March Against the Wars!
U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan! Stop the War on Libya!
Sunday, April 10 in San Francisco
Rally Against the Wars at Home and Abroad
Dolores Park, San Francisco
11am: Assemble, 12noon: Rally, 1:30pm: March
Sat, April 9 in New York City
Rally at Union Square at 12 Noon
ANSWER contingent gathering at
Union Square West (Broadway) between 16th St. and 17th St.
Click here to download flyer for the ANSWER contingent
Call for the ANSWER Coalition Contingent:
On March 19th of this year, the eighth anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government initiated the bombing of another oil-rich nation: Libya. The U.S. government always states that each Pentagon invasion or bombing attack is for humanitarian rather than imperial objectives, but this one, like those in the past, is all about profit and political control.
With the war in Afghanistan continuing to rage on, now nearing a decade in duration, and 50,000 troops continuing to occupy Iraq, the anti-war movement must be in the streets and in full force.
Three weeks ago, marches around the country brought thousands into the streets. Let's keep that energy going! Join us this Saturday, April 9, for a mass rally and march that begins at Union Square. The march has been called under the slogans, "Money for Jobs and Education, Not War--Bring the Troops Home Now!" and is raising the vital connections between the wars abroad and the attacks on working people and oppressed communities here in the United States.
As the government claims to be flat broke, attacking labor unions and vital social services, they find limitless funds for their endless military adventures and Wall Street friends. The movements from Tunisia to Egypt, Bahrain to Yemen, have sent a clear message: the people have the power once they are mobilized and in the streets. That is the same spirit that was reflected in the heroic Capitol building occupation in Madison, Wisconsin.
Come out this Saturday and help revitalize the anti-war movement that is needed as much as ever before.
The march has been called by the United National Antiwar Committee and has been endorsed by a wide variety of organizations across the progressive movement.
To contact ANSWER, call 212-694-8720 or email us at nyc@answercoalition.org.
Sponsored by: United National Antiwar Committee, endorsed by many organizations including the ANSWER Coalition.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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Join Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network at the anti-war march this Sunday, April 10th at 11am in Dolores Park, San Francisco! Make art for Bradley at our tent!
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San Francisco, Sunday, April 10th
Gather at Dolores Park at 11am (18th Street and Dolores Street)
Rally at 12pm • March at 1:30pm
Spread the word on Facebook!
Featuring Malalai Joya, "The bravest woman in Afghanistan"
RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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ENDING THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
An Evening with MALALAI JOYA
When: Saturday April 9th, 2011
6-7 pm reception/light food
7-9 pm program
Where: Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist
corner of 15th and Julian (btw Mission & Valencia) San Francisco
with music by Kaylah Marin
$10-25 (no one turned away)
wheelchair accessible (wheelchair entrance on 15th Street)
Malalai Joya has been called the "bravest woman in Afghanistan." She was the youngest member elected to the Afghan Parliament but was suspended for denouncing the warlords and the US/NATO war and occupation. She continues to speak out despite death threats and assassination attempts.
Join us as she talks about the situation in Afghanistan and why it's essential that US/NATO troops leave immediately.
Her book, "A Woman Among Warlords," with a new afterward about the war under Obama, is now in paperback and will be available for purchase.
For more information: or if you want to endorse: sfjoya@gmail.com
Endorsed by (partial list): American Friends Service Comm • ANSWER/SF • Arab Resource Organizing Center • BAYAN • Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace • Bay Area Women in Black • Black Alliance for Just Immigration • Black Women Stirring the Waters • Buddhist Peace Fellowship • California Women's Agenda • Catalyst Project • Code Pink/Women for Peace • Courage to Resist • Eastside Arts Alliance • Ecumenical Peace Institute • Freedom Archives • Global Exchange • Grandmothers Against the War • Haiti Action Committee • International Action Center • International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network • International Socialist Organization • KPFA Women's Magazine •LAGAI • Middle East Children's Alliance • National Radio Project/ Making Contact • Priority Africa Network • Queers Undermining Israeli Terror • Radical Women • San Francisco Women In Black • Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SF • UNAC • War Resisters League/West • Women for Genuine Security • WILPF/ Berkeley /East Bay • WILPF/ Santa Cruz) • Veterans For Peace Chapter 69
•Unitarian Universalists for Peace-SFUNAC • War Resisters League/West • Women for Genuine Security • WILPF/ Berkeley /East Bay • WILPF/ Santa Cruz) • Veterans For Peace Chapter 69
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Atomic Mom at the Los Angeles Women's International Film Festival
Atomic Mom, a feature length documentary by M.T. Silvia, will screen on Saturday, April 9th @ 7:30pm at the Roxie Theater at 3117 16th Street San Francisco, CA 94103 in the San Francisco International Women's Film Festival.
Media Contact:
M.T. Silvia
mtsilvia@atomicmom.org
510-541-0413
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -
Atomic Mom weaves an intimate portrait of a complex mother-daughter relationship within an obscure - but important - moment in American history.
As the only female scientist present during atomic detonations in the Nevada desert, Pauline Silvia, the filmmaker's mother, undergoes a crisis of conscience. After a long silence and prompted by her daughter, she finally reveals grim secrets of working in the U.S. atomic testing program.
In our present moment of Wikileaks, Pauline is a similar whistle-blower having been cowed by the silencing machine of the US military for decades. In an attempt to reconcile with her own mother's past, her daughter, filmmaker M.T. Silvia, meets Emiko Okada, a Hiroshima survivor trying to reconcile her own history in Japan. The film follows these survivors, each on a different end of atomic warfare, as they "meet" through the filmmaking process, and as they, with startling honestly, attempt to understand the other.
With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the footage of the devastation is hauntingly familiar to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Japan experiences its second nuclear crisis, Atomic Mom illustrates how we are all downwind of this story.
Atomic Mom invites viewers to confront American nuclear history in a completely new way and will inspire dialogue about human rights, personal responsibility, and the possibility - and hope - of peace.
More info at http://www.atomicmom.org
M.T. Silvia is an independent filmmaker. Her first documentary Picardy Drive (2002, Documentary, 57min) aired on KQED's ImageMaker series, FreeSpeechTV and airs yearly during the holidays on Oakland's KTOP. She has worked professionally in the film industry for over twenty years at both Skywalker Sound and Pixar Animation Studios. Among many mainstream film and CD credits, she has also worked on several independent films.
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RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!NO NUKES/NO WAR!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
Next organizing meeting Sunday, February 20, 1:00 P.M., Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street (between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
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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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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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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) Jena Six Activist Convicted, Faces Decades in Prison
by Jordan Flaherty
March 31, 2011
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/flaherty010411.html
2) Jena Sheriff Seeks Revenge for Civil Rights Protests
Jordan Flaherty
May 13, 2010 03:22 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html
3) Spring's Awakening?
New York Times Editorial
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04mon1.html?hp
4) Israel Scours Palestinian Village in Hunt for Killers
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/middleeast/05awarta.html?hp
5) Japan Releases Low-Level Radioactive Water Into Ocean
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/asia/05japan.html?hp
6) BP Seeks to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico
By JULIA WERDIGIER and JOHN M. BRODER
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/business/energy-environment/04bp.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1301936642-Z0/8NKbrLUDwDLIiMabKaQ
7) Pay of State University Presidents Holds Steady Despite Cuts
By JACQUES STEINBERG
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/business/04collegepay.html?ref=us
8) For New York's Well-to-Do, What to Do With Tax Windfall?
By ASHLEY PARKER
April 3, 2011, 7:00 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/for-new-yorks-well-to-do-what-to-do-with-tax-windfall/?ref=nyregion
9) Search for Radiation Leak Turns Desperate in Japan
"The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water - measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity - into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/04/04/business/AP-AS-Japan-Earthquake.html?src=busln
10) No cargo worked April 4th in solidarity with heroic Wisconsin
Dockworkers shut down ports of Oakland & San Francisco for 24 hours
By Dave Welsh
April 5, 2011
VIA Email
11) Bound for Radicalism; Diarist of a Century
The Chronicle Review By Nina C. Ayoub
April 3, 2011
http://chronicle.com/article/Nota-Bene-Bound-for/126933/
12) Bradley Manning Support Network Praises British Parliamentary Initiative to
Intervene on Behalf of Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Jeff Paterson
+1 (202) 640-4388
jp@jeffpaterson.net
13) Another war on Gaza?
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada,
4 April 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11896.shtml
14) 'No Safe Levels' of Radiation in Japan
Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is "too much".
By Dahr Jamail
April 4, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/20114219250664111.html
14) 'No Safe Levels' of Radiation in Japan
Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is "too much".
By Dahr Jamail
April 4, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/20114219250664111.html
15) Cancer Risks for Women and Children Due to Radiation Exposure Far Higher Than for Men
National Academy of Sciences Report Raises Major Issues for Radiation Protection, Independent Institute Claims
For further information contact:
Arjun Makhijani or Lisa Ledwidge, IEER: 301-270-5500
http://www.ieer.org/comments/beir/beir7pressrel.html
16) U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?hp
17) Company Says Radioactive Water Leak at Japan Plant Is Plugged
"Fish and seaweed can concentrate radioactive elements as they grow, leading to levels that are higher, sometimes far higher, than in the surrounding water. Seaweed can concentrate iodine 131 10,000-fold over the surrounding water; fish concentrate cesium 137 modestly. The announced standards for fish came hours after Tokyo Electric said it had found iodine 131 in seawater samples at 200,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter, or five million times the legal limit. The samples were collected Monday near the water intake of the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The samples also showed levels of cesium 137 to be 1.1 million times the legal limit, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Cesium remains in the environment for centuries, losing half its strength every 30 years. "
By ANDREW POLLACK, KEN BELSON and KEVIN DREW
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06japan.html?ref=world
18) Nitrogen Injected at Nuclear Plant to Stop Possible Blast
By ANDREW POLLACK
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07japan.html?ref=world
19) Government Forces Fire On Protesters in Yemen
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/middleeast/06yemen.html?ref=world
20) Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?hp
21) Powerful Aftershock Complicates Japan's Nuclear Efforts
By HIROKO TABUCHI and ANDREW POLLACK
April 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/asia/08japan.html?ref=world
22) Critics Call Terrorism Hearing in Manhattan Anti-Muslim
By PAUL VITELLO
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/nyregion/07muslim.html?ref=us
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1) Jena Six Activist Convicted, Faces Decades in Prison
by Jordan Flaherty
March 31, 2011
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/flaherty010411.html
Civil rights activist Catrina Wallace, who received national acclaim for her central role in organizing protests around the Jena Six case, was convicted today of three counts of distribution of a controlled substance. She was taken from the courtroom straight to jail after the verdict was read, and given a one million dollar bail. Her sentencing is expected to come next month.
Wallace, who is 30, became an activist after her teenage brother, Robert Bailey, was arrested and charged with attempted murder after a fight in Jena High School. Bailey and five others later became known as the Jena Six, and their cause became a civil rights rallying cry that was called the first struggle of a 21st-century Civil Rights Movement. Their case eventually brought 50,000 people on a march through the town of Jena, and as a result of the public pressure the young men were eventually freed. The six are all now in college or -- in the case of the youngest -- on their way. Wallace and her mother, Caseptla Bailey, stayed in Jena and founded Organizing in the Trenches, a community organization dedicated to working with youth.
Catrina Wallace was represented by Krystal Todd of the Lasalle Parish Public Defenders Office. The case was prosecuted by Lasalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, who also prosecuted the Jena Six case, and famously told a room full of students: "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen." The case was presided over by 28th District Judge J. Christopher Peters, a former Assistant District Attorney under Reed Walters. Peters is the son of Judge Jimmie C. Peters, who held the same seat until 1994. The 12-person jury had one Black member.
Wallace was arrested as part of "Operation Third Option," which saw more than 150 officers, including a SWAT team and helicopters, storm into Jena's Black community on July 9, 2009. Although no drugs were seized, a dozen people were arrested, based on testimony and video evidence provided by a police informant, 23-year-old convicted drug dealer Evan Brown. So far, most of those arrested on that day have pled guilty and faced long sentences. Devin Lofton, who pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute, received ten years. Adrian Richardson, 34, who pled guilty to two counts of distribution, received twenty-five years. Termaine Lee, a twenty-two-year-old who had no previous record but faced six counts of distribution, received twenty years.
In response to the verdict, community members responded with sadness and outrage. "We don't have any help here," said Marcus Jones, the father of Mychal Bell, another of the Jena Six youths. "Catrina tried to keep in high spirits leading up to the trial, but when a bomb like this is dropped on you, what can you do?" Jones and others are calling for the US Department of Justice to investigate.
Wallace, a single mother, has three small children, aged 3, 5, and 10. The youngest child has frequent seizures.
For more background on this case, see "Jena Sheriff Seeks Revenge for Civil Rights Protests."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist and staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's Clarin newspaper. He has produced news segments for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now, and appeared as a guest on CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360, and Keep Hope Alive with the Reverend Jesse Jackson. His new book is Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org, and more information about Floodlines can be found at floodlines.org. For speaking engagements, see communityandresistance.wordpress.com.
