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Help us rent a billboard for Bradley Manning in Washington DC!
Sign the "I am Bradley Manning" photo petition at iam.bradleymanning.org
Help us rent a billboard for Bradley in Washington DC
Bradley will soon have his own billboard in the Washington DC metro area, if we step up. We're launching this campaign to rent the high-profile ad space to coincide with the soon-expected start of his pre-trial court martial in the DC area.
View the billboards, donate, and help choose the design:
epicstep.com/campaign/239/support-bradley
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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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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Sat. May 21, 7pm
ANSWER Coalition Office, 2969 Mission St.
btwn 25th and 26th Sts., San Francisco
Community Forum
Mexico in Struggle
A discussion on the crises in Mexico and the role of U.S. intervention
• Elvira Villescas Sánchez - activist and founding member of the community organization "Las Hormigas" in Cuidad Juarez
• Frank Lara - activist from the Calexico-Mexicali border and organizer for the May Day Coalition and ANSWER Coalition
• David Bacon - renowned activist, journalist and photographer of the labor and immigrant struggle in Mexico and the U.S.
A donation of $5 to $10, no one turned away for lack of funds
Sponsored by BALASC (Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition)
For more information, visit: www.balasc.org, 415-821-6545
Sab. 21 de mayo, 7pm
Oficina de Coalición ANSWER, Calle Mision #2969
entre 25 y 26th, San Francisco
Foro Comunitario
México en Lucha
Una discusión sobre las crises en México y el papel de intervención por los EE.UU.
• Elvira Villescas Sánchez - activista y fundadora de la organización comunitaria "La Hormigas" en Ciudad Juarez
• Frank Lara - activista de la frontera Calexico-Mexicali y organizador para la Coalición Día de Mayo y la Coalición ANSWER
• David Bacon - activista, periodista, y fotógrafo reconocido de la lucha inmigrante y de labor en México y los EE.UU.
Una donación de $5 a $10, nadie se rechazará por falta de fondos
Patrocinado por BALASC (Coalición de la Bahía por la Solidaridad con América Latina)
Para mas información, visite: www.balasc.org, 415-821-6545
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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Join the ANSWER Coalition and other community organizations and unions in supporting this important action.
LOCAL 2 SIEGE ACTION!
INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL ASKS FOR A FIGHT!
Join Local 2 for a whole day picket!
Where: Intercontinental Hotel, 888 Howard Street (at 5th Street)
Date: Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
Time: 7am to 7pm
The Intercontinental Hotel corporation continues to insist on transferring PBX (telephone operators) work to front desk clerks at the Holiday Inn Express Fisherman's Wharf. At the same time, they refuse to adjust the low pay rate for workers who are performing a higher job classification. Intercontinental said NO! to our job security clause in the event that rooms at the Mark Hopkins get converted into condominiums, and when we proposed to adjust the workload for room cleaners at the Intercontinental Hotel, management was very disrespectful and went as far as saying that the women very often finished their rooms at 3pm instead of 4pm. This hotel chain manages the Intercontinental Hotel - Moscone, Mark Hopkins, Holiday Inn Express, and Holiday Inn - Fisherman's Wharf.
Visit www.unitehere2.org 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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Next UNAC general meeting is Sunday, June 12, 2:00 PM at Redstone Bldg., 16th Street and Capp. (Capp Street is one block or so below Mission Street.) Third Floor Conference Room, San Francisco. MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!
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Save the Date!
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country -- from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
In state capitals, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back. But if we're going to be successful in pushing back the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services and education, we need to build unity within our movement, including forging stronger ties with labor's allies: communities of color, students and youth, single-payer advocates, environmentalists, antiwar activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive forces.
Relying on politicians to defend us -- the so-called "friends of labor" -- has proven to be disastrous. During the past three decades, working people have suffered a dramatic decline in their standard of living while the rich have amassed an unprecedented amount of wealth at the top, regardless of which of the major parties was running the government. We have had every combination imaginable: Republicans occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, Democrats occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, or some kind of "divided government." But in each case the result for working people has been the same: conditions got worse for workers while the corporations prospered even more. Why should we continue this vicious cycle?
The working class has the power to put an end to this situation. And as the debate over the debt and the deficit intensifies, the need has never been greater for an organized campaign to demand "No Cuts, No Concessions!" whether in regard to social programs or workers' wages and benefits. We say place the burden for solving the financial crises squarely where it belongs: on the rich. They caused the crisis, let them pay for it!
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was initiated earlier this year at a historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 at Kent State University in Ohio for a national labor-community conference to spur the campaign to build a more militant fight-back movement and to launch a national campaign for an alternative agenda for working people. Together we can move forward on both fronts.
This conference is open to all who agree with its purpose, as explained in this Call. To register for the conference, please go to our website at www.laborfightback.org. If you prefer to register offline, write emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715 for a registration form.
For more information, e-mail emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715.
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Oct. 7 - Protest, March & Die-In on 10th Anniversary of Afghanistan War
Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, 4:30-6:30pm
New Federal Building, 7th & Mission Sts, SF
Protest & Die-In on 10th Anniversary of Afghanistan War
End All the Wars & Occupations-Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Haiti . . .
Money for Jobs, Healthcare & Schools-Not for the Pentagon
Friday, October 7, 2011 will be the exact 10th anniversary of the U.S./NATO war on the people of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani people have been killed, wounded and displaced, and thousands of U.S. and NATO forces killed and wounded. The war costs more than $126 billion per year at a time when social programs are being slashed.
The true and brutal character of the U.S. strategy to "win hearts and minds" of the Afghani population was described by a Marine officer, quoted in a recent ANSWER Coalition statement:
"You can't just convince them [Afghani people] through projects and goodwill," another Marine officer said. "You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That's how you start convincing them." (To read the entire ANSWER statement, click here)
Mark your calendar now and help organize for the October 7 march and die-in in downtown San Francisco. There are several things you can do:
1. Reply to this email to endorse the protest and die-in.
2. Spread the word and help organize in your community, union, workplace and campus.
3. Make a donation to help with organizing expenses.
Only the people can stop the war!
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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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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Bruised Tear: Aiyana Jones Spoken Word Poem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lIyGGOdlZOg
This piece is to commemorate the death of 7 year old Aiyana Jones who was murdered by the Detroit Police Department. The poem is introduced by the F.B.I.'s first president, J. Edgar Hoover, that he sent out to the COINTELPRO in 1968. Please share, so that we might awaken more eyes to this great injustice!
Police Brutality: Cop Kills 7yr.old Aiyana Jones - Cover Up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZH7iYaQSAE&NR=1&feature=fvwp
DETROIT READY TO EXPLODE! http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/crime/2010/05/18/bts.detroit.girl.shot.briefing.wdiv.html
An attorney representing the family of a 7-year-old girl shot to death Sunday in a police raid is accusing the Detroit Police Department of misrepresenting the incident.
In an interview with WDIV on Monday, Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger said he obtained video footage of the incident captured by a crew filming for the A&E network show, "The First 48."
Fieger, who didn't say how he received the tape, said it shows officers rushing the home and throwing a flash grenade through a window before one officer fires into the home from the front porch.
However, according to Assistant Police Chief Ralph Godbee, preliminary information indicates that members of the Detroit Police Special Response Team approached the house and announced themselves as police. Godbee cited the officers involved and at least one independent witness.
Godbee said officers used a "flash bang" device, entered the home and encountered a 46-year-old female inside the front room.
"Exactly what happened next is a matter still under investigation, but it appears the officer and the woman had some level of physical contact," Godbee said in a statement Sunday. "At about this time, the officer's weapon discharged one round which, tragically, struck 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones in the neck/head area."
Police were executing a search warrant in the search for the suspect in a shooting Friday that killed a high school student.
Godbee said the 34-year-old suspect was found and arrested at the home where the girl was shot. In addition, a vehicle and a moped matching the descriptions of those involved in the shooting of 17-year-old Jarean Blake were also found, he said.
Fieger called the explanation from police "entirely false."
"Of course, I have seen the videotape and the videotape vividly portrays the fact that a percussion grenade device was thrown through the front window and a shot was fired immediately from the outside from the porch," he said.
"No murder suspect was found in Aiyana's house," Fieger said in Monday's interview. "In fact, there's an upstairs apartment next door which the police did not have a search warrant for and that is where he surrendered, they went into that house too. But he was not in Aiyana's house."
Aiyana's father, Charles Jones, also has denied that the suspect was in his home.
Detroit police spokesman Phillip Cook told reporters Monday that he was not aware of the video and declined to comment. The investigation, he said, has been taken over by state police to preserve the "community's trust."
A source at A&E, who asked not to be identified citing company policy, confirmed that a crew was on the scene and that the footage was confiscated by police. He would not comment on what the crew had captured on video.
Another police spokesman said the department would not identify the suspect in Blake's shooting death until he has been formally charged by prosecutors. The suspect remains in custody.
Godbee, in his statement Sunday, said he wished to "express to the family of Aiyana Jones the profound sorrow that we feel within the Detroit Police Department and throughout this community. We know that no words can do anything to take away the pain you are feeling at this time."
Police obtained the "high-risk search warrant" based on intelligence, and it was approved by the prosecutor and a magistrate, Godbee said. "Because of the ruthless and violent nature of the suspect in this case, it was determined that it would be in the best interest of public safety to execute the search warrant as soon as possible and detain the suspect ... while we sought a murder warrant.
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Labor Beat: May Day Weekend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiitdOiO6kA
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Paradise Gray Speaks At Jordan Miles Emergency Rally 05/06/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOLz1EYDYE&feature=player_embedded
Police Reassigned While CAPA Student's Beatdown Investigated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-6IsP3dUg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Pittsburgh Student Claims Police Brutality; Shows Hospital Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j_AVsTXZc&feature=relmfu
Justice For Jordan Miles
By jasiri x
http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Even though Pittsburgh Police beat Jordan Miles until he looked like this: (Photo at website)
And even though Jordan Miles, an honor student who plays the viola, broke no laws and committed no crimes, the Federal Government decided not to prosecute the 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers who savagely beat him.
To add insult to injury, Pittsburgh's Mayor and Police Chief immediately reinstated the 3 officers without so much as a apology. An outraged Pittsburgh community called for an emergency protest to pressure the local District Attorney to prosecute these officers to the fullest extent of the law.
Below is my good friend, and fellow One Hood founding member Paradise Gray (also a founding member of the Blackwatch Movement and the legendary rap group X-Clan) passionately demanding Justice for Jordan Miles and speaking on the futility of a war of terror overseas while black men are terrorized in their own neighborhoods.
For more information on how you can help get Justice For Jordan Miles go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
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Nation Behind Bars Mass Incarceration And Political Prisoners In the U.S. - Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination
Black is Back Conference on the Other Wars, March 26, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKfFEqaoSs&feature=email
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Cindy Sheehan has turned her grief into an anti-war crusade, even questioning the death of Osama bin Laden. From HLN's Dr. DREW Show Thurs. 5/5/11:
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-05-06/cindy-sheehan-mothers-war-war
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Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
http://vimeo.com/22706805
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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New Video - Lupe Fiasco ft. Skylar Grey - 'Words I Never Said'
Thu, Apr 28 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0
Lupe Fiasco addresses some heavy issues in the latest video for his new single, 'Words I Never Said,' featuring Skylar Grey. In the 5 minute and 45 second dose of reality, Lupe tackles issues such as the war on terrorism, devastation, conspiracy theories, 9/11 and genocide. From the opening lyrics of "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh*t", Lupe doesn't hold back as he voices his socio-political concerns.
"If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of what the f-ks'
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homie that's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say s-t
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful."
Skylar Grey (who also lends her vocals to Dirty money's 'Coming Home' and Eminem's 'I Need A Doctor') does an excellent job of complementing the Alex Da Kid produced track.
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BREAKING ALERT: Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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MAY DAY 1886-International Workers Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF-ADtNerPM&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: We Are One - Illinois
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOntwNsWHac
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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More troops join anti-government protests in Yemen
More soldiers have been joining anti-government protests on the streets of the capital Sana'a.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6658
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E.: Miss. Medical Examiner Dr. Adel Shaker On Frederick Carter Hanging (4/19/2011)
http://blip.tv/file/5057532
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Egyptian Soldiers Join Protest Demanding End to Military Dictatorship
Adam Hanieh: Class struggle in Egypt enters a new stage
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6626
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Row over Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning treatment (12Apr11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv8xyHhDKkY&feature=related
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AP writer--State Department on Human Rights Abuse of Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUctxdsKk9Q
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environmet would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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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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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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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Frederick Alexander Meade on The Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vqzfEYo6Lo
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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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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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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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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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ELLA BAKER CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
CLOSE PRISONS NOT SCHOOLS!
https://secure3.convio.net/ebc/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=164&utm_campaign=bnb_close_prisons_not_schools&utm_source=email-action&utm_medium=email&s_src=bnb_close_prisons_not_schools&s_subsrc=email-action&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=k3sp4vh2j4.app332b
Carlos* was only 14 years when he was locked up in a California youth prison. Growing up in a rough neighborhood in Northern CA, there were few resources for him or his younger brothers. Carlos was swept up by gangs and ended up serving a 10 year sentence in Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), leaving his siblings and childhood behind.
For 10 long years, our state spent millions of dollars to lock him up in a cell. Meanwhile, the state spent a tiny fraction of that amount providing an inadequate education to his younger brothers.
When Carlos was finally released earlier this year, he returned to a neighborhood that hasn't changed. Resources for youth are still scarce. He worries about his little brothers growing up in a society that would rather lock them up than invest in their educations and future.
Carlos' experience is only one example of why California ranks near the bottom in education spending and performance, but we're #1 in prison spending. DJJ drains much-needed resources from California's schools and the vital community programs that would help our State thrive. It's time to close the expensive, abusive DJJ and redirect those resources into our schools.
Join Books Not Bars in calling on Governor Brown to protect our schools by closing the Division of Juvenile Justice.
On May 10, join Books Not Bars, teachers, students, and other concerned Californians at the Capitol to save our schools. For more information or if you plan on attending, please contact Jennifer Kim at Jennifer@ellabakercenter.org, or (510) 285-8234.
If you can't join us in person, take action now, then sign up for join our online rally next Tuesday by sending Gov. Brown an email now.
Justice for families.
Sumayyah Waheed
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
*Carlos' name has been changed to protect his privacy.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
www.ellabakercenter.org | 510.428.3939
1970 Broadway, Suite 450 | Oakland, CA | 94612
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U.S. Attorney Escalates Attacks on Civil Liberties of Anti-War,
Palestinian Human Rights Activists
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald first thing Monday morning! (contact info at bottom of this email)
On Friday, May 6, the U.S. government froze the bank accounts of Hatem Abudayyeh and his wife, Naima. This unwarranted attack on a leading member of the Palestinian community in Chicago is the latest escalation of the repression of anti-war and Palestinian community organizers by the FBI, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Hatem Abudayyeh is one of 23 activists from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Chicago, and his home was raided by the FBI in September of last year. Neither Hatem Abudayyeh nor Naima Abudayyeh have been charged with any crime.
One of the bank accounts frozen was exclusively in Naima Abudayyeh's name. Leaders of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, as well as Chicago's Coalition to Protect People's Rights are appalled at the government's attempt to restrict the family's access to its finances, especially so soon before Mothers' Day. Not only does the government's action seriously disrupt the lives of the Abudayyehs and their five-year-old daughter, but it represents an attack on Chicago's Arab community and activist community and the fundamental rights of Americans to freedom of speech.
The persecution of the Abudayyeh family is another example of the criminalization of Palestinians, their supporters, and their movement for justice and liberation. There has been widespread criticism of the FBI and local law enforcement for their racial profiling and scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. These repressive tactics include infiltration of community centers and mosques, entrapment of young men, and the prominent case of 11 students from the University of California campuses at Irvine and Riverside who have been subpoenaed to a grand jury and persecuted for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US. The government's attempt to conflate the anti-war and human rights movements with terrorism is a cynical attempt to capitalize on the current political climate in order to silence Palestinians and other people of conscience who exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner which does not conform to the administration's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.
