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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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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
New Documentary on Terrorism Against Cuba
and the Reasons for the Cuban 5
Saturday April 16, 7:00PM
La Brava Theater
2781 24th Street, San Francisco
Doors will open at 6PM
Tickets $15.00
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!"
and music by The Cuban Cowboys
Q & A by Saul Landau
Reception will follow
In April 1961, the CIA sent a force of Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban government. This resulted in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco. Fifty years later, a new documentary shows that US-backed violence against Cuba continued for decades. The new film, with Danny Glover, anti-Cuba terrorists, and Fidel Castro himself (filmed recently) is combined with fascinating archival footage and a rare recorded interview from prison with one of the Cuban 5. These men are serving long sentences in US prisons for trying to stop terrorism against tourist sites in their country.
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!"provides every professor and specialist with an invaluable teaching and learning tool about US-Cuba policy and the history of terrorism in that policy. It also explains the story of and context for the "Cuban 5," the Cuban agents who penetrated Miami exile groups to stop their plans for violence against the island, and ended up in US prisons." Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It's a real Who's Who of key figures in the more than half-century-long grudge match over Cuba." Tracey Eaton former Dallas Morning News' Bureau Chief, Havana
"Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up!" produced by Emmy-Award Winner Saul Landau, with live music from the Cuban Cowboys. Won loud applause at the Havana Film Festival.
For more information call 415-647-2822 - To purchase tickets online go to www.brava.org
Organized by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 www.thecuban5.org
Special thanks to La Peña Cultural Center for their constant support
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
For updated information about the case visit: www.thecuban5.org
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NO MORE NUCLEAR VICTIMS
by Coffee House Teach Ins
PROTEST against Diablo and stand up for clean energy.
Join at a peaceful demonstration on
Saturday, April 16.
Meet at Avila Pier in Avila Beach, CA, at noon.
Bring signs and the messages that:
We can no longer ignore the warnings from Fukushima Daiichi,
Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island
Diablo Canyon is on shaky ground; the area is riddled with over a
dozen earthquake faults
Nuclear Energy is not worth the risk to our lives and our planet
Stop the license renewal process at Diablo
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
http://mothersforpeace.org
(805)773-3881
P.O. Box 3608
San Luis Obispo, CA 93403
Date: Sat, Apr 16th, 2011
Time: 12:00 pm
More Info: http://mothersforpeace.org
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Please circulate widely
Wed. April 20, 4-6pm
Protest at Obama Fundraiser in San Francisco
Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California St.
(btwn Jones and Taylor), SF
President Obama will be in San Francisco for a $35,800 per plate fundraiser and other events. Join the ANSWER Coalition and other organizations to say:
End the Wars and Occupations
Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti & everywhere!
Fund Jobs, Healthcare, Schools and Housing, Not War!
Stop budget cuts & layoffs! Stop the war on working people!
The People & the Planet, Not Nuclear Profits
No more gov't subsidies for nuclear corporations!
Call 415-821-6545 or reply to this email to endorse or for more info.
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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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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Do you want to work for peace and justice?
Do you want to see an end to the wars abroad?
Do you want to defend civil rights at home?
Come to the Next Meeting of UNAC, the United National Antiwar Committee, and Help Us Decide What to Do Next.
Saturday, April 23, 1pm
Centro Del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street (Between 15th St. & 16th St.)
San Francisco
Bring the Troops, Mercenaries, and War Dollars Home Now! Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan!
End all
U.S./U.N./NATO Hands Off North Africa and the Middle East! Stop the bombing of Libya! Hands off the internal affairs of other countries!
Stop Spending Trillions on Wars, Tax Breaks and Bailouts for the Wealthy! Money for Jobs, Housing, Universal Healthcare and Education!
No to Islamophobia and All Racism! Stop the Attacks at Home on People of Color!
MONEY FOR JOBS, HOUSING, HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION -- NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION!
No Nukes!
Free Bradley Manning! Hands Off Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
unacpeace.org · facebook.com/endthewars · twitter.com/unacpeace
UNACNorthernCalifornia@gmail.com · (415) 49-NO-WAR
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Ninth Annual International Al-Awda Convention
April 29 & 30, 2011
The Embassy Suite Hotel, Anaheim South
11767 Harbor Boulevard
Garden Grove, Ca 92840
A significant event at a critical time in Arab history!
CONVENTION WEBSITE: http://www.al-awda.org/convention9/index.html
Ninth Annual International Al-Awda Convention - Onward, United and Stronger Until Return!
JUST IN: Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, one of the 'big five' trade unions in Britain, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Chair UK will be addressing Al-Awda's Ninth Annual International Convention.
Strategy, tactics and planning discussions:
* The Palestine Papers and the Arab people's uprising; Impact on the Palestinian struggle and future organizing
* Boycotts & Divestment
* Refugee Support
* Return From Exile Project with Free Palestine Movement
* Cultural Resistance Through Various Forms of Art
* Palestinian Children's Rights Campaign
* Young activist program with hands on workshops
Speakers include:
* Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Founding President of the Palestine Land Society
* Abbas Al-Nouri, Syrian Arab actor of "bab el-hara" fame, political activist
* Diana Buttu, Palestinian lawyer, former legal advisor to Palestinian negotiating team
* Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Chair UK
* Ali Abunimah, Palestinian author and co-founder Electronic Intifada
* Lubna Masarwa, Palestinian activist, survivor of Mavi Marmara massacre
* Laila Al-Arian, Palestinian Author, writer and Al-Jazeera English producer
* Dr. Jamal Nassar, Specialist in Middle East politics, Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at CSUSB
* Rim Banna, Palestinian singer & activist
* Najat El-Khairy, Palestinian porcelain painting artist
* Remi Kanazi, Palestinian spoken word artist, activist
* Youth from Al Bayader Center Yarmouk Refugee Camp
Plus . . .
Cultural presentations, films, books and solidarity items, network with friends and fellow activists & lunch keynote presentations & evening banquet with live music! (Baby-sitting available for entire convention)
Al-Awda Convention on Facebook
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CELEBRATE THE HISTORIC RETURN OF JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE TO HAITI!
A REPORT BACK
Saturday, APRIL 30, 4-6PM
La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley (wheelchair accessible)
$5-$20 donation requested (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth, co-founders of Haiti Action Committee, were eyewitness to the joyful return of President Aristide and his family to Haiti. Come hear their account of the President's arrival and the response of the Haitian people, as well as the background to this remarkable event.
The program will include updates on the latest developments in fraudulent elections imposed on Haiti, and what's ahead for the solidarity movement.
In the wake of sham elections and an ongoing 7-year military occupation, Haiti's grassroots movement for democracy is vital and alive and an essential part of movements around the world fighting for dignity and freedom. Let us continue to stand in solidarity!
Haiti Action Committee
www.haitisolidarity.net
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Out in the Streets April 9 and 10. Bring our War $$ Home
By Cartoonist/Artist Khalil Bendib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrSTd500LUQ
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RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g
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Join the Pan-Canadian day of action to end war in Afghanistan - April 9, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wOwu34kzs
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1968 - Martin Luther King's Prophetic Last speech - Remember
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1L8y-MX3pg&feature=player_embedded
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VIDEO: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother
Take Back the Land- Rochester Eviction Defense March 28, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2axN1zsZno&feature=player_embedded
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B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Wisconsin and After
http://blip.tv/file/4959469
A overview of the recent weeks in the battle for public sector workers in Wisconsin, and touching upon the national ramifications. Key issues are raised, through interviews and documentary footage: concessions have been pushed and agreed to by the Democrats and top union leaderships, setting workers up for the current Republican attacks. "On the national level, the Democrats have bought into the idea that workers should pay for the crisis," points out AFSCME 2858 Pres. Steve Edwards. But the money is there, if we taxed the rich and ended war spending. Includes scenes of the return of the 14 Democrats, the capitol rotunda occupation, mass marches, Iraq Veterans Against the War, more. Connects state budget crises with the wars and Wall Street, and looks at the tactics of the recall election and a general strike. Interviews and speeches from: Steve Edwards, Pres. of AFSCME 2858 and member of Socialist Alternative; Andy Heidt, Pres. of AFSCME Local 1871 and member of wisconsinwave.org; Jesse Sharkey, V.P. Chicago Teachers Union (for i.d. purposes only); Jan Rodolfo, National Outreach Coordinator, National Nurses United; Scott Kimbell, Iraq Veterans Against the War; Austin Thompson, labor organizer - Madison, WI. 25:30. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Dr. Michio Kaku says three raging meltdowns under way at Fukushima (22442 views)
Uploaded 3/31/2011
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=604AB3FA803FF3647DF6E34EC5E8C8A0
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Afghans for Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ror0qPcasM&NR=1
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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
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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END THE U.S./UN/NATO KILL TEAM NOW!
WARNING: THESE ARE HORRIFIC, DISGUSTING, VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE U.S. MILITARY MAKING THE UPCOMING APRIL 10 [APRIL 9 IN NEW YORK] MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS A FIRST PRIORITY FOR WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. WE DEMAND OUT NOW! END THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND EVERYWHERE! BRING ALL THE TROOPS, UN/NATO/US/ and CONTRACTORS HOME NOW!
The Kill Team Photos More war crime images the Pentagon doesn't want you to see
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327
'Death Zone' How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling 'music video'
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/death-zone-20110327
'Motorcycle Kill' Footage of an Army patrol gunning down two men in Afghanistan
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/motorcyle-kill-20110327
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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
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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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Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
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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 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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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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WTF: WHERE'S THE FUNDING?
[PUBLIC NEED VS. CORPORATE GREED]
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CAMPAIGN VISIT:
WWW,STUDENTLABOR.ORG
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm excited to tell you that yesterday over 1,000 actions took place not only around the country but around the world in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his assassination 43 years ago. We were able to talk about his role in the Memphis sanitation workers' strike and unionization campaign and how he viewed unions as a path way to a true democracy. It was with this thought, honor, and respect that we fought to keep progressing the struggle for social and economic justice moving forward yesterday. SLAP, Jobs with Justice and United States Student Association took part in over 50 of the actions yesterday, ranging from rallies to teach-ins held on campuses.
In Philadelphia: Over 1,000 community members, faith, students, young people and workers came out to rally in solidarity with the labor movement and battles happening around the country.
In Ann Arbor: At the University of Michigan, hundreds of students covered the campus as they demanded the right to an affordable and accessible education and demanded that our communities be run by us, not corporations.
In Altanta: Hundreds of workers, students, young people, faith and community came out to a march and rally to stand against the attacks being launched on our communities that included MLK III as a speaker.
These actions did not go unheard, either. The New York Times uplifted USSA's role in an article re-capping the actions and explaining Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role in the day of action.
But the fight is just beginning - and we have more to say. Today SLAP is proud to be participating in a national teach-in lead by Francis Fox Piven and Cornel West called: "Fight Back USA!" that will discuss austerity, debt, and corporate greed and how we as young people can fight back. You can tune into the national broadcast that will be online from 2-3:30 EST and then there nearly 225 local teach-ins scheduled.
And after today more will be happening. The United States Student Association Board of Directors, composed of students from around the country, have declared April a month of action. We will be fighting every day to make higher education a priority, workers' rights mandatory and scale back the corporate greed that is trying to take over our country.
It is in this struggle that all members of our communities - elderly and young, working and unemployed - share the same interests. The fight happening right now is simply "public need verses corporate greed." It is time for us to set our priorities as neighborhoods, communities, cities, states and a country.
In Solidarity,
Chris Hicks
Student Labor Action Project Coordinator
SLAPfacebook | SLAPtwitter | SLAPonline
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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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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) Jury Clears Cuban Exile of Charges That He Lied to U.S.