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2) Jena Sheriff Seeks Revenge for Civil Rights Protests
Jordan Flaherty
May 13, 2010 03:22 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html
Sheriff Scott Franklin of Jena says he is trying to rid his community of drugs. Critics say he is pursuing a vendetta against the town's Black community.
At 4 am on July 9 of last year, more than 150 officers from ten different agencies gathered in a large barn just outside Jena, Louisiana. The day was the culmination of an investigation that LaSalle Parish Sheriff Scott Franklin said had been going on for nearly two years. Local media was invited, and a video of the sheriff speaking to the rowdy gathering would later appear online.
The sheriff called the mobilization "Operation Third Option," and he said it was about fighting drugs. However, community members say that Sheriff Franklin's actions are part of an orchestrated revenge for the local civil rights protests that won freedom for six Black high school students -- known internationally as the Jena Six -- who had been charged with attempted murder for a school fight.
One thing is clear: the sheriff spent massive resources; yet officers seized no contraband. Together with District Attorney Reed Walters, Sheriff Franklin has said he is seeking maximum penalties for people charged with small-time offenses. Further, in a parish that is eighty-five percent white, his actions have almost exclusively targeted African Americans. In a town with just over three hundred Black residents, he sent his 150 officers only into the town's Black neighborhood.
Downtown Baghdad
According to a report from Alexandria's Town Talk newspaper, LaSalle Parish Sheriff Scott Franklin prepared the assembled crowd for a violent day. "This is serious business what we're fixing to do," said Sheriff Franklin. "If you think this is a training exercise or if you think these are good old boys from redneck country and we're just going to good-old-boy them into handcuffs, you're wrong. These people have nothing to lose. And they know the stakes are high."
"It's going to be like Baghdad out in this community at five am," he continued dramatically, explaining that their target was 37-year-old Darren DeWayne Brown, who owns a barbershop -- one of the only Black-owned businesses in town -- and his "lieutenants," who Franklin said supplied eighty percent of the narcotics for three parishes. "Let me put it to you this way," declared the sheriff, "When the man says, 'We don't sell dope today,' dope won't get sold."
Sheriff Franklin said that option one is for drug dealers and users to quit, option two is to move, and option three is to spend the rest of their lives in prison. And this day was all about option three. "They will get put in handcuffs, put behind bars today and never see the light of day again unless they are going out on the playground in prison," he boasted.
At the end of the day, a dozen people were arrested on charges that ranged from contempt of court to resisting arrest to distribution of marijuana, hydrocodone, or cocaine. Despite catching the accused residents by surprise with early morning raids, in which doors were battered down by SWAT teams while a helicopter hovered overhead and then search teams were brought in to take houses and businesses apart, no drugs or other physical evidence were retrieved -- other than small traces of marijuana at one house.
Virtually all evidence in the cases comes from the testimony of twenty-three-year-old Evan Brown of Jena, who also wore a hidden camera during the investigation that parish officials have said provides powerful visual evidence. "We're completely satisfied with the results," said LaSalle Sheriff's Department Narcotic Chief Robert Terral, who refused further comment on the operation.
LaSalle Parish is a politically conservative enclave located in northwest Louisiana. Former Klansman David Duke received a solid majority of local votes when he ran for governor in 1991 -- in fact, he received a higher percentage of votes in LaSalle Parish than in any other part of the state.
The Parish became famous in 2007 for the case of the Jena Six. In demonstrations that were called the birth of a 21st-century civil rights movement, an estimated 50,000 people marched in Jena -- nearly twenty times the population of the town. They were protesting a pattern of systemic racism and discriminatory prosecutions. All six youths, who once faced life in prison, are now either enrolled in college or are on their way.
The Sheriff told the Jena Times that he began preparing for Operation Third Option in November of 2007, less than two months after the historic protests. The raid occurred just a few weeks after the Jena Six cases were finally settled.
A Terrifying Morning
Catrina Wallace, 29, was sleeping in her bed with her youngest child when her door was broken down and she awoke to the feeling of a gun to her head. When she opened her eyes, her small home was filled with police. "I never seen that many police at one time," she recalled. "Everywhere I looked all I saw was police. There were six or seven just in my bedroom." She says police pointed guns at her small children and wouldn't let her comfort them.
Catrina Wallace is the sister of Robert Bailey, one of the Jena Six. Along with her mother, Caseptla Bailey, she was one of the leaders of the campaign to free the accused youths, and she organized meetings and protests for months. Wallace says her political activism made her a target. "I'm a freedom fighter," she says. "I fight for peoples' rights. I've never been in trouble."
Police found no drugs or any other evidence of wrongdoing in Wallace's home. Officers initially claimed they found marijuana on her kitchen table, but later discovered that they had collected broccoli stems, left over from dinner the previous night.
Despite the lack of evidence, and the fact that she has lived her whole life in Jena and is raising three small children, she was held for a $150,000 cash-only bond. Her car, a 1999 Mitsubishi Gallant, was also taken by police, who continue to hold it in an impound lot, along with about fifty other vehicles seized that day. If she wants it back, Catrina will have to pay twelve dollars a day to the lot for every day since July of last year -- an amount already larger than the value of the car.
Tasered and Traumatized
Samuel Howard was sleeping in his bed, naked, when police broke down his door at five am. Howard says police tasered him three times, twice in the back and once in his arm, and pointed guns at his three kids. They took him out of his house still naked, and brought him to a baseball field, along with the other arrestees from that day. There he says he spent another hour without any clothes, standing with the other arrestees, until police brought him an orange jailhouse jumper.
"They treated us like we was hardcore killers," says Howard, who says that in a small town like Jena where everyone knows each other, such violent tactics are uncalled for. "The sheriff knows me," he says. "We went to school together. He knows I'm not a violent person."
Howard is being charged with three counts of distribution of cocaine. His trial is scheduled for May 24 (Catrina Wallace's is scheduled for the same week). As with the other defendants, the only evidence against him is the testimony and video from the police informant. Howard, who has seen the evidence, says he is not implicated in the video.
His home was badly burned up that day, apparently from flares that police fired inside, and his windows were all destroyed. Howard, who does some auto repair work, says police also seized his four vehicles -including two older cars that don't run.
Racially Motivated
Many of Jena's Black residents say that the town's white power structure - including the DA, Sheriff, and the editor of the local paper - wants revenge against Black people in town who stood up and fought against unjust charges. They complain that in a town that is mostly white, all but two of the people arrested were Black, and the only arrestees pictured in the town's paper were Black. The sheriff "Just wants to humiliate people," says Caseptla Bailey, Wallace's mother, "Especially the African Americans." The editor and publisher of the Jena Times, the town's only paper, is Sammy Franklin, who has owned the paper since 1968. His son is Sheriff Scott Franklin.
A white-owned store around the corner from the courthouse in downtown Jena sells t-shirts commemorating Operation Third Option, with a design of a person behind bars. Black residents of Jena say that an earlier version of the shirt featured a monkey behind bars. They say that white residents of Jena have gloated about the arrests.
Four of those arrested on that day have pled guilty. Chelsea Brown, who was arrested for contempt of court, received a sentence of 25 days. Devin Lofton, who pled guilty to conspiracy to distribute, received ten years. Adrian Richardson, 34, who pled guilty on April 23 to two counts of distribution, received twenty-five years. Termaine Lee, a twenty-two-year-old who had no previous record but faced six counts of distribution, received twenty years.
Some of the accused have hired attorneys, while others have had public defenders appointed. However, all involved say they doubt they can receive a fair trial in LaSalle. They say that white defendants with similar or worse charges received lower bonds, and face lesser sentences. "It's crooked," says Howard. "They ain't playing fair down here, that's all."
Marcus Jones, the father of one of the Jena Six youths, doesn't mince words. "This is racially motivated," he says. "It's revenge." He says that the problem is that while the Jena Six youths were freed, there were no consequences for the Sheriff or DA. "Wouldn't none of this be going on if justice had been done the way it was supposed to have been," he says.
Jones was not among those arrested, but in a small town like Jena, he knows everyone involved. He says he was shocked at the resources the police brought in. "Why did you need helicopters and military weapons?" he asks. "I could see it if you were going to arrest Noriega or the Mafia, but these are people with kids in their homes. The sheriff's department never had any violent run-ins with any of these people."
Jones believes the entire campaign by Sheriff Franklin has been a gesture of asserting control over the Black community, and he calls for a federal investigation of the sheriff's department and DA.
Samuel Howard says that now he mostly stays home with his three kids, ages 12, 14, and 15. He's afraid of the sheriff's office arresting him if he leaves the house, and he wants to stay close to his kids, who were traumatized by his arrest. "It scared them to death," he says. "They still talk about it to this day."
"They know they're wrong," said Howard, referring to the sheriff and DA, "You can't tell me they don't know."
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3) Spring's Awakening?
New York Times Editorial
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04mon1.html?hp
There are encouraging signs in the March jobs report, but for each hopeful development, there is a caveat. The economy added 216,000 jobs last month and marked the 13th straight month of private-sector job gains - but the growth is still weak. At a comparable point in the recoveries from other severe recessions, the economy was adding about 400,000 jobs a month.
The drop in the unemployment rate - from 8.9 percent in February to 8.8 percent last month - also requires an asterisk. More unemployed people found jobs in March. But over all, the number of people who have found work in the past year has been dwarfed by the masses who are missing from the labor force, including young people without jobs and without prospects and others who have given up looking for jobs. If sidelined workers were counted in the official statistics, the jobless rate today would be 9.8 percent.
So what to make of the data? Incremental gains are welcome, but their durability is much in doubt. Higher oil prices, among other things, could undo tenuous job gains. Politicians' unwillingness to do what is needed to reinforce the recovery is an even bigger threat.
On the federal level, the fixation on the deficit above all else is particularly dangerous. An economy with significant labor slack requires more - not less - government spending. Unfortunately, Republicans have successfully framed the debate so that spending cuts are inevitable, and the best one can hope for is that the White House and Congressional Democrats will hold down the size of the cuts.
The recent Republican attack on foreclosure relief efforts, just as house prices are falling anew, is another destructive move. Foreclosures reduce the equity of all homeowners and the health of communities, which is bad for business and bad for jobs.
On the state level, politicians are talking about reducing the duration of unemployment benefits. Michigan just adopted a law - passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by the Republican governor, Rick Snyder - to reduce state unemployment benefits to 20 weeks starting next January, down from 26 weeks. Florida is also considering cutbacks, in what advocates for the unemployed fear may be a wave of such measures across the country.
Proponents say that lowering employer-paid taxes that go to cover unemployment benefits will boost businesses and jobs. More likely, lost economic activity from reduced benefits will be greater than the tax savings - leading to even fewer new jobs.
Republicans often justify their antirelief, antitax stances by saying that businesses aren't hiring due to uncertainty about the effects of government spending and regulation. The numbers don't support that. A research note last week from the Economic Policy Institute pointed out that in March, the length of the average workweek remained stuck at 34.3 hours, far below where it was before the recession and not far off its low point of 33.7 hours in mid-2009. If employers had work that needed to be done but were skittish about hiring, hours would have been ramped up to meet the need.
Clearly, it is not uncertainty about government that is impeding hiring; it is lack of work. And lack of work is due to the fallout from the financial crisis and recession. It stands to reason that government spending, job-creation programs and regulations to ensure that there isn't another crash would help the economy and lead to more jobs. Reason, however, is in short supply.
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4) Israel Scours Palestinian Village in Hunt for Killers
By ISABEL KERSHNER
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/middleeast/05awarta.html?hp
AWARTA, West Bank - In the rolling hills of the northern West Bank, Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements exist in a geographical intimacy that belies decades of mutual hostility, suspicion and fear.
Here neighbors are also enemies, and the brutal killing of five members of the Fogel family in the settlement of Itamar three weeks ago has done nothing but harden that division.
The Israeli military and security services have focused their search for the suspected killers in Awarta, the Palestinian village next door. The army has repeatedly raided the village, searching homes, forcing doors and breaking furniture, residents said. Hundreds have been arrested, they said, and about two dozen remain in custody.
Awarta lies a few hundred yards across a valley from Itamar, and the villagers say the settlement and its satellite outposts are built on their confiscated lands, in territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. Itamar is surrounded by a security fence that the assailants apparently scaled that Friday night.
Contact between the two communities is limited to occasional confrontations in the fields, and residents said that settlers stoned houses on the edge of the village the day after the murders. Yet residents of Awarta, who denounced the killings, said they did not believe that anyone from their village could be responsible for such an act.
Standing outside his house on the edge of the village, across from the distant row of houses where the Fogels lived, Asad Abd al-Karim Lolah, 70, said it was "impossible for any Palestinian Muslim Arab to have committed that crime."
The March 11 killings, which occurred late on the Sabbath eve, were reviled by all Israelis, regardless of their politics. The victims included parents in their 30s, two young children and a baby who were stabbed and slashed to death in their beds.
The Israeli authorities have not revealed any details of their investigation, other than to say it is continuing. But the night after the killings the Israeli military's regional brigade commander, Col. Nimrod Aloni, told reporters that the event seemed to be "something local."