The issuance of subpoenas against the 23 activists has been met with widespread opposition and criticism across the country. Six members of the U.S. Congress, including five in the past month, have sent letters to either Holder or President Obama, expressing grave concern for the violations of the civil liberties and rights of the 23 activists whose freedom is on the line. Three additional U.S. representatives have also promised letters, as thousands of constituents and other people of conscience across the U.S. have demanded an end to this assault on legitimate political activism and dissent. Over 60 Minnesota state legislators also issued a resolution condemning the subpoenas.
The Midwest activists have been expecting indictments for some time. The freezing of the Abudayyeh family's bank accounts suggests that the danger of indictments is imminent.
Take action:
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Then dial 0 (zero) for the operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
Demand Fitzgerald
-- Unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family and
-- Stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
In solidarity,
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression and
The Coalition to Protect People's Rights
For more info go to StopFBI.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Abolish the Death Penalty Blog
http://www.ncadp.org/blog.cfm?postID=165
Abolish the Death Penalty is a blog dedicated to...well, you know. The purpose of Abolish is to tell the personal stories of crime victims and their loved ones, people on death row and their loved ones and those activists who are working toward abolition. You may, from time to time, see news articles or press releases here, but that is not the primary mission of Abolish the Death Penalty. Our mission is to put a human face on the debate over capital punishment.
You can also follow death penalty news by reading our News page and by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
1 Million Tweets for Troy! April 12, 2011
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
The state of Georgia is seeking to change the drugs they use to carry out executions so they can resume scheduling execution dates, including that of Troy Davis, a man with a strong claim of innocence. Doubts in the case persist, including the fact that no physical evidence links him to the murder, most of the witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony and newer testimony implicates a different person (including an eyewitness account).
The Davis case has already generated hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters in support of clemency, including from leaders such as the Pope, Jimmy Carter and former FBI chief Bill Sessions. We need to continue to amass petitions in support of clemency, demonstrating the widespread concern about this case and what it represents.
Please help us send a message to Georgia officials that they can do the right thing - they can intervene as the final failsafe by commuting Davis' sentence. Please help us generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis!
Share this tweet alert with your friends and family that care about justice and life as soon as you can.
More information about the case is available at www.justicefortroy.org
Here are some sample tweets:
When in doubt, don't execute!! Sign the petition for #TroyDavis! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Too much doubt! Stop the execution! #TroyDavis needs us! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No room for doubt! Stop the execution of #TroyDavis . Retweet, sign petition www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Case not "ironclad", yet Georgiacould execute #TroyDavis ! Not on our watch! Petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No murder weapon. No physical evidence. Stop the execution! #TroyDavis petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recanted. No physical evidence. Stop the execution of Troy Davis www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition #TroyDavis
Thanks!
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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/
Bulletin from the cause: Bradley Manning Support Network
Go to Cause
Posted By: Tom Baxter
To: Members in Bradley Manning Support Network
A Good Address for Bradley!!!
We have a good address for Bradley,
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
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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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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she 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.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also 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 !)
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.
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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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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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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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) LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL, BUENOS AIRES, MAY 5, 2011:
May 14th, 2011 3:18 pm ET
http://www.examiner.com/nonpartisan-in-national/revolt-from-us-war-criminals-letter-from-a-real-nobel-peace-prize-laureate#ixzz1MjyVPw3M
2) Why Did US Medical Personnel Remove High-Value Detainee Abu Zubaydah's Eye?
Wednesday 18 May 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout
http://www.truthout.org/abu-zubaydah-eye-removed-guantanamo/1305727623
3) The Great Switch by the Super Rich
By Robert Reich
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
http://robertreich.org/post/5583016733
4) Obama's Mideast Speech
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20prexy-text.html
5) Mine Owner's Negligence Led to Blast, Study Finds
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20mine.html?hp
6) Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html?hp
7) Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19prisons.html?ref=us
8) U.S. Was Warned on Vents Before Failure at Japan's Plant
By MATTHEW L. WALD
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/science/earth/19nuke.html?ref=us
9) Afghan Detainee Is Found Dead at Guantánamo
By REUTERS
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19guantanamo.html?ref=us
10) Reality Check: The Profound Hypocrisy of
President Obama's Speech on the Middle East
By Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
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
11) As Citi Revives, Pandit Wins Big Pay Package
"In January, Citi's board raised Mr. Pandit's $1 salary to $1.75 million a year. The additional $5.5 million a year in retention payouts will set the stage for him to be paid as much, if not more, than his peers. Bank of America's chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, received about $10.2 million in total compensation for 2010, according to Equilar, a compensation research and consulting firm. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chairman and chief executive, was awarded a $23.6 million pay package last year, making him the highest paid of any Wall Street chief. The heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were paid somewhere in between."
By ERIC DASH
May 18, 2011, 4:59 pm Investment Banking
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/pandits-take-of-citigroups-profits/?hp
12) Trader Joe's and Farm Laborers
labor-for-peace-and-justice@igc.org
13) When Will Scientists Grow Meat in a Petri Dish?
A handful of scientists aim to satisfy the world's growing appetite for steak without wrecking the planet. The first step: grab a petri dish
By Jeffrey Bartholet
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 | 13
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=inside-the-meat-lab
14) At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/business/20fund.html?hp
15) Spaniards Take to Streets Before Vote
By RAPHAEL MINDER
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/europe/20iht-spain20.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB
16) Head of Japanese Utility Steps Down After Nuclear Crisis
"The head of Tokyo Electric's nuclear division, Vice President Sakae Muto, will also resign, the company said. But Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman and former president, kept his post, a move designed to provide some continuity it the company's time of crisis, but which could raise questions over how serious the company is about accountability following what has become the world's worst nuclear accident since World War II." [Is this article actually saying that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. in WWII was an accident?!?!?!?!?!?!...bw]
By HIROKO TABUCHI
May 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/business/global/21iht-tepco21.html?hp
17) Reaction in Arab Capitals Is Muted and Mixed
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20egypt.html?ref=world
18) Deal Reached on Extension of Patriot Act
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20patriot.html?ref=us
19) Oakland police fatally shoot 2 men on street
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
[Several TV news reports have definitively stated that the men were unarmed at the time of the police shooting....bw]
Friday, May 20, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/BA1R1JICCF.DTL
20) Turning the Camera on the Police
By David Sirota
Posted on May 19, 2011
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/turning_the_camera_on_the_police_20110519/
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1) LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL, BUENOS AIRES, MAY 5, 2011:
May 14th, 2011 3:18 pm ET
http://www.examiner.com/nonpartisan-in-national/revolt-from-us-war-criminals-letter-from-a-real-nobel-peace-prize-laureate#ixzz1MjyVPw3M
Below is a voice that you should consider for your highest expression of citizen virtue. What I have to say are in these two articles:
Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics
Common Sense for new American Revolution: revolt from US government by dicts
LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL, BUENOS AIRES, MAY 5, 2011:
FROM NOBEL TO NOBEL
Dear Barack,
In addressing you I do it fraternally and, at the same time, to express my concern and indignation after witnessing the destruction and death caused in several nations in the name of "freedom and democracy", two words that have been twisted and stripped of meaning, and how you end up justifying murder, which was cheered up as if you were talking about a sports event.
My indignation refers to the big celebration of this assassination by North American social sectors, chiefs of state in Europe and other countries...a murder ordered by your administration and the satisfaction in your smiling face while stating that it was "in the name of justice".
You didn't intend to seize and judge him for his alleged crimes, which makes us believe that your real intent was to assassinate him.
The dead are mute and fearing that Bin Laden could disclose compromising facts for the USA, you decided to kill him, ensuring his permanent silence, unaware that by doing this you have reinforced our suspicions.
When you were granted the Nobel Prize I sent you a letter which read: "Barack, I am astounded by your having been presented with the Nobel Prize, but now that you have it you must use to promote peace among nations; you have all the possibilities to do it...to end the wars and begin correcting the severe crisis in your own country and the world".
Unfortunately, you have increased hatred and betrayed the principles you assumed during your electoral campaign, such as ending the invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq; closing the prisons in Guantanamo and Abu Graib, but you haven't done it, quite to the contrary, you decided to start another war in Libya, backed up by NATO and the shameful resolution by UNO to support you, when this organization, diminished and weak, has lost its path and has been subjugated to the whims and interests of the dominant powers.
The foundational premise of the UNO is to defend and promote peace and dignity among nations. Its Chart begins saying: "Us, the peoples of the world..." currently ignored by this organization.
I would like to recall a mystic and teacher who has meant a great influence in my life: priest Thomas Merton of the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, who stated: "The greater necessity of our time is to cleanse the enormous mass of mental garbage in our consciousness, which has turned public life into a mass disease. Without this domestic cleansing we will be unable to start seeing... and if we can't see, we can't think".
You were very young, Barack, during the Vietnam war; maybe you don't remember the huge opposition of the North American people to such war.
The dead, injured, and maimed in Vietnam are painful consequences...
Thomas Merton also said while analyzing a mail stamp exhibiting the legend: "el ejército norteamericano es clave para la paz" (The U.S. Army, key to peace"). No country possesses the key to anything other than war...power has nothing to do with peace. The more men are destined to the military, more destruction and violations occur.
I have shared with and accompanied Vietnam veterans, in particular Brian Wilson and his mates, all of them victims of that and all wars.
Life is unpredictable and surprising; it possesses the fragrance and beauty God gave us and must protect to ensure a fair and fraternal life for future generations; to reinstate balance in our Mother Earth.
If we don't react and change the current situation of suicidal pride, dragging the peoples to deep corners where hope is death, it will be very hard to see the light. Mankind deserves a better fate.
You know that hope is like the flower who flourishes in mud and blossoms in all splendor exhibiting its beauty. Leopoldo Marechal, the notorious Argentine writer, used to say that "you get off the maze climbing to the top".
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I believe, Barack, that after erring the way, you find yourself within a maze, unable to find the exit and instead, you submerge deeper and deeper in violence, uncertainty...devoured by the thirst for power; dragged by the huge corporations, and the military, thinking that you possess the might to do whatever you want, and that the world must surrender to the USA, because you have the weaponry and invade countries in total impunity. This is painful reality but there is also the valiant resistance of the people who don't yield to the greed of the dominant powers.
So huge are the atrocities perpetrated by your country that it could take a long time to discuss them; they are also a challenge to historians who would have to peer deeper to understand the behavior, the politics, the greatness and pettiness which have led North America to dominate the minds of its society preventing them to see other realities.
Bin Laden, alleged author of the attack to the Twin Towers, has been made the Satan who has terrorized the world and the USA propaganda has identified him as the "core of evil" which has served you well to wage the wars so craved by the military industry to merchandise their murderous trinkets.
Did you know that those who have investigated the painful events of September 11 have declared that such attacks were self-inflicted...the crash of a plane against the Pentagon and the evacuation of the Towers the previous day...all of it concocted to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and now against Libya, based on lies and arrogance...that you are entitled to "save the peoples in the name of "freedom and the defense of democracy", cynically stating that the deaths of women and children are "collateral damage". I experienced all this in Iraq, in Iran, when you bombarded their cities and hospitals and a shelter for children victimized and deemed "collateral damage".
Pronouncing a speech void of values and meaning, you dub assassination as "death" and boast that "finally, Bin Laden is "dead". By no means, am I defending Bin Laden, as I have always been against terrorism by both, armed gangs and the government which your country exerts in several regions of the world, generating violence to maintain your control world-wide, and I wonder: if there is a "core of evil" how would you call it?
Could all of this be the reason for the fear North Americans live in...afraid of the vengeance from those dubbed as the "core of evil"...the superficiality and hypocrisy used to justify the unjustifiable.
Peace is a practice of life; the harmonic relations among peoples; it is a challenge to mankind's consciousness; its path is difficult but hopeful; a path where people construct their own history. Peace is not something you give away...is something you build...and this is precisely what you don't have, lad: courage to assume your historical responsibility towards your country and the world.
You cannot live immersed in a labyrinth of fear and control from those who truly rule the USA, ignoring international treaties, conventions and protocols of governments who sign but don't comply with any agreement and hypocritically speak in the name of freedom and law.
How dare you speak of peace if you don't want to honor your commitments, except those to benefit the USA?
How dare you talk about freedom when you keep innocent people in your prisons of Guantanamo, USA, Iraq, Abu Graib, and Afghanistan?
How dare you speak of human rights and dignity when you violate them permanently and fight all those who don't share your ideology and, instead, must endure your abuse?
How dare you send soldiers to Haiti after a devastating earthquake, instead of sending humanitarian aid to that suffering country?
How dare you speak of freedom when you massacre the peoples in the Middle East and foster wars and torture in endless violence which hurt Palestinians and Israeli?
Barack: try to look at the top of the maze...you may find the star that guides you, even knowing you will never reach it,quoting Eduardo Galeano. Try to be consistent with what you say and do...this is the only way to avoid losing the way.
The Nobel Prize is a tool which must be used to serve the peoples, but never for personal vanity
I wish you find the strength and hope, and also wish you find the courage to mend your ways to attain wisdom and peace.
Our appreciation to Patricia Barba Avila for this translation. Also, to Camilo Perez Bustillo, Law professor at UNAM and lead Attorney for the 'International Tribunal of Conscience' Pueblos en Movimiento
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Revolt from US War Criminals: letter from a real Nobel Peace Prize Laureate - National Nonpartisan | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/nonpartisan-in-national/revolt-from-us-war-criminals-letter-from-a-real-nobel-peace-prize-laureate#ixzz1Movg70M5
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2) Why Did US Medical Personnel Remove High-Value Detainee Abu Zubaydah's Eye?
Wednesday 18 May 2011
by: Jason Leopold, Truthout
http://www.truthout.org/abu-zubaydah-eye-removed-guantanamo/1305727623
Shortly after he was captured in March 2002 at a safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, following an early morning raid jointly conducted by the CIA, FBI, Pakistani police and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Abu Zubaydah woke up at a black site prison in Thailand and discovered that his left eye had been surgically removed.
Zubaydah, who is wearing an eye patch in a photograph included in his Guantanamo threat assessment file released by WikiLeaks last month, apparently never consented to the medical procedure and to this day has no idea why it was done, according to one of Zubaydah's attorneys.
"I can tell you that Abu Zubaydah has no explanation for the loss of his eye," said Brent Mickum, who has represented Zubaydah since 2007. "He continually wants me to make inquiries to try and determine the circumstances for which he lost his eye, but no one has been forthcoming."
Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee captured in the "war on terror" whom the Bush administration had falsely claimed helped plan the 9/11 attacks and was the "No. 3" person in al-Qaeda, was shot in the leg, groin and stomach with an AK-47 during the March 28, 2002, raid. He allegedly attempted to evade capture by trying to jump from the rooftop of his safe house to the roof of a neighboring house. But the wounds he sustained did not include injuries to his eyes, face or head, according to intelligence officials and photographs of Zubaydah taken as he lay unconscious in a pool of blood, teetering on the brink of death, following the raid.
Retired CIA officer John Kiriakou, who was the head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan and led the team involved in Zubaydah's capture, told Truthout recently that Zubaydah "had both eyes" when the suspected terrorist was escorted from a Pakistani hospital to a Gulf Stream jet a day or so after the raid where a trauma surgeon from Johns Hopkins University the CIA tapped to perform surgery on the suspected terrorist was waiting.
So, what happened?
A US counterterrorism official, responding to a query from Truthout, said, "Zubaydah had a preexisting eye condition when he was captured" and "American medical personnel treated the condition, [but] he ultimately lost the eye."
The revelation stands as the first piece of new medical information related to Zubaydah's case to surface in years.
But Mickum doesn't believe the government is being truthful.
"It is patently false to state Zubaydah lost his eye due to a preexisting condition and that is belied by the evidence that I have from [Zubaydah], which I can't discuss due to the government's protective order," said Mickum. "My client had two good eyes before he was seized. I'm aware of no information from my client, the government or any other source that he had a 'preexisting eye condition.'"
The counterterrorism official, who was speaking on behalf of the US government, did not respond to follow-up questions about what Zubaydah's pre-existing condition was, when the surgery to remove his eye took place, who performed it and where it was done, whether officials at the CIA (who had custody of Zubaydah) signed off on the procedure, whether measures were taken to try and save Zubaydah's eye and whether the CIA or any other intelligence official told Zubaydah why his eye was being removed.
