*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5/7 SF Rally-Stop Nuke Plants In Japan and the World
End The Japan Government/TEPCO Cover-Up!
Rally-Protest
Saturday, May 7, 2011
11:00 AM
At: the Japanese Consulate
50 Fremont Street/Mission Street in San Francisco
On May 7, 2011, thousands of Japanese workers, farmers and people will be protesting the continued use of nuclear power in Japan and the information cover-up on the nuclear disaster by the Japanese government in collusion with Tokyo Electric Power Company TEPCO. The government has flagrantly manipulated public safety standards for radioactive contamination from week to week in order to limit public outrage and activism against this threat to the people of Japan and the world.
The US government, in fact, was directly responsible for organizing a political campaign to force the Japanese people to accept these dangerous nuclear plants. They orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign and managed this corporate scheme to sell GE nuclear plants. Despite these public warnings, the Japanese government, TEPCO executives and US corporations profiting from these plants ignored these warnings, and continued to operate the plants including Fukushima, putting the Japanese people and the people of the world in danger. This was a man-made disaster for greater profits driven by both Japanese and US corporations.
As we now know from this world disaster at Fukushima, there is no "safe" nuclear power and we must shift to safe alternative energy such as wind, solar and more efficiency in the use of energy. The use of nuclear plants, nuclear weapons including depleted uranium bombs must be end, and only the people can make this happen.
Initial List of Speakers:
Leuren Moret, Geoscientist
Charles Smith, AFSCME 444 Delegate To Alameda Labor Council
Steve Zeltzer, Labor Video Project
Musician Carol Denney
Endorsed by: Labor Video Project, United Public Workers For Action (www.upwa.info), California Green Party, Peace of the Action, Climate SOS, Canadians for Action on Climate Change, Freedom Socialist Party, Bail Out The People Not The Banks, Workers World Party
For information: lvpsf@labornet.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Educators for a Democratic Union/EDU
Occupy the State Capitol May 9-13. Bring signs that say:
- Tax the Rich and the Corporations
- Fully Fund Public Education and Public Services
- California for All: Transfer the Wealth to the Bottom
The California Teachers' Association (CTA) has declared a "State of Emergency" in public education and public services and issued a call to all unions and their allies to support a Week of Action, May 9 - 13, to occupy the Capitol in Sacramento. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) has also endorsed this action. United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) is getting involved locally and in Sacramento!
Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU) is asking for a concerted effort to kick off the week of action by having as many of our unions, community members and parents allies join us by occupying the Capitol on Monday, May 9th. Consider coming for as much of the week as you can: EDU hopes to turn out huge numbers on Monday May 9! Call UESF at 956-8373 to ask about transportation to Sacramento.
For educators, public workers and recipients of public services, the "state of emergency" in California is no surprise. Public workers at all levels have seen cuts to our livelihoods: furloughs, pay cuts, and layoffs. Residents and students have seen services cut and tremendous increases in fees, while attempts to stave the bleeding are usually regressive local tax options.
The Republican party and their more extreme Tea Party allies blame public workers and portray the public sector as a drag on economic growth and efficiency. Currently Republicans are calling for a firm $25 billion in cuts. Democrats tell us to live within our means and tighten our belts. Jerry Brown is pushing for $12 billion in cuts and $12 billion in largely regressive tax extensions on sales, income and vehicle fees. Public debate is only beginning to address corporate responsibility, an unfair and unfixed tax system -- and a horrifying and increasing unfair distribution of wealth. NOW IS THE TIME to mobilize independently and build a coalition around defense of public service and progressive taxation.
The $25 billion budget shortfall has a solution!
- Raise the income tax on the wealthiest 1% by 4% = $20 billion
- Increase the corporate tax rate by just 4% = $4 billion.
- Institute an Oil Company Severance Tax = another $1 billion.
Even if you think that Jerry Brown and the Democrats current "alternative" is reasonable or a "necessary evil" -- you probably agree with BUILDING an ALTERNATIVE; a CALIFORNIA for ALL.