About 2 a.m. on March 12, some two hours after the bodies were found, Israeli troops "invaded" Awarta, according to the deputy mayor, Hassan Awad. The village, a few miles south of the city of Nablus, was put under curfew for the next four days and was divided into four sections, with soldiers taking over a house in each quarter as a military post. All men and boys over age 15 had to report to the posts, where they were questioned, fingerprinted and given mouth swabs for DNA testing, Mr. Awad said.
Residents said at least half of the 1,500 homes have been searched. Of the 7,000 people in the village about 300 have been arrested, Mr. Awad said, adding that while most were released within days, some 25 males between the ages of about 18 and 45 remained in detention on Monday.
Mr. Awad said he did not know of any arrests or raids in villages other than Awarta. No charges have been filed.
The Palestinian Government Media Center took reporters to Awarta last week, primarily to highlight the damage wrought by the Israeli Army. Children cried and ran away in fright at the sight of strangers. Mr. Lolah, who had two sons aged 30 and 33 in detention, said the soldiers had raided his house four times and "left nothing untouched."
According to the Islamic calendar the Itamar killings took place a year almost to the day after two 19-year-old cousins from Awarta, Muhammad Qawariq and Salah Qawariq, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers on the village lands. At the time the Israeli military said the cousins had tried to attack a soldier with a pitchfork and an ax. After an investigation the military admitted that the shooting was unnecessary, and that if the soldiers had operated in a more professional manner they could have avoided the need to open fire.
Muhammad Qawariq's father, Faisal Mahmoud Masar Qawariq, said his house had been raided seven times since the killings at Itamar. Four of his sons were rounded up and two of them, aged 21 and 24, were still in detention.
"My son was murdered while he was working the land," Mr. Qawariq said. "We have a lawsuit against the Israeli Army in the Israeli courts. This is why they are targeting us."
The dingy, sparsely furnished interior of the house, with bare cement-block walls and a bare cement floor, attests to the family's poverty. Mr. Qawariq, who has seven surviving children and is unemployed, said the soldiers broke all the closets and the family's first, newly acquired washing machine.
Even so, he said, "Whoever committed the crime" in Itamar "deserves the harshest punishment."
Echoing other Palestinians residents here he said it was not in their culture or tradition to kill children, but settler leaders have circulated what they say is a partial list detailing nearly a dozen Palestinian terrorist attacks over the past decade in which a score of Israeli children have been killed, including two, aged 12 and 15, who were shot in their home in Itamar in 2002.
Although none of the residents of Awarta who were interviewed had ever set foot in Itamar, some settlers are familiar with Awarta. Some have visited at night, under the protection of the army, to pray at shrines traditionally believed to be the burial sites of the family of the biblical prophet Aaron.
Mr. Awad, the deputy mayor, said Israeli peace groups had come to the village last year to show solidarity after the two youths were killed. But he said no settlers from Itamar had made contact, nor would they have been welcomed if they had
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5) Japan Releases Low-Level Radioactive Water Into Ocean
By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEN BELSON
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/asia/05japan.html?hp
TOKYO - Tokyo Electric Power Company began dumping more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Monday, mostly to make room in storage containers for increasing amounts of far more contaminated runoff.
The water, most of it to be released over two days, contains about 100 times the legal limit of radiation, Tokyo Electric said. The more contaminated water has about 10,000 times the legal limit.
The effort would help workers clearing radioactive water from the turbine buildings at the damaged reactors, making it less dangerous to reach some of the most crucial controls for their cooling systems, which were knocked out by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck northeast Japan on March 11. The hopes are that the cooling systems can be revived and bring the plant back under control.
But the pumping effort is not expected to halt, or even alter, the gushing leak from a large crack in a six-foot-deep pit next to the seawater intake pipes near Reactor No. 2. The leak, discovered Saturday, has been spewing an estimated seven tons of highly radioactive water an hour directly into the ocean; attempts to trace and plug it have so far failed.
Tokyo Electric, the plant's operator, has been pumping hundreds of tons of water into four of the plant's six reactors to cool nuclear fuel in the cores of three and in spent-fuel storage pools at those three and a fourth. But leaks whose source in unclear - from the reactor containment units themselves, or pipes, valves or other connected units - have flooded areas of the plant, bringing new complications in the effort to stave off full meltdowns of the fuel.
Workers have been pumping the runoff into storage tanks, most urgently the highly radioactive water flooding the turbine building of Reactor No. 2. But the storage system is now full and adding capacity will take time. Tokyo Electric is rushing tanks to the plant, though they may not arrive until mid-April, a company spokesman said. The company also plans to moor a giant artificial island off the coast to store contaminated water, though getting the island in place will take at least a week, he said.
Tokyo Electric said it would dump about 4,800 tons of water a day for two days. An additional 1,500 tons will also be released from the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, after runoff was found flooding parts of their turbine buildings.
The concern there is that the water could damage the backup diesel generators for the reactors' cooling systems, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary. That water will be released 300 tons at a time over five days.
"Unfortunately, the water contains a certain amount of radiation," Mr. Edano said. "This is an unavoidable measure to prevent even higher amounts of radiation from reaching the sea."
Mr. Edano said he had ordered the company to monitor the effects of radioactive materials in the water on sea life. Consuming seafood caught in the area every day for a year would result in the intake of about 0.6 millisieverts of radiation, or about a quarter of the average annual exposure to radiation in Japan, a company spokesman said at a news conference.
But the Japanese government has said it could take months to stem the release of radioactive material from the plant, and marine biologists expressed concern.
"We're seeing the levels of radioactive materials in the water increase, which means this problem is going to continue to get worse and worse," said Kenya Mizuguchi, professor emeritus a of Maritime Science and Technology at Tokyo University.
Elements like cesium 137, which has a half-life of 30 years, collect in larger fish as they consume smaller fish, which means the problem may grow over time. Iodine 131 and other elements that have far shorter half-lives are not as dangerous because it can take weeks for fish to make it to supermarkets and restaurants, according to Hiroki Otani, who teaches in the Health and Welfare Department at Tokyo Metropolitan University.
But Mr. Otani said that the government needed to share more data on the impact on shellfish and different types of seaweed that do not move around the ocean.
Mixing radioactive water with uncontaminated seawater can lead to a rapid decrease in radiation levels, according to an analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency on April 1.
The I.A.E.A., citing samples taken by the Japanese authorities on March 24 and 27, said radiation levels in the water about 19 miles offshore from the nuclear plant were only about one-thousandth the level closer in, at about 360 yards from the shore. Nevertheless, the level of radiation at 19 miles offshore was still hundreds to thousands of times as high as levels sampled in the same site in 2005.
The I.A.E.A said in a different analysis that the short-term concern from radioactive water would be iodine 131, owing to "possible enrichment in the marine food chain."
Seafood businesses are being hurt. The price for some fish like inada, or young yellowtail, has fallen by half or more in recent days, according to Seizaburo Tsuruoka, deputy chief of the Isumi-East Fisheries Cooperatives in Chiba Prefecture, south of Fukushima.
Mr. Tsuruoka said his fishermen test their fish and have not found that they are radioactive. He added that the ocean current is traveling from south to north this season. He worries, though, what will happen when the tide reverses in autumn.
"While the government says, 'Don't worry,' the company says it will release water from the plant," he said. "I'm sure the general public feels very uncomfortable, and we get hurt."
To try to prevent radioactive silt from drifting deeper into the ocean, Tokyo Electric intends to drape a curtain in the waters off the plant, Reuters reported, quoting Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In Vienna on Monday, Japan's nuclear crisis was a major focus as the I.A.E.A. began a 10-day gathering of representatives of dozens of countries on nuclear safety.
Ken Ijichi, Yasuko Kamiizumi, Moshe Komata and Andrew Pollack contributed reporting.
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6) BP Seeks to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico
By JULIA WERDIGIER and JOHN M. BRODER
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/business/energy-environment/04bp.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1301936642-Z0/8NKbrLUDwDLIiMabKaQ
LONDON - BP has asked United States regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials said on Sunday, creating a delicate situation for the Obama administration as it seeks to balance safety concerns with a desire to increase domestic oil production.
The petition comes less than 12 months after a rig BP had leased there exploded, causing a huge oil spill and killing 11 workers. The accident tarnished BP's image and raised questions about its safety procedures.
Just last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was considering a range of civil and criminal penalties against BP, including potential manslaughter charges for the deaths of the rig workers, as part of its ongoing investigation into the accident.
At the same time, President Obama, in a major statement on energy policy last week, said the administrations was seeking to reduce dependence on imported oil in part by increasing domestic production, both onshore and off. BP was one of the major producers in the gulf before the accident.
BP is seeking permission to continue drilling at 10 existing deepwater production and development wells in the region in July in exchange for adhering to stricter safety and supervisory rules, said one of the officials. An agreement could be reached within the next month but would not include new drilling, the official said.
The other official said, "We're making progress but it's not a yes yet." Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks on a possible agreement were continuing.
Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was halted last summer as a result of the accident involving BP's Macondo well, which spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. The ban was lifted in October.
Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the federal agency that overseas the development of resources in the gulf, said on Sunday that there was no deal with BP. Toby Odone, a spokesman for BP, declined to comment.
The regulator had recently started to permit some deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Royal Dutch Shell won approval on Wednesday to drill off the coast of Louisiana on the condition that rigorous new safety standards were met. Other companies that have been allowed to continue drilling in the region include Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BHP Billiton.
Federal officials have said any company that wants to resume drilling in the gulf would have to meet the new safety requirements.
But granting permission to BP would be more controversial because the British oil company is still paying for costs related to the oil spill, the cleanup and the continuing civil and criminal investigations into the accident. BP so far has set aside more than $40 billion to cover those costs.
The administration has pressed BP to ensure that victims of the spill are compensated, but the company has said publicly it needs to resume drilling in the gulf in order to have the financial resources to pay the claims submitted by federal and state officials, and individuals and businesses.
The Obama administration has spent 11 months dealing with the aftermath of the Macondo well blowout and writing new rules to try to prevent similar accidents.
Allowing BP to resume operations in the gulf would send a mixed message - that even as the administration was trying to increase the safety of offshore drilling and punish bad actors, it was responding to critics in Congress and the oil industry who say the administration is choking off production and driving up energy prices.
What seems clear is that the gulf will not return to full production until all the major players are allowed to resume drilling.
BP is eager for that to happen, and its chief executive, Robert Dudley, has repeatedly said the company remains committed to its operations in the United States. Mr. Dudley has pledged to make improving BP's safety record his priority. He set up a new division last year to monitor safety and suspended some operations in Alaska and the North Sea after the projects failed to meet the new standards.
Gaining permission to resume drilling in the gulf would help Mr. Dudley to move BP beyond its painful and expensive recent history in the region, which has eroded shareholder trust. It would also give BP a boost of confidence.
The British oil company suffered a setback in its expansion strategy last month when a Swedish court blocked a $10 billion cooperation agreement with Rosneft of Russia, which was supposed to give the company access to the Arctic.
The drilling ban had cost oil companies tens of millions of dollars as they were required to keep rigs warm and ready to drill. The Obama administration lifted the drilling ban early but said that companies must meet the new safety standards before they could resume drilling.
They include new standards for well design, casing and cementing. Companies would also require verification from a third party that safety devices like blowout preventers, which failed during the BP spill, were properly designed and tested.
Some environmental groups had criticized the decision, saying it was too early to grant drilling permits again while details of the accident were still being investigated.
Julia Werdigier reported from London and John M. Broder from Washington. Clifford Krauss contributed reporting from Doha, Qatar.
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7) Pay of State University Presidents Holds Steady Despite Cuts
By JACQUES STEINBERG
April 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/business/04collegepay.html?ref=us
In a year in which state universities often absorbed sharp budget cuts and raised tuition, the salaries of the presidents of those institutions largely held steady, according to a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education released Sunday night.
The median total compensation for the leaders of 185 of the nation's largest state research universities during the 2009-10 academic year was $440,487, a figure that includes base pay and bonuses, as well as deferred compensation and money set aside for retirement, the Chronicle said. Over all, that figure represented an increase of about 1 percent over the previous year.
In tallying questionnaires completed by the universities, the Chronicle counted 59 of the 185 presidents, or nearly a third, as earning more than $500,000 in total compensation. Of the 10 highest-paid - including E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State ($1.8 million), and Francisco G. Cigarroa of the University of Texas ($813,892) - none earned less than $725,000.
In an indication that the highest-paid university leaders risked the wrath of taxpayers and students, several turned down at least a portion of their pay. Mr. Gee, whose base salary is listed as $802,000, donated nearly $300,000 in bonus payments to "scholarship funds and other university efforts," as he did the prior year, according to the Chronicle. Gary D. Forsee, president of the University of Missouri system, whose base salary was $400,000, declined a performance bonus of $100,000. (He has since left office.)
Other presidents had pay cuts, including those in the University of California system, whose salaries were reduced 10 percent under furloughs initiated by Mark G. Yudof, president of the university system.
The full study can be found at chronicle.com/presidentialpay.
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8) For New York's Well-to-Do, What to Do With Tax Windfall?
By ASHLEY PARKER
April 3, 2011, 7:00 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/for-new-yorks-well-to-do-what-to-do-with-tax-windfall/?ref=nyregion
Some of the New Yorkers who stand to benefit most from Albany's decision to kill the temporary income tax surcharge on the state's high earners - the so-called millionaires' tax - do not feel like millionaires.