Evisceration or Enucleation?
Dr. Jonathan Macy, who runs the Macy Eye Center in Los Angeles and is an associate clinical professor of ophthalmology at UCLA and the University of Southern California, said the "indications for removal of an eye include trauma, infection, pain, tumor and sympathetic ophthalmia," where a piercing injury to one eye results in inflammation of the uninjured eye.
"If the eye is removed primarily at the time of trauma, the indication is a blind eye that cannot be put back together," Macy said. "An alternative scenario would involve primary repair of the ruptured globe and the subsequent development of infection or pain in a blind eye."
Macy added that "removal of eyes is done with either evisceration or enucleation."
"Evisceration is usually the preferred procedure," Macy said. "With evisceration, the contents of the globe are removed, but the outer wall, or sclera of the eye in retained. A silicone ball implant is inserted within the sclera to create volume. The volume within the orbit allows proper fitting of a prosthesis. When the whole globe must be removed, that is an enucleation."
But Macy said it is unknown which procedure Zubaydah underwent because the counterterrorism official would only say that "he ultimately lost the eye."
A 1998 passport picture of Zubaydah, which for years was the only photograph available, shows him wearing a pair of glasses and what appears to be a shadow or scar over his left eye, possibly the result of a shrapnel wound he suffered a decade prior to his capture.
Macy said in that photograph Zubaydah's "left orbit may have already contained a prosthesis," but Macy did not take a position as to whether that was the case.
"When one eye is normal and the other eye has a prosthesis, they rarely appear symmetrical," he said. Zubaydah's "eyes look slightly different from one another, but not to any marked degree."
Macy also viewed the photograph of Zubaydah lying unconscious that was taken immediately following the raid and said Zubaydah's eyes appears to be "fine."
"I do not see any see any cuts or big lacerations and no cuts around the face or nose," Macy said.
Regarding the counterterrorism official's account about Zubaydah's pre-existing eye condition and the circumstances that led to his left eye being removed, Macy said the scenario is conceivable.
"If the eye had suffered significant direct trauma, there are usually signs of injury to the surrounding skin," Macy said. "The photos don't show collateral damage. Therefore, the official explanation is very plausible."
"Rather than perforation causing infection, an infection of the cornea may lead to perforation of the globe," Macy added. "In this case, as there is a claim of a preexisting condition, [Zubaydah] may have suffered a previous corneal ulcer that thinned and weakened the globe. He may have had a bacterial infection or herpes of the cornea. This is almost always a unilateral process. Such infections may be severe enough to perforate the eye, rendering it blind. The offending agent must be removed, leading to evisceration or enucleation."
Zubaydah's medical records would likely explain the pre-existing eye condition, but those files are classified. The government has refused to share Zubaydah's medical files with his legal team, all of whom have top secret clearance, because it contends that doing so would amount to a violation of the detainee's privacy rights, an assertion that Mickum said is "so ludicrous that it is not even laughable at this stage."
Mickum said Zubaydah now wears a prosthetic eye, but it sometimes irritates him so he takes it out and instead wears the eye patch.
Shrapnel Wound
The only known pre-existing condition that may have affected Zubaydah's eye was the shrapnel wound to his head he suffered from a mortar attack while "on the front lines" in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces a decade prior to his capture, according to the government's classified Detainee Assessment Brief released by WikiLeaks.
That file says Zubaydah "stated he had to relearn fundamentals such as walking, talking and writing; as such, he was therefore considered worthless to al-Qaida."
Last year, the government finally admitted in court documents that Zubaydah's diaries seized during the raid of the safe house "indicate that he suffered cognitive impairment from a shrapnel injury for a number of years."
But when former Justice Department attorney John Yoo prepared one of the August 2002 torture memos, authorizing the CIA to subject Zubaydah to ten brutal torture techniques, which included waterboarding and repeatedly slamming him into a wall, Yoo wrote: "Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from your proposed interrogation methods."
"Through reading his diaries and interviewing him, you [CIA] have found no history of mood disturbance or other psychiatric pathology ... 'thought disorder' ... enduring mood or mental health problems," Yoo wrote.
One of the interrogation memos Yoo drafted for the Department of Defense (DoD) that was used by military personnel and contractors conducting interrogations at Guantanamo and other prison facilities operated by the DoD stated that "gouging" a prisoner's eyes out was arguably legal under the president's executive powers unless "specific intent" to harm the prisoner could be proven.
"Infected Eye"
Details about Zubaydah's eye appear to have first surfaced in a 2008 FBI inspector general's report that contained details of his interrogation conducted by CIA contractors, which former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, identified in the report by the pseudonym "Thomas," said amounted to "borderline torture."
In the report, the then-FBI Inspector General Glenn Fine said Soufan's colleague, FBI special agent Steve Gaudin, identified by the pseudonym "Gibson," disclosed to his fiancé in 2002 or 2003 that he accompanied Soufan to the black site prison in Thailand to "interview a notorious terrorist."
Soufan had interrogated Zubaydah at the CIA's black site prison in Thailand in April 2002, before CIA contractors took over, and had tended to his wounds.
Gaudin's fiancé at the time, identified in the report as "Morehead," "stated the terrorist was missing an eye. [Gaudin] told [the FBI during an interview into the matter] that Zubaydah had an infected eye, sometimes wore an eye patch and eventually got a glass eye," which seems to indicate that Zubaydah's eye may have already been removed by the time both agents arrived at the black site in April 2002.
Truthout tried to reach Gaudin's ex-fiancé to determine if Gaudin disclosed additional information to her about Zubaydah's eye and his medical condition in general, but she did not return emails or voice mail messages left on her cell phone.
Daniel Freedman, who works as director of strategy for policy and analysis at Soufan's consulting firm, The Soufan Group, said Soufan confirmed that Zubaydah had a "preexisting eye condition."
"I checked with [Soufan] and the [counterterrorism official's] account is correct," Freedman told Truthout in an email.
Neither Freedman nor Soufan elaborated.
Kiriakou, who wrote a book about his tenure at the CIA and the capture of Zubaydah, said, "I now recall that when [Zubaydah] first opened his eyes, his left eye was cloudy, like it had a significant cataracts film over it."
"Zubaydah spent most of the time with his eyes closed and I just forgot about it," said Kiriakou, who was surprised to learn Zubaydah's eye had been removed. "It looked like a really bad cataract. I was with him about 48 hours when the plane came. I do not recall the Pakistani doctors paying any attention at all to his eye. They were so focused on his wounds that they didn't pay any attention to anything else."
Zubaydah Blames Interrogators
Zubaydah seems to be under the impression that he lost his eye as a result of abusive treatment.
During his Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing, Zubaydah said the interrogators subjected him to "months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder and my left thigh and my reproductive organs."
The counterterrorism official also said that any suggestion that Zubaydah "lost the eye while being captured or as a result of interrogation would be flat wrong."
But other detainees' claimed there were attempts to gouge out their eyes.
In a recent interview with The Guardian UK, Omar Deghayes said a Guantanamo guard "pushed his fingers inside my eyes" and blinded him in his right eye.
"I didn't realise what was going on until the guy had pushed his fingers inside my eyes and I could feel the coldness of his fingers," Deghayes told The Guardian UK, explaining that the incident took place when he protested a policy that called for detainees to walk around without pants. "Then I realised he was trying to gouge out my eyes."
Shaaker Aamer, the last British detainee who remains imprisoned at Guantanamo, told his attorney he also experienced similar treatment. Aamer said naval military police brutally tortured him for two and a half hours on June 9, 2006, "gouged his eyes" and "held his eyes open and shined a maglite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat," during a brutal two-and-a-half hour beating on June 9, 2006, after he refused to provide his captors with a retina scan and fingerprints.
Mickum said the loss of Zubaydah's eye and the government's rationale that it was the result of a "preexisting eye condition" only raises additional questions about Zubaydah's treatment.
"The only way to rule out that anything nefarious took place is to look at Zubaydah's medical records," Mickum said. "Until that occurs, the jury is way out and the government is not entitled to any credibility. They've lied consistently starting with the fact that they said Zubaydah was never tortured. The only inference one can draw is that he lost his eye as a result of mistreatment by the government and that he received poor medical treatment in the aftermath of his injury."
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3) The Great Switch by the Super Rich
By Robert Reich
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
http://robertreich.org/post/5583016733
Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money. While foreigners own most of our national debt, over 40 percent is owned by Americans - mostly the very wealthy.
This great switch by the super rich - from paying the government taxes to lending the government money - has gone almost unnoticed. But it's critical for understanding the budget predicament we're now in. And for getting out of it.
Over that four decades, tax rates on the very rich have plummeted. Between the end of World War II and 1980, the top tax bracket remained over 70 percent - and even after deductions and credits was well over 50 percent. Now it's 36 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the capital gains rate was 35 percent. Now it's 15 percent.
Not only are rates lower now, but loopholes are bigger. 18,000 households earning more than a half-million dollars last year paid no income taxes at all. In recent years, according to the IRS, the richest 400 Americans have paid only 18 percent of their total incomes in federal income taxes. Billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers are allowed to treat much of their incomes as capital gains (again, at 15 percent).
Meanwhile, more and more of the nation's income and wealth have gone to the top. In the late 1970s, the top 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. Now the top 1 percent's take is more than 20 percent. Over the same period, the top one-tenth of one percent has tripled its share.
Wealth is even more concentrated at the top - more concentrated than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.
So what are America's super rich doing with all this money? They're investing it all over the world, wherever they can get the best return for any given level of risk. Treasury bills - essentially loans to the U.S. government - have proven good and safe investments, particularly during these last few tumultuous years.
You hear a lot of worries about foreigners dumping Treasuries if they lose confidence in the dollar because of our future budget deficits. What you hear less about are these super-rich Americans, who are just as likely to abandon Treasuries if spooked by future budget deficits.
The great irony is if America's super rich financed the U.S. government the way they used to - by paying taxes rather than lending the government money - that long-term budget deficit would be far lower.
This is why a tax increase on the super rich must be part of any budget agreement. Otherwise the great switch by the super rich will make the income and wealth gap far wider.
Worse yet, average working Americans who can least afford it will either lose the services they depend on, or end up with a tax burden they cannot bear.
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4) Obama's Mideast Speech
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20prexy-text.html
Following is a text of President Obama's prepared speech on the Middle East, delivered on Thursday in Washington, as released by the White House:
I want to thank Hillary Clinton, who has traveled so much these last six months that she is approaching a new landmark - one million frequent flyer miles. I count on Hillary every day, and I believe that she will go down as of the finest Secretaries of State in our nation's history.
The State Department is a fitting venue to mark a new chapter in American diplomacy. For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change take place in the Middle East and North Africa. Square by square; town by town; country by country; the people have risen up to demand their basic human rights. Two leaders have stepped aside. More may follow. And though these countries may be a great distance from our shores, we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security; history and faith.
Today, I would like to talk about this change - the forces that are driving it, and how we can respond in a way that advances our values and strengthens our security. Already, we have done much to shift our foreign policy following a decade defined by two costly conflicts. After years of war in Iraq, we have removed 100,000 American troops and ended our combat mission there. In Afghanistan, we have broken the Taliban's momentum, and this July we will begin to bring our troops home and continue transition to Afghan lead. And after years of war against al Qaeda and its affiliates, we have dealt al Qaeda a huge blow by killing its leader - Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden was no martyr. He was a mass murderer who offered a message of hate - an insistence that Muslims had to take up arms against the West, and that violence against men, women and children was the only path to change. He rejected democracy and individual rights for Muslims in favor of violent extremism; his agenda focused on what he could destroy - not what he could build.
Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some adherents. But even before his death, al Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance, as the overwhelming majority of people saw that the slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries for a better life. By the time we found bin Laden, al Qaeda's agenda had come to be seen by the vast majority of the region as a dead end, and the people of the Middle East and North Africa had taken their future into their own hands.
That story of self-determination began six months ago in Tunisia. On December 17, a young vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi was devastated when a police officer confiscated his cart. This was not unique. It is the same kind of humiliation that takes place every day in many parts of the world - the relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity. Only this time, something different happened. After local officials refused to hear his complaint, this young man who had never been particularly active in politics went to the headquarters of the provincial government, doused himself in fuel, and lit himself on fire.
Sometimes, in the course of history, the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has built up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia, as that vendor's act of desperation tapped into the frustration felt throughout the country. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, then thousands. And in the face of batons and sometimes bullets, they refused to go home - day after day, week after week, until a dictator of more than two decades finally left power.
The story of this Revolution, and the ones that followed, should not have come as a surprise. The nations of the Middle East and North Africa won their independence long ago, but in too many places their people did not. In too many countries, power has been concentrated in the hands of the few. In too many countries, a citizen like that young vendor had nowhere to turn - no honest judiciary to hear his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could choose his leader.
This lack of self determination - the chance to make of your life what you will - has applied to the region's economy as well. Yes, some nations are blessed with wealth in oil and gas, and that has led to pockets of prosperity. But in a global economy based on knowledge and innovation, no development strategy can be based solely upon what comes out of the ground. Nor can people reach their potential when you cannot start a business without paying a bribe.
In the face of these challenges, too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people's grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills, a half century after the end of colonialism. Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression. Divisions of tribe, ethnicity and religious sect were manipulated as a means of holding on to power, or taking it away from somebody else.
But the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and diversion won't work anymore. Satellite television and the Internet provide a window into the wider world - a world of astonishing progress in places like India, Indonesia and Brazil. Cell phones and social networks allow young people to connect and organize like never before. A new generation has emerged. And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied.
In Cairo, we heard the voice of the young mother who said, "It's like I can finally breathe fresh air for the first time."
In Sanaa, we heard the students who chanted, "The night must come to an end."
In Benghazi, we heard the engineer who said, "Our words are free now. It's a feeling you can't explain."
In Damascus, we heard the young man who said, "After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity."
Those shouts of human dignity are being heard across the region. And through the moral force of non-violence, the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades.
Of course, change of this magnitude does not come easily. In our day and age - a time of 24 hour news cycles, and constant communication - people expect the transformation of the region to be resolved in a matter of weeks. But it will be years before this story reaches its end. Along the way, there will be good days, and bad days. In some places, change will be swift; in others, gradual. And as we have seen, calls for change may give way to fierce contests for power.
The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds. For decades, the United States has pursued a set of core interests in the region: countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel's security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.
We will continue to do these things, with the firm belief that America's interests are not hostile to peoples' hopes; they are essential to them. We believe that no one benefits from a nuclear arms race in the region, or al Qaeda's brutal attacks. People everywhere would see their economies crippled by a cut off in energy supplies. As we did in the Gulf War, we will not tolerate aggression across borders, and we will keep our commitments to friends and partners.
Yet we must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these interests will not fill an empty stomach or allow someone to speak their mind. Moreover, failure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people will only feed the suspicion that has festered for years that the United States pursues our own interests at their expense. Given that this mistrust runs both ways - as Americans have been seared by hostage taking, violent rhetoric, and terrorist attacks that have killed thousands of our citizens - a failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and Muslim communities.
That's why, two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. I believed then - and I believe now - that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable. Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.
So we face an historic opportunity. We have embraced the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator. There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity. Yes, there will be perils that accompany this moment of promise. But after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.
As we do, we must proceed with a sense of humility. It is not America that put people into the streets of Tunis and Cairo - it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and must determine their outcome. Not every country will follow our particular form of representative democracy, and there will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region. But we can - and will - speak out for a set of core principles - principles that have guided our response to the events over the past six months:
The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region.
We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders - whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran.
And finally, we support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.
Our support for these principles is not a secondary interest- today I am making it clear that it is a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions, and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.
Let me be specific. First, it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.
That effort begins in Egypt and Tunisia, where the stakes are high -as Tunisia was at the vanguard of this democratic wave, and Egypt is both a longstanding partner and the Arab World's largest nation. Both nations can set a strong example through free and fair elections; a vibrant civil society; accountable and effective democratic institutions; and responsible regional leadership. But our support must also extend to nations where transitions have yet to take place.