There is the wealth in California to fully fund parks, water systems, schools, public transportation, etc. EDU asks you to join us in resisting a discourse and a system that tells us poverty is the only choice: user fees, less services, more unemployment, ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE -- for us, for other public workers, for our students and their families.
There is an alternative: Tax the Rich. And then help us bring the debates and on-going organizing & coalition-building back to the local level, regional and state levels, Empowerment, not poverty; Build the alternative: California for all.
To work with EDU on "Tax the Rich/Fight Cuts/Fight for Public Education" and public service/community coalition efforts, please contact:
Andy Libson at: ed4all@googlegroups.com &/or 415-336-5034
If you are an SF teacher and are interested in Educators for a Democratic Union,
The next EDU meeting is:
Thursday May 19th, 4:30 at the Glen Park Library; 2825 Diamond Street
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Thursday May 12th
Campaign to End Wage Theft Launch
9:30 AM Press Event at SF City Hall
10 AM Public Hearing
Join the Progressive Workers Alliance to launch our campaign to end wage theft-because everyone has the right to be paid for the hours they work. For a San Francisco of opportunity and progress, it's time to say no more wage theft!
Friday, May 13th
State of Emergency Statewide Actions to Defend Public Education and Services
4:00 pm Rally at SF Civic Center Plaza
August 5-7th
National Jobs with Justice Conference
Washington, DC
Help build the movement for worker's rights and social justice locally and nationally by supporting Jobs with Justice San Francisco!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
BREAKING ALERT: Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MAY DAY 1886-International Workers Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF-ADtNerPM&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Labor Beat: We Are One - Illinois
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOntwNsWHac
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Row over Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning treatment (12Apr11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv8xyHhDKkY&feature=related
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
AP writer--State Department on Human Rights Abuse of Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUctxdsKk9Q
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Afghans for Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ror0qPcasM&NR=1
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
BOB MARLEY - WAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zaNwyhXn0&playnext=1&list=PLA467527F8DD7DE1F
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Frederick Alexander Meade on The Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vqzfEYo6Lo
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Defend our liberties! In solidarity, buy a Civil Liberty Bond today
Committee to Stop FBI Repression Defend Our Civil Liberties!
PO Box 14183, Minneapolis MN 55414 Buy a Civil Liberty Bond Today!
www.StopFBI.net An Injury to One is an Injury to All!
Dear Friends,
Statements of support and actions taken by your organization are deeply appreciated. Thank you!
Do you want another way to actively support the defense of our Civil Liberties and the antiwar and international solidarity activists targeted by the FBI in the current sweep of repression?
Civil Liberty Bonds are perfect birthday or holiday or any-day gifts! For organizations and for individuals.
Civil Liberty Bonds are available in denominations of $10, $25, $50, $100, $250 & $500. They may be purchased online and printed directly from the website by clicking on this link: Civil Liberty Bonds.  Or from a link that appears in the upper right corner on the www.stopfbi.net home page that takes you directly to the Civil Liberty Bond page.
Show your visible support for Civil Liberties. Buy a Civil Liberty Bond for your organization! Civil Liberty Bond can a gift to a liberty-loving individual or presented to honor a courageous organization like yours. Or a bond may be framed to hang on wall in an office or home to boldly declare, as it says: Material Support for the defense of freedom of speech, thought and action in the service of solidarity and peace. The bearer is entitled "as are we all" to a future free from harassment and repression.
All 23 of the targeted activists say that they will not cooperate with this witch hunt against the movements so many of us have worked to build. The U.S. attorney is working to put these activists in prison. Whether some of them are indicted, or others are jailed for refusing to testify, the threat is very real. We will carry forward the fight for our right to speak out, organize and to stand in solidarity with those who want freedom.
We invite your organization to purchase a Civil Liberty Bond to help with legal expenses for the subpoenaed activists. National Lawyers Guild attorneys are donating countless hours of time and expertise to ensure the protection of First Amendment rights. As the legal processes continue and several more people have been subpoenaed, the costs of legal office staff, court fees, and supplies are mounting.