"Prices keep rising," said Jamie Cohen, who works in advertising sales and was on the way to an Equinox Fitness Club on the West Side Thursday. "It's like New York is immune to everything; $250,000 here is different than $250,000 anywhere else."
The surcharge, set to expire at the end of this year, was first imposed in 2009 and applies to single filers who earn more than $200,000 and joint filers earning more than $300,000. Under its provisions, a married couple making $350,000 paid an additional $3,500 in tax; a couple that earned $550,000 paid an extra $11,660; and a couple making $1 million paid an additional $21,200.
But Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's new budget does not extend the tax, and well-to-do New Yorkers will no longer have to pay it, beginning in the 2012 tax year.
Some are thinking about how to spend the money. With the economy still rebounding, many say they are skipping tropical vacations or new gadgets for what they hope will be smart payoffs in the long term.
Mr. Cohen, 34, said that he and his wife made close to half a million dollars a year, and that they had been considering putting their savings from taxes toward their 2-year-old son's education.
"The truth is to decide if we can send him to school five days a week, like we want, versus what it costs to do three days a week," Mr. Cohen said. "If I could spend my money smartly, I'd put it back into the education of my child."
For now, Mr. Cohen said, he and his wife chiefly discussed the things they needed, rather than the things they wanted. But if he were to use his money a bit more freely, he added, "I owe my wife an engagement ring. It just got stolen recently, and I need to replace it."
David Chitel, 41, the founder of a media entertainment start-up who put his household income at "$300,000 plus," said he would either save the tax windfall or put it toward college funds for his two young children.
"There's still time to have it actually mature," Mr. Chitel said as he ate lunch at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. "Saving, that's it. The only other thing I might do is invest a little more in my business, be a little more aggressive with that."
Daniel Klaus, a venture capitalist who said he made more than a half-million dollars annually, had the same idea.
"I invest in a lot of small companies, so I would probably invest more money in media and tech start-ups," Mr. Klaus, 37, said.
Waiting for a friend outside Landmarc, a restaurant at the Time Warner Center, Mr. Klaus said he probably would not spend the money at fancy restaurants or on special nights out. "I do all that stuff anyways," he said.
"It's probably not going to have a super meaningful effect on my day-to-day life," Mr. Klaus said. "But where it will have an affect is, for me, investing more."
Sitting at the bar of Porter House New York, also at the Time Warner Center, Drew - who gave only his first name because he was concerned about revealing his income - said he made more than $250,000 in real estate and planned to "sit down with my accountant and financial adviser" before making any decisions.
"I have young kids, so I'd probably put it toward college or something like that," he said. "I'll probably invest it."
Drew added, more enthusiastically: "I'll always take free money. I'm not going to give it back."
Yet, for some who would benefit, the governor's decision not to extend the income tax surcharge was not entirely welcome.
"I think it's appalling that he did it because the state and the country needs the money," said Stephanie, a marketing executive who also declined to give her last name. She said that "in a decent year with a bonus," she made about $325,000.
"The people who get money back should maybe stop stepping over the homeless and start feeding the hungry or donating to charity, or feeding the one in five children in this country who go hungry," she added.
Stephanie echoed some of the criticism of Mr. Cuomo's position on the surcharge as the budget process moved forward.
So, what would she do?
"I need my money," she said, citing the expense of caring for her elderly parents.
Yet others, like Lee Hunt, a consultant for television networks who makes more than $500,000, said that while the news was welcome, he did not mind paying the surcharge.
"I've been lucky enough to do well, so I'm happy to give back," Mr. Hunt said. "We don't even notice we're getting the break, or care all that much, which really illustrates the problem."
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9) Search for Radiation Leak Turns Desperate in Japan
"The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water - measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity - into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/04/04/business/AP-AS-Japan-Earthquake.html?src=busln
TOKYO (AP) - Workers used a milky bathwater dye Monday as they frantically tried to trace the path of radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant.
The crack in a maintenance pit discovered over the weekend was the latest confirmation that radioactivity continues to spill into the environment. The leak is a symptom of the primary difficulty at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex: Radioactive water is pooling around the plant and preventing workers from powering up cooling systems needed to stabilize dangerously vulnerable fuel rods.
The plant operators also deliberately dumped 10,000 tons of tainted water - measuring about 500 times above the legal limit for radiactivity - into the ocean Monday to make space at a storage site for water that is even more highly radiactive.
Engineers have turned to a host of improvised and sometimes bizarre methods to tame the nuclear plant after it was crippled in Japan's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami on March 11.
Efforts over the weekend to clog the leak with a special polymer, sawdust and even shredded newspapers failed to halt the flow at a cracked concrete maintenance pit near the shoreline. They still can't say for sure if the pit, where radioactive iodine was measured at 10,000 times the legal limit, is the source of the leak.
Suspecting they might be targeting the wrong channel to the pit, workers tried to confirm the leak's pathway by dumping several pounds (kilograms) of salts used to give bathwater a milky hue into the system, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday.
"There could be other possible passages that the water may be traveling. We must watch carefully and contain it as quickly as possible," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety and Industrial Agency.
Radioactive water has pooled throughout the plant because the operator has been forced to rely on makeshift ways of pumping water into the reactors - and allowing it to gush out wherever it can - to bring down temperatures and pressure in the cores.
Government officials conceded Sunday that it will likely be several months before the cooling systems are completely restored. And even after that happens, there will be years of work ahead to clean up the area around the complex and figure out what to do with it.
The makeshift system makes it difficult to contain the radiation leaks, but it is aimed a preventing fuel rods from going into a full meltdown that would release even more radiactivity into the environment.
"We must keep putting water into the reactors to cool to prevent further fuel damage, even though we know that there is a side effect, which is the leakage," Nishiyama said. "We want to get rid of the stagnant water and decontaminate the place so that we can return to our primary task to restore the sustainable cooling capacity as quickly as possible."
To that end, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it jettisoned the 10,000 tons of water Monday, clearing space in a waste-storage facility. The government decided to allow the step as "an unavoidable emergency measure," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.
An additional 1,500 tons will be dumped from a trench under the plant's units 5 and 6. That water is threatening to interfere with the workings at those units, whose reactors are under control.
Radioactivity is quickly diluted in the ocean, and Edano said the dump should not affect the safety of seafood in the area.
The crisis has unfolded as Japan deals with the aftermath of twin natural disasters that decimated large swaths of its northeastern coast. Up to 25,000 people are believed to have died in the disaster, and tens of thousands lost their homes. Thousands more were forced to flee a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant because of the radiation.
The 8-inch-long (20-centimeter-long) crack was discovered in the maintenance pit over the weekend. It is sending radioactive water into area that is normally blocked off by a seawall, but a crack was also discovered in that outer barrier Monday.
Though it later authorized the dumping of slightly radioactive water, the government said Monday it was growing concerned about the sheer volume of contaminated materials spilling into the Pacific. It is not clear how much water has leaked from the pit so far.
"Even if they say the contamination will be diluted in the ocean, the longer this continues, the more radioactive particles will be released and the greater the impact on the ocean," Edano said. "We are strongly urging TEPCO that they have to take immediate action to deal with this."
The crisis has sparked protests in Japan and raised questions around the world about the safety of nuclear power. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told delegates at a nuclear safety conference Monday that the industry cannot afford to ignore these concerns.
"We cannot take a 'business as usual' approach," Yukiya Amano said.
The operator said Monday it is ordering fencing that is typically used to contain oil spills. The screens are not designed to trap radioactivity but might curtail the flow of water and thus reduce the spread of contamination, said TEPCO manager Teruaki Kobayashi. It was not clear when they would arrive.
All of the plant's reactors were designed by General Electric, and the company's CEO met Sunday with TEPCO's chairman. Jeffrey Immelt told reporters Monday that more than 1,000 engineers from GE and its partner Hitachi are helping to analyze the problems at the plant.
Immelt also offered assistance in dealing with the electricity shortage brought on by damage to Dai-ichi and other power plants. Japan is expecting a shortfall of at least 10 million kilowatts come summer.
Gas turbines are on their way from the U.S. with both long- and short-term capabilities, Immelt said.
Associated Press writer Ryan Nakashima in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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10) No cargo worked April 4th in solidarity with heroic Wisconsin
Dockworkers shut down ports of Oakland & San Francisco for 24 hours
By Dave Welsh
April 5, 2011
VIA Email
Oakland, CA, April 4, 2011 - The power of workers to bring production to a halt was on dramatic display April 4th, when longshore workers of ILWU Local 10 shut down the ports of Oakland and San Francisco for 24 hours, in solidarity with the heroic struggles in Wisconsin.
The big container port of Oakland was deader than a doornail Monday at 6:00 a.m. I saw a long snake-line of trucks bearing shipping containers idled on the roadway. The shipping cranes were all "standing at attention" - i.e., not working any containers. [These are same Port of Oakland cranes that gave George Lucas the idea for some of his "Star Wars" imagery.]
The ILWU hiring hall was practically deserted at dispatch time for the night shift, leaving several hundred jobs unfilled. The dock workers stayed away, and no cargo was worked on any shift Monday in Oakland or San Francisco.
The rank-and-file-initiated shutdown was part of nationwide actions on April 4th to challenge the draconian budget cuts and union busting in Wisconsin and other states.
An "organized act of resistance" by rank-and-file dock workers
"This was a voluntary rank and file action - an organized act of resistance," said Clarence Thomas, a dock worker and Local 10 executive board member.
"It is significant that the action by Local 10 was taken in solidarity with Wisconsin public sector workers who are facing the loss of collective bargaining," Thomas said. He pointed out that April 4th is also the anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. - who was killed in Memphis demanding collective bargaining for sanitation workers in that city.
"So we've come full circle," he concluded. The Memphis public workers got their union, after a two-month strike. Now 40 years later their Wisconsin counterparts are threatened with losing theirs. But it is Wisconsin's "fierce resistance that is inspiring all of us today."
It is not surprising that the 24-hour port work stoppage came out of International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10, a racially diverse, predominantly African American local, and the home local of legendary labor leader Harry Bridges. Martin Luther King was named an honorary member of Local 10, six months before he was killed.
Oakland teachers shut down Wells Fargo Bank for 3 hours on Apr. 4
The Oakland Education Association has been facing crippling attacks on the public school system - including layoff notices for 600 of their members. When the April 4th Day of Action arrived, the OEA chose to protest at Wells Fargo Bank in downtown Oakland, demanding "Bail out schools, not banks."
About 100 teachers and supporters chanted, marched and sat down at the bank entrance, effectively shutting down the bank for three hours. They set up a makeshift classroom in the bank plaza to teach about the key role of the banks in bringing on today's economic crisis. OEA President Betty Olson-Jones pointed out that Wells Fargo received a $50 Billion federal bailout, and the people chanted: "Banks took our money...Now give it to the schools!"
Protesters took turns at the bullhorn:
1. To demand that workers' jobs, pensions, schools & social services must be safeguarded before one cent of interest is paid to the banks and wealthy bond investors. Which has priority, they asked: Profits for the wealthy, or our children's future?
2. To highlight Wells Fargo's role in the foreclosure epidemic - affecting many families of district school children - and demand a moratorium on foreclosures, so families can stay in their homes. An OEA press release said Wells Fargo must "stop foreclosures and lower mortgage debt to reflect homes' reduced market value."
The Bail out the People Movement organized demonstrations Monday at Wells Fargo branches in Los Angeles and Baltimore, in solidarity with the teachers' action in Oakland.
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11) Bound for Radicalism; Diarist of a Century
The Chronicle Review By Nina C. Ayoub
April 3, 2011
http://chronicle.com/article/Nota-Bene-Bound-for/126933/
Will Kaufman's Woodie Guthrie, American Radical seeks to reclaim the "obsessive thinker and fitful strategist" buried in the celebration of the Dust Bowl troubadour.
"A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once," wrote Joe Hill. "But a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over." Embracing the words of the Wobblies' martyr, Woody Guthrie kept an IWW songbook in his breast pocket as he also sought to use music as a weapon to "fan the flames of discontent," writes Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, in England.
Yet Guthrie's radicalism has often been soft-pedaled, notes the scholar. Take the evisceration of radical verses from "This Land Is Your Land," arguably Guthrie's most famous tune. Or consider, Kaufman writes, the incarnation of "Saint Woody" in the 1976 film Bound for Glory, with David Carradine as a Guthrie "a little too holy, in spite of his philandering; a little too wooden, and certainly too tall."
Kaufman, an American abroad who has become a noted performer of Guthrie's repertoire, has found that his students are often unaware that there ever was anything like a radical tradition in the United States. Yet, he writes, Guthrie's radical activism was once common knowledge, particularly among those tuned in to the "energetic progressive culture that predated McCarthyism, that poisonous watershed of political erasure."
Yes, there have been two major biographies-Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man-that have included the singer's political history. But in those, Kaufman writes, the politics are a thread "often disappearing into the epic tales of rambling and womanizing and the Greek tragedy of the voice, body, and life lost to the grim reaper of Huntington's disease."