Unfortunately, in too many countries, calls for change have been answered by violence. The most extreme example is Libya, where Moammar Gaddafi launched a war against his people, promising to hunt them down like rats. As I said when the United States joined an international coalition to intervene, we cannot prevent every injustice perpetrated by a regime against its people, and we have learned from our experience in Iraq just how costly and difficult it is to impose regime change by force - no matter how well-intended it may be.
But in Libya, we saw the prospect of imminent massacre, had a mandate for action, and heard the Libyan people's call for help. Had we not acted along with our NATO allies and regional coalition partners, thousands would have been killed. The message would have been clear: keep power by killing as many people as it takes. Now, time is working against Gaddafi. He does not have control over his country. The opposition has organized a legitimate and credible Interim Council. And when Gaddafi inevitably leaves or is forced from power, decades of provocation will come to an end, and the transition to a democratic Libya can proceed.
While Libya has faced violence on the greatest scale, it is not the only place where leaders have turned to repression to remain in power. Most recently, the Syrian regime has chosen the path of murder and the mass arrests of its citizens. The United States has condemned these actions, and working with the international community we have stepped up our sanctions on the Syrian regime - including sanctions announced yesterday on President Assad and those around him.
The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition, or get out of the way. The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests; release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests; allow human rights monitors to have access to cities like Dara'a; and start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition. Otherwise, President Assad and his regime will continue to be challenged from within and isolated abroad.
Thus far, Syria has followed its Iranian ally, seeking assistance from Tehran in the tactics of suppression. This speaks to the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime, which says it stand for the rights of protesters abroad, yet suppresses its people at home. Let us remember that the first peaceful protests were in the streets of Tehran, where the government brutalized women and men, and threw innocent people into jail. We still hear the chants echo from the rooftops of Tehran. The image of a young woman dying in the streets is still seared in our memory. And we will continue to insist that the Iranian people deserve their universal rights, and a government that does not smother their aspirations.
Our opposition to Iran's intolerance - as well as its illicit nuclear program, and its sponsorship of terror - is well known. But if America is to be credible, we must acknowledge that our friends in the region have not all reacted to the demands for change consistent with the principles that I have outlined today. That is true in Yemen, where President Saleh needs to follow through on his commitment to transfer power. And that is true, today, in Bahrain.
Bahrain is a long-standing partner, and we are committed to its security. We recognize that Iran has tried to take advantage of the turmoil there, and that the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law. Nevertheless, we have insisted publically and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain's citizens, and will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can't have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail. The government must create the conditions for dialogue, and the opposition must participate to forge a just future for all Bahrainis.
Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process, even as they have taken full responsibility for their own security. Like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. As they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner.
So in the months ahead, America must use all our influence to encourage reform in the region. Even as we acknowledge that each country is different, we will need to speak honestly about the principles that we believe in, with friend and foe alike. Our message is simple: if you take the risks that reform entails, you will have the full support of the United States. We must also build on our efforts to broaden our engagement beyond elites, so that we reach the people who will shape the future - particularly young people.
We will continue to make good on the commitments that I made in Cairo - to build networks of entrepreneurs, and expand exchanges in education; to foster cooperation in science and technology, and combat disease. Across the region, we intend to provide assistance to civil society, including those that may not be officially sanctioned, and who speak uncomfortable truths. And we will use the technology to connect with - and listen to - the voices of the people.
In fact, real reform will not come at the ballot box alone. Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information. We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard - whether it's a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.
Such open discourse is important even if what is said does not square with our worldview. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard, even if we disagree with them. We look forward to working with all who embrace genuine and inclusive democracy. What we will oppose is an attempt by any group to restrict the rights of others, and to hold power through coercion - not consent. Because democracy depends not only on elections, but also strong and accountable institutions, and respect for the rights of minorities.
Such tolerance is particularly important when it comes to religion. In Tahrir Square, we heard Egyptians from all walks of life chant, "Muslims, Christians, we are one." America will work to see that this spirit prevails - that all faiths are respected, and that bridges are built among them. In a region that was the birthplace of three world religions, intolerance can lead only to suffering and stagnation. And for this season of change to succeed, Coptic Christians must have the right to worship freely in Cairo, just as Shia must never have their mosques destroyed in Bahrain.
What is true for religious minorities is also true when it comes to the rights of women. History shows that countries are more prosperous and peaceful when women are empowered. That is why we will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men - by focusing assistance on child and maternal health; by helping women to teach, or start a business; by standing up for the right of women to have their voices heard, and to run for office. For the region will never reach its potential when more than half its population is prevented from achieving their potential.
Even as we promote political reform and human rights in the region, our efforts cannot stop there. So the second way that we must support positive change in the region is through our efforts to advance economic development for nations that transition to democracy.
After all, politics alone has not put protesters into the streets. The tipping point for so many people is the more constant concern of putting food on the table and providing for a family. Too many in the region wake up with few expectations other than making it through the day, and perhaps the hope that their luck will change. Throughout the region, many young people have a solid education, but closed economies leave them unable to find a job. Entrepreneurs are brimming with ideas, but corruption leaves them unable to profit from them.
The greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people. In the recent protests, we see that talent on display, as people harness technology to move the world. It's no coincidence that one of the leaders of Tahrir Square was an executive for Google. That energy now needs to be channeled, in country after country, so that economic growth can solidify the accomplishments of the street. Just as democratic revolutions can be triggered by a lack of individual opportunity, successful democratic transitions depend upon an expansion of growth and broad-based prosperity.
Drawing from what we've learned around the world, we think it's important to focus on trade, not just aid; and investment, not just assistance. The goal must be a model in which protectionism gives way to openness; the reigns of commerce pass from the few to the many, and the economy generates jobs for the young. America's support for democracy will therefore be based on ensuring financial stability; promoting reform; and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy - starting with Tunisia and Egypt.
First, we have asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to present a plan at next week's G-8 summit for what needs to be done to stabilize and modernize the economies of Tunisia and Egypt. Together, we must help them recover from the disruption of their democratic upheaval, and support the governments that will be elected later this year. And we are urging other countries to help Egypt and Tunisia meet its near-term financial needs.
Second, we do not want a democratic Egypt to be saddled by the debts of its past. So we will relieve a democratic Egypt of up to $1 billion in debt, and work with our Egyptian partners to invest these resources to foster growth and entrepreneurship. We will help Egypt regain access to markets by guaranteeing $1 billion in borrowing that is needed to finance infrastructure and job creation. And we will help newly democratic governments recover assets that were stolen.
Third, we are working with Congress to create Enterprise Funds to invest in Tunisia and Egypt. These will be modeled on funds that supported the transitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. OPIC will soon launch a $2 billion facility to support private investment across the region. And we will work with allies to refocus the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development so that it provides the same support for democratic transitions and economic modernization in the Middle East and North Africa as it has in Europe.
Fourth, the United States will launch a comprehensive Trade and Investment Partnership Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa. If you take out oil exports, this region of over 400 million people exports roughly the same amount as Switzerland. So we will work with the EU to facilitate more trade within the region, build on existing agreements to promote integration with U.S. and European markets, and open the door for those countries who adopt high standards of reform and trade liberalization to construct a regional trade arrangement. Just as EU membership served as an incentive for reform in Europe, so should the vision of a modern and prosperous economy create a powerful force for reform in the Middle East and North Africa.
Prosperity also requires tearing down walls that stand in the way of progress - the corruption of elites who steal from their people; the red tape that stops an idea from becoming a business; the patronage that distributes wealth based on tribe or sect. We will help governments meet international obligations, and invest efforts anti-corruption; by working with parliamentarians who are developing reforms, and activists who use technology to hold government accountable.
Let me conclude by talking about another cornerstone of our approach to the region, and that relates to the pursuit of peace.
For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them. For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own. Moreover, this conflict has come with a larger cost the Middle East, as it impedes partnerships that could bring greater security, prosperity, and empowerment to ordinary people.
My Administration has worked with the parties and the international community for over two years to end this conflict, yet expectations have gone unmet. Israeli settlement activity continues. Palestinians have walked away from talks. The world looks at a conflict that has grinded on for decades, and sees a stalemate. Indeed, there are those who argue that with all the change and uncertainty in the region, it is simply not possible to move forward.
I disagree. At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever.
For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel's security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums. But precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.
The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River. Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself. A region undergoing profound change will lead to populism in which millions of people - not just a few leaders - must believe peace is possible. The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.
Ultimately, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them, nor can endless delay make the problem go away. But what America and the international community can do is state frankly what everyone knows: a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples. Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people; each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.
So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.
As for security, every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself - by itself - against any threat. Provisions must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security. The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state. The duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated.
These principles provide a foundation for negotiations. Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basic security concerns will be met. I know that these steps alone will not resolve this conflict. Two wrenching and emotional issues remain: the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians.
Recognizing that negotiations need to begin with the issues of territory and security does not mean that it will be easy to come back to the table. In particular, the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel - how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist. In the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question. Meanwhile, the United States, our Quartet partners, and the Arab states will need to continue every effort to get beyond the current impasse.
I recognize how hard this will be. Suspicion and hostility has been passed on for generations, and at times it has hardened. But I'm convinced that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians would rather look to the future than be trapped in the past. We see that spirit in the Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas, who helped start an organization that brought together Israelis and Palestinians who had lost loved ones. He said, "I gradually realized that the only hope for progress was to recognize the face of the conflict." And we see it in the actions of a Palestinian who lost three daughters to Israeli shells in Gaza. "I have the right to feel angry," he said. "So many people were expecting me to hate. My answer to them is I shall not hate...Let us hope," he said, "for tomorrow."
That is the choice that must be made - not simply in this conflict, but across the entire region - a choice between hate and hope; between the shackles of the past, and the promise of the future. It's a choice that must be made by leaders and by people, and it's a choice that will define the future of a region that served as the cradle of civilization and a crucible of strife.
For all the challenges that lie ahead, we see many reasons to be hopeful. In Egypt, we see it in the efforts of young people who led protests. In Syria, we see it in the courage of those who brave bullets while chanting, 'peaceful,' 'peaceful.' In Benghazi, a city threatened with destruction, we see it in the courthouse square where people gather to celebrate the freedoms that they had never known. Across the region, those rights that we take for granted are being claimed with joy by those who are prying lose the grip of an iron fist.
For the American people, the scenes of upheaval in the region may be unsettling, but the forces driving it are not unfamiliar. Our own nation was founded through a rebellion against an empire. Our people fought a painful civil war that extended freedom and dignity to those who were enslaved. And I would not be standing here today unless past generations turned to the moral force of non-violence as a way to perfect our union - organizing, marching, and protesting peacefully together to make real those words that declared our nation: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal."
Those words must guide our response to the change that is transforming the Middle East and North Africa - words which tell us that repression will fail, that tyrants will fall, and that every man and woman is endowed with certain inalienable rights. It will not be easy. There is no straight line to progress, and hardship always accompanies a season of hope. But the United States of America was founded on the belief that people should govern themselves. Now, we cannot hesitate to stand squarely on the side of those who are reaching for their rights, knowing that their success will bring about a world that is more peaceful, more stable, and more just.
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5) Mine Owner's Negligence Led to Blast, Study Finds
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20mine.html?hp
WASHINGTON - In the first comprehensive state report on the 2010 coal mine disaster in West Virginia, an independent team of investigators put the blame squarely on the owner of the mine, Massey Energy, concluding that it had "made life difficult" for miners who tried to address safety and built "a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable."
The report, issued Thursday by an independent team appointed by the former West Virginia governor, Joe Manchin III, and led by the former federal mine safety chief Davitt McAteer, echoed preliminary findings by federal officials that the blast could have been prevented if Massey had observed minimal safety standards.
But it was more pointed in naming Massey as the culprit, using blunt language to describe what it said was a pattern of negligence that ultimately led to the deaths of 29 miners on April 5, 2010, in what was the worst American mining disaster in 40 years.
"The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris," the report concluded. "A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking."
In a statement on Thursday, Massey Energy's general counsel, Shane Harvey, disputed some of the report's findings. Company executives invoked their Fifth Amendment rights, and refused to be interviewed by investigators.
The 120-page report chronicles the explosion and its aftermath, pieced together through months of interviews, documents, data and correspondence.
Workers at the mine had long known the conditions were risky, and the report opens with a passage about the fear that one miner felt the day before he died in the disaster.
"Man, they got us up there mining, and we ain't got no air," the miner, Gary Wayne Quarles, told his friend Michael Ferrell, who talked to investigators. "I'm just scared to death to go to work because I'm just scared to death something bad is going to happen."
The report goes on to say that a "perfect storm" was brewing inside the mine, combining poor ventilation, equipment whose safety mechanisms were not functioning and coal dust, which, contrary to industry rules, had been allowed to accumulate, "behaving like a line of gunpowder carrying the blast forward in multiple directions."
Investigators rejected the conclusion offered by Massey officials - that the explosion occurred when a giant burst of methane bubbled from the ground, a natural event that would have been impossible to predict or control.
The damage inside the mine was not consistent with that theory, investigators said. Among the evidence were the bodies of the miners in the area of the main explosion: only two had methane in their lungs.
"If, as Massey investigators maintained, one million cubic feet of methane had been suddenly released, the result would have been a five million cubic foot flame going across the face and throughout the tailgate entries in both directions," the report said, referring to areas of the mine.
It added, "Evidence found during the investigation does not suggest a force of this magnitude."
The deadliness, the report stated, was in fact because of the combustible coal dust that had been allowed to accumulate. The dust, which is explosive, carried the explosion into the far reaches of the mine, making it far deadlier for the miners than it otherwise would have been.
Mr. Harvey disputed that finding.
"We disagree with Davitt's conclusion that this was an explosion fueled by coal dust," he said. "Again, we believe that the explosion was caused by a massive inundation of methane-rich natural gas."
A mine the size of Upper Big Branch should have a team of several miners reducing coal dust, several times a day, the report said. Instead there was one miner, Nathaniel Jeter, who was often diverted to construction projects. What is more, the machine that was designed to dilute coal dust was often clogged, and miners were reduced to carrying rock dust, the diluting substance, into the mine by hand.
Mr. Jeter complained to senior management that the machine, known as a track duster, was broken. The response, he said, spoke volumes about the attitude toward safety: "Track duster? I didn't know we had a track duster."
Another area of Massey negligence, the report noted, was the mine's jury-rigged ventilation system, which received dozens of citations in the year leading up to the blast. Joe Mackowiak, a ventilation supervisor for the Mining, Safety and Health Administration, said the mine used a "Band-Aid approach" to ventilation, the report said, changing the bare minimum in order to pass inspections.
The lack of air in the nearly three miles of tunnels combined with coal dust and fumes turned the air hot, tormenting miners, the report found. One miner, Dean Jones, would come home so exhausted, that "I'd look over at the dinner table and he would be asleep," the report quoted his wife as saying.
"It literally felt like you were melting," said Michael Ellison, a roof bolter who called in sick the day of the accident. By an hour and a half into the shift, he said, "all of us looked like we had been standing out in a rainstorm, just soaking wet."
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6) Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html?hp
The individual stories are familiar. The chemistry major tending bar. The classics major answering phones. The Italian studies major sweeping aisles at Wal-Mart.
Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates - the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession - the outlook is rather bleak.
Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What's more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is "worth it" after all.
"I have friends with the same degree as me, from a worse school, but because of who they knew or when they happened to graduate, they're in much better jobs," said Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. "It's more about luck than anything else."
The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.
Of course, these are the lucky ones - the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007. (Some have gone for further education or opted out of the labor force, while many are still pounding the pavement.)
Even these figures understate the damage done to these workers' careers. Many have taken jobs that do not make use of their skills; about only half of recent college graduates said that their first job required a college degree.
The choice of major is quite important. Certain majors had better luck finding a job that required a college degree, according to an analysis by Andrew M. Sum, an economist at Northeastern University, of 2009 Labor Department data for college graduates under 25.
Young graduates who majored in education and teaching or engineering were most likely to find a job requiring a college degree, while area studies majors - those who majored in Latin American studies, for example - and humanities majors were least likely to do so. Among all recent education graduates, 71.1 percent were in jobs that required a college degree; of all area studies majors, the share was 44.7 percent.
An analysis by The New York Times of Labor Department data about college graduates aged 25 to 34 found that the number of these workers employed in food service, restaurants and bars had risen 17 percent in 2009 from 2008, though the sample size was small. There were similar or bigger employment increases at gas stations and fuel dealers, food and alcohol stores, and taxi and limousine services.