"Cuba and Venezuela would like to try him for the 1997 hotel bombings or the airliner bombing, but a United States immigration judge has ruled that he cannot be sent to either country, for fear he could be tortured."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/09posada.html?ref=us
2) The Drought Is Over (at Least for C.E.O.'s)
"On this year's list, the highest-paid C.E.O. was Philippe P. Dauman of Viacom, who made $84.5 million in just nine months. (Viacom changed its fiscal year-end to September from December.)...Many consumer products companies also offered rich pay packages, including one for John F. Lundgren, chief executive of Stanley Black & Decker, whose pay rose 253 percent, to $32.57 million, after a huge stock award. His counterpart at Emerson Electric, David N. Farr, saw his pay rise 233 percent, to $22.9 million, also because he was granted millions in stock."
By DANIEL COSTELLO
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html?src=busln
3) Jobless Rate Is Not the New Normal
By CHRISTINA D. ROMER
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10view.html?src=busln
4) Anti-nuclear protesters march in Tokyo
Work continues to stabilize stricken nuclear power plant; Japan's PM visits fishing city wrecked by tsunami
April 10, 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/10/501364/main20052528.shtml?tag=stack
5) Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job
"Some workers are hired from construction sites, and some are local farmers looking for extra income. Yet others are hired by local gangsters, according to a number of workers who did not want to give their names. They spoke of the constant fear of getting fired, trying to hide injuries to avoid trouble for their employers, carrying skin-colored adhesive bandages to cover up cuts and bruises. In the most dangerous places, current and former workers said, radiation levels would be so high that workers would take turns approaching a valve just to open it, turning it for a few seconds before a supervisor with a stopwatch ordered the job to be handed off to the next person. Similar work would be required at the Fukushima Daiichi plant now, where the three reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake shut down automatically, workers say."
By HIROKO TABUCHI
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/asia/10workers.html?_r=1&hp
6) Israeli Strikes on Gaza Continue
"Of the 17 Palestinians killed since Thursday, 9 were civilians, Palestinian medical authorities said. Those authorities said dozens were also wounded."
By FARES AKRAM and ETHAN BRONNER
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/middleeast/10gaza.html?ref=world
7) Iraqis Protest U.S. After Comments From Gates
By TIM ARANGO and KHALID D. ALI
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html?hp
8) What's in a Lethal Injection 'Cocktail'?
By PAM BELLUCK
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/weekinreview/10injection.html?ref=us
9) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
U.S. Actors and Artists Thank Former President Jimmy Carter for his call to Release the Cuban 5
MEDIA ADVISORY
CONTACT: Suzanne Thompson (310) 570-5419
SuzanneThompson55@gmail.com
Alicia Jrapko (510) 219-0092
ajrapko@yahoo.com
10) Former Fukushima Governor Sato Eisaku Blasts METI -TEPCO Alliance: "Government must accept responsibility for defrauding the people"
By Onuki Satoko
Translated by Julie Higashi
March 30, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Onuki-Satoko/3514
11) Strong Aftershock as Japan Urges More Evacuations
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/asia/12japan.html?hp
12) Cameras Read License Plates, Helping City's Police
By AL BAKER
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/nyregion/12plates.html?hp
13) Iranian Students Hurl Firebombs at Saudi Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Iran-Bahrain.html?hp
14) Four Killed as Syria Cuts Off City
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/11syria.html?ref=world
15) Police Move Swiftly to Prevent Protest in Uganda
By JOSH KRON
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/africa/12uganda.html?ref=world
16) France Enforces Ban on Full-Face Veils in Public
By ALAN COWELL
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/europe/12france.html?ref=world
17) Thousands Gather At Union Square To Voice Concerns Against Wars
CBS New York
April 9, 2011
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/09/thousands-gather-at-union-square-to-voice-concerns-against-wars/
18) Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at 'torture'
Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source
By Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk,
April 10, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-legal-scholars-letter
19) Private Manning's Humiliation
The New York Review of Books issue dated: April 28, 2011
Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/private-mannings-humiliation/
20) The Prosecution Rests, but I Can't
By JOHN THOMPSON
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
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1) Jury Clears Cuban Exile of Charges That He Lied to U.S.
"Cuba and Venezuela would like to try him for the 1997 hotel bombings or the airliner bombing, but a United States immigration judge has ruled that he cannot be sent to either country, for fear he could be tortured."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/09posada.html?ref=us
EL PASO (AP) - A Cuban former C.I.A. operative who was accused of lying during an immigration hearing was acquitted of all charges Friday, with jurors taking just three hours to reach a verdict after 13 weeks of often-delayed testimony.
The abrupt decision ends four years of attempts by the United States to convict Luis Posada Carriles, now 83, and means he no longer faces the prospect of spending the final years of his life in prison, at least in the United States.
For decades, Mr. Posada, an anti-Castro militant, worked to destabilize communist governments throughout Latin America and was often supported by Washington.
After hearing that he had been acquitted on all 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud, Mr. Posada grinned widely and hugged his three lawyers simultaneously. Two of the lawyers broke out in tears.
Across the aisle, three federal prosecutors, who painstakingly built their case by calling 23 witnesses over 11 weeks, sat dejectedly.
"Any time a jury has a case, there's no telling what they might do. But we respect the jury's decision," said the assistant United States attorney Timothy Reardon.
Mr. Posada, who has slurred his words since being shot in the face and losing part of his tongue during a 1990 assassination attempt in Guatemala, joked softly with his defense team, then left the courthouse a free man.
Mr. Posada sneaked into the United States in 2005 and sought political asylum, and later citizenship, for which he went through immigration hearings in El Paso. Prosecutors accused him of lying while under oath during those proceedings about how he made it into the country and by denying he masterminded hotel bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded 12 other people.
Mr. Posada said in a 1998 interview with The New York Times that he planned the attacks, but later recanted that. During the trial, jurors heard more than two hours of recordings from those interviews, but apparently were not swayed by them.
The defense maintained that Mr. Posada should have been allowed to retire a hero in Miami, where he had been living since his 2007 release from an immigration detention center, for his service to the country during the cold war.
He participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, served as a lieutenant in the United States Army and was an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency until 1976. He then moved to Venezuela and served as head of that country's intelligence service.
Also in 1976, he was arrested after the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Mr. Posada was acquitted by a military tribunal, but escaped from prison while facing a civilian trial.
He helped the United States funnel support to Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s and in 2000, was arrested in Panama amid a plot to kill President Fidel Castro of Cuba there. He was pardoned by Panama's president in 2004 and turned up in the United States the following March.
Cuba and Venezuela would like to try him for the 1997 hotel bombings or the airliner bombing, but a United States immigration judge has ruled that he cannot be sent to either country, for fear he could be tortured.
Jose Pertierra, a lawyer representing Venezuela against Mr. Posada, sat through every day of the trial and was crestfallen after the verdict.
"The evidence was strong. We heard the voice of Luis Posada saying he was the mastermind of the bombings," Mr. Pertierra said. He said Venezuela would renew its efforts for extradition.
Pepe Hernandez, who heads the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami and trained with Mr. Posada ahead of the Bay of Pigs invasion, applauded the verdict.
"The U.S. government had a very scant case. Obviously, it didn't have any evidence beyond that of Ann Louise Bardach," Mr. Hernandez said, referring to the contract writer who interviewed Mr. Posada for The Times.
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2) The Drought Is Over (at Least for C.E.O.'s)
"On this year's list, the highest-paid C.E.O. was Philippe P. Dauman of Viacom, who made $84.5 million in just nine months. (Viacom changed its fiscal year-end to September from December.)...Many consumer products companies also offered rich pay packages, including one for John F. Lundgren, chief executive of Stanley Black & Decker, whose pay rose 253 percent, to $32.57 million, after a huge stock award. His counterpart at Emerson Electric, David N. Farr, saw his pay rise 233 percent, to $22.9 million, also because he was granted millions in stock."
By DANIEL COSTELLO
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html?src=busln
HAPPY days are back - in the corner office, at least.
After shrinking during the 2008-9 recession, paychecks for top American executives are growing again - in many cases, significantly so.
Rarely has the view from the corner office seemed so at odds with the view from the street corner. At a time when millions of Americans are trying to hang on to homes and millions more are trying to hang on to jobs, the chief executives of major corporations like 3M, General Electric and Cisco Systems are making as much today as they were before the recession hit. Indeed, some are making even more.
The disparity is especially stark as companies are swimming in cash. In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.
So far, this recovery has not trickled down. After two relatively lean years, C.E.O.'s in finance, technology, energy and beyond are pulling down multimillion-dollar paychecks. What many of these executives aren't doing, however, is hiring. Unemployment, although down from its peak, stood at 8.8 percent in March. And few economists predict the jobless rate will drop substantially anytime soon.
For the average C.E.O., however, the good times have returned. The median pay for top executives at 200 major companies was $9.6 million last year. That was a 12 percent increase over 2009, according to a study conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, a compensation consulting firm based in Redwood City, Calif.
Many if not most of the corporations run by these executives are doing better than they were in the downturn. Many businesses were hit so hard by the recession that even small improvements in sales and profits look good by comparison. But C.E.O. pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all those taxpayer-financed bailouts.
Against such a backdrop, it's noteworthy that recent moves to empower shareholders seem to have done little to tamp down corporate enthusiasm for paying top dollar to top executives. This is generally the season when companies hold annual meetings for their shareholders.
Under new rules included in the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, nearly all public companies must now give shareholders a say on executive pay. Analysts and corporate governance experts are wondering how these votes will play out, even though companies are under no obligation to heed their shareholders' advice.
"What's funny about pay is that when the market is going up, it covers a lot of sins," said David F. Larcker, director of the corporate governance research program at the Stanford Business School. It is when the market "is going sideways or down that funny things happen," he said: "Considering some of the current pay packages, shareholders want to see strong results."
On this year's list, the highest-paid C.E.O. was Philippe P. Dauman of Viacom, who made $84.5 million in just nine months. (Viacom changed its fiscal year-end to September from December.)
Viacom has said that the compensation was inflated by one-time stock awards linked to a long-term contract signed last year.
Also at the top was Ray R. Irani, the C.E.O. of Occidental Petroleum, who took home $76.1 million last year, up 142 percent from the previous one. Last year, the board awarded Mr. Irani a $33 million cash bonus plus $40.3 million in stock awards, more than double what he received in 2009.
Mr. Irani is retiring this year, and Occidental has said that it has set higher hurdles that will significantly reduce executive pay packages.
Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle, the software giant, followed close behind, with a $70.1 million payout, though that is down 17 percent from 2009. Still, Mr. Ellison's fortunes are just fine: he had more than $26.3 billion in stock and other holdings in Oracle in 2010.
UNLIKE some previous years, 2010 registered broad gains in executive pay, benefiting C.E.O.'s from nearly all parts of the economy.
Many consumer products companies also offered rich pay packages, including one for John F. Lundgren, chief executive of Stanley Black & Decker, whose pay rose 253 percent, to $32.57 million, after a huge stock award. His counterpart at Emerson Electric, David N. Farr, saw his pay rise 233 percent, to $22.9 million, also because he was granted millions in stock.
Most executive compensation plans consist of stock options that ballooned as markets recovered after the financial crisis. Although executives typically have to wait several years before cashing in new options, the booming stock market still meant that those options were a bonanza for many chiefs, said Bruce H. Goldfarb, a compensation consultant based in New York.
The chief executive of Ford Motor, Alan R. Mulally, made $26.5 million in total pay, up 48 percent over the previous year as a result of big stock option awards. Ford was the only one of Detroit's Big Three automakers that did not receive a government bailout, and its stock value rose 68 percent last year.
New government regulations put in place after the financial crisis have emboldened some activist shareholders to try again to rein in compensation they deem excessive and undeserved. Although companies will not be bound by such votes, they will have to disclose the results in reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as how they considered the voting in setting subsequent executive pay.
Still, it remains to be seen whether these changes have any teeth. For "say on pay" votes, there is no standard for what percentage of shareholder votes constitutes an endorsement or a rebuttal of policies. Even the prospect of the public votes, though, appears to have altered the relationship between investors and corporate executives on many discussions in recent months.