In Woody Guthrie, American Radical (University of Illinois Press), Kaufman seeks to reclaim the "obsessive thinker and fitful strategist" buried in the celebration of the Dust Bowl troubadour. He also promises full attention to what Guthrie's daughter Nora, who manages his archives, has called Woody's "nuances."
One prickly subject was Guthrie's embrace of Stalin, even after the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. Kaufman begins his book by recounting how Guthrie's refusal to break with the Soviet leader got him fired from a left-wing but anti-Stalinist radio station in Los Angeles-a job that helped support his family. His column "Woody Sez" for San Francisco's People's World was done for free.
Soon after the KFVD debacle, Guthrie, restless, hitchhiked East. In New York he encountered a Communist Party unreceptive to folk music. Instead the party, looking for a "scientific approach," favored experimental modernism, says Kaufman. Charles Seeger, father of Pete, recalled a song attacking Chiang Kai-shek in a five-tone scale in 5/4 time with five-measure phrases. "We really did sing away, but it didn't catch on very much."
What aided in the hard left's embrace of the folk song was New Deal patronage through the WPA, Kaufman writes, and the support of such figures as the Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax. Guthrie's militancy grew, writes Kaufman, nurtured by Lomax. Their work together included a songbook, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, that was compiled in the 1940s but left unpublished until 1967, the year of Guthrie's death. While ever more militant, Guthrie also grew more controlled. Kaufman limns a singer who was "learning about when and when not to reveal the anger and the retributive impulses underlying his activism." The troubadour, he writes, became skilled at filtering his Popular Front politics through the "gauze of down-home Americanism."
In New York, Guthrie became one of the Almanac Singers. The Almanacs were grappling with the challenge of being antifascist, but also anti-interventionist at a time when public opinion was being mobilized for war. It was a stance that cost the group dearly in early 1941, when it released Songs for John Doe, an album that was declared "in poor taste" by Eleanor Roosevelt and that could have almost been applauded by the likes of Charles Lindbergh and the German American Bund. Relief came when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and the Almanacs changed their tunes, even if it played hell, as one said, with their repertoire. Along with peace songs' being cut, the material needs of the war put the kibosh on many strike songs as well. In response, Guthrie quipped in a letter, "I want to raise the slogan 'Continue in the Highways of Marx and Roosevelt and Free Oklahoma if Possible!'" His compositions of that era included War Songs Are Work Songs, a collection that revealed "a capacity for rhetorical violence that is often astonishing," writes Kaufman.
Guthrie would join the Merchant Marine, and in 1944, the one-time anti-interventionist FDR-basher toured 24 states on the "Roosevelt bandwagon." Yet the singer's wartime belligerence, Kaufman writes, dissolved in the wake of the atomic bomb, turning him into an antiwar activist for the rest of his life. Guthrie also faced a rising Red Scare and crumbling left-wing labor movement. "My lonesome soul is radical," he sang in a playful but yearning blues song in 1946. "Ain't no reactionary baby/Can ease my revolutionary mind."
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12) Bradley Manning Support Network Praises British Parliamentary Initiative to
Intervene on Behalf of Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Jeff Paterson
+1 (202) 640-4388
jp@jeffpaterson.net
For More Information:
http://blog.ukfriendsofbradleymanning.org/2011/04/05/today-in-parliament-bradley-mannings-citizenship-status-confirmed/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/04/bradley-manning-british-moral-authority?CMP=twt_fd
On anniversary of the publication of WikiLeaks' "Collateral Murder,"
activists applaud U.K. Parliamentary motion to raise Manning's
pretrial conditions with U.S. officials
April 5, 2011, San Francisco, CA -- The Bradley Manning Support
Network applauds the United Kingdom's motion to intervene on behalf of
the accused whistleblower. Manning, held in solitary confinement for
over nine months, is alleged to have leaked a video showing two
employees of Reuters news agency being shot and killed by American
soldiers. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of
that video on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
In the House of Commons, Welsh Member of Parliament (MP) Ann Clwyd
sponsored an early-day motion urging UK officials to confront the
United States about the harsh pretrial confinement of Manning, who is
held in conditions many have likened to torture. The motion has been
supported by 37 MPs thus far. Henry Bellingham, the Foreign Office
Minister, promised to raise the issue of Manning's confinement
conditions with the U.S. State Department.
Manning's mother is Welsh and lives in Pembrokeshire, and thus Manning
can claim dual citizenship by birthright. Bellingham has acknowledged
that Ann Clwyd's "understanding of the British Nationality Act is
accurate" - namely, that Manning automatically acquired U.K.
citizenship at birth.
"We welcome the support of the MPs, who join Amnesty International and
activists worldwide in urging the U.S. to end this inhumane pretrial
punishment," said Jeff Paterson, steering committee member of the
Bradley Manning Support Network and project director of Courage to
Resist.
"Thirty-seven British parliamentarians have shown their commitment to
justice and a fair trial," said steering committee member Mike
Gogulski. "We hope to see twice as many American legislators respond
with a similar motion."
The Bradley Manning Support Network has raised over $250,000 thus far
toward the defense of the accused whistleblower.
Learn more:
http://blog.ukfriendsofbradleymanning.org/2011/04/05/today-in-parliament-bradley-mannings-citizenship-status-confirmed/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/04/bradley-manning-british-moral-authority?CMP=twt_fd
# # #
The Bradley Manning Support Network is an international grassroots,
nonpartisan organization which works to:
- Stop the extreme, inhumane and illegal pre-trial punishment of Bradley Manning
- Ensure that Bradley Manning receives top-notch legal representation
from the lawyer of his choice
- Stop any effort by the United States government to hold a secret
court martial trial, unchecked by public and media oversight
- Free Bradley Manning!
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13) Another war on Gaza?
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada,
4 April 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11896.shtml
In recent weeks an escalation in violence between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip has claimed the lives of more than a dozen Palestinians, the youngest of them 10-year-old Mahmoud Jalal al-Hilu.
Does this escalation increase the likelihood of another large-scale assault on Gaza similar to "Operation Cast Lead" in winter 2008-2009 that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians? There are worrying signs Israel -- by its words and deeds -- could be laying the ground for an attack.
The ratchet of violence took another turn in the small hours of 2 April when Israel carried out an air attack on the Gaza Strip killing three members of Hamas' military wing.
Israel did not claim that the three Hamas men were engaged in any hostile activity at the time they were killed (riding in a car), but a statement from the Israeli army alleged that they were "planning to kidnap Israelis over the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover" -- several weeks in the future.
Israel's latest attack constituted an extrajudicial killing, in which Israel, the occupying power, acted as judge, jury and executioner, issuing allegations for which it offered no evidence, after it had already carried out the death sentence. Under international law, this is a war crime.
Global media tend to report these events as Israeli "retaliation" for Palestinian attacks, but a close reading of Israeli media presents a very different picture: deliberate provocation and escalation by Israel.
On 23 March, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that, "The current tensions began exactly a week ago when Israel launched an air attack on a Hamas base in the ruins of the settlement of Netzarim, killing two Hamas men. That attack came in response to a Qassam [rocket] fired from Gaza that landed in an open area." Palestinians responded with a barrage of 50 projectiles into Israel.
Israel then "launched a series of air attacks in which a number of Hamas militants were wounded." And on 22 March Israeli forces launched the shelling which killed Mahmoud al-Hilu and three other civilians, allegedly in response to mortar fire from an olive grove on the Gaza side ("A small war is starting along Gaza border").
On 24 March, Issacharoff and Harel observed, "Despite the escalation, Hamas does not seem to want large-scale clashes yet. The organization actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi [whom Israeli agents kidnapped from Ukraine] in Israel, and ended with last week's bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed. It is noteworthy that Hamas has not fired at Israel over the past two days, even after four Palestinian civilians were killed by errant IDF [Israeli army] mortar fire on Tuesday [22 March]" ("Hamas not likely behind Jerusalem bombing").
Issacharoff and Harel added in a 25 March analysis that the Israeli attack on the Hamas outpost at Netzarim "is believed to have been authorized by the defense minister and the chief of staff, who should have known there would be people at the outpost during the day and that causing casualties would have different consequences than a routine attack on empty offices. Israel assumed -- mistakenly -- that Hamas would not respond to the bombing. In fact, Hamas responded by firing 50 mortar shells on Saturday morning" ("Escalation approaching").
It is difficult to believe, especially in light of the extrajudicial executions on 2 April, that Israeli leaders did not know that killing Palestinians would prompt further retaliation from the Palestinian side. It seems very likely this was their intention.
These events are worryingly similar to the sequence that preceded "Operation Cast Lead." After a bloody spring of 2008 in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, Israel and Hamas negotiated a mutual ceasefire beginning on 19 June 2008. By Israel's own admission, this mutual truce resulted in a 97 percent reduction in rockets being fired from Gaza over the subsequent four months, and none of the handful of projectiles that were fired were launched by Hamas, nor did they cause any injuries to Israelis.
A mutually agreed ceasefire proved to be the most effective way to achieve the goal Israel claimed was most important: protecting Israeli civilians from rocket fire from Gaza. But on the night of 4-5 November 2008, Israel decided to end the truce. As The Guardian reported on 5 November 2008, "A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory" ("Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen").
Then, just as it has with its latest attack, Israel justified the killings with the unverifiable claim that those it killed were involved in a plot to kidnap Israelis.
On 21 March, amid the escalating violence, Hamas' military wing itself stated that it would be willing to abide by another mutual truce if Israel agreed to one, but Israel showed no interest ("Gaza: Hamas calls for truce," Ma'an News Agency, 21 March 2011).
Israel's seemingly constant and deliberate provocation of violence along the border with Gaza comes against a backdrop of belligerent statements and propaganda exercises by Israeli leaders. On 15 March, Israel intercepted a ship en route from Turkey to Alexandria in Egypt, which it alleged without providing evidence, was carrying arms destined for Gaza.
Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio on 23 March that Israel may have to carry out another large scale attack on Gaza to topple Hamas, adding, "I say this despite the fact that I know such a thing would, of course, bring the region to a far more combustible situation."
Culture minister Limor Livnat warned, according to Haaretz, Israel might have no choice but to carry out "Operation Cast Lead 2."
Shalom, reversing the facts and laying the blame for the escalating violence on the Palestinians, put the possibility of a renewed war on Gaza in an overtly political context. Hamas, the vice premier claimed, according to Haaretz, "might have opened a new front with Israel 'to stop any possibility of dialogue among the Palestinians or to come to the intra-Palestinian negotiation in a far stronger position'" ("Netanyahu: Israel will continue to operate against terrorists in Gaza," 23 March 2011).
In other words, according to Shalom, it is the continued strength of Hamas that prevents an intra-Palestinian reconciliation on terms favorable to the Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas.
Whether Israel is deliberately laying the ground for a new assault on Gaza, or stumbles into one -- if the current escalation does not stop -- any such attack must be understood in political terms. It would be an effort to finish the unfinished business of destroying Hamas and any other island of Palestinian resistance.
The commitment of any significant Palestinian group to resistance -- political or military -- remains a major obstacle to the full legitimation of the warm embrace between Israel and the Abbas-led PA, whose extent was recently laid bare in the Palestine Papers. Indeed the relationship is so friendly that last October the top echelons of the PA in Bethlehem received then Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi -- who commanded Operation Cast Lead -- as their honored guest, even providing him with a guided tour of the Church of the Nativity ("Israeli army chief visits Bethlehem," Ma'an News Agency, 3 October 2010).
Ironically, Hamas remains much less intransigent than Israel, as evidenced by the movement's repeated offers of ceasefires which Israel rejects or violates; its constant noises about "reconciliation" with Abbas without insisting that the latter terminate his "security" relationship with Israel; and its embrace of the defunct "two-state solution." Despite these unacknowledged political concessions, Hamas retains a military capability that Israel is unwilling to tolerate either as a challenge to itself, or to the PA.
Until now, there have been good reasons to believe Israel would hesitate to launch a new major military assault on Gaza. It is still suffering the diplomatic and political fallout of Cast Lead, including the UN-commissioned Goldstone report, as well as its massacre of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara during last spring's Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Without exaggerating the risks, the constraints on Israel may be loosening. In the wake of the revolution in Egypt and amid the political upheaval in the Arab world, some Israelis may think they have a "last chance" to act in the interregnum before a new and less friendly government is seated in Cairo. Western and Saudi military interventions in Libya and Bahrain respectively have also provided new respectability to using military force for political ends.
International complicity also continues to send Israel a clear message that its impunity is guaranteed. The Obama administration's recent veto of a UN Security Council resolution that merely restated US policy on Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank was one sure sign that Israel still has a blank check from the United States.
Tragically, the biggest contributor to renewed confidence in Israel that it could once again get away with murder in Gaza, may be Judge Richard Goldstone himself. Israeli leaders have seized on his apologetic 1 April op-ed in The Washington Post as vindication and proof that Israel never committed war crimes in Gaza, and was the victim a "blood libel," as Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli occupation army volunteer and The Atlantic blogger put it.
While Goldstone was clearly trying to appease Zionists who subjected him to an intense campaign of personal vilification and ostracism his article did not in fact repudiate one single concrete finding in the report that bears his name ("Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes," 2 April 2011).