This may be a waste of a college degree, but it also displaces the less-educated workers who would normally take these jobs.
"The less schooling you had, the more likely you were to get thrown out of the labor market altogether," said Mr. Sum, noting that unemployment rates for high school graduates and dropouts are always much higher than those for college graduates. "There is complete displacement all the way down."
Meanwhile, college graduates are having trouble paying off student loan debt, which is at a median of $20,000 for graduates of classes 2006 to 2010.
Mr. Bishop, the Pittsburgh graduate, said he is "terrified" of the effects his starter jobs might have on his ultimate career, which he hopes to be in publishing or writing. "It looks bad to have all these short-term jobs on your résumé, but you do have to pay the bills," he said, adding that right now his student loan debt was over $70,000.
Many graduates will probably take on more student debt. More than 60 percent of those who graduated in the last five years say they will need more formal education to be successful.
"I knew there weren't going to be many job prospects for me until I got my Ph.D.," said Travis Patterson, 23, a 2010 graduate of California State University, Fullerton. He is working as an administrative assistant for a property management company and studying psychology in graduate school. While it may not have anything to do with his degree, "it helps pay my rent and tuition, and that's what matters."
Going back to school does offer the possibility of joining the labor force when the economy is better. Unemployment rates are also generally lower for people with advanced schooling.
Those who do not go back to school may be on a lower-paying trajectory for years. They start at a lower salary, and they may begin their careers with employers that pay less on average or have less room for growth.
"Their salary history follows them wherever they go," said Carl Van Horn, a labor economist at Rutgers. "It's like a parrot on your shoulder, traveling with you everywhere, constantly telling you 'No, you can't make that much money.' "
And while young people who have weathered a tough job market may shy from risks during their careers, the best way to nullify an unlucky graduation date is to change jobs when you can, says Till von Wachter, an economist at Columbia.
"If you don't move within five years of graduating, for some reason you get stuck where you are. That's just an empirical finding," Mr. von Wachter said. "By your late 20s, you're often married, and have a family and have a house. You stop the active pattern of moving jobs."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 19, 2011
An earlier version of this article included a photo caption that erroneously said the University of Michigan commencement was held in May.
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7) Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19prisons.html?ref=us
PHOENIX - The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons - even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.
The state's experience has particular relevance now, as many politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its private-inmate population.
The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates nationwide has leveled off. But hopes of big taxpayer benefits might end in disappointment, independent experts say.
"There's a perception that the private sector is always going to do it more efficiently and less costly," said Russ Van Vleet, a former co-director of the University of Utah Criminal Justice Center. "But there really isn't much out there that says that's correct."
Such has been the case lately in Arizona. Despite a state law stipulating that private prisons must create "cost savings," the state's own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons.
The research, by the Arizona Department of Corrections, also reveals a murky aspect of private prisons that helps them appear less expensive: They often house only relatively healthy inmates.
"It's cherry-picking," said State Representative Chad Campbell, leader of the House Democrats. "They leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers and take the easy prisoners."
In the 1980s, soaring violent crime, tougher sentencing and overcrowding led lawmakers to use private prisons to expand. Then, as now, privatization advocates argued that corporations were more efficient. Over time, most states signed contracts, one of the largest transfers of state functions to private industry.
Nationally, the number of state inmates in private prisons grew by a third over the past decade to more than 90,000, but it has stagnated, and some states have reduced total prison populations - shifting nonviolent offenders to treatment programs while bolstering probation. Now, Ohio lawmakers want to privatize prisons with 6,000 inmates, and Florida will transfer institutions with 15,000 inmates to private management. The Arizona plan would add 5,000 private prison beds.
Matthew Benson, spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, did not dispute the state research. But he said officials had a "pretty wide lens" to interpret the cost-savings mandate, like taking into account the ability of private companies to recoup hundreds of millions in construction costs over the life of contracts.
"It is a significant advantage to have a private firm be able to come in and front the costs," he said.
Privatization advocates play down the data. Leonard Gilroy, director of government reform for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research organization, questioned whether all costs were included and said the figures were too narrowly drawn, particularly on medium-security prisons, to prompt conclusions. "It is looking at a limited slice," Mr. Gilroy said.
Competing studies - some financed by the prison industry - have argued over claims of savings. But when a University of Utah team including Mr. Van Vleet reviewed years of research, it concluded in 2007 that "cost savings from privatizing prisons are not guaranteed and appear minimal."
Steve Owen, spokesman for the largest operator, Corrections Corporation of America, said: "There is a mixed bag of research out there. It's not as black and white and cut and dried as we would like."
A number of states mandate that contracts save money. But Arizona is one of the few - if not only - places to measure the outcome so rigorously.
While private prisons collect a daily rate per inmate, some expenses disproportionately borne by states are not counted. The most significant are terms limiting sicker inmates.
Five of eight private prisons serving Arizona did not accept inmates with "limited physical capacity and stamina" or severe physical illness or chronic conditions, according to the state's analysis, issued last month. None took inmates with "high need" mental health conditions. Some inmates who became sick were "returned to state prisons due to an increase of their medical scores that exceeds contractual exclusions."
"Unlike the private contractors," the analysis said, the state "is required to provide medical and mental health services to inmates regardless of the severity of their condition." Medical costs averaged up to $2.44 a day more for state inmates, a third higher than private prisons.
That gap can be wider. In Florida, officials found that two private prisons spent only about half as much on health care per inmate as comparable state prisons, a difference of $9 million over two years. Florida officials say that the new plan will better balance costs, and that private prisons comply with a 7-percent-savings law. But skeptics like State Senator Mike Fasano, a Republican, fear cherry-picking may be the only way they can do that.
In Arizona, minimum-security state inmates cost 2.6 percent - or $1.39 per day - more than those in private prisons, before accounting for extra costs borne by the state. But after eliminating these, state prisoners cost only three cents more per day, the analysis found.
And state medium-security inmates cost 4.4 percent less before adjustments and 8.7 percent less afterward. That is more than $2 million annually at one prison, or $1,679 per inmate. Using 2009 corrections data, state auditors calculated the difference at up to $2,834 per inmate.
Charles L. Ryan, the Arizona corrections director, said private prisons "often negotiate restrictions on the type of inmates" and limit "inmates with medical conditions to a specific cost level." The new contracts seek to reduce this practice.
Mr. Owen did not dispute the Arizona research, but said the industry saved money. He pointed to a study - partly financed by the industry - that found states with private prisons had lower growth in public prison costs.
"We do provide value to our government partners," he said.
However, Mr. Owen acknowledged that most contracts had cost caps, and that terms barring the sickest prisoners were not unusual. He said his company never voiced a preference for such terms. "The myth is that we are somehow hand-selecting" inmates.
According to Arizona officials, the data account for costs as varied as guards' pensions and inmate food. They track past results publicized in the state, but those have not prompted any privatization rethinking: contracts on the state's expansion could be awarded by the summer.
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8) U.S. Was Warned on Vents Before Failure at Japan's Plant
By MATTHEW L. WALD
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/science/earth/19nuke.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem.
Anthony Sarrack, one of the two engineers, notified staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the design of venting systems was seriously flawed at his reactor and others in the United States similar to the ones in Japan. He later left the industry in frustration because managers and regulators did not agree.
Mr. Sarrack said that the vents, which are supposed to relieve pressure at crippled plants and keep containment structures intact, should not be dependent on electric power and workers' ability to operate critical valves because power might be cut in an emergency and workers might be incapacitated. Part of the reason the venting system in Japan failed - allowing disastrous hydrogen explosions - is that power to the plant was knocked out by a tsunami that followed a major earthquake.
Copies of Mr. Sarrack's correspondence with the N.R.C. were supplied by David Lochbaum, a boiling-water-reactor expert who works for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Mass., that is generally hostile to nuclear power.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot claim ignorance about this one," he said.
Plant managers and nuclear regulators are warned about far more problems each year than actually occur, but in this case, the cautionary note was eerily prescient and could rekindle debate over whether automatic venting systems are safer alternatives.
While staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considered Mr. Sarrack's warning, they decided against changes.
On Wednesday, a commission spokesman, Scott Burnell, said the commission still believed that existing venting systems were a "reasonable and appropriate means" of dealing with a rise in pressure after an accident. But he has also said that the commission's staff members are studying the events at Fukushima Daiichi for "lessons learned," and that they had identified means of "reducing risk even further" by making the vents "more passive." He said the staff had not yet chosen a way to do that.
One way would be using rupture disks, relatively thin sheets of steel that break and allow venting without any operator command or moving parts when the pressure reaches a specified level. But many in the industry argue that using such a disk requires that there be a way to close the vent once pressure is relieved in order to hold in radioactive materials.
The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was the first time the venting systems were put to the test.
Pressure began to build in three reactors soon after the tsunami hit because the plant's cooling system stopped operating when the electricity went off. Without an adequate flow of cool water in the reactors, the fuel rods began to overheat and produce explosive hydrogen gas.
Managers were worried about venting because it would release significant amounts of radioactive materials, but when they finally gave the order to do so - after being told to by the government - the workers found the venting system inoperable. With the power out, their commands from the control room did not open the valves. They then discovered that that radiation levels at one reactor were so high they could not attempt to manually open the valve. And at two other reactors, their attempts to open the valves failed, possibly because the equipment itself was damaged in the earthquake.
In Units No. 1 and No. 3, the gas leaked from primary containment structures and fueled explosions that ripped apart the reactor buildings, spewing radioactive material into the air. Unit No. 2 suffered a hydrogen explosion inside the primary containment.
Mr. Sarrack, reached by telephone, said that his proposal was opposed by the operations department officials at his company, who wanted direct control over the reactor rather than employing automatic systems. He was working at the time at the nuclear plant in Monticello, on the Mississippi River near Minneapolis.
He said he continued to believe that a passive system, like one using a rupture disk, would work better and could be set to rupture at a pressure just slightly less than the pressure at which the containment would rupture. In those cases, he said, venting is always preferable; the releases of radioactive materials during deliberate venting are expected to be lower than those resulting from explosions.
But the consensus in the nuclear industry supports the existing systems. Douglas E. True, the president of ERIN Engineering and Research of Walnut Creek, Calif., said: "In some cases you can argue it might be better to have a rupture disk. In other cases, it would certainly be better to have a manually controlled system." For example, he said, the disk is backed up by a valve that is normally in the open position. If the disk ruptured and there was no electricity, it might be impossible to close the valve, and the venting would be permanent.
The Fukushima plant was designed by General Electric, and the venting systems that failed in Japan exists at similar plants designed by G.E. in the United States.
In a statement, James Klapproth, the nuclear energy chief consulting engineer at GE Hitachi, said that his company believed that the venting system would have operated in an accident within the "design basis" of the plant," but that the Fukushima disaster was worse than what the plant was designed for. He said that the industry in this country had considered passive systems "at one time."
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9) Afghan Detainee Is Found Dead at Guantánamo
By REUTERS
May 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19guantanamo.html?ref=us
MIAMI (Reuters) - An Afghan prisoner has died at the Guantánamo detention center in an apparent suicide, the United States military said Wednesday.
The prisoner, identified as Inayatullah, 37, who was accused of being a member of Al Qaeda, died early Wednesday, the military's Southern Command said in a statement.
He was found dead by guards conducting routine checks at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military said.
"The guards found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing," the statement said. "After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician."
Inayatullah is the eighth prisoner to have died at the detention center since the United States began sending foreign captives with suspected links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban to the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay in January 2002.
Five others died apparently of suicides, and two died of natural causes.
The prison camp has held 779 foreign captives since the United States invaded Afghanistan to oust Al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It now holds 171.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service will conduct an autopsy and Inayatullah's body will be prepared for repatriation, the military said.
Inayatullah was taken to Guantánamo in September 2007, according to the military.
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10) Reality Check: The Profound Hypocrisy of
President Obama's Speech on the Middle East
By Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
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
President Obama took to the airwaves today to discuss the revolts and conflicts spreading throughout the Middle East. The U.S. dominance over this strategic and oil-rich region has been the pivot of U.S. foreign policy for decades. Utilizing a system of proxy and client regimes, in addition to its own vast military forces in the region, the United States has supported a network of brutal dictatorships and the Israeli regime for decades.
Now that system of imperial control has been shaken by the popular risings that started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt and elsewhere, the Obama administration spoke today at the U.S. State Department as part of an effort to reassert U.S. leadership over the swiftly changing region.
Using the rhetoric of democracy and freedom to mask the responsibility of U.S. imperialism in the enduring oppression and suffering of the peoples of the Middle East, President Obama's speech was a demonstration of profound hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy: President Obama said that the "greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people."
Reality: The U.S. strategy is based on control of the Middle East's most coveted resource: two-thirds of the world's known oil supply. The U.S. government has given billions of dollars and armed the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East for decades, a practice fully continued by the Obama administration. The U.S. government never cut funds to the Mubarak dictatorship even while the regime murdered more than 850 peaceful protestors. More than 5,000 civilians in Egypt have been convicted and jailed since Jan. 25 following trials conducted by the Egyptian military. The United States continues to provide massive funding to Egypt's military in spite of the ongoing repression against the people.
Hypocrisy: President Obama stated, "it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy."
Reality: The only governments in the Middle East that have been targeted for invasion, economic sanctions and overthrow by the U.S. government are those that pursue policies that are independent of U.S. economic, political and military control. The U.S. never imposed economic sanctions on the Mubarak dictatorship and only came out publicly against Mubarak when the tide of revolution had become irresistible. Likewise, the U.S. supports the brutal Saudi monarchy.
Hypocrisy: President Obama championed for the people of the Middle East the "basic rights to speak your mind and access information," stating, "the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens."
Reality: The Obama administration has gone out of its way to punish those who would inform the public by shedding light on the activities of the U.S. government. Bradley Manning remains jailed with the threat of life in prison, having been held in brutal conditions that caused the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to seek an investigation. The Justice Department is working at full speed to find a way to prosecute Julian Assange of Wikileaks for disclosing government documents to the public, many of which expose the U.S. role in the Middle East. The Obama administration has undertaken a major campaign more aggressive than any prior administration to criminally prosecute whistleblowers who expose the truth of illegal government actions.
Hypocrisy: President Obama stated: "The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region."
Reality: The United States under Obama is involved in the invasion, occupation, and bombings of four predominantly Muslim countries simultaneously: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan. Moreover, the head of state who has been the single biggest violator of the basic human rights of Arab people and the perpetuator of violence in the region is George W. Bush, whose illegal invasion of Iraq cost the lives of more than one million people. The March 19, 2003, invasion was a war of aggression against a country that did not pose any threat to the United States or the people of the United States. The invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the deaths of more Arab people than have been killed by all the dictatorships in the region combined. President Obama today called Osama Bin Laden a mass murderer. September 11, 2001, was indeed a great crime that took the lives of thousands of innocent working people, but measured in order of the magnitude of victims killed, Bush's crime of mass murder in Iraq is unmatched. George W. Bush has not been arrested for the mass killings of Iraqi people but is treated honorifically by the Obama administration.
Hypocrisy: In an effort to appease Arab public opinion, President Obama's speech made it appear as if the United States was insisting that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. Obama stated, "precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."
Reality: Israel's war against the Palestinian people would be impossible without U.S. support, which continues unabated. The single biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid is the state of Israel, which uses the $3 billion it receives annually to lay siege to the people of Gaza, continue the illegal occupation of the West Bank and prevent the return of the families of the 750,000 Palestinians who were evicted from their homes and villages in historic Palestine in 1948. The United Nations in various resolutions has condemned the 1967 Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria's Golan Heights. Far from imposing economic sanctions, President Obama has promised Israel a minimum of $30 billion in military aid over the next 10 years, thus functioning as a partner in the occupation. Obama's speech also made it clear that the United States would support Israel retaining vast swaths of the West Bank. This is what he meant by referring to "land swaps." In the coming days, Obama will have private meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and will be a featured speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. He will undoubtedly reinforce the strong U.S.-Israeli military ties and U.S. financial support.
Hypocrisy: President Obama stated: "We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders - whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran.... [W]e will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men."