"I've been in two client meetings a week for the past four months to help determine this year's compensation plans," said Ira T. Kay, a managing partner at Pay Governance, a compensation consulting firm in New York. "While companies are making many tactical decisions about what to pay executives, it's all being done in the context of trying to make sure they get a favorable vote on say on pay."
There are some early signs that shareholders are pushing back and demanding to be heard on what they deem as excessive pay packages.
Just weeks into this proxy season, a majority of voting shareholders at four companies have handed rebukes to management over pay plans: Hewlett-Packard, Beazer Homes USA, the Jacobs Engineering Group and Shuffle Master, a maker of casino equipment.
By comparison, in the entire proxy season last year, just three companies - KeyCorp, Occidental Petroleum and the former Motorola (now split into two companies) - received majority negative votes on corporate pay packages.
Shareholder frustration was probably most evident in recent weeks in the unusually bitter public spat at Hewlett-Packard. H.P.'s board has already been heavily criticized for its handling of the ouster last year of its former chief, Mark V. Hurd, after an H.P. investigation uncovered business conduct violations related to a personal relationship with a contractor.
Two of the most powerful shareholder advisory groups issued highly critical public reports recommending that investors this year vote against H.P.'s executive pay plans and current board members, saying that the company highly overpaid its executives.
In a report in early March, one advisory firm, Glass, Lewis & Company, gave H.P. a grade of D on a scale of A to F. It said H.P. paid its executives more than the median of 33 other similar-size companies and faulted the board for the $35 million severance payout to Mr. Hurd, now a president of Oracle.
In a second report, the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services criticized H.P. for what it called its generous executive compensation that "rewards executives even if the company performs poorly."
H.P. rejected the criticism in a letter to shareholders in March, saying the recommendations were flawed. But at a packed annual meeting in an Arlington, Va., hotel late last month, a majority of shareholders voted against approving the robust executive pay packages.
The company said the compensation plans were under review.
"While we are disappointed with the outcome of the advisory shareholder vote, H.P. intends to carefully consider our shareholders' perspectives regarding executive compensation matters and will take those views under advisement when making future decisions relating to executive compensation," the company said in a statement.
True power for shareholders may come when executives who perform badly or whose companies are accused of fraud are required to forfeit their multimillion-dollar payouts.
Regulators forced just such a concession with the chief executive of Beazer Homes, Ian J. McCarthy. Though he was not charged personally, in a settlement with the S.E.C. last month, Mr. McCarthy agreed to return $6.5 million in compensation that he had received while the company was accused of filing inaccurate financial statements in 2006. Beazer restated its results for that year and resolved the S.E.C.'s claims in 2008 without paying penalties or admitting any wrongdoing.
Such clawbacks have rarely been used, but were a main feature of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which was passed after extensive frauds at Enron and WorldCom. In late March, investors in Beazer Homes also filed a lawsuit against directors of the company, accusing the board of improperly increasing pay for executives in 2010 despite the company's $34 million net loss that year. The losses were blamed on poor sales of existing homes and little demand for new ones. Beazer said it would not comment on pending litigation.
CAROL BOWIE, director of research at Institutional Shareholder Services, said that while executive compensation would probably keep rising and outstrip wage increases in the economy, pay packages could be entering a new era of investor scrutiny.
With "say on pay" voting, investors are "in a moment when the rubber meets the road," Ms. Bowie said. "They have a tool - maybe it's a blunt one - but it can help them express their frustration and ensure the buck stops with them."
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3) Jobless Rate Is Not the New Normal
By CHRISTINA D. ROMER
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10view.html?src=busln
IT takes a while to match people with jobs, so even in normal times the unemployment rate is never zero. Before the recent recession, in the view of many economists, the lowest sustainable rate of unemployment in the United States - a level known as the normal or natural rate of unemployment - was around 5 percent.
The turmoil of the last few years, however, has shaken up the economy. Is it possible that it has affected the natural rate of unemployment - increasing it to 8 or even 9 percent? Such a climb would imply that the prospects for a rebound in output and employment have been greatly reduced - and that high unemployment would be our new normal.
This is implicitly the view of some Federal Reserve policy makers, who say that there is nothing more the central bank can do to lower unemployment. And it's the view of those who say "structural" factors are the main cause of our current high unemployment, which stood at 8.8 percent in March.
Fortunately, there is a more compelling explanation. Strong evidence suggests that the natural rate of unemployment actually hasn't risen very much. Instead, the elevated unemployment rate appears to reflect mainly cyclical factors, particularly a lingering shortfall in consumer spending and business investment.
Consider the effects of changes in industrial composition. The housing bust and financial crisis led to a decline in construction and finance employment that is likely to be long-lasting. Does that imply a substantial rise in normal unemployment? Almost surely not. Compared with the pre-crisis days, about 1.3 million more construction and finance workers are out of work. Even if they all remained permanently unemployed - which is obviously unrealistic - this change would add less than a percentage point to the normal unemployment rate.
More fundamentally, the economy can usually cope with changes in industrial composition. During normal times, industries decline and grow, and displaced workers move to new sectors. For example, manufacturing jobs declined steadily as a share of total employment in the 1990s, yet the normal unemployment rate remained very low.
The real problem today is that jobs are scarce in just about all sectors. An important study, published in 2010 and recently updated, showed that workers who have lost jobs in construction and finance have been leaving the ranks of the unemployed at almost the same rate as those laid off in less troubled industries. The problem isn't about particular sectors; it's about a general lack of hiring.
What about declining geographic mobility? Today, about 11 million families are underwater on their mortgages, which means they owe more than their homes are currently worth. This could make it harder for them to sell their homes and move to jobs in other regions.
But the argument that such "house lock" is a source of high unemployment runs into two empirical walls. First, jobs are not plentiful anywhere. In the most recent data, the unemployment rate in every state was above its level before the recession. So our unemployment problem wouldn't go away if only people could move more easily.
Second, if house lock were an important factor, we would expect to see greater declines in labor mobility in states with more underwater mortgages, and among homeowners compared with renters. A study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Economic Perspectives finds no support for either of these hypotheses.
Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, made waves last August when he pointed to a recent climb in posted job vacancies as evidence that current unemployment is mainly structural. Normally, there wouldn't be this many vacancies until unemployment were closer to normal. Therefore, he argued, a severe mismatch between unemployed workers and the skill requirements or location of available jobs had raised the normal unemployment rate by as much as three percentage points.
But this analysis misses the fact that early in recoveries, vacancies typically rise relative to unemployment. Also, as discussed by Peter A. Diamond in his recent Nobel prize lecture, businesses that are relatively more plentiful today - for example, larger companies and those outside of construction - tend to post their vacancies more consistently. Thus, the changing composition of companies helps explain the unusual rise in vacancies.
When experts weigh the evidence, they come down strongly on the side that normal unemployment has not risen greatly. Once a year, the Survey of Professional Forecasters asks respondents for their estimate of the natural unemployment rate. In the third quarter of 2010, the median estimate was 5.78 percent, almost exactly one percentage point higher than in the third quarter of 2007, just before the recession started. (The highest estimate was 6.8 percent.) And the Congressional Budget Office uses 5.2 percent as its estimate of the natural rate.
All of this suggests that most of our high unemployment is still the consequence of low demand. Consumers remain hesitant to spend because unemployment and debt are high. Companies are unwilling or unable to invest because customers are few and credit is still tight.
This diagnosis suggests that the appropriate remedy is to stimulate demand. In February, I suggested a number of steps the Federal Reserve could take. Some additional fiscal measures would also be useful. More public investment (as the president has advocated), additional aid to state and local governments, and a cut in payroll taxes for employers would all help. Given the severity of the long-run budget problem, short-run fiscal stimulus should only be undertaken as part of a comprehensive package of gradual spending cuts and tax increases. That would give the economy the jolt it needs, while providing reassurance that the United States will remain solvent over the long haul.
REGARDLESS of the cause of extended high unemployment, it is a disaster for families, the economy and government budgets. Thus, if I am wrong, and more unemployment is structural than the current evidence suggests, this is no excuse for washing our hands of the problem. Only the nature of the needed policy response would change. Instead of focusing on increasing demand, we would need policies to help workers and jobs find one another, measures to move workers to where the jobs are (or vice versa), training programs and better education.
And even though today's unemployment appears mainly cyclical, it could turn structural. The longer that unemployment remains high for cyclical reasons, the more likely that job prospects for unemployed workers will be permanently damaged. In a number of European countries in the 1980s, for example, prolonged recession appears to have caused normal unemployment to rise sharply. Getting cyclical unemployment down quickly is the surest way to prevent that from happening in the United States.
Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
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4) Anti-nuclear protesters march in Tokyo
Work continues to stabilize stricken nuclear power plant; Japan's PM visits fishing city wrecked by tsunami
April 10, 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/10/501364/main20052528.shtml?tag=stack
(CBS/AP)
TOKYO - Thousands of people carrying "No nukes" signs marched through the streets of Tokyo Sunday, calling for an end to the use of nuclear power, as work continued to stabilize a troubled nuclear power plant in the country's northeast.
Protesters, including families with small children and members of labor, consumer and feminist groups, carried placards with anti-nuclear slogans and chanted "No more Fukushima!" "No nuclear plants."
"It is time for us to think of alternative power other than nuclear power," said protester Etsuko Nikiori, 40.
Tokyo is about 140 miles southwest of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.
Marching through government headquarters and past the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, protesters chanted, "We will not be deceived anymore."
Meanwhile, 250,000 households in northern Japan were still without running water and electricity Sunday. Some have not had it since the tsunami, while others lost it in a magnitude-7.1 aftershock Thursday that killed three people and rattled nerves, but did not cause extensive damage.
Japan nuclear endgame starts; body hunt renewed
Complete coverage: Disaster in Japan
Prime Minister Naoto Kan paid another visit to Japan's tsunami-devastated coast Sunday, promising officials in a fishing-dependent city that his government will do whatever it can to help.
Kan visited Ishinomaki, a coastal city of 163,000 people in Miyagi, one of the prefectures (states) hardest hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that killed as many as 25,000 people, destroyed miles of coastline and left tens of thousands homeless.
"The government will do its utmost to help you," Kan, dressed in blue work clothes, told local people gathered near the sea. "We will support you so that you can resume fishing."
Ishinomaki Mayor Hiroshi Kameyama told him the government needs to quickly build temporary homes for the 17,000 city residents who lost theirs and are living in shelters. More than 2,600 people from Ishinomaki were killed in the disaster and another 2,800 are missing. Boats were also destroyed, crippling the fishing industry that accounts for 40 percent of the city's economy.
While Kan was visiting Ishinomaki, Japanese and U.S. troops fanned out along the coast in another all-out search for bodies by land, air and sea.
Television news showed them using heavy equipment to lift a boat washed inland by the tsunami so they could search a crushed car underneath. No one was inside.
"A month after the earthquake and tsunami, many people are still missing," said Japanese defense ministry spokesman Norikazu Muratani. "We would like to do our utmost to find bodies for their families."
Only 13,000 deaths have been confirmed so far, and many bodies have likely washed out to sea and will never be found.
A similar three-day search with even more troops a week ago found just 70 bodies, underscoring the difficulties of locating victims in the ocean and the debris along the coast.
In coastal Fukushima on Sunday, a middle-aged man watched as soldiers in scuba gear dove underwater. He hoped they would locate his younger brother, a fisherman who was swept away.
"He must be trapped in the boat," the man told public broadcaster NHK, which did not identify him. "I'm just praying soldiers will find him."
The latest search was to last just one day and did not include the 12-mile evacuation zone around the tsunami-flooded Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. Police officers decked out in full protective gear continue the dangerous, painstaking task of looking for bodies inside that zone.
Workers at the complex have spent the past month frantically trying to stop radiation spewing from nuclear reactors by restoring the cooling systems, but they still have a long way to go.