Two important analyses of Goldstone's op-ed, and how it is in no way a repudiation of the Goldstone report, appeared on Mondoweiss on 2 April: "What the Goldstone op-ed doesn't say" by Yaniv Reich, and "Goldstone op-ed praises Israeli investigation of Gaza war crimes, but UN committee paints a different picture," by Adam Horowitz. Goldstone's op-ed is the personal opinion of one person. The Goldstone report, an official UN document authored by a commission, remains a compendium of acts by Israel -- and indeed by Hamas -- uncontradicted by any new evidence, much less by Israel's self-serving "investigations."
Yet as we have sadly learned so many times, proper analysis and respect for basic facts have little bearing in the "fog of war," especially when Israel is that party that launches that war.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books).
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14) 'No Safe Levels' of Radiation in Japan
Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is "too much".
By Dahr Jamail
April 4, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/04/20114219250664111.html
In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.
Airborne radiation near the plant has been measured at 4-times government limits.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, the company that operates the crippled plant, has begun releasing more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water that was used to cool the fuel rods into the ocean while it attempts to find the source of radioactive leaks. The water being released is about 100 times more radioactive than legal limits.
Meanwhile, water that is vastly more radioactive continues to gush into the ocean through a large crack in a six-foot deep pit at the nuclear plant. Over the weekend, workers at the plant used sawdust, shredded newspaper and diaper chemicals in a desperate attempt to plug the area, which failed. Water leaking from the pit is about 10,000 times more radioactive than water normally found at a nuclear plant
Thus, radiation from a meltdown in the reactor core of reactor No. 2 is leaking out into the water and soil, with other reactors continuing to experience problems.
Yet scientists and activists question these government and nuclear industry "safe" limits of radiation exposure.
"The U.S. Department of Energy has testified that there is no level of radiation that is so low that it is without health risks," Jacqueline Cabasso, the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Her foundation monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies and related high technology energy, with a focus on the national nuclear weapons laboratories.
Cabasso explained that natural background radiation exists, "But more than 2,000 nuclear tests have enhanced this background radiation level, so we are already living in an artificially radiated environment due to all the nuclear tests."
"Karl Morgan, who worked on the Manhattan project, later came out against the nuclear industry when he understood the danger of low levels of ionizing radiation-and he said there is no safe dose of radiation exposure," Cabasso continued, "That means all this talk about what a worker or the public can withstand on a yearly basis is bogus. There is no safe level of radiation exposure. These so-called safe levels are coming from within the nuclear establishment."
Risk at low doses
Karl Morgan was an American physicist who was a founder of the field of radiation health physics. After a long career in the Manhattan Project and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he became a critic of nuclear power and weapons. Morgan, who died in 1999, began to offer court testimony for people who said they had been harmed by the nuclear power industry.
"Nobody is talking about the fact that there is no safe dose of radiation," Cabasso added, "One of the reasons Morgan said this is because doses are cumulative in the body."
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a report in 2006 titled Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report, VII Phase 2. NAS BEIR VII was an expert panel who reviewed available peer reviewed literature and wrote, "the committee concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses."
The concluding statement of the report reads, "The committee concludes that the current scientific evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a linear, no-threshold dose-response relationship between exposure to ionizing radiation and the development of cancer in humans."
This means that the sum of several very small exposures to radiation has the same effect as one large exposure, since the effects of radiation are cumulative.
For weeks engineers from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) have been working to restore power to the plant and have resorted to having seawater sprayed on radioactive fuel rods that have been at risk of meltdown.
Despite this, Japanese officials conceded to the public on March 31 that the battle to save four crippled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been lost. On March 29 a US engineer who helped install the reactors at the plant said he believed the radioactive core in unit No. 2 may have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor.
Tepco's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said they had "no choice" but to scrap the No's 1-4 reactors, but held out hope that the remaining two could continue to operate, despite the fact that he admitted the nuclear disaster could last several months. It is the first time the company has admitted that at least part of the plant will have to be decommissioned.
But the government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, repeated an earlier call for all six reactors at the 40-year-old plant to be decommissioned. "It is very clear looking at the social circumstances," he said.
Even after a cold shutdown, scrapping the plant will likely take decades, and the site will become a no-man's land.
Tonnes of nuclear waste sit at the site of the nuclear reactors, and enclosing the reactors by injecting lead and encasing them in concrete would make it safe to work and live a few kilometres away from the site, but is not a long-term solution for the disposal of spent fuel, which will decay and emit fission fragments over tens of thousands of years.
Near the plant, the radiation levels dangerously escalated to 400 milliseiverts/hour. Considering background radiation is on the order of 1 milliseivert per year, this means a yearly background dose every 9 seconds, based on industry and governmental "allowable" radiation exposure limits.
That compares with a national "safety standard" in the U.S. of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause internal hemorrhaging.
Meanwhile, more than 168 citizens organizations in Japan submitted a petition to their government on March 28 calling for an expanded evacuation zone near the Fukushima nuclear disaster site. The groups are also calling for other urgent measures to protect the public health and safety.
Residents of evacuated areas near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have been warned that they may not be able to return to their homes for months as Japan's nuclear crisis stretched into a third week.
The neighbourhoods near the plant will remain empty "for the long term", Yukio Edano, the country's chief cabinet secretary, said on April 1.
Though he did not set a timetable, he said residents would not be able to return permanently "in a matter of days or weeks. It will be longer than that".
The official evacuation zone remains only 20 kilometres, while the government has encouraged people within 30 kilometres to evacuate.
Yet levels of cesium-137 in the village of Iitate, for example, have been measured at more than twice the levels that prompted the Soviet Union to evacuate people near Chernobyl. Iitate is 40 kilometres northwest of Fukushima.
Radioactive Iodine has already been found in the tap water in all of Tokyo's 23 wards.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had already recommended an 80-kilometre evacuation zone for U.S. citizens in Japan.
Fukushima as Chernobyl
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
"There are still no-go areas there, and the workers town has long since been abandoned, and we are seeing radioactive refugees from there, like we are now seeing generated in Japan," Dr Kathleen Sullivan, a disarmament educator and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for over 20 years told Al Jazeera, "Tepco is trying to cover their rear-end, and the Japanese government is being cagey about it, and I believe people don't understand that radiation is a major problem and issue."
Dr Sullivan, cited Albert Einstein, who said, "The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man's mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe."
"So we don't understand this mistake because of the timeless invisible nature of the problem that radiation is," Sullivan, who has been an education consultant to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, added.
Some experts have warned of a nightmare scenario where clouds of radioactive material could spread lethal toxins across the planet for months on end if the spent fuel rods catch fire due to lack of coolant.
The Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna told New Scientist on March 24: "Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors - designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests - to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl."
The same group of scientists stated, "The Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site," while, "the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes."
According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.
Monitors have detected tiny radioactive particles which have spread from the reactor site across the Pacific to North America, the Atlantic and even Europe.
Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, told Reuters, "It's only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere."
Tens of thousands of people living near the plant have been evacuated or ordered to stay indoors, while radioactive materials have leaked into the sea, soil and air.
Last week also marked the 32nd anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Middletown, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
250,000 years of radiation
Sullivan explained that when dealing with long-lived radioactive materials, in addition to carcinogens there are inter-generational effects that include the mutation of the genetic structure of life.
"This is permanent and irreversible," she added.
Sullivan uses Fukushima reactor No. 3 as an example, because it is fueled with Mox fuel uranium and plutonium. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means it is carcinogenic and mutagenic for up to 250,000 years, or 12,000 human generations.
A radioactive half-life means that in this case, in 24,000 years, half of the ionizing radiation will have decayed, then in another 24,000 years half of that radiation will decay, etc.
"That's not really understandable or explainable in a conventional sense of knowing," Sullivan said, "We have to apply our moral imagination to 12,000 generations to even begin to understand what we are doing in this moment."
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15) Cancer Risks for Women and Children Due to Radiation Exposure Far Higher Than for Men
National Academy of Sciences Report Raises Major Issues for Radiation Protection, Independent Institute Claims
For further information contact:
Arjun Makhijani or Lisa Ledwidge, IEER: 301-270-5500
http://www.ieer.org/comments/beir/beir7pressrel.html
Takoma Park, Maryland, July 7, 2005: The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) latest report on radiation risk, called the BEIR VII report, issued June 29, has major implications on how radiation protection regulations are made and enforced, according to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). "BEIR" stands for the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. The NAS report issued this week updates the BEIR V report issued in 1990. The BEIR series of reports are the most authoritative basis for radiation risk estimation and radiation protection regulations in the United States.
"In 1990, the NAS estimated that the risks of dying from cancer due to exposure to radiation were about five percent higher for women than for men," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "In BEIR VII, the cancer mortality risks for females are 37.5 percent higher. The risks for all solid tumors, like lung, breast, and kidney, liver, and other solid tumors added together are almost 50 percent greater for women than men, though there are a few specific cancers, including leukemia, for which the risk estimates for men are higher." (Summary estimates are in Table ES-1 on page 28 of the BEIR VII report prepublication copy, on the Web at http://books.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html/28.html.)
Unlike the 1990 NAS report, BEIR VII estimates risks for cancer incidence rates as well as mortality and also provides detailed risk figures according to age of exposure for males and females, by cancer type. This is a great advance over the previous report. The BEIR VII report has thoroughly reviewed available human and animal cancer data and scientific understanding arrived at using cellular level studies. Cancer risk incidence figures for solid tumors for women are also about double those for men.
The BEIR VII report estimates that the differential risk for children is even greater. For instance, the same radiation in the first year of life for boys produces three to four times the cancer risk as exposure between the ages of 20 and 50. Female infants have almost double the risk as male infants. (Table 12 D-1 and D-2, on pages 550-551 of the prepublication copy of the report, on the Web starting at http://books.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html/550.html).
While the report states there is no direct evidence of harm to human offspring from exposure of parents to radiation, the committee noted that such harm has been found in animal experiments and that there is "no reason to believe that humans would be immune to this sort of harm." (Page 20, prepublication copy, on the Web at http://books.nap.edu/openbook/030909156X/html/20.html)
"I think it is high time that society protected those most at risk," said Dr. Makhijani. "The BEIR VIII report has done the public a great service by putting the imprimatur of the NAS on solid research that has long indicated much greater risks for women and children. Now it is up the Environmental Protection Agency to change the framework of regulation from averages of men and women to those who are most at risk."
Contrary to the beliefs of many in the nuclear industry, the BEIR VII report reaffirmed the conclusion of the prior report that every exposure to radiation produces a corresponding increase in cancer risk. The proportionality of risk means that at low exposures the risks are small, as the NAS report points out. The average risks to the population are estimated to be 10 to 15 percent higher than the reference value now used for radiation protection of the general population (565 cancer fatalities per million rem exposure in BEIR VII compared to 500 typically cited in the literature on radiation protection). While this average risk is in the general range of uncertainties and values reported previously, it indicates an increase of risk overall. Both incidence and mortality risk estimates are now greater. Finally, the committee also noted that relatively high levels of radiation exposure increase risk of heart disease and stroke, though it did not give specific risk estimates.
"I want to thank the BEIR VII committee for keeping a promise it made to IEER and 133 other organizations and individuals to consider crucial issues outlined in a letter we delivered to the committee in September 1999," said Lisa Ledwidge, Outreach Director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. The Institute sent several letters to the BEIR VII committee, which can be viewed at http://www.ieer.org/comments/beir/index.html. The Committee's response to IEER is in Annex C of the BEIR VII report, on the Web at http://books.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html/577.html.
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16) U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?hp
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.
In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.
While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.
The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.
Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.
The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown "up to one mile from the units," and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be "bulldozed over," presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.
David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain.
"I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods," said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. "This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don't work out for them."
The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. On Wednesday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, said it was preparing to take such a step and to inject nitrogen into one of the reactor containment vessels.
The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality.
Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. "I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing," said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment.
The document was prepared for the commission's Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company. It says it is based on the "most recent available data" from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group.
The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant's six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking.
The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 "is severely restricted and likely blocked." Inside the core itself, "there is likely no water level," the assessment says, adding that as a result, "it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel." Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.
Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.
A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that "when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment."
Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.
Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, "If I were in the Japanese's shoes, I'd be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn't been checked since the earthquake."
The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a "hazardous atmosphere" in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment.
Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.
Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. "If so," Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, "you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods."
Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems.
The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls "a major source term release."
Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.
"Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air," Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. "They've got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse."
Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
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17) Company Says Radioactive Water Leak at Japan Plant Is Plugged
"Fish and seaweed can concentrate radioactive elements as they grow, leading to levels that are higher, sometimes far higher, than in the surrounding water. Seaweed can concentrate iodine 131 10,000-fold over the surrounding water; fish concentrate cesium 137 modestly. The announced standards for fish came hours after Tokyo Electric said it had found iodine 131 in seawater samples at 200,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter, or five million times the legal limit. The samples were collected Monday near the water intake of the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The samples also showed levels of cesium 137 to be 1.1 million times the legal limit, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Cesium remains in the environment for centuries, losing half its strength every 30 years. "
By ANDREW POLLACK, KEN BELSON and KEVIN DREW
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - The company that runs Japan's crippled nuclear power plant announced Wednesday that it had stopped the leak of tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean discovered over the weekend. The news came a day after the company said the levels of radioactive material in the seawater near the plant were measured at several million times the legal limit.
