hoping consumers are not reading labels too closely.
But the downsizing keeps occurring. A can of Chicken of the Sea albacore tuna is now packed at 5 ounces, instead of the 6-ounce version still on some shelves, and in some cases, the 5-ounce can costs more than the larger one. Bags of Doritos, Tostitos and Fritos now hold 20 percent fewer chips than in 2009, though a spokesman said those extra chips were just a "limited time" offer.
Trying to keep customers from feeling cheated, some companies are introducing new containers that, they say, have terrific advantages - and just happen to contain less product.
Kraft is introducing "Fresh Stacks" packages for its Nabisco Premium saltines and Honey Maid graham crackers. Each has about 15 percent fewer crackers than the standard boxes, but the price has not changed. Kraft says that because the Fresh Stacks include more sleeves of crackers, they are more portable and "the packaging format offers the benefit of added freshness," said Basil T. Maglaris, a Kraft spokesman, in an e-mail.
And Procter & Gamble is expanding its "Future Friendly" products, which it promotes as using at least 15 percent less energy, water or packaging than the standard ones.
"They are more environmentally friendly, that's true - but they're also smaller," said Paula Rosenblum, managing partner for retail systems research at Focus.com, an online specialist network. "They announce it as great new packaging, and in fact what it is is smaller packaging, smaller amounts of the product," she said.
Or marketers design a new shape and size altogether, complicating any effort to comparison shop. The unwrapped Reese's Minis, which were introduced in February, are smaller than the foil-wrapped Miniatures. They are also more expensive - $0.57 an ounce at FreshDirect, versus $0.37 an ounce for the individually wrapped.
At H. J. Heinz, prices on ketchup, condiments, sauces and Ore-Ida products have already gone up, and the company is selling smaller-than-usual versions of condiments, like 5-ounce bottles of items like Heinz 57 Sauce sold at places like Dollar General.
"I have never regretted raising prices in the face of significant cost pressures, since we can always course-correct if the outcome is not as we expected," Heinz's chairman and chief executive, William R. Johnson, said last month.
While companies have long adjusted package sizes to appeal to changing tastes, from supersizes to 100-calorie packs, the recession drove a lot of corporations to think small. The standard size for Edy's ice cream went from 2 liters to 1.5 in 2008. And Tropicana shifted to a 59-ounce carton rather than a 64-ounce one last year, after the cost of oranges rose.
With prices for energy and for raw materials like corn, cotton and sugar creeping up and expected to surge later this year, companies are barely bothering to cover up the shrinking packs.
"Typically, the product manufacturers are doing this slightly ahead of the perceived inflationary issues," Ms. Rosenblum said. "Lately, it hasn't been subtle - I mean, they've been shrinking by noticeable amounts."
That can work to a company's benefit. In the culture of thinness, smaller may be a selling point. It lets retailers honestly claim, for example, that a snack package contains fewer calories - without having to change the ingredients a smidge.
"For indulgences like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips, consumers may say 'I don't mind getting a little bit less because I shouldn't be consuming so much anyway,' " said Professor Gourville. "That's a harder argument to make with something like diapers or orange juice."
But even while companies blame the recession for smaller packages, they rarely increase sizes in good times, he said.
He traced the shrinking package trends to the late 1980s, when companies like Chock full o' Nuts downsized the one-pound tin of ground coffee to 13 ounces. That shocked consumers, for whom a pound of coffee had been as standard a purchase unit as a dozen eggs or a six-pack of beer, he said.
Once the economy rebounds, he said, a new "jumbo" size product typically emerges, at an even higher cost per ounce. Then the gradual shrinking process of all package sizes begins anew, he said.
"It's a continuous cycle, where at some point the smallest package offered becomes so small that perhaps they're phased out and replaced by the medium-size package, which has been shrunk down," he said.
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25) Marine Life Faces Threat From Runoff
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and WILLIAM J. BROAD
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29safety.html?ref=world
The announcement by Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy that high levels of radioactive cesium have been detected in seawater near the crippled nuclear reactors raises the prospect that radiation could enter the food chain.