Contamination in water pooling around the complex has slowed efforts to stabilize the reactors, emitting so much radiation in some places that workers can get in only for short periods of time, if at all.
In a move that prompted some criticism from neighboring countries, engineers decided earlier this month to deliberately pump less-contaminated water into the ocean from a storage facility they thought might make a good receptacle for the more highly radioactive water. They are also pumping out water from drains to keep it from backing up.
"I would like to apologize from my heart over the worries and troubles we are causing for society due to the release of radiological materials into the atmosphere and seawater," Sakae Muto, a vice president of the nuclear plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said Saturday.
The pumping was set to end Sunday, and officials hoped that within days they could start transferring the more highly contaminated water to the now-drained facility. The operation is risky because the water will be transferred through a hose snaking around buildings on the complex, meaning that if there are cracks or leaks in the hose, radiation could escape into the air.
"We must make sure we can do this safely," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, chief spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency.
Now that removal of the contaminated water is under way, officials are starting to consider options for restoring cooling systems vital to preventing further reactor damage. But they won't know what will work best until the water is out of the way and they can see which parts are usable and which have been destroyed.
Also Sunday, plant workers were getting ready to move highly contaminated water swelling in a trench in one of six reactor buildings into a storage area in the building. The transfer was necessary to keep the water from leaking into the sea.
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5) Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job
"Some workers are hired from construction sites, and some are local farmers looking for extra income. Yet others are hired by local gangsters, according to a number of workers who did not want to give their names. They spoke of the constant fear of getting fired, trying to hide injuries to avoid trouble for their employers, carrying skin-colored adhesive bandages to cover up cuts and bruises. In the most dangerous places, current and former workers said, radiation levels would be so high that workers would take turns approaching a valve just to open it, turning it for a few seconds before a supervisor with a stopwatch ordered the job to be handed off to the next person. Similar work would be required at the Fukushima Daiichi plant now, where the three reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake shut down automatically, workers say."
By HIROKO TABUCHI
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/asia/10workers.html?_r=1&hp
KAZO, Japan - The ground started to buck at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and Masayuki Ishizawa could scarcely stay on his feet. Helmet in hand, he ran from a workers' standby room outside the plant's No. 3 reactor, near where he and a group of workers had been doing repair work. He saw a chimney and crane swaying like weeds. Everybody was shouting in a panic, he recalled.
Mr. Ishizawa, 55, raced to the plant's central gate. But a security guard would not let him out of the complex. A long line of cars had formed at the gate, and some drivers were blaring their horns. "Show me your IDs," Mr. Ishizawa remembered the guard saying, insisting that he follow the correct sign-out procedure. And where, the guard demanded, were his supervisors?
"What are you saying?" Mr. Ishizawa said he shouted at the guard. He looked over his shoulder and saw a dark shadow on the horizon, out at sea, he said. He shouted again: "Don't you know a tsunami is coming?"
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he is not even an employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, itinerant, temporary laborers who handle the bulk of the dangerous work at nuclear power plants here and in other countries, lured by the higher wages offered for working with radiation. Collectively, these contractors were exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times as high as the levels faced by Tokyo Electric employees last year, according to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the industry. These workers remain vital to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plants.
They are emblematic of Japan's two-tiered work force, with an elite class of highly paid employees at top companies and a subclass of laborers who work for less pay, have less job security and receive fewer benefits. Such labor practices have both endangered the health of these workers and undermined safety at Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, critics charge.
"This is the hidden world of nuclear power," said Yuko Fujita, a former physics professor at Keio University in Tokyo and a longtime campaigner for improved labor conditions in the nuclear industry. "Wherever there are hazardous conditions, these laborers are told to go. It is dangerous for them, and it is dangerous for nuclear safety."
Of roughly 83,000 workers at Japan's 18 commercial nuclear power plants, 88 percent were contract workers in the year that ended in March 2010, the nuclear agency said. At the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 89 percent of the 10,303 workers during that period were contractors. In Japan's nuclear industry, the elite are operators like Tokyo Electric and the manufacturers that build and help maintain the plants like Toshiba and Hitachi. But under those companies are contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors - with wages, benefits and protection against radiation dwindling with each step down the ladder.
Interviews with about a half-dozen past and current workers at Fukushima Daiichi and other plants paint a bleak picture of workers on the nuclear circuit: battling intense heat as they clean off radiation from the reactors' drywells and spent-fuel pools using mops and rags, clearing the way for inspectors, technicians and Tokyo Electric employees, and working in the cold to fill drums with contaminated waste.
Some workers are hired from construction sites, and some are local farmers looking for extra income. Yet others are hired by local gangsters, according to a number of workers who did not want to give their names.
They spoke of the constant fear of getting fired, trying to hide injuries to avoid trouble for their employers, carrying skin-colored adhesive bandages to cover up cuts and bruises.
In the most dangerous places, current and former workers said, radiation levels would be so high that workers would take turns approaching a valve just to open it, turning it for a few seconds before a supervisor with a stopwatch ordered the job to be handed off to the next person. Similar work would be required at the Fukushima Daiichi plant now, where the three reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake shut down automatically, workers say.
"Your first priority is to avoid pan-ku," said one current worker at the Fukushima Daini plant, using a Japanese expression based on the English word puncture. Workers use the term to describe their dosimeter, which measures radiation exposure, from reaching the daily cumulative limit of 50 millisieverts. "Once you reach the limit, there is no more work," said the worker, who did not want to give his name for fear of being fired by his employer.
Takeshi Kawakami, 64, remembers climbing into the spent-fuel pool of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant during an annual maintenance shutdown in the 1980s to scrub the walls clean of radiation with brushes and rags. All workers carried dosimeters set to sound an alarm if exposure levels hit a cumulative dose limit; Mr. Kawakami said he usually did not last 20 minutes.
"It was unbearable, and you had your mask on, and it was so tight," Mr. Kawakami said. "I started feeling dizzy. I could not even see what I was doing. I thought I would drown in my own sweat."
Since the mid-1970s, about 50 former workers have received workers' compensation after developing leukemia and other forms of cancer. Health experts say that though many former workers are experiencing health problems that may be a result of their nuclear work, it is often difficult to prove a direct link. Mr. Kawakami has received a diagnosis of stomach and intestinal cancer.
News of workers' mishaps turns up periodically in safety reports: one submitted by Tokyo Electric to the government of Fukushima Prefecture in October 2010 outlines an accident during which a contract worker who had been wiping down a turbine building was exposed to harmful levels of radiation after accidentally using one of the towels on his face. In response, the company said in the report that it would provide special towels for workers to wipe their sweat.
Most day workers were evacuated from Fukushima Daiichi after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which knocked out the plant's power and pushed some of the reactors to the brink of a partial meltdown. Since then, those who have returned have been strictly shielded from the news media; many of them are housed at a staging ground for workers that is off limits to reporters. But there have been signs that such laborers continue to play a big role at the crippled power plant.
The two workers who were injured two weeks ago when they stepped in radioactive water were subcontractor employees. As of Thursday, 21 workers at the plant had each been exposed to cumulative radiation levels of more than 100 millisieverts, or the usual limit set for nuclear plant workers during an emergency, according to Tokyo Electric. (That limit was raised to 250 millisieverts last month.)
The company refused to say how many contract workers had been exposed to radiation. Of roughly 300 workers left at the plant on Thursday, 45 were employed by contractors, the company said.
Day laborers are being lured back to the plant by wages that have increased along with the risks of working there. Mr. Ishizawa, whose home is about a mile from the plant and who evacuated with the town's other residents the day after the quake, said he had been called last week by a former employer who offered daily wages of about $350 for just two hours of work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant - more than twice his previous pay. Some of the former members of his team have been offered nearly $1,000 a day. Offers have fluctuated depending on the progress at the plant and the perceived radiation risks that day. So far, Mr. Ishizawa has refused to return.
Working conditions have improved over the years, experts say. While exposure per worker dropped in the 1990s as safety standards improved, government statistics show, the rates have been rising since 2000, partly because there have been more accidents as reactors age. Moreover, the number of workers in the industry has risen, as the same tasks are carried out by more employees to reduce individual exposure levels.
Tetsuen Nakajima, chief priest of the 1,200-year-old Myotsuji Temple in the city of Obama near the Sea of Japan, has campaigned for workers' rights since the 1970s, when the local utility started building reactors along the coast; today there are 15 of them. In the early 1980s, he helped found the country's first union for day workers at nuclear plants.
The union, he said, made 19 demands of plant operators, including urging operators not to forge radiation exposure records and not to force workers to lie to government inspectors about safety procedures. Although more than 180 workers belonged to the union at its peak, its leaders were soon visited by thugs who kicked down their doors and threatened to harm their families, he said.
"They were not allowed to speak up," Mr. Nakajima said. "Once you enter a nuclear power plant, everything's a secret."
Last week, conversations among Fukushima Daiichi workers at a smoking area at the evacuees' center focused on whether to stay or go back to the plant. Some said construction jobs still seemed safer, if they could be found. "You can see a hole in the ground, but you can't see radiation," one worker said.
Mr. Ishizawa, the only one who allowed his name to be used, said, "I might go back to a nuclear plant one day, but I'd have to be starving." In addition to his jobs at Daiichi, he has worked at thermal power plants and on highway construction sites in the region. For now, he said, he will stay away from the nuclear industry.
"I need a job," he said, "but I need a safe job."
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6) Israeli Strikes on Gaza Continue
"Of the 17 Palestinians killed since Thursday, 9 were civilians, Palestinian medical authorities said. Those authorities said dozens were also wounded."
By FARES AKRAM and ETHAN BRONNER
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/middleeast/10gaza.html?ref=world
GAZA - Israeli aircraft and artillery continued to strike Gaza on Saturday, killing three more militants, including a senior commander, bringing the total dead since Thursday to 17, Palestinian officials said. From Gaza, 20 more rockets and mortar shells hit southern Israel but caused no injuries or damage.
Israel said its attacks were in retaliation for a Hamas missile strike on an Israeli school bus on Thursday that critically wounded a 16-year-old boy. Hamas said it fired at the bus to retaliate for Israel's killing of three militants last Saturday.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said one of the three militants killed in the new attack on Saturday was Tayser Abu Snima, a senior commander who had played a major role in firing rockets into Israel. She added that since Friday, Israel's newly installed Iron Dome anti-rocket system had intercepted seven projectiles, including medium-range Grad missiles aimed at the city of Ashkelon.
On Saturday, witnesses in the Gazan city of Rafah said three militants were hit by a missile fired from a drone. Two were killed, and the third was in critical condition. The armed wing of Hamas said in a statement that the two dead were senior commanders, including Mr. Abu Snima.
Later in the morning, a similar drone strike hit northeastern Gaza, killing a Hamas militant on a motorcycle, medics said.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said that militant groups were still restraining themselves and that their rocket attacks were still "restricted and controlled."
He blamed Israel for not respecting a unilateral cease-fire that Gaza groups declared on March 23, adding that Israel would be responsible if the violence increased.
Of the 17 Palestinians killed since Thursday, 9 were civilians, Palestinian medical authorities said. Those authorities said dozens were also wounded.
Tensions with Gaza have been rising for weeks, and the Israeli raids have been the deadliest since Israel's three-week invasion more than two years ago.
Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Ethan Bronner from Tel Aviv.
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7) Iraqis Protest U.S. After Comments From Gates
By TIM ARANGO and KHALID D. ALI
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD - A day after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that American troops could remain here for years, tens of thousands of protesters allied with Moktada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, flooded the streets demanding an end to the American military presence.
The protests were scheduled before Mr. Gates's comments - made on Friday during a visit to troops in northern Iraq - although his statements may have fueled some of the day's fervor. The protesters were whipped up by comments drafted by Mr. Sadr, who is continuing his religious studies in Iran but who sent a message to the crowd threatening to reconstitute his militia, the Mahdi Army, if the American military did not leave this year.