But even the rare bit of good news from the plant was unlikely to calm worries about the growing contamination in nearby coastal waters. On Tuesday, the government said that a fish caught about 43 miles away was found to have high levels of radioactive iodine 131, prompting it to announce radiation safety levels for fish.
And the company has been flushing thousands of tons of relatively low-level radioactive water into the Pacific to make room in storage containers for increasing amounts of far more contaminated runoff. The runoff resulted from workers' pouring massive amounts of water on reactors and spent fuel-rod pools to keep them from overheating after their normal cooling systems failed.
The water being intentionally released contains about 100 times the legal limit of radiation, said the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant's operator. The more contaminated water that it hopes to contain has about 10,000 times the legal limit.
The small fish caught Friday - before the intentional dumping began - had 4,080 becquerels of iodine 131 per kilogram. The new standards allow up to 2,000 becquerels of iodine 131 per kilogram, the standard used for vegetables in Japan, but it was unclear how the government would enforce the new rules.
The fish also contained cesium 137, which decays much more slowly than iodine 131, at a level of 526 becquerels per kilogram.
"Clearly the fish are consuming highly radioactive food," said Paul G. Falkowski, a professor of marine, earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University. But Professor Falkowski emphasized that even those levels were not likely to present health hazards in Japan or elsewhere, since fishing is restricted in Japan and these levels of radiation are not likely to travel far.
Still, experts on radiation in seafood said it was nearly impossible to get a full sense of the scope of the environmental and health risks until the Japanese released information on radiation levels in more species of fish and seaweed and in a greater number of locations. Measurements in the seawater are often not a good indication of how much radiation may be entering the food chain, scientists say.
Fish and seaweed can concentrate radioactive elements as they grow, leading to levels that are higher, sometimes far higher, than in the surrounding water. Seaweed can concentrate iodine 131 10,000-fold over the surrounding water; fish concentrate cesium 137 modestly.
The announced standards for fish came hours after Tokyo Electric said it had found iodine 131 in seawater samples at 200,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter, or five million times the legal limit. The samples were collected Monday near the water intake of the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
The samples also showed levels of cesium 137 to be 1.1 million times the legal limit, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Cesium remains in the environment for centuries, losing half its strength every 30 years.
The Monday sampling of seawater showed a drop in radioactive iodine levels since Saturday when, the company said, the level of iodine 131 was 300,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the March 11 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami rose to 12,341 on Tuesday, the country's National Police Agency said. More than 15,000 people are missing, and more than 160,000 are in temporary shelters across the country, the agency said.
The crisis at the power station, now in its fourth week, has shaken public confidence in Tokyo Electric. Its share prices plunged to an all-time low on Tuesday over concern by investors about the financial burden of the work being carried out at Daiichi.
The company has lurched from crisis to crisis since the plant's cooling systems stopped working after the quake and tsunami. Even the news about stopping the leak came after days of false starts, including attempts to plug a large crack in a maintenance pit with more than 120 pounds of sawdust, three garbage bags of shredded newspaper and about nine pounds of a polymeric powder that absorbs water.
In the end, the company said it had succeeded in stopping the leak using sodium silicate, which acts as a cement.
The country's trade and industry minister, Banri Kaieda, said Tuesday that 60,000 tons of radioactive water was thought to be flooding the basements of the plant's reactor buildings and underground tunnels, according to the Kyodo news agency.
A government panel suspended work on Tuesday on revising the country's policy platform on nuclear power, according to local news media reports, saying the crisis needed to be resolved before Japan could publicly assess its nuclear power policies.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry directed Tokyo Electric to start paying "condolence money" to 10 communities near the company's Fukushima Daiichi plant. In a news conference, Tokyo Electric said all but one community had accepted the money, which is meant to help evacuees but does not recognize responsibility in the disaster.
Andrew Pollack and Ken Belson reported from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong. Reporting was contributed by Hiroko Tabuchi, Norimitsu Onishi, Ken Ijichi, Yasuko Kamiizumi and Moshe Komata from Tokyo, and by Elisabeth Rosenthal from New York.
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18) Nitrogen Injected at Nuclear Plant to Stop Possible Blast
By ANDREW POLLACK
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - The operator of the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has begun injecting nitrogen into a reactor containment vessel to try to prevent a possible explosion.
Japan's nuclear regulatory agency, which confirmed early Thursday morning that the injections had just started, said the operation was aimed at reducing the risk of an explosion from hydrogen gas that might be building up in the plant's No. 1 reactor. But agency officials said the step was being taken as a precaution, not because an explosion was deemed imminent.
"We do not believe there is a lot of hydrogen in the units," Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the regulatory body, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters Wednesday night. But he added that scientists did not know for sure.
This is the first injection of nitrogen into any of the reactors. The same approach might later be tried for the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, but the No. 1 unit was chosen first because the pressures and temperatures there are higher than in the other two.
Hydrogen explosions occurred in some of the reactors in the days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the nuclear plant. The explosions damaged the outer buildings around the reactors. It was thought that the hydrogen was produced when the zirconium from disintegrating fuel rods reacted with steam after cooling water was lost.
Mr. Nishiyama said a concern now was that as the reactors gradually cooled there would be less steam in the containment vessels, leaving room for oxygen to come in and react with the hydrogen and cause explosions. Injecting nitrogen can reduce the amount of hydrogen and oxygen.
Nitrogen injection was one of the steps recommended by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a confidential assessment dated March 26. Mr. Nishiyama said the recommendation "substantiated and reinforced" an idea already being discussed by the Japanese authorities.
The American assessment cited various threats to the plant. One is that the water being pumped into the reactors to cool them could put stress on the containment vessels, leaving them vulnerable to a rupture in the event of a large aftershock from the earthquake.
Mr. Nishiyama played down that concern saying, "Even if we had an aftershock, I don't believe it would lead to a dangerous situation."
Meanwhile, the government said it was considering what would in effect be an expansion of what is now a 12-mile evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant. It has already encouraged people within 19 miles of the plant to leave, but has not ordered them to.
Yukio Edano, the government's chief spokesman, said the expansion was being considered not because of concern that the situation at the plant was worsening, but rather because some people just outside the evacuation zone were accumulating radiation exposure over time.
"There are areas where the accumulated radiation level is rising," Mr. Edano told reporters late Wednesday. How large the evacuation zone becomes would depend on what level of accumulated radiation is deemed to be of concern. "Specialists in the field are currently considering the issue," he said.
The government is also considering strengthening oversight of the nuclear industry by separating the regulatory agency from the ministry in charge of promoting nuclear power. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which is part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, has been criticized for being too cozy with companies it is supposed to police.
Last week Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he would consider whether and how to remove the conflict of interest. This could include moving the regulatory body under control of the cabinet and merging it with an advisory group, according to a report Wednesday in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
The move to inject nitrogen quickly tempered Tokyo Electric's announcement Wednesday that it had stopped a leak of tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean. The leak, which came from a crack in a concrete maintenance pit near the plant's No. 2 reactor, was sealed after days of unsuccessful attempts using a variety of materials. In the end, workers plugged the leak by using sodium silicate, which acts as a cement.
On Tuesday, Tokyo Electric said the levels of radioactive material in the seawater near the plant were measured at several million times the legal limit. The samples were collected Monday near the water intake of the No. 2 reactor. The high radiation level in the water was believed to have come from the leaking pit.
The utility has been flushing thousands of tons of relatively low-level radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean to make room in storage containers for increasing amounts of far more contaminated runoff. The runoff resulted from workers' pouring huge amounts of water on reactors and spent-fuel pools to keep them from overheating after their cooling systems failed.
The water being intentionally released has about 100 times the legal limit of radiation, Tokyo Electric said. The more contaminated water that it hopes to contain has about 10,000 times the legal limit.
In Tokyo, radiation levels in the air are only slightly above normal, posing no health threat, the authorities said. The city government has started briefly displaying the radiation levels several times a day on giant outdoor screens in five neighborhoods, including Shinjuku and Shibuya.
The National Police Agency said the official death toll from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami was more than 12,400, and that about more than 80 percent of the bodies had been identified. An additional 15,000 people are missing.
Reporting was contributed by Ken Belson, Ken Ijichi, Moshe Komata, Kantaro Suzuki and Chika Ohshima from Tokyo, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong.
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19) Government Forces Fire On Protesters in Yemen
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
April 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/middleeast/06yemen.html?ref=world
SANA, Yemen - Security forces and armed men in civilian clothes clashed with antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Taiz on Tuesday, opening fire on crowds calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, witnesses said. It was the third straight day of violence in Taiz, where more than 10 protesters were killed by gunfire on Monday.
Boshra al-Maqtari, one of the protest leaders, said that at least 20 people were wounded by gunfire on Tuesday, but that there had been no deaths.
The clashes began in roughly the same area of the city where the protesters were killed on Monday, the deadliest day so far in six weeks of demonstrations demanding the immediate ouster of Mr. Saleh. As protesters marched down a central street on Tuesday, they encountered the security forces and plainclothes government supporters, and witnesses said military helicopters flew over the demonstration as the violence broke out. Clouds of tear gas rose over the street.
"The thugs and the security forces fired on us with live gunfire," said Mahmud al-Shaobi, 33, a protester who spoke by telephone and said he was there when the violence began. "Many people were shot."
Gunfire also erupted in Sana, the capital, near the headquarters of Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, a top military leader who broke with Mr. Saleh last month to support the antigovernment demonstrators.
Witnesses described an exchange of fire between General Ahmar's soldiers and armed government supporters, some of whom fired from their cars. The official Saba news agency said that the gunfire came only from General Ahmar's soldiers and that they opened fire on a peaceful march of pro-government tribesmen, killing three and wounding at least 15.
But a spokesman for the general said in a statement that his soldiers moved to prevent the Saleh supporters from breaking into the general's headquarters; the statement did not mention any gunfire by soldiers.
Witnesses said that a group of about 400 protesters, who had peeled away from the main antigovernment protest and marched toward the headquarters, became caught up in the fighting. Doctors at a nearby hospital said that at least two people died from bullet wounds, one a protester and one a Saleh supporter.
The United States has grown increasingly wary of the escalating violence in Yemen, a country that has been an ally against Al Qaeda in the region. The Obama administration inched closer on Tuesday to a break with President Saleh, its longtime ally. In a statement Tuesday night, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said the United States "strongly condemns the use of violence by Yemeni government forces against demonstrators" in Yemeni cities in the past several days. Mr. Carney "reminded" Mr. Saleh "of his responsibility to ensure the safety and security of Yemenis who are exercising their universal right to engage in political expression."
Significantly, the statement called for "meaningful political change" to take place soon, in wording which administration officials now say reflects a growing belief within the administration that Mr. Saleh needs to go. The administration has not yet publicly called for Mr. Saleh to leave.
On Monday, a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, called the violence in Yemen "appalling."
The clashes on Tuesday came as the provincial governor of Taiz, south of the capital, said that he would form a committee to investigate the "unfortunate events" of the previous day. Witnesses said that security forces and government supporters opened fire on Monday from rooftops and the street, directing their fire at tens of thousands of protesters. But the government has suggested that the deaths occurred during an exchange of gunfire between the plainclothes government supporters and armed protesters.
"We express our deep regret for the deviation from peaceful protests," the governor, Hamoud al-Soufi, said. He accused the protesters of attacking the presidential palace and other government buildings on Monday.
On Tuesday, the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation regional coalition, invited the government and opposition parties in Yemen to hold talks in Riyadh, the capital of neighboring Saudi Arabia, on ending the crisis in Yemen, according to the Saba news agency. Mr. Saleh welcomed the invitation; his political opposition did not immediately respond.
In the western port city of Al Hudaydah on Monday, two protesters were killed by gunfire from armed men in plain clothes during a march on the presidential palace there. Doctors said that another person died on Tuesday of bullet wounds suffered during that clash.
Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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20) Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?hp
The starchy cassava root has long been an important ingredient in everything from tapioca pudding and ice cream to paper and animal feed.
But last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world's largest cassava exporter, went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled.
Each year, an ever larger portion of the world's crops - cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil - is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream.
But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.
This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially "throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty," the World Bank said.
Soaring food prices have caused riots or contributed to political turmoil in a host of poor countries in recent months, including Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh, where palm oil, a common biofuel ingredient, provides crucial nutrition to a desperately poor populace. During the second half of 2010, the price of corn rose steeply - 73 percent in the United States - an increase that the United Nations World Food Program attributed in part to the greater use of American corn for bioethanol.
"The fact that cassava is being used for biofuel in China, rapeseed is being used in Europe, and sugar cane elsewhere is definitely creating a shift in demand curves," said Timothy D. Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University who studies the topic. "Biofuels are contributing to higher prices and tighter markets."
In the United States, Congress has mandated that biofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. The European Union stipulates that 10 percent of transportation fuel must come from renewable sources like biofuel or wind power by 2020. Countries like China, India, Indonesia and Thailand have adopted biofuel targets as well.