Cesium 137 levels were 20 times the normal level about 1,000 feet from the effluent at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. That is far less than the level of the other main radioactive isotope spilling from the plant, iodine 131. It was found in concentrations of more than 1,150 times the maximum allowable for a seawater sample a mile north of the plant.
Still, scientists say, cesium 137 poses the greater long-term danger to the marine food chain.
Iodine 131 degrades relatively fast, becoming half as potent every eight days. So the radioactive risk can be combated by banning fishing and the consumption of seafood for a period of time, as the Japanese have already done.
Cesium 137, on the other hand, has a half-life of 30 years. Worse still, it is absorbed by marine plants, which are eaten by fish and - like mercury - tends to become concentrated as it moves up the food chain.
"It's worrisome in that CS 137 is leaking, although the levels are still low," said Paul G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. "At some point this water that is pooling in various places is ultimately going to make its way out to the sea." And if there is a lot of cesium 137 over an extended period "then you'll have to worry."
The exact source of the cesium 137 is unclear, although some scientists have speculated that the seawater dumped on the overheating reactors to cool them picked up radiation and then washed back out to sea. But Japanese officials said highly radioactive water in several tunnels is threatening to overflow and may also contain cesium 137.
Even so, the ocean has remarkable power to dilute radioactive effluents, because of its sheer volume and depth. And the ocean is already slightly radioactive.
Over the eons, elements like uranium have washed into it from rivers. More recently, humans have dumped radioactive materials into the marine environment, including dozens of nuclear warheads and reactors that are slowly decaying, as well as many thousands of barrels of radioactive waste.
In October 1993, a Russian ship dumped hundreds of tons of low-level nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan, touching off a diplomatic row between Tokyo and Moscow.
Oceanographers have monitored the areas around the dumps for dangerous levels of radioactivity but typically find little of consequence because of the sea's powers of dilution. Even so, in 1994 most countries gave up the longstanding practice of dumping radioactive materials into the sea.
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26) Michigan Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks
By MICHAEL COOPER
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/politics/29michigan.html?ref=us
Michigan, whose unemployment rate has topped 10 percent longer than that of any other state, is about to set another record: its new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, signed a law Monday that will lead the state to pay fewer weeks of unemployment benefits next year than any other state.
Democrats and advocates for the unemployed expressed outrage that a such a hard-hit state will become the most miserly when it comes to how long it pays benefits to those who have lost their jobs. All states currently pay 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, before extended benefits paid by the federal government kick in. Michigan's new law means that starting next year, when the federal benefits are now set to end, the state will stop paying benefits to the jobless after just 20 weeks. The shape of future extensions is unclear.
The measure, passed by a Republican-led Legislature, took advocates for the unemployed by surprise: the language cutting benefits next year was slipped quietly into a bill that was originally sold as way to preserve unemployment benefits this year.
The original bill was aimed at reducing unemployment fraud and making a technical change so the state's current long-term unemployed could continue receiving extended unemployment benefits from the federal government for up to 99 weeks - benefits that would have been phased out next week without a change in the state law to make the unemployed in the state eligible to continue receiving benefits. Republican lawmakers amended it to cut the length of benefits starting in January.
"It turns the clock back 50 years at a time when unemployment is at historic highs since the Depression," Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said in an interview, adding that he worried that the state would set a precedent that would be followed by other states, including Florida, that are thinking of curtailing their unemployment programs. "I think that Michigan should not be to unemployment insurance what Wisconsin has become to collective bargaining."
But Republicans and business groups said that cutting benefits was necessary, because the unemployment trust fund, which was ill-prepared to cope with the recession, is insolvent. The state owes the federal government $4 billion that it borrowed to keep its program afloat, and unemployment taxes on businesses have already been raised, and will need to be raised more, to repay the money. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce called the new law "a huge win for job providers," and said it could save up to $300 million a year.
Mr. Snyder issued a statement after signing the bill trumpeting the fact that it would preserve the extended benefits this year - and making no mention of the fact that it would cut state benefits beginning next year. "Snyder Signs Bill to Protect Unemployed," was the headline of the news release that his office sent out. "Now that we have continued this safety net, we must renew our focus on improving Michigan's economic climate," he said in the statement.
Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman for Mr. Snyder, said in an e-mail that he signed the bill because 35,000 Michiganders would have lost their extended benefits this week, and an additional 150,000 would have lost them by year's end, if the state's law had not been altered. She said that about 250,000 people collected more than 20 weeks of benefits in 2010.
Advocates for the unemployed called it a bad trade. "We have a temporary change to help some jobless workers that is imposing an indefinite or permanent cost on future jobless workers," said Rick McHugh, a staff lawyer for the National Employment Law Project, which opposed the law. "And that does seem doubly unfair when the temporary help for current jobless workers is almost totally paid for by the federal government."
But business groups saw the state's need to change its unemployment law as an opportunity to make the cuts to benefits that they have long sought.
"The business community, the chamber included, were opposed to a one-sided benefits increase," said Wendy Block, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce's lobbyist responsible for health policy and human resources initiatives, and unemployment insurance. She said that while the extended benefits were currently paid for by the federal government, the money comes from a fund that is financed by federal unemployment taxes on employers. "Employers will ultimately see higher federal unemployment taxes to pay for this," Ms. Block said.
More than half the states together owe the federal government more than $46 billion that they borrowed to pay for their unemployment programs during the downturn. Many states had salted away too little money in their unemployment trust funds during good times - often because they cut taxes on employers - and saw their funds depleted by the length and depth of the recession, and the slow pace at which businesses have begun hiring again. Now some other states are thinking about reducing unemployment benefits.
In Florida, where the unemployment rate hovers at 11.5 percent, even higher than Michigan's current rate of 10.4 percent, lawmakers are zeroing in on a similar bill. The Florida House also approved a bill this month to reduce the number of weeks unemployed workers could receive benefits to 20 weeks, from 26, and make it easier for businesses to deny benefits to applicants. A Senate bill takes a less stringent approach and does not cut the number of weeks workers can receive benefits. (It is unclear how the differences will be resolved.) Doing so would undo a consensus that emerged in the years after World War II that states should pay up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. And it would come as the average length of unemployment has risen.
Richard A. Hobbie, the executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, said "at a time when long-term unemployment is worse than ever, it doesn't match up well with the trends in the labor market."
One of the unemployed Michiganders who was warned that her extended benefits could run out next week without action was Melissa Barone, 42, who lost her job with a software company in August 2009, and has been collecting unemployment since then. She has gone back to school to train to be a nurse.
"Maybe what they need to do is look at giving businesses more incentives," Ms. Barone said, "rather than taking from the guy that is unemployed and needs those funds."
Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from Miami.
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27) Justices Deny New Appeal by Convict in Georgia
By ADAM LIPTAK
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29teacher.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday turned down what were probably the last set of appeals from Troy Davis, a death row inmate from Georgia who was convicted of murdering an off-duty police officer and whose case has attracted international attention.
In 2009, Mr. Davis obtained a new hearing from the Supreme Court by an unusual route, filing an original writ of habeas corpus with the justices rather than appealing from a lower-court ruling. The court responded by ordering a federal trial court in Georgia to consider whether new evidence clearly established Mr. Davis's innocence. Several witnesses in the case against him had recanted, and some had implicated the prosecution's main witness as the actual killer.
In August, the trial judge, Judge William T. Moore Jr., concluded that Mr. Davis's evidence was "largely smoke and mirrors." On Monday, the justices refused to review that ruling.
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28) Maine: Labor Mural Is Moved to Undisclosed Location
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/us/29brfs-LABORMURALIS_BRF.html?ref=us
A mural depicting Maine's labor history was removed from the lobby of the state's Department of Labor and stored at an undisclosed location over the weekend by directive of Gov. Paul LePage. Mr. LePage, a Republican elected in 2010, says the mural favors labor interests at the expense of business interests. Last week, he ordered that the mural be taken down and that Labor Department conference rooms named for labor leaders be renamed for mountains, counties or something else perceived as neutral. Robert Shetterly, president of the Union of Maine Visual Artists, called it "an exceptionally cowardly act" to move it over the weekend when no one would notice.
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