"The first thing we will do is escalate the military resistance activity and reactivate the Mahdi Army in a new statement which will be published later," Mr. Sadr's representative, Salah al-Obaidi, told the crowd. "Second is to escalate the peaceful and public resistance through sit-ins."
A demonstration against the American invasion is held each April 9, the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in 2003 and the date when Iraqis, with the help of American Marines, pulled down a statue of the dictator Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in Baghdad.
Posters that proclaimed "Down with America" were distributed to the crowds, and some people burned American flags and chanted slogans like "Get out! Get out! America the great devil!" Others spoke of their "religious duty" to "expel the occupier."
But the event - an annual rite of the Shiite underclass loyal to Mr. Sadr - took on more political importance this year because it came amid the debate here and in Washington about whether American troops will leave on schedule by the end of the year or stay on in some capacity. The departure date was set by a security agreement that binds both countries.
"We want them to get out of the country," said Sheik Ahmed al-Hasnawi, one of the event's organizers. "It's the last year for them."
Ali Husain, a high school student, said: "We came from southern Iraq yesterday evening at the invitation of Moktada al-Sadr. We will expel the occupier."
Similar protests, although drawing much smaller numbers, took place in Sunni districts. On Friday after prayers, demonstrators in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold in Baghdad, chanted, "Leave, leave, occupier!" And a few hundred people demonstrated Saturday against the Americans in Ramadi, in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province
Under the terms of the security agreement, the Iraqi government would have to ask the United States to stay on. But any such request would be politically complicated for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki because of Mr. Sadr's influence.
Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army twice fought pitched battles with American forces, in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad in 2008, and in the holy city of Najaf in 2004. But he has since laid down his arms and joined the political process. In last year's election, candidates loyal to him won nearly 40 seats in Parliament, and Mr. Maliki largely owes his second term as prime minister to Mr. Sadr's support.
Even Parliament members from Mr. Sadr's party support a return to armed revolt if their demands for the Americans to leave are not met.
"Military resistance is the motto of the Sadrist movement against the occupiers, which was adopted after 2003," Rafi Abed al-Jabar, a Sadrist member of Parliament, said in an interview. "The occupier has to get out of Iraq at the date submitted in the agreement."
Mr. Sadr's ability to galvanize his followers to fill the streets - on vivid display Saturday - is part of his power over Mr. Maliki, who has recently faced antigovernment protests modeled after those in Tunisia and Egypt. But the demonstrations have not yet led to a powerful national movement, largely because loyalists to Mr. Sadr, who has said that the government should be given time to address the country's needs, have stayed away. If Mr. Sadr changed his mind, and Sadr supporters began protesting against the government, it would be a serious challenge to Mr. Maliki's authority.
Even Saturday, some protesters were chanting, "Liar, liar, Nuri al-Maliki!"
President Obama, whose rise to national prominence followed his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq, has said publicly that all troops will leave by the end of the year, but Mr. Gates's comments on Friday amounted to a rare public acknowledgment of what many officials say privately: that there is much behind-the-scenes deliberation about a continued presence of United States forces after this year.
Officials also say privately that part of the top echelon of the Iraqi government believes that the country still needs American help in developing its armed forces, particularly in air defense and protecting borders.
On Friday Mr. Gates mentioned the possibility of keeping troops in what he called an "advise-and-assist" role.
Even if the military leaves on schedule, the American diplomatic presence, already housed in the United States's largest embassy in the world, will become greater. Americans there, with a large contingent of private contractors, are expected to take on many of the functions that are now the military's responsibility. That includes training the Iraqi Army to use tanks and other equipment it has bought, and training the Iraqi police.
But in some places, especially in the northern city of Kirkuk, disputed by Arabs and Kurds, there is widespread fear that the absence of American troops could lead to violence.
"This area will be a civil war if U.S. troops leave," said Nahida al-Dainni, a member of Parliament from Iraqiya, a coalition headed by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Omar al-Jawoshy and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad.
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8) What's in a Lethal Injection 'Cocktail'?
By PAM BELLUCK
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/weekinreview/10injection.html?ref=us
¶ THE latest controversy over the always controversial subject of capital punishment: the drugs used to execute people on death row.
¶ Lawyers for death row inmates in Texas and Arizona have filed challenges to the executions questioning the use of specific drugs in the lethal injection of their clients. (Last week, the Supreme Court stayed the executions for other reasons.)
¶ These challenges have been prompted by a shortage of one of the drugs, sodium thiopental, an anesthetic. The American manufacturer of sodium thiopental, Hospira, recently announced that it would no longer produce the drug, and manufacturers in Europe do not want to supply the drug if it will be used in executions. Some executions have been postponed while states try to sort out the drug situation.
¶ In Texas, which carries out more executions than any other state, the controversy is focused on the proposed switch from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital in a three-drug cocktail.
¶ What is the difference?
¶ The two drugs come from the same family: barbiturates, drugs that depress the central nervous system. So, in general, said Dr. John Dombrowski, director of the Washington Pain Center and a board member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, "it's like if you ask me what's the difference between Johnnie Walker Blue, Black and Red - they're all scotch."
¶ But sodium thiopental has been commonly used as an anesthetic in hospitals. Pentobarbital has a few medical uses in humans, but is often used by veterinarians to anesthetize or euthanize animals. It has also been used in physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and in Europe.
¶ When injected into the bloodstream, both drugs "cross the blood-brain barrier very efficiently," said Dr. Scott Segal, chairman of the department of anesthesiology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. "They get into brain tissue itself."
¶ Within the brain tissue, on the surface of the neurons, he said, are receptors that respond to a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA.
¶ "GABA is an inhibitory receptor, meaning that stimulation of the GABA receptor reduces firing of neurons," Dr. Segal said, depressing the brain's electrical activity.
¶ Both drugs stimulate these GABA receptors.
¶ "All barbiturates put the brain to sleep by slowing down brain function," said Dr. Mark A. Warner, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. "The brain cells that drive the desire to breathe are also suppressed. So any barbiturate, if you give enough of it, somebody quits breathing. Also, if you give enough of it the heart quits pumping as hard and that can cause decreased blood pressure."
¶ But while the way the drugs work might be similar, the effects are different.
¶ Sodium thiopental is used in hospitals because it "has a relatively fast onset and it doesn't last long," Dr. Warner said. "You want a patient to go sleep and wake up pretty quickly."
¶ Pentobarbital is a long-acting drug.
¶ "If veterinarians are using this, they don't really care if an animal wakes up faster or not," Dr. Dombrowski said. "If the dog or cat is still a little sleepy it doesn't make a difference."
¶ In euthanizing animals, higher doses are used, and "the lethal effect is a cardiovascular effect," Dr. Segal said, meaning that it stops the heart.
¶ Pentobarbitol is used in hospitals in certain circumstances, like inducing a coma in brain-damaged patients because "that allows the brain to use more energy and oxygen to repair itself," Dr. Warner said. He said it can also be used to stop seizures in patients for whom other drugs are ineffective.
¶ Opponents of the death penalty object to either drug. Some say thiopental can wear off too quickly, allowing inmates to feel pain. Others object to using pentobarbital, because it is so infrequently used in humans.
¶ In the three-step cocktail common in executions, a barbiturate is given with pancuronium bromide, a paralyzing drug, and potassium chloride, which induces cardiac arrest. Dr. Segal said all three drugs can have lethal effects.
¶ "I'm not sure anyone knows which drug actually kills someone," he said.
¶
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9) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
U.S. Actors and Artists Thank Former President Jimmy Carter for his call to Release the Cuban 5
MEDIA ADVISORY
CONTACT: Suzanne Thompson (310) 570-5419
SuzanneThompson55@gmail.com
Alicia Jrapko (510) 219-0092
ajrapko@yahoo.com
DANNY GLOVER, SUSAN SARANDON, JACKSON BROWNE, MARTIN SHEEN, BONNIE RAITT, OLIVER STONE, CHRISSIE HYNDE, EDWARD ASNER, MIKE FARREL, GRAHAM NASH (PLUS OTHERS)
THANK FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER FOR HIS CALL TO
RELEASE THE CUBAN 5 AND FOR IMPROVED RELATIONS WITH CUBA
(LOS ANGELES - April 11, 2011) After hearing former President Carter call for the release of the Cuban 5, twenty U.S. Actors and Artists United for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 sent a letter thanking him for demanding their release and for improved relations with Cuba. "I believe that there is no reason to keep the Cuban 5 imprisoned, there were doubts in the U.S. courts and also among human rights organizations in the world. Now, they have been in prison 12 years and I hope that in the near future they will be released to return home."- Former President Jimmy Carter.
The actors and artists who signed on to the letter include: Edward Asner, Co-Chair, Danny Glover, Co-Chair, Jackson Browne, James Cromwell, Mike Farrell, Richard Foos, Elliott Gould, Chrissie Hynde, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Susan Sarandon, Pete Seeger, Martin Sheen, Betty & Stanley K. Sheinbaum, Andy Spahn, Oliver Stone, Esai Morales, Francisco Letelier and Haskell Wexler.
Carter, invited by Cuban President Raul Castro, on behalf of The Carter Center, is the first US President in 50 years to set foot on Cuban soil. He ended his three-day trip on March 30th by also calling to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, to lift the US blockade now having been imposed on Cuba for half a century, and to remove all restrictions imposed on its citizens regarding travel to Cuba. To watch the Press Conference visit www.thecuban5.org
"Typically, President Carter moves forward with courage. Just as typically, he will be criticized by those who lack it." - Mike Farrell
The Cuban 5 are Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Ramon Labanino Salazar, and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, serving over 12 years in US prisons for simply trying to protect their country from terrorism.
The actors and artists also expressed their gratitude for Carter's visit and encouraged subsequent discussions with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Your wisdom and courage in calling for the release of the Cuban 5 provides support for President Obama to correct this injustice and issue Executive Clemency for the Cuban 5 so they can return to their families." - Danny Glover, Co-Chair
And certainly, until their release, the US government should grant regular visas in a timely manner, to their family members to visit them.
LETTER FROM U.S. ACTORS AND ARTISTS SENT TO FORMER PRESIDENT CARTER
April 8, 2011
The Honorable Jimmy Carter
The Carter Center
One Copenhill
453 Freedom Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30307
Dear President Carter:
We, Actors and Artists United for the Freedom of the Cuban 5, want to extend our deepest gratitude for your recent visit to Cuba, as well as our support for your statements promoting improved relations between our countries.
Your call for the release of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Ramon Labanino Salazar, and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, known as the Cuban 5, and your willing-ness to visit with their family members in Cuba mean a great deal to all involved. We strongly agree that there is no reason to keep these men, who were simply trying to protect their country from terrorism, imprisoned any longer.
And certainly, until their release, the US government should grant regular visas in a timely manner, to their family members to visit them.
Your leadership honors the principles upon which our nation was founded. Your calls to remove Cuba from the US State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, to lift the US blockade now having been imposed on Cuba for half a century, and to remove all restrictions imposed on its citizens regarding travel to Cuba (a position supported by 67% of Americans and Cuban Americans), are fair, just and appropriate.
Further, we enthusiastically support you in having subsequent discussions with President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and hope you will call for urgent action on their part to make right this unjust situation.
Again, we thank you and look forward to the possibility of improved relations and future visits to Cuba.
With respect,
Edward Asner, Co-Chair; Danny Glover, Co-Chair; Jackson Browne; James Cromwell; Mike Farrell; Richard Foos; Elliott Gould; Chrissie Hynde; Francisco Letelier; Esai Morales; Graham Nash; Bonnie Raitt; Susan Sarandon; Pete Seeger; Martin Sheen; Betty & Stanley K. Sheinbaum; Andy Spahn; Oliver Stone; Haskell Wexler.