Reality: While the U.S. government - along with Britain and France (the former colonizers of the Middle East and Africa) - are bombing Libya with the latest high-tech bombs and missiles in the name of "protecting civilians" and "promoting democracy," the Obama administration offered the most tepid pro-forma criticism of the Bahrain monarchy as it and the Saudi monarchy kill and imprison peaceful protestors in Bahrain. No sanctions have even been hinted at for Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. The Saudi monarchy is the ultimate negation of democracy, depriving women of all rights, depriving workers of the right to form unions and depriving all sectors of the population of any right to free speech, assembly or press. There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi monarchy functions as a client of the U.S. government and, as such, is not targeted for economic sanctions or "regime change" as are the governments of Syria and Libya. The Bahrain monarchy likewise functions as a U.S. client and allows the U.S. Fifth Fleet to use Bahrain as its home port, which is why he referred to the monarchy as "a long-standing partner."
Hypocrisy: President Obama denounced the Iranian government, stating that "we will continue to insist that the Iranian people deserve their universal rights," and condemned what he called Iran's "illicit nuclear program."
Reality: He failed to mention that it was the CIA along with its British counterpart that staged the overthrow of Iran's democratic government in 1953 and reinstated the Shah's monarchy. They overthrew Iran's democracy when Iran nationalized its own oil from AIOC/British Petroleum. The U.S. only broke relations with the Iranian government when the Shah's dictatorship was overthrown by a populist national revolution. Regarding nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has accumulated 200 "illicit" nuclear weapons. Of course, the United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Hypocrisy: President Obama told the world that the United States shares the goals of the Arab revolution, that "repression will fail, that tyrants will fall, and that every man and woman is endowed with certain inalienable rights."
Reality: The U.S. government, whether it is led by Democrats or Republicans, views the oil-rich Middle East through the lens of empire. Operating through a network of proxy regimes including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, the Shah of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, and other regimes in the region - and supplemented by tens of thousands of U.S. troops positioned in U.S. bases throughout the region and on aircraft carriers - the United States aims to dominate and control a region that possesses two-thirds of the world's known oil supply. It has and continues to finance a network of brutal client dictatorships, and it has funded the Israeli war machine and staged repeated invasions, bombing campaigns, and occupations against the people of the region.
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11) As Citi Revives, Pandit Wins Big Pay Package
"In January, Citi's board raised Mr. Pandit's $1 salary to $1.75 million a year. The additional $5.5 million a year in retention payouts will set the stage for him to be paid as much, if not more, than his peers. Bank of America's chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, received about $10.2 million in total compensation for 2010, according to Equilar, a compensation research and consulting firm. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chairman and chief executive, was awarded a $23.6 million pay package last year, making him the highest paid of any Wall Street chief. The heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were paid somewhere in between."
By ERIC DASH
May 18, 2011, 4:59 pm Investment Banking
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/pandits-take-of-citigroups-profits/?hp
After spending years as one of Wall Street's lowest paid chief executives, Vikram S. Pandit received a $23.2 million retention package that could catapult him to the top of the list.
Mr. Pandit earned a token annual salary of $1 as he steered Citigroup back into the black over the last two years. But on Wednesday, Citi's board awarded him as much as $16.5 million in stock and options as well as a cash payment valued at more than $6.65 million as part of a special profit-sharing program for top executives.
The payouts will be spread over the next four years and are subject to Mr. Pandit's meeting certain performance goals. They will be in addition to his regular salary and annual bonuses.
The announcement comes as Citigroup recently posted its fifth consecutive quarterly profit and completed a reverse stock split that, with the stroke of a pen, ratcheted its share price to more than $40 from $4.
Just three short years ago, Citigroup was in such dire straits that it twice needed to be rescued by the government. With the bank receiving more than $45 billion of federal aid, questions swirled about whether Mr. Pandit would remain at the helm. The large retention award seems to put those questions to rest.
"Vikram has done an outstanding job since coming on board as the financial crisis began," Richard S. Parsons, Citigroup's chairman, said in a statement. "This award is designed to retain Vikram as our C.E.O. and reward him for future performance benefiting the company and our shareholders."
The retention package also could signify the unofficial end of the post-bailout pay era.
Most banks made minor adjustments to compensation practices amid the uproar over bonuses, shifting more pay into stock from cash but still awarding hefty sums. Others like Citigroup and Bank of America, which accepted multiple government rescues, needed a federal pay overseer to formally approve the awards for their 25 highest earners.
Mr. Pandit helped avert even more animosity toward his bankers when he pledged at a 2009 Congressional hearing to accept a mere $1 a year in salary until Citigroup turned a profit.
Even so, he continued to benefit from the Citi board's largess. Throughout the crisis, Mr. Pandit was allowed to hold about $79.7 million in cash from the sale of Old Lane Partners, an investment firm he founded that was acquired by Citi in April 2007. Mr. Pandit would have to forfeit that money if he left the company before July 2011, giving the board a strong incentive to extend the retention package now.
Careful not to call it a bonus - Mr. Parsons referred to it as a "long-term, multiyear performance-based" award. Citigroup's board broke the retention package into three parts. It also has the power to claw back any ill-gotten pay.
The largest part of the award is deferred stock valued at $10 million, which will vest in three equal installments from the end of 2013 to 2015. Mr. Pandit must meet largely subjective performance goals, including developing senior managers, satisfying certain regulatory goals like improved risk management and steering the bank toward a culture focused on so-called responsible finance.
The second part of the retention package is a special profit-sharing plan for top employees based on the company's financials. If Citigroup's core operations over the period earn at least $12 billion in pretax income during each of the next two years, Mr. Pandit could take home more than $6.65 million.
About two dozen or so other top executives participate in the program - including John P. Havens, Citi's chief operating officer, who could receive almost $5.2 million. The bank earned $19 billion in pretax income last year.
Citigroup also awarded Mr. Pandit more than 500,000 options, which the company valued at as much as $6.5 million. The options carry strike prices ranging from $41.54 to $60. Citigroup shares currently trade at $41.24.
Citigroup's board had signaled a pay increase for Mr. Pandit last fall when it granted stock awards to several of his top lieutenants and announced plans to restore his compensation so that it would be in line with other Wall Street chiefs.
In January, Citi's board raised Mr. Pandit's $1 salary to $1.75 million a year. The additional $5.5 million a year in retention payouts will set the stage for him to be paid as much, if not more, than his peers.
Bank of America's chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, received about $10.2 million in total compensation for 2010, according to Equilar, a compensation research and consulting firm. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chairman and chief executive, was awarded a $23.6 million pay package last year, making him the highest paid of any Wall Street chief. The heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were paid somewhere in between.
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12) Trader Joe's and Farm Laborers
labor-for-peace-and-justice@igc.org
The farm labor leader Cesar Chavez is gone, but the agonizing poverty of farm laborers is still with us. Trader Joe's is telling its customers that it has arrived at an agreement with tomato wholesalers to increase the income of farm laborers who harvest tomatoes. According to the labor organization that has been advocating these agreements,Trader Joe's is not telling the truth. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers insists that the wholesalers have agreed to absolutely nothing. There has been no settlement.
In Community,
Harry
Harry Brill
150 San Carlos Avenue
El Cerrito, Ca. 94530
Phone: 510-559-3138
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13) When Will Scientists Grow Meat in a Petri Dish?
A handful of scientists aim to satisfy the world's growing appetite for steak without wrecking the planet. The first step: grab a petri dish
By Jeffrey Bartholet
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 | 13
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=inside-the-meat-lab
It is not unusual for visionaries to be impassioned, if not fanatical_, and Willem van Eelen is no exception. At 87, van Eelen can look back on an extraordinary life. He was born in Indonesia when it was under Dutch control, the son of a doctor who ran a leper colony. As a teenager, he fought the Japanese in World War II and spent several years in prisoner-of-war camps. The Japanese guards used prisoners as slave labor and starved them. "If one of the stray dogs was stupid enough to go over the wire, the prisoners would jump on it, tear it apart and eat it raw," van Eelen recalls. "If you looked at my stomach then, you saw my spine. I was already dead." The experience triggered a lifelong obsession with food, nutrition and the science of survival.
One obsession led to another. After the Allies liberated Indonesia, van Eelen studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam. A professor showed the students how he had been able to get a piece of muscle tissue to grow in the laboratory. This demonstration inspired van Eelen to consider the possibility of growing edible meat without having to raise or slaughter animals. Imagine, he thought, protein-rich food that could be grown like crops, no matter what the climate or other environmental conditions, without killing any living creatures.
If anything, the idea is more potent now. The world population was just more than two billion in 1940, and global warming was not a concern. Today the planet is home to three times as many people. According to a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock business accounts for about 18 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions-an even larger contribution than the global transportation sector. The organization expects worldwide meat consumption to nearly double between 2002 and 2050.
Meat grown in bioreactors-instead of raised on farms-could help alleviate planetary stress. Hanna Tuomisto, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Ox_ford, co-authored a study last year on the potential environmental impacts of cultured meat. The study found that such production, if scientists grew the muscle cells in a culture of cyanobacteria hydrolysate (a bacterium cultivated in ponds), would involve "approximately 35 to 60 percent lower energy use, 80 to 95 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions and 98 percent lower land use compared to conventionally produced meat products in Europe."
As it is, 30 percent of the earth's ice-free land is used for grazing livestock and growing animal feed. If cultured meat were to become viable and widely consumed, much of that land could be used for other purposes, including new forests that would pull carbon out of the air. Meat would no longer have to be shipped around the globe, because production sites could be located close to consumers. Some proponents imagine small urban meat labs selling their products at street markets that cater to locavores.
The Only Choice Left
Even Winston Churchill thought in vitro meat was a good idea. "Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under suitable medium," he predicted in a 1932 book, Thoughts and Adventures. For most of the 20th century, however, few took the idea seriously. Van Eelen did not let it go. He worked all kinds of jobs-selling newspapers, driving a taxi, making dollhouses. He established an organization to help underprivileged kids and owned art galleries and cafes. He wrote proposals for in vitro meat production and eventually plowed much of his earnings into applying for patents. Together with two partners, he won a Dutch patent in 1999, then other European patents and, eventually, two U.S. patents. In 2005 he and others finally convinced the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs to pledge €2 million to support in vitro meat research in the Netherlands-the largest government grant for such research to date.
By that time, an American scientist had already succeeded in growing a piece of fish filet in a lab. Using a small grant from NASA, which was interested in developing food sources for deep-space voyages, Morris Benjaminson removed skeletal muscle from a common goldfish and grew it outside the fish's body. Then an associate briefly marinated the explants in olive oil, chopped garlic, lemon and pepper, covered them in bread crumbs and deep-fried them. "A panel of female colleagues gave it a visual and sniff test," says Benjaminson, now an emeritus professor at Touro College in Bay Shore, N.Y. "It looked and smelled pretty much the same as any fish you could buy at the supermarket." But NASA, apparently convinced there were easier ways to provide protein to astronauts on long deep-space voyages, declined to further fund Benjaminson's research.
The Dutch money was used by van Eelen and H. P. Haagsman, a scientist at Utrecht University, to fund a consortium that would aim to show that stem cells could be taken from farm animals, cultured and induced to become skeletal muscle cells. The team included a representative from meat company Meester Stegeman BV, then part of Sara Lee Corporation in Europe, and top scientists at three Dutch universities. Each university studied different aspects of in vitro meat production. Scientists at the University of Amsterdam focused on producing efficient growth media; a group at Utrecht worked on isolating stem cells, making them proliferate and coaxing them into muscle cells; and those at Eindhoven University of Technology attempted to "train" the muscle cells to grow larger.
The scientists made some progress. They were able to grow small, thin strips of muscle tissue in the lab-stuff that looked like bits of scallop and had the chewy texture of calamari-but several obstacles remained to commercial-scale production. "We gained knowledge; we knew a lot more, but we still didn't have [something that tasted like] a T-bone steak that came from a petri dish," says Peter Verstrate, who represented Meester Stegeman in the consortium and now works as a consultant. In time, the Dutch money ran out.
Van Eelen now fumes that one scientist involved was "stupid" and others just milked him and the Dutch government for money. "I don't know what they did in four years-talking, talking, talking-every year taking more of the money," he says. For their part, the scientists say that van Eelen never understood the scale of the challenge. "He had a naive idea that you could put muscle cells in a petri dish and they would just grow, and if you put money into a project, you'd have meat in a couple of years," says Bernard Roelen, a cell biologist who worked on the project at Utrecht.
Van Eelen was not the only one who imagined a revolution. In 2005 an article in the New York Times concluded that "in a few years' time there may be a lab-grown meat ready to market as sausages or patties." A couple of months before the story appeared, researchers had published the first peer-reviewed article on cultured meat in the journal Tissue Engineering.* The authors included Jason G. Matheny, co-founder of the lab-produced meat advocacy group New Harvest. He understands the challenges better than most. "Tissue engineering is really hard and extremely expensive right now," he says. "To enjoy market adoption, we mainly need to solve the technical problems that increase the cost of engineered meat." That will take money, he notes, and few governments or organizations have been willing to commit necessary funding.
*Clarification (5/19/11): The sentence refers to the paper as the first peer-reviewed article on cultured meat; the paper is the first peer-reviewed article on the prospects for industrial production of cultured meat.
To the scientists involved, that failure seems shortsighted. "I think [in vitro meat] will be the only choice left," says Mark J. Post, head of the physiology department at Maastricht University. "I'm very bold about this. I don't see any way you could still rely on old-fashioned livestock in the coming decades."
Assembly Required
In theory, an in vitro meat factory would work something like this: First, technicians would isolate embryonic or adult stem cells from a pig, cow, chicken or other animal. Then they would grow those cells in bioreactors, using a culture derived from plants. The stem cells would divide and redivide for months on end. Technicians would next instruct the cells to differentiate into muscle (rather than, say, bone or brain cells). Finally, the muscle cells would need to be "bulked up" in a fashion similar to the way in which animals build their strength by exercising.
For now there are challenges at every stage of this process. One difficulty is developing stem cell lines that can proliferate for long periods without suddenly deciding they want to differentiate on their own. Another challenge is to be sure that when stem cells are prompted to differentiate, the overwhelming majority of them turn into muscle as instructed. "If 10 cells differentiate, you want at least seven or eight to turn into muscle cells, not three or four," Roelen says. "We can achieve 50 percent now."
The Utrecht scientists tried to extract and develop embryonic stem cell lines from pigs. Such cells would, in normal conditions, be able to duplicate every day for long periods, meaning 10 cells could grow into a staggering amount of potential meat in just two months-more than 50,000 metric tons. "Culturing embryonic stem cells would be ideal for this purpose since these cells have an (almost) infinite self-renewal capacity," according to a 2009 report by the Utrecht team. "In theory, one such cell line would be sufficient to literally feed the world."
Until now, however, such cell lines have been developed only from mice, rats, rhesus monkeys and humans. Embryonic cells from farm animals have had a tendency to differentiate quickly-and of their own accord-into specialized cells. In the report, Utrecht team's porcine cells often veered toward "a neural lineage"-brains, not bacon.
The Utrecht group also worked with adult stem cells, which have the advantage of being largely preprogrammed. These cells exist within skeletal muscle (as well as other parts of the body) with a specific mission: to do repair work when tissue is injured or dies off. So if you are making in vitro meat and want stem cells that will almost surely turn into muscle tissue, adult stem cells from skeletal muscle tissue should work very well. Until now, however, scientists have not been able to get these cells to proliferate as readily as they can embryonic cells.
Cost is another barrier. The culture used to grow stem cells of any kind is very expensive. With currently available media, it might cost $50,000 to produce a pound of meat, according to Roelen, and the most efficient nutrient bath is derived from fetal calf or horse serum taken from slaughtered animals. In recent years scientists have developed their own recipes for "chemically defined media" that include no animal products. By using recombinant-DNA technology, they have also been able to get plant cells to produce animal proteins that could be used to grow the meat. But both these types of media are, for now, prohibitively expensive. An algae-based medium may eventually work best because algae can produce the proteins and amino acids necessary to sustain cell life, but that, too, is costly-at least for now.