To be sure, many factors help drive up the price of food, including bad weather that ruins crop yields and high oil prices that make transportation costly. Last year, for example, unusually severe weather destroyed wheat harvests in Russia, Australia and China, and an infestation of the mealy bug reduced Thailand's cassava output.
Olivier Dubois, a bioenergy expert at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said it was hard to quantify the extent to which the diversions for biofuels had driven up food prices.
"The problem is complex, so it is hard to come up with sweeping statements like biofuels are good or bad," he said. "But what is certain is that biofuels are playing a role. Is it 20 or 30 or 40 percent? That depends on your modeling."
While no one is suggesting that countries abandon biofuels, Mr. Dubois and other food experts suggest that they should revise their policies so that rigid fuel mandates can be suspended when food stocks get low or prices become too high.
"The policy really has to be food first," said Hans Timmer, director of the Development Prospects Group of the World Bank. "The problems occur when you set targets for biofuels irrespective of the prices of other commodities."
Mr. Timmer said that the recent rise in oil prices was likely to increase the demand for biofuels.
It can be tricky predicting how new demand from the biofuel sector will affect the supply and price of food. Sometimes, as with corn or cassava, direct competition between purchasers drives up the prices of biofuel ingredients. In other instances, shortages and price inflation occur because farmers who formerly grew crops like vegetables for consumption plant different crops that can be used for fuel.
China learned this the hard way nearly a decade ago when it set out to make bioethanol from corn, only to discover that the plan caused alarming shortages and a rise in food prices. In 2007 the government banned the use of grains to make biofuel.
Chinese scientists then perfected the process of making fuel from cassava, a root that yielded good energy returns, leading to the opening of the first commercial cassava ethanol plant several years ago.
"They're moving very aggressively in this new direction; cassava seems to be the go-to crop," said Greg Harris, an analyst with Commodore Research and Consultancy in New York who has studied the trade.
In addition to expanding cassava cultivation at home, China is buying from Cambodia and Laos as well as Thailand.
Although a mainstay of diets in much of Africa, cassava is not central to Asian diets, even though the Chinese once called it "the underground food store" because it provided crucial backup nutrition in lean harvest years. So the Chinese reasoned that making fuel with cassava would not directly affect food prices or create food shortages, at least at home. The proportion of Chinese cassava going to ethanol leapt to 52 percent last year from 10 percent in 2008.
More distant or indirect impacts are considered to be likely, however. Because cassava chips have been commonly used as animal feed, new demand from the biofuels industry might affect the availability and cost of meat. In Southeast Asian countries where China is paying generously for stockpiles of cassava, farmers may be tempted to grow the crop instead of, for example, other vegetables or rice.
And if China turned to Africa as a source, one of that continent's staple food crops could be in jeopardy, although experts note that exporting cassava could also become a business opportunity.
"This is becoming a more valuable cash crop," Mr. Harris said. "The farmland is limited, so the more that is devoted to fuel, the less is devoted to food."
The Chinese demand for cassava could also dent planned biofuel production in poorer Asian nations: in the Philippines and Cambodia, developers were recently forced to suspend the construction of cassava bioethanol plants because the tuber had become too expensive.
Thailand's own nascent biofuel industry may have trouble getting the homegrown cassava it needs because it may not be able to match the prices offered by Chinese buyers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Biofuels development in wealthier nations has already proved to have a powerful effect on the prices and the cultivation of crops. Encouraged by national biofuel subsidies, nearly 40 percent of the corn grown in the United States now goes to make fuel, with prices of corn on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rising 73 percent from June to December 2010.
Such price rises also have distant ripple effects, food security experts say. "How much does the price of corn in Chicago influence the price of corn in Rwanda? It turns out there is a correlation," said Marie Brill, senior policy analyst at ActionAid, an international development group. The price of corn in Rwanda rose 19 percent last year.
"For Americans it may mean a few extra cents for a box of cereal," she said. "But that kind of increase puts corn out of the range of impoverished people."
Higher prices also mean that groups like the World Food Program can buy less food to feed the world's hungry.
European biofuels developers are buying large tracts of what they call "marginal land" in Africa with the aim of cultivating biofuel crops, particularly the woody bush known as jatropha. Advocates say that promoting jatropha for biofuels production has little impact on food supplies. But some of that land is used by poor people for subsistence farming or for gathering food like wild nuts.
"We have to move away from the thinking that producing an energy crop doesn't compete with food," said Mr. Dubois of the Food and Agriculture Organization. "It almost inevitably does."
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21) Powerful Aftershock Complicates Japan's Nuclear Efforts
By HIROKO TABUCHI and ANDREW POLLACK
April 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/asia/08japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - The strongest aftershock to hit since the day of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan rocked a wide section of the country's northeast Thursday night, prompting a tsunami alert, raising fears of further damage to the already crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and knocking out external power at three other nuclear facilities.
The public broadcaster, NHK, said there were local reports of injuries, fires and blackouts. The aftershock had a magnitude of 7.1, according to the United States Geological Survey; last month's quake, which devastated much of the northeastern coast, was measured at 9.0.
The tsunami alert, which warned of waves up to three feet and possibly higher in some areas, was lifted after about an hour and a half and Japan's Meteorological Agency said no tsunami had been detected.
But it warned that slight changes in sea level were still possible and it was unclear whether there was any damage along the coast. Many coastal communities were ravaged last month, and some are vulnerable because sea walls were breached and land levels have sunk.
Workers at the Fukushima plant were told to take cover until the tsunami warning was lifted, but Japanese officials said at a news conference that water was being automatically pumped into three damaged reactors in the crucial effort to keep their nuclear fuel cool. The plant's cooling systems were knocked out by last month's quake and tsunami, and there was no immediate word of whether there was new damage to the plant, according to its operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Nitrogen also continued to be piped into the No. 1 reactor, the company said, in an effort to prevent a possible explosion. Tokyo Electric said it was unsure of the status of the damaged No. 4 reactor because it has not been able to station workers there.
Monitoring posts around the plant were not showing any rise in radiation levels, the company said.
Experts have said that a big aftershock poses an additional risk to the Fukushima plant because its containment structures are filled with water that was used in the cooling efforts and is now highly radioactive. The strain from holding that water could make the structures more vulnerable to rupture in the event of an earthquake, according to an assessment made by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in late March.
Two other nuclear facilities - a fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho and a nuclear power plant at Higashidori, both in northern Aomori Prefecture - were running on emergency diesel generators after their external power supplies were knocked out by the aftershock.
A third site, the Onagawa nuclear power station in Miyagi Prefecture, lost two of its three external power systems. All three facilities have been shut down since the March 11 quake, but power is needed to keep the nuclear fuel cool.
The aftershock hit at 11:32 p.m. local time and was centered 41 miles east of Sendai, 72 miles from Fukushima and 205 miles from Tokyo, officials said. It was about 30 miles below the ocean floor, considerably deeper than March 11's magnitude 9.0 quake, which hit about 20 miles below the sea floor.
Thursday's aftershock was the strongest since the day of the March 11 quake, according to the United States Geological Survey. There have been hundreds of aftershocks since the initial quake.
Also on Thursday, the police searched for people missing in an evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Nearly 240 police officers from Tokyo and about 100 from Fukushima Prefecture fanned out wearing protective suits in a search for bodies in the 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant, according to Mikio Murakoshi, a spokesman for the Fukushima Prefecture police.
Japanese and American soldiers last weekend conducted a huge search for the missing but avoided the evacuation zone because of the radiation risk. But Mr. Murakoshi said radiation levels had dropped, making a search in the area possible.
The police say about 12,600 people have died as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. More than 14,700 are listed as missing, including about 4,200 in the evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant.
The magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami flattened communities, has kept an estimated 160,000 still housed in temporary shelters and knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where workers have since battled to stabilize the reactors.
Raising new concerns about the plant, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that some of the core of the No. 2 reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure. The assessment implied that the damage at the No. 2 unit was worse than previously believed.
The agency emphasized its interpretation was speculative and based on high radiation readings that Tokyo Electric had found in the lower part of unit No. 2's primary containment structure, called the drywell. The statement said that the commission "does not believe that the reactor vessel has given way, and we do believe practically all of the core remains in the vessel."
Linda L. Gunter, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric, dismissed the analysis, saying Thursday morning, "We believe the containment for the reactor is still functioning at Unit 2; however, the damage to the suppression pool may be the source of the radiation."
But a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of Japan said that he was familiar with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's statement and agreed that it was possible the core had leaked into the larger containment vessel.
The statement was issued after Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, told a House hearing on Wednesday morning that the commission had told him that the core had melted through the vessel.
He based that on a question his staff had asked the agency. But the agency responded to him by e-mail on Tuesday without directly addressing possible melting, saying only that it speculated that "part of the Unit 2 core may be out of the reactor pressure vessel and may be in the lower space of the drywell." After the hearing, in response to numerous questions, the agency said that "there are possible leakage paths from the reactor vessel into the drywell."
It did not say whether the fuel was molten or solid. If molten fuel has left the reactor's pressure vessel and reached the drywell in substantial quantities, it raises the possibility that the fuel could escape the larger containment structure, leading to a large-scale radioactive release.
Some engineers have theorized that if a core melted down and concentrated at the bottom of the vessel it could melt through the vessel and then burn through the concrete of the foundation. One element of such an event would probably be a resumption of the nuclear chain reaction, in a molten mass in which no control would be possible because there would be no control rods to slide smoothly between neatly arrayed bundles of fuel.
Other experts say that a resumption of the chain reaction would be difficult or impossible with the type of fuel in use at Fukushima Daiichi.
But extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel at Reactor 2, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a senior nuclear executive said.
"It's a little like pulling a thread out of your tie," he said. "Any breach gets bigger."
Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric's difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from radiation damaging measurement instruments because it exceeds the maximum dose that they are designed to measure, he said.
"It's killing the measuring equipment," he said. "They're blaming it on software - it's their meters getting cooked."
Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The broken pieces may be from spent fuel rods in the spent-fuel pools, as opposed to the reactors themselves. Hydrogen explosions have flung them out of the reactor building.
"They're running bulldozers around to bury the stuff so it doesn't cook people going by," he said.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
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22) Critics Call Terrorism Hearing in Manhattan Anti-Muslim
By PAUL VITELLO
April 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/nyregion/07muslim.html?ref=us
A state senator has scheduled a daylong hearing for Friday on terrorism preparedness in New York City, featuring an array of experts in law enforcement, emergency response and counterterrorism.
But his plan to take testimony in Manhattan about the threat from radical Islam is drawing sharp criticism from Muslim and interfaith groups that call the hearing anti-Muslim and incendiary - a local version of the contentious session held last month in Washington by Representative Peter T. King of Long Island.
In fact, the witness list includes Mr. King, a Republican who has promised more Congressional hearings on what he calls the radicalization of American Muslims.
The state senator, Gregory R. Ball, a Putnam County Republican who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs, said he did not intend his inquiry to focus unfairly on threats from any one group.
"But there are people who seek to hurt and destroy us," Mr. Ball said. "We have to move beyond political correctness."
Among the witnesses whose scheduled testimony has raised objections is Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born American who is president of a group called Former Muslims United. Mr. Ball said Ms. Darwish would testify about Shariah law and "being taught to hate Israelis and Americans" in Islamic schools she attended in Egypt.
Adem Carroll, a spokesman for the New York State Interfaith Network for Immigration Reform, one of the organizations protesting the hearing, said that by including witnesses like Ms. Darwish and Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official who has often criticized Islam, Mr. Ball was exploiting deep public concern about terrorism to incite fear of Muslims as a group.
"None of us are condemning the hearings' stated purpose," Mr. Carroll said. "The issue of terrorism is of concern to all Americans. But hate speech and defamation can and do perpetuate a cycle of violence." He cited the killing of United Nations workers in Afghanistan recently after a Florida pastor burned a copy of the Koran.
Not all the witnesses scheduled to testify at Mr. Ball's hearing have been a cause of objections. They include Richard Daddario, the New York Police Department's top counterterrorism official; Thomas LaBelle, executive director of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs; and a raft of experts on emergency communications, nuclear safety and international security.
Mr. Ball, 33, an Air Force Academy graduate and two-term state assemblyman elected to the Senate in 2010 on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration, said criticism of witnesses like Ms. Darwish and Mr. Gaffney was "just an attempt by some to drum up national publicity."
Eight Democrats in the State Senate have signed a letter of protest to Mr. Ball from State Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Democrat whose Brooklyn district includes one of the city's largest populations of Pakistani immigrants, most of them Muslim.
"By including Islamic law as a topic of the hearing," Mr. Parker wrote, "you conflate the religious observances and practices of a faith into a security matter. Some opportunists and political leaders have sought to create hostility against Muslims by raising the specter of the Shariah 'bogeyman' as a threat to America."
He urged Mr. Ball not to follow that example, and suggested that he also call witnesses who are not biased against Islam.
Mr. Ball said he announced his intentions in the Senate chamber weeks ago, and invited members to propose witnesses. None did, he said. Mr. Parker said in an interview that "that is not my understanding of the facts."
The hearing is to be held at the State Senate office building in Lower Manhattan.
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