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the case visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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10) Former Fukushima Governor Sato Eisaku Blasts METI -TEPCO Alliance: "Government must accept responsibility for defrauding the people"
By Onuki Satoko
Translated by Julie Higashi
March 30, 2011
http://japanfocus.org/-Onuki-Satoko/3514
The explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has become an earthshaking situation, severely damaging the surrounding area. In addition, highly radioactive ocean water has been detected nearby. Sato Eisaku (_____ age 71), who at one point brought 17 nuclear power plants operated by the Tokyo Power Electric Company (TEPCO) to a halt, is indignant about the situation: "The root of all evil is the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the government."
Every time I see news about the accident, I cannot help but feel anger rise in me. Some of the pundits have said, "This is an accident beyond all expectations. It is a natural disaster," but do not be fooled. This accident was doomed to happen. In other words, it is a man-made disaster.
During my tenure as governor of Fukushima prefecture, I fought hard against METI, demanding a transparency guarantee on accident information and working to secure the prefectural government's rights with regard to where nuclear plants are built. METI is supposed to supervise and instruct TEPCO so as to prevent TEPCO's repeated tampering with and concealing of information, but instead, the two organizations have been working together. Judging from the news reports, I think the situation has not changed at all.
On January 6 of that year, we discovered that an accident had occurred in reactor unit 3 at the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station. Part of a recirculation pump (for the reactor core coolant) had fallen off. However, TEPCO not only continued to operate the plant, even after the warning alarm had gone off at the end of the previous year, but the organization also concealed this fact. The prefectural and municipal governments were the last to receive this information. How can this be allowed to go unchallenged?
The people who need to receive this kind of information first and foremost are the locals. Through the vice governor, I fiercely protested to METI (then Ministry of International Trade and Industry, or MITI), but we received no response from them whatsoever.
Most members of the National Dietcannot touch Japan's nuclear energy policy, because it is the Cabinet's exclusive prerogative. Even the minister, who is in charge of the policy, is largely controlled by the government office. In other words, METI and the Cabinet's Nuclear Energy Commission, the so-called "people of the nuclear power plant village," decide the entire direction of policy. Neither politicians nor local governments where the power plants are built have any authority.
According to Sato, the government and the electric power companynot only kept local municipalitiesin the dark about nuclear power plants but they also concealed evidence of an accident, which Sato terms, "8.29." On August 29, 2002, the Fukushima prefectural office received a fax from an informant inside the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA). It contained a terrifying message: "For many years, TEPCO has tampered with inspection records to cover up the malfunction of and cracks found in reactors ofthe Fukushima Daiichi and Daini nuclear plants."
I immediately ordered my subordinate to investigate. We later found out that NISA had received the same information two years earlier but, instead of conducting any investigation, had simply routed the information to the concerned party, TEPCO.
At this point, my anger reached its peak. This is like the police and thieves working together. Until then, I had thought TEPCO was in cahoots with the government, but the real evil deep within the electric company, remained hidden. The ultimate problem is with METI and the government.
As a result of this scandal, the president of TEPCO and five top executives resigned. In April 2003, all the power plants TEPCO operated were forced to shut down their nuclear reactors (10 in Fukushima Prefecture and 7 in Niigata Prefecture; link). However, neither NISA nor METI received any punishment or ever accepted any responsibility.
On the contrary, the manager of METI came to Futaba County, where the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is located, to distribute pamphlets that said,"Nuclear power plants are absolutely safe," to all households. How shameless can one be?
Even now, TEPCO staff and the spokesman of NISA, who appear unsure about the situation, are the only ones who bow their heads in apology at their press conferences. The people who told everyone that nuclear power plants are safe are in hiding yet again.
Furthermore, Sato is feeling a sense of impending crisis in the wake of the March 14 hydrogen explosionin reactor unit 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, a"pluthermal" facility.
Why don't the mediacover this issue prominently? The generation of "pluthermal" power involves plutonium and uranium mixed-oxide fuel (MOX fuel) extractedfrom spent nuclear fuel. For a country that depends on imports of uranium, "pluthermal" is the core of the nuclear fuel cycle plan.
With Pluthermal, A Crisis Remains in Fukushima
At one point in 1998, I agreed to the use of MOX fuel, on condition that four requirements of quality control be followed.
Three years later, however, I rejected the plan. This was because data falsification about the planned use of MOX fuel came to light at the Daiichi and Takahama nuclear power plants in Fukui Prefecture, where the pluthermal program was to be implemented.
Moreover, the nuclear fuel cycle plan has a major flaw. The reprocessing plant in Rokkasho Village in Aomori Prefecture has experienced numerous technical problems, and completion of the plant has been repeatedly postponed. Unless this plant can begin full operations, Fukushima will need to continue holding used spent fuel rods inside its nuclear reactor's pool. The pool in reactor unit 3 may have been damaged during the recent earthquake. Consequently, the danger remains.
On August 30, 2010, the prefectural assembly endorsed the decision of the current governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Sato Yuhei, to accept the "pluthermal" power-generation plan. This news received extensive media coverage. However, how widespread was the news that completion of the Rokkasho Village reprocessing plant would be postponed yet again for the 18th time, this time for two years? (Link)
Because of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident, metropolitan Tokyo has experienced a power cut. In April 2000, Tokyo's governor Ishihara Shintaro, announced at the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum annual conference that he "wouldn't mind if nuclear power plants were built in Tokyo Bay." I wonder whether he would say the same thing today, given the current situation.
In 2006, I was arrested by the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Prosecutors Officefor bribery in connection with plans to construct a dam ordered by the prefecture. At an intermediate appeal hearing, the judge delivered an interesting ruling, stating that "the amount of bribery is zero." I am currently fighting these false accusations in court. From this experience, I can say that the people in the Special Investigation Department and at the "nuclear power village" are very similar. The Special Investigation Department leaked information about the structure of relationships behind the crime to the media and they continue to fabricate an image of me as a criminal.
The current accident, too, can be viewed as a cover-up and as an example of the withholding of vital information from the public. It is high time that the government took responsibility for defrauding the people.
Sato Eisaku was born 1939 in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture. He graduated from Tokyo University's School of Law and was elected governor of Fukushima Prefecture in 1988. In 2006, after stepping down as Governor, he was arrested and charged with bribery by the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office. In 2009, he was found guilty and sentenced to two years (with a probation period of four years). But given that the bribery amount was set at zero, the verdict virtually clears the charge. Currently, he is making a final appeal. Author of Chiji Massatsu [Obliterating the governor] (Heibonsha, 2009).
This article by Onuki Satoko was published online on March 30 and in Shukan Asahi on April 8, 2011.
Recommended citation: Onuki Satoko, Former Fukushima Governor Sato Eisaku Blasts METI -TEPCO Alliance: "Government must accept responsibility for defrauding the people", The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 15 No 4, April 11, 2011.
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11) Strong Aftershock as Japan Urges More Evacuations
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/asia/12japan.html?hp
TOKYO - A strong aftershock off Japan's Pacific coast on Monday briefly set off a tsunami warning and knocked out cooling at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for almost an hour, underscoring the vulnerability of the plant's reactors to continuing seismic activity along the coast a month after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The Japanese government said on Monday that it was preparing to expand the evacuation zone around the nuclear facility to address concerns over long-term exposure to radiation; the announcement was made before the aftershock struck.
The United States Geological Survey measured the aftershock's magnitude at 6.6, only about one hundred-thousandth the strength of the March 11 quake, and the tsunami warning was lifted after 45 minutes when no sizable waves were detected. Still, the shake left 220,000 homes in three prefectures in the areas without power and caused a spate of injuries.
It also knocked out the external power supply to the Fukushima Daiichi plant, temporarily stopping pumps there from sending cooling water into the facility's three most severely damaged reactors, according to Japan's nuclear regulator. The tsunami warning also obliged workers at the plant to evacuate temporarily.
Using emergency pumps to cool the nuclear fuel rods within the reactors and in spent-fuel pools above the reactors has been a top priority for the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, since the March 11 quake and tsunami damaged the reactors' usual circulation systems. But Monday's aftershock appeared to have exposed a big vulnerability in that approach.
The backup power and pumping systems that have been brought to the plant since March 11, including emergency diesel generators, fire trucks on standby and other generator trucks - all require workers to operate them manually, according to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That makes them useless when workers must evacuate away from the reactors.
Moreover, pumping hundreds of tons of water a day into the reactors has produced harmful runoff of highly contaminated water, some of which leaked into the Pacific Ocean earlier this month. Plant workers have now plugged that leak, and are capturing the runoff in various storage tanks at the plant. However, as the tanks fill up, Tokyo Electric has had to release lower-level radioactive water into the ocean to make room.
Monday's quake was shallower than most of the previous aftershocks - only eight miles down, half the depth of the 7.1-magnitude temblor last Thursday. Its epicenter was farther south than earlier aftershocks; it is the most powerful recorded so far between Fukushima and Tokyo striking at a point about 50 miles south of Fukushima and 101 miles north-northeast of Tokyo.
Yukio Edano, the government's chief cabinet secretary, said in the capital on Monday that the government would order parts of five villages and cities that are outside the current zone to prepare to evacuate. The fear is that these areas are being exposed to radiation equivalent to at least 20 millisieverts a year, he said, which could be harmful to human health over the long term. Evacuation orders will come within a month for Katsurao, Namie, Iitate and parts of Minamisoma and Kawamata, Mr. Edano said.
People in five other areas may also be told to evacuate if there is a worsening of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi station, Mr. Edano said. Those areas are Hirono, Naraha, Kawauchi, Tamura and other sections of Minamisoma.
"This measure is not an order for you to evacuate or take actions immediately," he said. "We arrived at this decision by taking into account the risks of remaining in the area in the long term," he added, appealing for calm.
The incremental ways in which the government has ordered evacuations from around the Fukushima complex has caused confusion on the ground.
In a different directive issued last month, residents within a 30-kilometer (18-mile) radius have already been advised - though not ordered - to evacuate, overlapping with some of the communities ordered to prepare for evacuation on Monday. Mr. Edano also said on Monday that pregnant women, children and hospital patients should stay out of the 30-kilometer radius, and that schools in that zone would remain closed.
The Japanese government had so far refused to officially widen the zone, despite being urged to do so by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Countries like the United States and Australia have advised their citizens to stay 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from the plant.
Mr. Edano said on Monday that the chance of a large-scale radiation leak from the Fukushima Daiichi plant had, in fact, decreased.
Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear plant operator for 13 years in the United States and a specialist in emergency responses to nuclear accidents, said that the Japanese decision to evacuate more areas made sense not just in terms of protecting their residents but also in terms of making easier the eventual decontamination of farms and communities.
Allowing people and non-emergency vehicles to continue moving through both radiation-contaminated areas and safer areas farther from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors runs the risk of spreading around radioactively contaminated particles, which could result in more square miles of territory ultimately being contaminated. "Unless you gain control, it will be like trying to mop your kitchen floor with the kids running in and out of the house," Mr. Friedlander said.
The I.A.E.A., based in Vienna, said on Sunday that its team had measured radiation on Saturday of 0.4 to 3.7 microsieverts per hour at distances of 20 to 40 miles from the damaged nuclear reactors - well outside the earlier evacuation zone. At that rate of accumulation, it would take 225 days to 5.7 years to reach the Japanese government's threshold level for evacuations: radiation accumulating at a rate of at least 20 millisieverts per year.
In other words, only the areas with the highest readings would qualify for the new evacuation ordered by the government.
But the former Soviet Union used a lower threshold - 5 millisieverts per year - in eventually offering resettlement to people who lived near the Chernobyl reactors in 1986. At the rates of radiation accumulation identified by the I.A.E.A., the new evacuation areas in Japan would take 56 days to 17 months to reach this level.
Across Japan at evacuation centers, at work and on the street, people observed a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. to mark the passage of exactly one month after the March 11 quake.
"We will not let the tsunami defeat us," the mayor of the coastal city of Miyako, overrun by waves that measured as high as 125 feet, said in a message broadcast across the city through emergency speakers on Monday.