Once the researchers get a big supply of muscle cells, they will need to keep them alive and bulk them up. It is possible now to engineer a thin strip of tissue, but if it gets thicker than a few cell layers, parts of it start to die off. The cells need a constant flow of fresh nutrients to stay alive. In the body, these nutrients are delivered by the bloodstream, which also removes waste. Post is working on how to develop a three-dimensional system that delivers such nutrients.
He is also exploring bulking up the muscle cells. "If you take your cast off after a bone break, it scares you: the muscles are gone," he says. "But within a couple of weeks they're back. We need to replicate that process." The body achieves this in several ways, including exercise. In a lab setting, scientists can stimulate the tissue with electrical pulses. But that is costly and inefficient, bulking up the cells by only about 10 percent. Another method is simply to provide anchor points: once the cells are able to attach to different anchors, they develop tension on their own. Post has made anchors available by providing a scaffold of sugar polymers, which degrades over time. But at this stage, he says, "We're not looking at Schwarzenegger muscle cells."
He has one more method in mind, one he thinks might work best. But it is also more complex. The body naturally stimulates muscle growth with tiny micropulses of chemicals such as acetylcholine. These chemicals are cheap, which is part of what makes this approach appealing. "The trick is to do it in very, very short pulses," Post says. The hurdles to that are technological, not scientific.
Breakthroughs in all these areas will take money, of course. In 2008 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) offered $1 million to the first person or persons who could grow commercially viable chicken in a lab by 2012. But that was mainly a publicity stunt and no help to scientists who need money to get research done now. More seriously, the Dutch government recently pledged roughly €800,000 toward a new four-year project that would continue the stem cell research at Utrecht-and also initiate a study on the social and moral questions related to in vitro meat.
The Ick Factor
Some see social acceptance as the biggest barrier of all to producing in vitro meat on a commercial scale. "I've mentioned cultured meat to scientists, and they all think, 'great idea,' " says Oxford's Tuomisto. "When I talk to nonscientists, they are more afraid of it. It sounds scary. Yet it's basically the same stuff: muscle cells. It's just produced differently."
Cor van der Weele of Wageningen University is heading up the philosophical aspects of the new Dutch study (for example, is cultured meat a moral imperative or morally repugnant, or some combination of the two?). She has been intrigued by the emotional reactions that some people have toward the idea. "We call it the 'yuck response,' " she says. "People initially think that it might be something contaminated or disgusting."
But that perception can change quickly, van der Weele observes. She notes that people often associate cultured meat with two other ideas: genetically modified foods-which are often seen, particularly in Europe, as a dangerous corporate scheme to dominate or control the food supply-and negative perceptions of the meat industry in general, with its factory farms, disease and mistreatment of animals. Once people realize that cultured meat is not genetically modified and could be a clean, animal-friendly alternative to factory farms, she says, "the scared, very negative response is often very fleeting."
Such observations are only anecdotal, of course. The study will assess popular responses to in vitro meat in detail-comparing reactions across different regions and cultures-and will determine ways to frame the issue that might enhance consumer interest. Proponents imagine a day when governments will levy special environmental taxes on meat produced from livestock or when consumers will be able to opt for in vitro meat that is labeled "cruelty-free."
"I don't think you want to know about the hygienic conditions in the majority of slaughterhouses in the U.S. or the efficiency of euthanasia," says Post, who spent six years at Harvard University and Dartmouth College before returning home to the Netherlands in 2002. Another outbreak of disease-like mad cow or bird flu-could make cultured meat seem all the more appetizing. "We are far from what we eat," Roelen says. "When we're eating a hamburger, we don't think, 'I'm eating a dead cow.' And when people are already so far from what they eat, it's not too hard to see them accepting cultured meat."
Post has a bold scheme to attract new funding: he aims to create an in vitro sausage just to demonstrate that it is possible. He estimates that it will cost €300,000 and take six months of work by two doctoral students using three incubators. "We'll take two or three biopsies of a pig-say, 10,000 stem cells," Post says. "After 20 population doublings, we'll have 10 billion cells." The students will use 3,000 petri dishes to produce many tiny bits of porcine muscle tissue, which then will be packed into a casing with some spices and other nonmeat ingredients to give it taste and texture. In the end, scientists will be able to display the sausage next to the living pig from which it was grown.
"It's basically a stunt to generate more funds," Post says. "We're trying to prove to the world we can make a product out of this." But will it taste like a sausage? "I think so," Roelen says. "Most of the taste in a chicken nugget or a sausage is artificially made. Salt and all kinds of other things are added to give it taste."
Van Eelen, who regards himself as "the godfather of in vitro meat," is not a fan of the sausage proposal. He is a diehard idealist and thinks it is important to launch the in vitro revolution with meat that looks, smells and tastes just like anything you would buy off the farm. Van Eelen probably also realizes that time is running out to realize a dream that he has pursued nearly his entire life. "Every time you talk to him, he's speaking about someone else he's found who will be the top scientist who will solve his problems," Roelen says. "I can understand his point of view. But I can't change the laws of the universe."_
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14) At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/business/20fund.html?hp
WASHINGTON - It is an international island in the midst of the American capital, a sharp-elbowed place ruled by alpha male economists. The days are long, and employees are regularly pressed together for weeks on end during overseas "missions." It is a climate in which romances often flourish - and lines are sometimes crossed.
Some women avoid wearing skirts for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Others trade whispered tips about overly forward bosses. A 2008 internal review found few restraints on the conduct of senior managers, concluding that "the absence of public ethics scandals seems to be more a consequence of luck than good planning and action."
This is life at the International Monetary Fund, the lender of last resort for governments that need money and, under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an emerging force in the regulation of the global economy.
But with Mr. Strauss-Kahn's arrest earlier this week and indictment on Thursday on charges that he tried to rape a New York hotel housekeeper, a spotlight has been cast on the culture of the institution. And questions have been revived about a 2008 episode in which the I.M.F. decided that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not broken any rules in sleeping with a female employee.
What may draw even more attention to the culture of the fund is the revelation of an affair involving a potential successor to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as managing director on Wednesday. Kemal Dervis of Turkey had a liaison while working at the World Bank years ago with a woman who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the relationship.
Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.'s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: "Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment."
"It's sort of like 'Pirates of the Caribbean'; the rules are more like guidelines," said Carmen M. Reinhart, a prominent female economist who served as the I.M.F.'s deputy director for research from 2001 to 2003. "That sets the stage, I think, for more risk-taking."
In 2007, officials at the fund declined to investigate a complaint by an administrative assistant who had slept with her supervisor, and who charged that he had given her poor performance reviews to pressure her to continue the relationship. Officials told the woman that the supervisor planned to retire soon, and therefore there was no point in investigating the charges, according to findings by the I.M.F.'s internal court.
The official, who is not named in the records, told investigators that he also had a sexual relationship with a second employee, and that he did not believe he had acted improperly.
In another case, a young woman who has since left the I.M.F. said that in 2009, a senior manager in her department started sending her increasingly explicit e-mails seeking a relationship. She complained to her boss, who did not take any action.
"They said they took it seriously, but two minutes later they were turning around and acting like everything was O.K. to the person who had done it to me," said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she still works in the international development community. "He wasn't punished. Not at all."
Virginia R. Canter, who joined the I.M.F. last year with responsibility for investigating harassment claims, said the institution recently took a series of strong steps to protect employees. A new code of conduct adopted on May 6 specifies that intimate relationships with subordinates "are likely to result in conflicts of interest" and must be disclosed to the proper authorities.
"It's recognizing that sometimes relationships grow in the workplace," Ms. Canter said. "But it doesn't mean we're not sensitive to this issue and we will investigate if there is evidence to suggest harassment."
She also said that the fund would not again brush aside an employee complaint like the one from the assistant who was sleeping with her boss. "Absolutely that wouldn't have happened today," she said. "We would investigate the matter."
The I.M.F., created in 1945, has 2,400 employees evaluating the economic health of nations from a pair of huge Washington buildings and on regular trips abroad. When nations borrow money from the fund, they typically must agree to adopt economic reforms, and employees are sent to watch their progress.
In recent years the fund has tried to diversify by hiring more women, Even so, only six of the I.M.F.'s 30 senior executives are women. Only 21.5 percent of all managers at the fund are women, compared with 32 percent at its sister institution, the World Bank, and 26 percent at the United Nations secretariat.
Some women say the fund is a welcoming work environment.
"I haven't met any cases in my career of sexual harassment," said Teresa Ter-Minassian, who spent 37 years at the I.M.F. and retired last year as director of the fiscal affairs department.
Some issues arise from cultural differences. In one case, a married Muslim woman complained when her European boss paid her a compliment that was innocuous but unrelated to work, the only subject she considered permissible.
"Culturally, there are a lot of people thrown together," said Susan Schadler, who spent 32 years at the fund, rising to deputy director of the European department before leaving in 2007. "There's a lot of scope for misunderstanding, misreading signals. I think that's a particular vulnerability for the fund."
The new relationship policy is a response to the 2008 case in which a Hungarian economist, Piroska M. Nagy, had a relationship with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
Ms. Nagy described herself in a letter to investigators as "damned if I did and damned if I didn't."
An independent investigation found that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not abused his power. Though he apologized publicly, many women at the I.M.F. were dismayed by the outcome.
"What are we supposed to make of this when we go into Strauss-Kahn's office?" Ms. Schadler said, recounting conversations with former colleagues. "Do we sit there and think, 'He's sizing me up as a potential sexual object?' "
"There is this implicit culture that this wasn't really seen as something that the fund is going to worry about," she said, "and I think that's what bothered women."
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15) Spaniards Take to Streets Before Vote
By RAPHAEL MINDER
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/europe/20iht-spain20.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB
MADRID - With elections set for Sunday in Spain in more than 8,000 municipalities and 13 of its 17 regions, thousands of people, most of them young, have taken to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona and other large cities this week, calling for an end to suspected longstanding corruption among established parties. Fueling the demonstrators' anger is the perceived failure by politicians to alleviate the hardships imposed on a struggling population by a jobless rate of 21 percent.
At sit-ins, street protests and on social media networks, the protesters' message is that of an alternative campaign that could eclipse that of the established parties and result in a decline in voter turnout on Sunday, from 63 percent four years ago.
Some of the youth groups have made the fight against corruption their battle cry, like NoLesVotes, or "Don't vote for them," whose manifesto starts with the warning that "corruption in Spain has reached alarming levels." The group recently published a Web site map pinpointing localities where more than 100 politicians seeking election were also under judicial investigation.
Other protesters are fielding alternative candidates, like the Pirate Party in Catalonia, founded 18 months ago, which is hoping to win about 7,000 votes across Catalan municipalities. One of its candidates in Barcelona, the 27-year-old Francesc Parelleda, said political corruption was a consequence of a "political system in which there is simply zero transparency and democracy within the main parties."
José M. de Areilza, dean of the IE Law School in Madrid, said, "I don't think that political corruption is necessarily worse in Spain than in other European countries, but I do think that the economic crisis is now generating a lot more anger and resentment here toward politicians."
On Sunday, Francisco Camps is expected to be re-elected as head of the regional government of Valencia, which includes the third-largest city in Spain and some of the most popular Spanish resorts.
By the end of the year, however, Mr. Camps is also likely to be in court facing bribery charges, as part of a vast corruption investigation, dubbed the Gürtel case, that has also targeted several other politicians from the main center-right political force, the Popular Party.
Mr. Camps was charged in February for allegedly receiving tailor-made suits in return for granting public contracts, with further possible financial irregularities still under investigation. Nine other politicians standing for the Popular Party on Sunday in Valencia are being investigated or have been charged with fraud. Mr. Camps and his fellow candidates deny any wrongdoing.
For now, the corruption allegations have not hindered Mr. Camps's re-election bid, according to the latest opinion polls. Like Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister who is engulfed in scandal, Mr. Camps has portrayed himself as the victim of a witch hunt by political opponents, judges and left-leaning media. Asked in December to comment on some of the allegations, he said that "nobody should believe Soviet-style propaganda against everything that has been achieved in Valencia."
In fact, "many people in Valencia now talk about the Berlusconization of our society," said Ferrán Bono, a Socialist lawmaker who represents Valencia in the national Parliament in Madrid. "Some people have seen so many political scandals that they just treat them as banal, but I think many also genuinely believe the conspiracy theory that Camps has been so actively promoting."
The Gürtel investigation, which also targets some Popular Party politicians in Madrid, involves more than €120 million, or about $170 million, of public funds misspent by politicians in return for alleged kickbacks, according to a summary of the charges presented by the prosecution this year. Its alleged ringleader, Francisco Correa, is in jail awaiting trial.
But corruption investigations have not spared other main Spanish political parties, starting with the governing Socialists of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Socialist politicians stand accused in several of the property-related fraud inquiries that have mushroomed amid a collapse in the Spanish construction sector. Since April, the Socialist party in Andalusia, the largest region in Spain, has also been shaken by an inquiry into whether party officials provided fictitious early-retirement packages to friends and family members.
Mr. de Areilza, the law school dean, said: "We have built a democracy with political parties somehow disconnected from society, who have accumulated a lot of internal powers and have not been regulated in very important areas like their financing - and unfortunately they are also the ones who are in charge of pushing through any reform of the system."
Mr. Camps's anticipated victory in Valencia is expected to be part of a countrywide sweep by the Popular Party at the expense of the governing Socialists, whose popularity has plummeted because of the economic crisis.
Whatever the outcome Sunday, Mr. Zapatero announced in April that he would not seek a third term in office, paving the way for the selection of a new Socialist leader ahead of the general election, expected in March 2012.
In their campaigns, many regional and municipal politicians sought to distance themselves from the policies of Mr. Zapatero's central government in Madrid in order to bolster their own prospects. In the case of Mr. Camps in Valencia, "the message has been that everything that works in Valencia is his doing while everything that is wrong, like a jobless rate that is four percentage points above the national average, is the fault of Zapatero," said Mr. Bono, the Socialist lawmaker.
The reverse, however, has not been true, with national party leaders careful not to antagonize powerful regional politicians who could influence their chances next March.
For much of last year, Mariano Rajoy, the Popular Party's national leader, refused to confirm his support for Mr. Camps because of his ties to the Gürtel corruption scandal. On Tuesday, however, Mr. Rajoy went to Valencia to join Mr. Camps at the city bullring. "You are a great president," Mr. Rajoy told him in front of a cheering audience. "The people vote for you because they love you."
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16) Head of Japanese Utility Steps Down After Nuclear Crisis
"The head of Tokyo Electric's nuclear division, Vice President Sakae Muto, will also resign, the company said. But Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman and former president, kept his post, a move designed to provide some continuity it the company's time of crisis, but which could raise questions over how serious the company is about accountability following what has become the world's worst nuclear accident since World War II." [Is this article actually saying that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. in WWII was an accident?!?!?!?!?!?!...bw]
By HIROKO TABUCHI
May 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/business/global/21iht-tepco21.html?hp
TOKYO - The president of Japan's troubled power company, Tokyo Electric Power, resigned Friday, shouldering responsibility for the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as the utility booked a $15 billion annual loss, the largest by a nonfinancial company in Japanese history.
At a news conference in Tokyo, the outgoing president, Masataka Shimizu, also said that the company had decided to decommission the four most heavily damaged of the plant's six reactors and to cancel plans to add two more.
But his choice of an insider to succeed him could prompt further criticism of the troubled utility in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was ravaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and continues to release radiation.
Mr. Shimizu, 66, will step down and be replaced by Toshio Nishizawa, 60, a senior executive at the company, Tokyo Electric said.
"I take responsibility for this accident, which has undermined trust in nuclear safety and brought much grief and fear to society," Mr. Shimizu said. "Whatever happens, there must be change," he said.
The crisis has raised serious questions over cozy ties between Japan's nuclear industry and the regulators charged with overseeing safety at the country's 55 nuclear reactors. It has also prompted a rethinking of Japan's energy policy, which had sought to raise the country's dependence on nuclear energy to one-half of its electricity needs, from the current one-third.
The Japanese government has also been saddled with the task of aiding Tokyo Electric as it starts to pay out what is expected to be trillions of yen in compensation claims even as it continues desperate efforts to stabilize the Fukushima plant.