In the city, a port famous for its salmon trade about 370 miles north of Tokyo, about 400 people have been confirmed dead from the March 11 disaster and 682 remain missing. Almost 3,500 people from Miyako remain in evacuation centers after losing their homes. "If we keep up our courage and hope," said Mayor Masanori Yamamoto, "Miyako will surely recover."
The overall death toll from the disaster, Japan's worst since World War II, has surpassed 13,000, with more than 14,000 people still missing, according to Japan's National Police Agency. The figures include the casualties from the March 11 quake and tsunami, as well as the several aftershocks that have since jolted northeast Japan.
Officials have said that many people may never be accounted for, because they were washed out to sea or buried under mountains of rubble. More than 150,000 people overall remain housed in emergency shelters, the national broadcaster NHK said.
Reporting was contributed by Moshe Komata, Kantaro Suzuki and Ken Ijichi.
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12) Cameras Read License Plates, Helping City's Police
By AL BAKER
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/nyregion/12plates.html?hp
When Luis Zeledon was captured by detectives, it was probably safe to say that he had not intended to be found. He was hiding in someone else's apartment in Queens, taking refuge inside a closet.
But for all Mr. Zeledon's evasiveness, the key to his arrest on murder charges in 2009 came days before the slaying even occurred - as he was driving his car.
The Police Department's growing web of license-plate-reading cameras has been transforming investigative work. Though the imaging technology was conceived primarily as a counterterrorism tool, the cameras' presence - all those sets of watchful eyes that never seem to blink - has aided in all sorts of traditional criminal investigations. The latest example came last month with the arrest of Marat G. Mikhaylich, a suspect in nine bank robberies in New York and New Jersey. Even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation had identified Mr. Mikhaylich through surveillance photos, he had managed to avoid arrest - until he added car theft to his criminal history.
As Mr. Mikhaylich fled from a bank heist in Edison, N.J., he took control of a livery cab, which he drove to Queens.
One or more of the New York Police Department's security cameras detected the stolen car's license plates and directed federal agents to a block in Queens. The next morning, Mr. Mikhaylich was arrested there, as he was stopped at a traffic light, a loaded 9-millimeter pistol in his belt.
There are 238 license plate readers in use in New York City, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman. Of those, 130 are mobile. They are mounted on the back of police cars assigned to patrol duties across the city's five boroughs and to specialized units like the highway and counterterrorism divisions. The remaining 108 cameras are set up at fixed posts at city bridges and tunnels and above thoroughfares.
The cameras have provided clues in homicide cases and other serious crimes. But they have been used in lesser offenses, too. With them, stolen cars have been identified, located and returned. The cameras have uncovered unregistered vehicles and those with stolen license plates. They can pinpoint fugitives from out of state who are linked to specific automobiles.
The first wave of specialized cameras went into use in September 2006, shortly after Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, introduced a surveillance system similar to one found in London to protect the financial district. The license plate readers were central to that plan, known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which relied on movable roadblocks and thousands of other security cameras below Canal Street, which were linked to a coordination center at 55 Broadway.
"We knew going into it that they would have other obvious benefits," Mr. Browne said about the use of the readers in the initiative. "Obviously, conventional crime is far more common than terrorism, so it is not surprising that they would have benefits, more frequently, in conventional crime fighting than in terrorism."
Yet the strategy for the use of the license plate readers has raised questions about whether they represent a system for tracking driving patterns, said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She said it was hard to tell whether interest in "effective and efficient law enforcement" was being balanced with the "values of privacy and freedom."
"We don't know how much information is being recorded and kept, for how long, and by which cameras," Ms. Lieberman said. "It's one thing to have information about cars that are stopped for suspicious activity, but it's something else to basically maintain a permanent database of where particular cars go when there is nothing happening that is wrong and there is no basis for suspicion."
When it comes to car thefts, the value of the cameras seems clear, Mr. Browne said.
In 2005, the year before the first license plate readers were put in place, there were 17,855 reports of stolen cars in the city, according to police statistics. Last year, there were 10,334, the statistics showed.
Meanwhile, arrests for grand larceny auto - one of the seven major crime categories - have increased to 248 through March 27 from 190 during the same period a year ago, a 31 percent increase, Mr. Browne said. He said the cameras were directly responsible for the recovery of 3,659 stolen cars since the first ones were introduced in 2006, and for the issuance of 34,969 summonses for unregistered vehicles.
"Arrests are up," Mr. Browne said. "Right now, grand larceny auto continues to come down, after dramatic decreases, and part of that is due to this technology. So it obviously helps."
The license plate readers are different from other security cameras in the city: they are aimed low, designed to focus on a small area, unlike traditional surveillance cameras which look at broader sections like a toll plaza or the entrance of a building, Mr. Browne said. The information collected is immediately checked against databases storing information on stolen cars, stolen license plates, wanted persons and unregistered vehicles.
If a link is found, a small alarm sounds, Mr. Browne said.
The data is also remotely downloaded to computers twice daily. Using this data, investigators can also retrieve photographs of the license plates, Mr. Browne said. New information, like the license plates of a newly wanted person, can be added to the system, and sets of databases are updated twice daily, he said.
In Mr. Zeledon's case, photos of his 2004 red Nissan Sentra with Connecticut license plates were captured and preserved by a network of police cameras and computers. Mr. Zeledon then became the prime suspect in the fatal stabbing of Andy Herrera, 28, on Jan. 19, 2009. Mr. Zeledon's car had been seen near 109th Street and Jamaica Avenue, in Queens, about a mile from where Mr. Herrera was killed.
Another set of police records showed that Mr. Zeledon was somehow associated with a specific address on 109th Street, near where his car's license plates had been spotted. The clues were collected by a detective at 1 Police Plaza who had pulled them from databases and flashed them on a screen - making a map with the suspect's photo at its center and a web of white lines connecting him to all his known links, movements or connections.
At 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2009, two detectives who were driving to the Freeport, N.Y., home of Mr. Zeledon's cousin received a call from the detective at the police headquarters who said they might want to first check out the 109th Street address, Mr. Browne said.
He said that once there, the detectives found and arrested Mr. Zeledon, who had been hiding in the closet. Mr. Browne added that Mr. Zeledon, speaking Spanish, later told the detectives, "I'm not an assassin; it was a mistake."
In a more recent case, the authorities in Richmond, Va., told detectives in New York that a man and a woman reported missing from New Jersey in February were believed to have been harmed. Investigators, who had the license plate number for a silver Nissan Altima, used the information to locate the car on March 11 on East 52nd Street, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Mr. Browne said.
In its trunk were the missing people: Evande Orna, 39, and Troy Edwards, 40, he said. Ms. Orna appeared to have been beaten. Mr. Edwards's head had been wrapped in plastic, and his throat appeared to have been slashed.
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13) Iranian Students Hurl Firebombs at Saudi Embassy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Iran-Bahrain.html?hp
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Scores of Iranian students have attacked the Saudi Arabian embassy with firebombs to protest the Gulf country's role in cracking down on anti-government protesters in Bahrain.
The official IRNA news agency says protesters tried to attach a flag of the Lebanese group Hezbollah to the embassy's gate Monday, but were prevented by police. Protesters chanted slogans against Saudi and Bahraini leaders, both followers of Sunni Islam.
Iran, predominantly Shiite Muslim, has denounced the deployment of a Saudi-led force to help prop up Bahrain's monarchy. A government crackdown against Bahrain's Shiite-led protests has killed at least 27 people. Authorities say they see Iran's influence among the opposition, though there are no visible links.
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14) Four Killed as Syria Cuts Off City
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/world/middleeast/11syria.html?ref=world
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Syrian security forces and pro-government gunmen killed four protesters on Sunday in the Syrian port city of Banias.
The army had sealed off the city as hundreds of protesters gathered, undaunted by the government's use of force to quell more than three weeks of unrest, witnesses said. State television reported that nine soldiers were killed in an ambush near the city.
Details were sketchy because telephone lines, electricity and Internet access were apparently cut to most parts of Banias. Army tanks and soldiers circled the city, preventing people from entering.
But one witness, reached by telephone, said hundreds of protesters had assembled near al-Rahman Mosque when security forces and armed men in civilian clothes opened fire. The names of the dead were read out on the mosque's loudspeakers.
Dozens of people were wounded, the witness said, but most of them asked to be treated at a small clinic instead of the city's main hospital, which was under the control of the security forces.
Like most people who were interviewed, the witness requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from the government. Several human rights activists, also citing witnesses, reported the shootings on Sunday in Banias, which is 185 miles northwest of Damascus, the capital.
"There are demonstrations throughout the city, and people are chanting against the regime," said Haitham al-Maleh, 80, a lawyer and human rights activist who spent years as a political prisoner in Syria.
The accounts could not be independently confirmed. The government has placed severe restrictions on news coverage and many journalists, including from The Associated Press, have been ordered to leave the country.
Protests erupted in Syria more than three weeks ago and have been growing steadily, with tens of thousands of people calling for sweeping reforms in President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian government.
More than 170 people have been killed, according to human rights groups.
The government blames armed gangs for the violence and has vowed to crush any additional unrest. On Sunday, state television reported thugs were behind the killing of nine soldiers in an ambush near Banias.
The television report said gunmen hiding among trees along a road shot at the soldiers, and it broadcast images of an ambulance and other civilian vehicles coming under fire along the road.
Mr. Assad said Sunday that the country was "moving ahead on the road of comprehensive reforms," the state-run news agency, Sana, reported. In recent weeks, Mr. Assad has answered the protesters with both force and limited concessions that have failed to appease them.
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15) Police Move Swiftly to Prevent Protest in Uganda
By JOSH KRON
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/africa/12uganda.html?ref=world
KAMPALA, Uganda -Police officers on Monday forcefully countered a small demonstration here over rising commodity prices, swiftly dispersing demonstrators with tear gas and live ammunition and arresting two former presidential candidates.
Broken glass, chunks of pavement and a tree trunk were scattered across a major road into Kampala, Uganda's capital, on Monday, after a small group of opposition figures led by Kizza Besigye, the runner-up in Uganda's February presidential election, began walking down the street towards central Kampala.
Another former presidential candidate, Norbert Mao, was also arrested in a different part of Kampala, as well as at least one member of Parliament.
"We had to get him," Ugandan police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba said of Dr. Besigye and his group. "They were blocking traffic."
She said that when the police blocked the demonstration, which had not been officially registered with the government, demonstrators started hurling rocks and slabs of pavement at the police.
Dr. Besigye was released on bail Monday afternoon, after being charged with inciting violence and disobedience against police.
The overpowering show of force by the police in the face of a meager demonstration - only a handful of people, and crowds of bystanders that grew when the police arrived - underscored the government's sensitivity to any hint of protest in the wake of the upheaval across north Africa.
President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power for 25 years, won re-election in February, but voting irregularities and allegations of widespread corruption tarnished the ballot.
While voters said they were not ready to risk their lives in protest like people in Egypt or Tunisia, President Museveni warned that protests would not be tolerated.
Opposition figures had announced Sunday that they would stage a "walk to work" demonstration on Monday against rising commodity prices, which have suffocated the landlocked east African country's economy in recent months. Gasoline prices have risen sharply in the wake of the spreading unrest in north Africa, forcing a cascade of rising commodity prices.
In some areas, staples such as soap, rice, and cooking oil have gone up by more than 40 percent since the beginning of the year, though observers here do not see the rising prices having an immediate effect on the country's stability.
But in Kansangati on the outskirts of Kampala Monday, supporters of Dr. Besigye said that a group of fewer than 10 people had walked only a mile before being stopped by the police, who then surrounded the demonstrators and arrested Dr. Besigye after a two-hour standoff. "We came out walking; only six of us," said Sam Mugumya, a personal aide to Dr. Besigye, at the scene of the arrest. Then the police came.
"They said there was no law we were breaking, but that 'we cannot let you proceed,'" said Mr. Mugumya. "You cannot use five police vehicles and then accuse one person of blocking the road."
Armored personnel carriers rolled up and down main roads around Kampala on Monday, firing tear gas canisters long after demonstrators dispersed, sending mostly journalists, police, and nearby primary school children fleeing to fresher air.
"They can't keep suppressing things forever," said Father Anthony Musaala, at the police station holding Dr. Besigye. "There will come a time."
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16) France Enforces Ban on Full-Face Veils in Public
By ALAN COWELL
April 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/europe/12france.html?ref=world
PARIS - A French ban outlawing full-face veils in public, the first to be enacted in Europe, came into force on Monday and faced immediate, if low-key, challenges.
The police detained two fully veiled women at a small protest outside the Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris, where demonstrators were easily outnumbered by police officers and journalists. But it was not clear whether the women had been held under laws forbidding unauthorized demonstrations.
The new law, approved last year, has been controversial from the start, raising questions about France's relationship with its Muslim minority of five to six million - Western Europe's largest - at a time when right-wing and anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise.
Just days ago France's governing party pressed ahead with a contentious public debate on the nature of its secularist philosophy and the challenges of Islam. The discussion drew criticism across a broad front including government officials, religious leaders, the Socialist opposition and the far-right National Front.
According to the French authorities, fewer than 2,000 women in France wear the full-face veil, known as a niqab, but the ban has touched nerves, prompting accusations that it stigmatizes one gender among one religious minority in a land that prides itself on the values enshrined in its national motto of liberty, equality and fraternity.
The ban also applies to foreigners visiting France. The law forbids clothing intended to hide the face in public spaces such as streets, markets, private business, government buildings and public transportation. Violators may be punished with a fine of 150 euros, equivalent to $215. But people forcing others to cover their faces are subject to much stiffer punishments, including a maximum 12 months in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros, equivalent to more than $42,000, or twice that amount if the person forced to cover their face is a minor.
News reports said a Muslim property dealer had set aside a fund of some $2.8 million to help women fight the ban while a woman wearing a niqab planned to travel by train from Avignon in southern France to Paris in defiance of the prohibition.
Rachid Nekkaz, the property developer who called for the protest at the cathedral, said in a Webcast quoted by Reuters: "I am calling on all free women who so wish to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience."
Police officers have been told by their superiors that they may not forcibly remove veils, but offenders may be taken to police stations to have their identities confirmed.
In some public debate, the niqab has been conflated with the full-body covering called a burqa, which is very rare in France. As debate flared over the law last year, Jean-François Copé, the parliamentary leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy's party, defended the bill on the grounds of public security and as an important assertion of French identity and values. Mr. Sarkozy himself has said, "The burqa is not welcome in France because it is contrary to our values and contrary to the ideals we have of a woman's dignity."
When the law was approved by the lower house of Parliament last year, there was only one opposing vote, cast by Daniel Garrigue, an opponent of President Sarkozy, who said: "To fight an extremist behavior, we risk slipping toward a totalitarian society."
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17) Thousands Gather At Union Square To Voice Concerns Against Wars
CBS New York
April 9, 2011
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/09/thousands-gather-at-union-square-to-voice-concerns-against-wars/
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) - Thousands attended an anti-war rally at Union Square on Saturday.
One woman had tears in her eyes as she talked about her nephews who are in the military and how she believed she may never see them again. Another man drove more than nine hours from Ohio so that his voice could be heard.
Tom Murphy from Brooklyn said instead of shutting down the government, they need to shut down the wars.
"It's costing $100 million a day. In the meantime, we are being told that there is no money for badly needed social programs. We don't want war. We want more jobs," Murphy said.
Carol Kennedy came from Pennsylvania and said that the killing of innocent people needs to stop.
"Anytime you have drones and other bombs-they kill people even if your intentions are to kill people like Ghaddafi," Kennedy said.
One man said President Obama needs to act and not deliver just words.
"It's not enough for President Obama to say in his election 'Yes, we can.' We need to see action. We just see words. We should stop this corruption. We should stop these wars," he said.
Did you go to the anti-war rally? Send your photos to news@cbsnewyork.com.
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18) Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at 'torture'
Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source
By Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk,
April 10, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-legal-scholars-letter
More than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.
The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America's foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.
He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that "is not only shameful but unconstitutional" as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.
The US soldier has been held in the military brig since last July, charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of thousands of embassy cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website.
Under the terms of his detention, he is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes under a so-called "prevention of injury order" and stripped naked at night apart from a smock.
Tribe said the treatment was objectionable "in the way it violates his person and his liberty without due process of law and in the way it administers cruel and unusual punishment of a sort that cannot be constitutionally inflicted even upon someone convicted of terrible offences, not to mention someone merely accused of such offences".
The harsh restrictions have been denounced by a raft of human rights groups, including Amnesty International, and are being investigated by the United Nations' rapporteur on torture.
Tribe is the second senior figure with links to the Obama administration to break ranks over Manning. Last month, PJ Crowley resigned as state department spokesman after deriding the Pentagon's handling of Manning as "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid".
The intervention of Tribe and hundreds of other legal scholars is a huge embarrassment to Obama, who was a professor of constitutional law in Chicago. Obama made respect for the rule of law a cornerstone of his administration, promising when he first entered the White House in 2009 to end the excesses of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
As commander in chief, Obama is ultimately responsible for Manning's treatment at the hands of his military jailers. In his only comments on the matter so far, Obama has insisted that the way the soldier was being detained was "appropriate and meets our basic standards".
The protest letter, published in the New York Review of Books, was written by two distinguished law professors, Bruce Ackerman of Yale and Yochai Benkler of Harvard. They claim Manning's reported treatment is a violation of the US constitution, specifically the eighth amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishment and the fifth amendment that prevents punishment without trial.
In a stinging rebuke to Obama, they say "he was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency".
Benkler told the Guardian: "It is incumbent on us as citizens and professors of law to say that enough is enough. We cannot allow ourselves to behave in this way if we want America to remain a society dedicated to human dignity and process of law."
He said Manning's conditions were being used "as a warning to future whistleblowers" and added: "
I find it tragic that it is Obama's administration that is pursuing whistleblowers and imposing this kind of treatment."
Ackerman pointed out that under the Pentagon's own rule book, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Manning's jailers could be liable to prosecution for abusing him. Article 93 of the code says "any person who is guilty of cruelty toward any person subject to his orders shall be punished".
The list of professors who have signed the protest letter includes leading figures from all the top US law schools, as well as prominent names from other academic fields. Among them are Bill Clinton's former labour secretary Robert Reich, President Theodore Roosevelt's great-great-grandson Kermit Roosevelt, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union Norman Dorsen and the writer Kwame Anthony Appiah.
• This article was amended on 11 April 2011. The original referred to Kwame Anthony Appiah as a novellist. This has been corrected.
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19) Private Manning's Humiliation
The New York Review of Books issue dated: April 28, 2011
Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/private-mannings-humiliation/
UPDATE:Our initial draft relied on news reports in the major news outlets. Comments we received since then lead us to think that two facts may be overstated in the original draft:
1. The instance of forced nudity overnight and in morning parade apparently occurred once. The continuing regime apparently commands removal of Pvt. Manning's clothes and his wearing a "smock" at night.
2. The shackling apparently occurs when Private Manning is moved from his cell to the exercise room, but not while walking during the one hour of exercise.
Other responses we have received suggest that there are claims of myriad other abuses that make conditions worse in various ways than we describe. We do not, and cannot, seek to adjudicate these factual claims. The conflicting responses underscore the need for a public, transparent, and credible response to the reported abuse, and cessation of those among them that cannot be justified.
Private Manning's Humiliation
Bradley Manning is the soldier charged with leaking US government documents to Wikileaks. He is currently detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.
For nine months, Manning has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. During his one remaining hour, he can walk in circles in another room, with no other prisoners present. He is not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, but must answer the question "Are you OK?" verbally and in the affirmative every five minutes. At night, he is awakened to be asked again "Are you OK?" every time he turns his back to the cell door or covers his head with a blanket so that the guards cannot see his face. During the past week he was forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a "smock" under claims of risk to himself that he disputes.
The sum of the treatment that has been widely reported is a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against punishment without trial. If continued, it may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, among other things, "the administration or application...of... procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality."
Private Manning has been designated as an appropriate subject for both Maximum Security and Prevention of Injury (POI) detention. But he asserts that his administrative reports consistently describe him as a well-behaved prisoner who does not fit the requirements for Maximum Security detention. The brig psychiatrist began recommending his removal from Prevention of Injury months ago. These claims have not been publicly contested. In an Orwellian twist, the spokesman for the brig commander refused to explain the forced nudity "because to discuss the details would be a violation of Manning's privacy."
The administration has provided no evidence that Manning's treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates. Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.
If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law. But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment. As the State Department's P.J. Crowley put it recently, they are "counterproductive and stupid." And yet Crowley has now been forced to resign for speaking the plain truth.
The Wikileaks disclosures have touched every corner of the world. Now the whole world watches America and observes what it does, not what it says.
President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning's confinement is "appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards," as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions-and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day.
Bruce Ackerman
Yale Law School
New Haven, Connecticut
Yochai Benkler
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Additional Signers: Jack Balkin, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Alexander M. Capron, Norman Dorsen, Michael W. Doyle, Randall Kennedy, Mitchell Lasser, Sanford Levinson, David Luban, Frank I. Michelman, Robert B. Reich, Kermit Roosevelt, Kim Scheppele, Alec Stone Sweet, Laurence H. Tribe, and more than 250 others. A complete list of signers has been posted on the blog balkinization:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/03/statement-on-private-mannings-detention.html
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20) The Prosecution Rests, but I Can't
By JOHN THOMPSON
April 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
New Orleans
I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I've been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I'd won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence - which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn't mine.
Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today.
I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmother's house - we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons - John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 - my girlfriend and me. The officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22.
They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon.
My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims' identification.
After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn't testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty.
I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn't kill me, he said, they'd put more volts in.
On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary - the infamous Angola prison. I was put in a dead man's cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they had executed eight men at Angola. I received my first execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing 12 men who were executed there.
Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh - and last - date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn't want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine - I was innocent, but it was time to give up.
But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I'd been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. "Oh, no, hold on," I said, "that's the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school." I begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him.
To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didn't know I was John Jr.'s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him.
Amazingly, I got a miracle. The same day that my lawyers visited, an investigator they had hired to look through the evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microfiche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of the perpetrator of the armed robbery. It didn't match mine; the report, hidden for 15 years, had never been turned over to my lawyers. The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports from the murder case that hadn't been turned over either.
As a result, the armed robbery conviction was thrown out in 1999, and I was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, my murder conviction was thrown out. At a retrial the following year, the jury took only 35 minutes to acquit me.
The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today.
Why weren't they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off.
In 2005, I sued the prosecutors and the district attorney's office for what they did to me. The jurors heard testimony from the special prosecutor who had been assigned by Mr. Connick's office to the canceled investigation, who told them, "We should have indicted these guys, but they didn't and it was wrong." The jury awarded me $14 million in damages - $1 million for every year on death row - which would have been paid by the district attorney's office. That jury verdict is what the Supreme Court has just overturned.
I don't care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didn't do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued.
Worst of all, I wasn't the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to death, five eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Because we were sentenced to death, the courts had to appoint us lawyers to fight our appeals. I was lucky, and got lawyers who went to extraordinary lengths. But there are more than 4,000 people serving life without parole in Louisiana, almost none of whom have lawyers after their convictions are final. Someone needs to look at those cases to see how many others might be innocent.
If a private investigator hired by a generous law firm hadn't found the blood evidence, I'd be dead today. No doubt about it.
A crime was definitely committed in this case, but not by me.
John Thompson is the director of Resurrection After Exoneration, a support group for exonerated inmates.
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