The Japanese government has announced a plan that could tap public money to save Tokyo Electric from financial collapse and also help it compensate victims of the disaster. But the plan would require the company to eventually repay in full all the money owed to victims of the accident. The company had hoped that payouts might be capped.
Speaking in a grave monotone, Mr. Shimizu said that Tokyo Electric had booked a net loss of 1.25 trillion yen, or $15.3 billion, for the fiscal year that ended in March, hit by the punishing costs of bringing the Fukushima Daiichi plant under control.
The company booked a special loss of 426 billion yen for costs associated with cooling down the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, he said, and another 207 billion yen for shutting down the four most heavily damaged reactors.
But its losses so far do not include the compensation claims related to the accident. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to relocate from the area around the power plant, while nearby farmers and fishermen have seen their livelihoods threatened.
Tokyo Electric said it would sell off at least 600 billion yen in assets - including real estate and a stake in one of Japan's largest telecommunications companies - to help meet compensation payments. The company's board of directors promised to take no pay, and other executives will return 40 percent to 60 percent of their paychecks.
The company also said it would not pay dividends for the current fiscal year. Still, it was impossible to forecast earnings for the year, the company said.
Moody's Japan has warned that it could downgrade its debt rating for Tokyo Electric to junk bond status.
Speaking after Tokyo Electric's announcement, Yukio Edano, the top government spokesman, called for the company to step up efforts to squeeze out funds for compensation payments.
"This is just the start. There must be more scrutiny and more effort," Mr. Edano said.
During the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, it became clear that Mr. Shimizu would have to go as the nuclear complex was exposed as woefully unprotected against tsunami risks.
Tokyo Electric has also come under intense criticism for its handling of the accident. Revelations this month that three of the plant's reactors may have suffered meltdowns in the early days of the crisis has added to the furor.
Mr. Shimizu had been particularly criticized for largely disappearing from the public eye just as the crisis worsened. He checked himself into a hospital for a week after the disaster, and has rarely appeared at news conferences since.
But the company deferred a decision on new management as it focused on battling the disaster at the Fukushima plant. Workers at the plant, about 225 kilometers, or 140 miles, north of the capital, are racing to install cooling systems at the six reactors and to stem leaks of highly contaminated water.
On paper, Mr. Nishizawa, who headed the planning department at Tokyo Electric, will take the helm at the company. In his previous post he was central to efforts to work with the Japanese government to bring the Fukushima plant under control.
"I feel tremendous responsibility in taking over as president during the biggest crisis in our company's history," he said Friday. "But I felt it was my fate to stand up and take the lead in this time of difficulty."
But under the government rescue plan, management at Tokyo Electric will effectively be taken away from the company and placed in the hands of an independent supervisory body, to make sure that profits are set aside for victims.
The head of Tokyo Electric's nuclear division, Vice President Sakae Muto, will also resign, the company said. But Tsunehisa Katsumata, the chairman and former president, kept his post, a move designed to provide some continuity it the company's time of crisis, but which could raise questions over how serious the company is about accountability following what has become the world's worst nuclear accident since World War II.
Mr. Shimizu said he would stay on indefinitely as an adviser at Tokyo Electric, without pay. The appointments must be approved at a shareholders' meeting in June, the company said.
Before Friday, the largest loss ever posted by a nonfinancial Japanese company was the 834 billion yen reported by the struggling communications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 2002.
In Japan's troubled banking industry, however, losses have soared as high as the 2.4 trillion yen reported by Mizuho Financial Holdings in 2003.
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17) Reaction in Arab Capitals Is Muted and Mixed
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20egypt.html?ref=world
CAIRO - President Obama may have hoped that his embrace of the democracy movement sweeping the Arab world might revive the warmth his name evoked after his speech to the Muslim world two years ago. But across the region, many said his soaring words and financial pledges did little to undo their disappointment at his apparent equivocation during the early days of the Arab revolt.
"Everybody still has it in the back of their minds how America flip-flopped in their position toward these Arab revolutions," said Amr Jarrad, 28, a banker in Amman, Jordan, recalling when the White House at first appeared to stand by its ally, Hosni Mubarak, during the Egyptian uprising. "If you were so good in supporting autocratic regime, why can't you be so good in telling them to leave?"
From here at the heart of the Arab Spring to its current battlefronts in Damascus; Syria; and Benghazi, Libya, many said the speech had failed to dispel the legacy of resentment from America's support for Arab autocrats, its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and its alliance with Israel. Many said Mr. Obama seemed most willing to support democratic revolts after the fact.
"They wait to see who wins and then support them," said Ahmed Maher, 30, a civil engineer and an architect of the Egyptian uprising as coordinator of the liberal April 6 Youth Movement.
Though some applauded Mr. Obama's criticism of America's allies in Yemen and Bahrain for their crackdowns on peaceful protesters, many noted the conspicuous omission of Saudi Arabia, another ally of the United States that is a conservative force throughout the region.
Mr. Obama acknowledged what he saw as a credible Bahraini fear that Iran might have worked from abroad to stir up the unrest, but he failed to mention that Saudi Arabia had intervened by sending troops to help crush the revolt.
"His message is clear," said Muhsen Awajy, a dissident Islamist lawyer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. "Do the job, and when you finish - when you have paid the price - we as Americans are ready to support our interests in a new phase." He added, "It is a great country with great values, and he should translate that into timely intervention."
Even in Syria, where Mr. Obama has imposed new sanctions on President Bashar al-Assad and urged him to accept reform or "get out of the way," some activists were not ready to trust an American president. "We've had long experience with American policy in the region, and we don't trust Obama's call for change in Syria," said Abdel Majid Manjouni, leader of the opposition Socialist Democratic Arab Union Party in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city.
Some close observers approved Mr. Obama's explicit invocation, for the first time, of Israel's 1967 borders as the starting place for talks with the Palestinians. But since those boundaries have long been the presumed baseline for negotiations, many in the Arab world were unimpressed. Instead, they noted that he did not call for Israel to stop building new settlements in Palestinian territory.
Egyptians thanked Mr. Obama for his pledge of $1 billion in debt forgiveness. But many saw it as an act of atonement for past support of Arab dictators, and they called it paltry in comparison to the many billions given as military aid to the Mr. Mubarak's government or spent on fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Others said Mr. Obama's talk of support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was likely to remind Egyptians of the economic liberalization under Mr. Mubarak's government - led by his reviled son Gamal, a banker - that enriched only an elite.
"The Egyptian experience with both these institutions is totally negative because the so-called structural economic adjustment that had been done only made the rich richer and the poor poorer," said Hassan Nafaa, a political scientist at Cairo University who attended the address two years ago.
Still, at least a few said they discerned a "new strategy" from Washington. "We felt that for the first time that he was talking to us and not to the leaders as he did before," said Mona Makram-Ebeid, a professor at American University in Cairo. "This time he put his hands on the real problems that are affecting the different countries," she said, applauding his talk of tracking down the money stolen by ousted dictators and combating corruption.
Salem Sharaa, sitting with his 4-year-old son at a cafe in Benghazi, said he was pleased that Mr. Obama had discussed the violent Libyan conflict as part of the broader Arab uprising along with the peaceful movements in Tunisia and Egypt. "He said the Libyan people would be free," said Mr. Sharaa, a former city official. "The Americans have interfered in other countries. We wish they would do it here."
Still, many in the region said they were too preoccupied with their own uprisings to pay much attention to words from Washington. It was a sharp contrast to the fascination with President Obama's speech in Cairo two years ago, or the rapt suspense that awaited his every word during the Egyptian revolution.
Even in Libya, where a United States-backed air campaign is raining bombs on the forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, residents of Benghazi, a rebel stronghold, lowered the volume on the wall-to-wall coverage on Al Jazeera so they could get on with their haircuts or conversations. One activist in Damascus refused to watch.
"The speech he gave in Cairo evaporated after two weeks; this speech will evaporate in a few minutes," said Essam el-Erian, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. "And the message it carries to the nations of this region is basically this: Do not wait to get any support from the White House; maintain your efforts and achieve your freedom."
Reporting was contributed by Mona El-Naggar from Cairo; Neil MacFarquhar from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Anthony Shadid from Beirut, Lebanon; and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.
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18) Deal Reached on Extension of Patriot Act
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20patriot.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders on Thursday reached a deal to extend by four years several statutes that expanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterterrorism and surveillance powers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, aides said.
Under the deal, two sections of the so-called USA Patriot Act and a third provision from a related intelligence law would be extended, without any changes, until June 1, 2015. The provisions had been set to expire later this month.
The sections allow investigators to get "roving wiretap" court orders allowing them to follow terrorism suspects who switch phone numbers or providers; to get orders allowing them to seize "any tangible things" relevant to a security investigation, like a business's customer records; and to get national-security wiretap orders against noncitizen suspects who are not believed to be connected to any foreign power.
Some lawmakers had proposed tightening the circumstances when the F.B.I. could use the surveillance powers. Others - including the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont - had proposed requiring greater auditing and public reporting about their use.
The Obama administration asked Congress to renew the provisions, while taking a coy stance about whether any particular changes were a good idea. Some Republicans, meanwhile, argued that the provisions should be made permanent without any modifications.
The deal to extend the powers without changes followed negotiations between the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, and Republican leaders including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner.
Michelle Richardson, a legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has pressed for greater limits on the Patriot Act powers, expressed disappointment that the push to overhaul the law had culminated "in no reform and no long-lasting institutional oversight."
Pointing to Mr. Leahy's proposal for greater auditing and public reporting, Ms. Richardson added, "It's shocking that even some of those requirements are now down the drain for another four years."
A spokeswoman for Mr. Leahy had no immediate comment.
Congress overwhelmingly passed the original Patriot Act in October 2001. Over time, for those who believed that government power had expanded too far, the act became a symbol of eroding civil liberties and privacy rights. Supporters say the powers are necessary to protect the country and have accused its critics of exaggerating the risk of abuse.
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19) Oakland police fatally shoot 2 men on street
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
[Several TV news reports have definitively stated that the men were unarmed at the time of the police shooting....bw]
Friday, May 20, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/BA1R1JICCF.DTL
(05-19) 18:17 PDT OAKLAND -- Oakland police killed two men during a brief and chaotic confrontation that began after officers got a tip that a violent gang crime was about to go down in a quiet neighborhood, police officials said Thursday.
When the officers tried to stop a car late Wednesday with three men inside on the 3000 block of Curran Avenue, two of the men emerged with guns, Officer Holly Joshi said.
"One of the armed men fled into a nearby yard while the other confronted officers and was shot," said Joshi, a department spokeswoman. "The third occupant of the vehicle was also shot during a confrontation with officers."
Joshi did not say how the third, unarmed suspect, whose body fell near the curb, had allegedly threatened officers during the 10:30 p.m. encounter on the outskirts of the Fruitvale neighborhood.
The suspect who ran from the scene, she said, was spotted by a helicopter and arrested on suspicion of violating his parole. His gun was found nearby, she said.
Suspects didn't fire
Neighbors said they had heard six to 12 shots ring out in rapid succession. Police officials, however, said none of the suspects had gotten off a shot.
Investigators did not identify the officers or any of the suspects. But family members identified one of the dead as Antoine Jackson, 30, a parolee who lived in El Cerrito with his girlfriend and their 5-year-old son.
The girlfriend and others spent hours at the scene Thursday and said they believed the deaths had been unnecessary.
They said Jackson's dead companion may have been shot while trying to run away. They noted that he had fallen on a lawn just in front of a narrow passageway between two homes.
Jackson "never would shoot at police," said his girlfriend, 23-year-old Michelle Heard. "We've had situations where he's gone to jail for evading the police. If anything, he would run."
Mother distraught
Jackson's mother, Mary Annette Cobb of Oakland, sat on a short brick wall near the shooting scene, crying as she held an 8-by-10 school photo of her son when he was 10.
"Oh God, my baby," she wailed. "They took my baby away from me."
The shooting is being investigated by the police homicide and internal affairs units as well as the Alameda County district attorney, which is standard procedure in fatal officer-involved shootings.
Police confirmed that agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration had been at the scene after the shootings along with city officers, but declined to say why. A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment.
Bullets everywhere
The shooting, in a neighborhood of modest homes and small apartment buildings, happened right outside the front window of Remesha Dorsey, 38. She had been watching a comedy show on television and playing solitaire on an iPad while holding her sleeping toddler.
"Oh my God, I thought they were shooting at my house," she said Thursday, pointing to a bullet hole that pierced her neighbor's home and a bullet fragment in a fence. "They were shooting so recklessly."
Hearing the burst, she said, she ducked and covered her child before sprinting to a back bedroom to check on her other son, who is 11. Then she ran back, peered through her front blinds to see one of the dead men, and finally opened her door to see the second on her lawn.
Criminal record
Alameda County court records show that Jackson was sentenced to 16 months in state prison after being convicted in January 2006 of being a felon in possession of a firearm as well as misdemeanor drunken driving.
With time served, he was freed Sept. 4, 2006, but was charged with murder in the killing eight days later of a 20-year-old Oakland man, Patrick Farris Jr., outside a pizza parlor on High Street.
However, a judge dismissed the case against Jackson and a co-defendant after a preliminary hearing the following May. Prosecutor John Mifsud said Thursday that the key witness had recanted his earlier identifications of the suspects.
Jackson's family said they believed his co-defendant in the High Street case was the other man killed in Wednesday's shooting.
Jackson returned to prison four times for allegedly violating his parole, records show, and was released most recently on Aug. 16, 2009.
His girlfriend said he had left their El Cerrito home at 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, saying he was going to get a drink with a friend.
"He grew up in the streets. He knew how to hustle," she said. "But he's never been a violent person."
E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.
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20) Turning the Camera on the Police
By David Sirota
Posted on May 19, 2011
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/turning_the_camera_on_the_police_20110519/
What’s good for the police apparently isn’t good for the people—or so the law enforcement community would have us believe when it comes to surveillance.
That’s a concise summary of a new trend reported by National Public Radio last week—a trend whereby law enforcement officials have been trying to prevent civilians from using cellphone cameras in public places as a means of deterring police brutality.
Oddly, the effort—which employs both forcible arrests of videographers and legal proceedings against them—comes at a time when the American Civil Liberties Union reports that “an increasing number of American cities and towns are investing millions of taxpayer dollars in surveillance camera systems.”
Then again, maybe it’s not odd that the two trends are happening simultaneously. Maybe they go hand in hand. Perhaps as more police officers use cameras to monitor every move we make, they are discovering the true power of video to independently document events. And as they see that power, they don’t want it turned against them.
But wait—why not?
Though you’d expect that uncomfortable question to evoke dissembling, Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Jim Pasco was quite straightforward about it.
Police officers, he told NPR, “need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be.” He added that law enforcement authorities believe that “anything that’s going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving—an apprehension that he’s being videotaped and may be made to look bad—could cost him or some citizen their life.”
Obviously, nobody wants to stop officers from doing their much-needed job (well, nobody other than budget-cutting politicians who are slashing police forces). In fact, organizations such as the NAACP have urged citizens to videotape police precisely to make sure police are doing ALL of their job—including protecting individuals’ civil liberties.
This is not some academic or theoretical concern, and video recording is not a needless exercise in Bill of Rights zealotry. The assault on civil liberties in America is a very real problem and monitoring police is absolutely required in light of recent data.
As USA Today reported under the headline “Police brutality cases on rise since 9/11,” situations “in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims’ civil rights increased 25 percent” between 2001 and 2007. Last year alone, more than 1,500 officers were involved in excessive-force complaints, according to the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project.
Considering this, Pasco has it exactly wrong. We should want more officers feeling “apprehension” about breaking civil liberties laws, we should hope more of them “give a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences” will be if they trample someone’s rights and we should crave an immediate “chilling effect” on such violations.
That’s what the practice of cellphone recording is supposed to do—not mimic the national security state’s Big Brother culture, but prevent that security state from trampling our freedoms.
Law enforcement officials, of course, don’t like the cellphone cameras because they don’t want any check on police power. So they’ve resorted to fearmongering allegations about lost lives. But the only police officers who are threatened by cellphone cameras are those who want to break civil liberties laws with impunity. The rest have nothing to worry about and everything to gain from a practice that simply asks them to remember the all-too-forgotten part of their “protect and serve” motto—the part about protecting the public’s civil rights.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
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