Please also forward this request to purchase bonds to your membership via a special mailing or your regular communications. Remember that Civil Liberty Bonds are perfect birthday or holiday or any-day gifts!
Gratitude for your solidarity can hardly be expressed in words. Thank you for your continuing support of our Civil Liberties and those who are specifically targeted by the FBI. Your support is essential for all of us.
Sincerely,
the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
www.StopFBI.net
http://www.stopfbi.net/donate/liberty-bonds
CSFR
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis MN Â 55414
612-379-3585
P.S. Don't forget to go to Stop FBI.net and sign the Pledge to Resist!
++++++++++
Please forward and otherwise distribute this message!
Committee to Stop FBI Repression StopFBI.net
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
"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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Geronimo Statement from Onondaga Nation
"We've ID'd Geronimo" - 102 years after his death Geronimo is still being killed by U.S. Forces.
Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, on Behalf of the Haudenosaunee
Haudenosaunee
Onondaga Nation Hemlock Road
Box 319B
Via Nedrow, New York
May 3, 2011
Press Statement
2) Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture
"But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment - including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times - repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier's identity. ...After the capture in March 2003 of Mr. Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was subjected to the most harrowing set of the so-called enhanced measures, which included slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours. Like two other prisoners, he was subjected to waterboarding."
[The very idea that torture is debatable under a humane and democratic society is unconcionable. This is disgusting! Not in my name!!! ...bw]
By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html?hp
3) New U.S. Account Says Bin Laden Was Unarmed During Raid
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04raid.html?hp
4) Prosecutors Are Expected to Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Bin Laden
By BENJAMIN WEISER
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/nyregion/with-bin-ladens-death-seeking-the-dismissal-of-all-charges.html?ref=world
5) Palestinian Factions Sign Pact to End Rift
By ETHAN BRONNER
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/world/middleeast/05palestinians.html?ref=world
6) Inquest Faults London Officer in 2009 Death During Protests
By SARAH LYALL
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/europe/04london.html?ref=world
7) Class-Action Lawsuit Says Utah Immigration Law Violates Civil Rights
By JULIA PRESTON
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/04immigration.html?ref=us
8) Asthma Rate Rises Sharply in U.S., Government Says
By RONI CARYN RABIN
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04asthma.html?ref=us
9) Failing Grades on Civics Exam Called a 'Crisis'
By SAM DILLON
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/education/05civics.html?ref=education
10) The Torture Apologists
New York Times Editorial
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05thu1.html?hp
11) Killing Gaddafi's Grandbabies
By Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
May 4, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/killing-gaddafis-grandbabies
12) Osama, Obama and Bush: Apt Comparisons, Missed Opportunities
By Bruce A. Dixon
Black Agenda Report
May 5, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/osama-obama-and-bush-apt-comparisons-missed-opportunities
13) The Phony Antiwar Movement
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
May 3, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/phony-antiwar-movement
14) Obama's Killing Spree
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report
May 4, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama%E2%80%99s-killing-spree
15) WHY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL SHOULD BE
RELEASED FROM PRISON NOW
It's not bleeding-heart liberal judges who are giving Mumia a second chance
by Michael Coard
Posted on 5/2/2011 at 8:00AM
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/05/02/why-mumia-abu-jamal-should-be-released-from-prison-now/
16) A Bin Laden Hunter on Four Legs
By GARDINER HARRIS
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/05dog.html?ref=us
17) What's Up With Obama's Cynical Approach to Medical Marijuana?
"In reality, however, the Obama administration has attacked medical-marijuana providers on several fronts. Since January 2010, it has staged more than 90 raids on dispensaries and growers, according to figures collected by the patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. That represents a pace double the Bush administration's, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. The administration has also threatened state officials with prosecution if they participate in licensing or regulating medical marijuana. The Internal Revenue Service has expanded auditing dispensaries for tax evasion, on the grounds that drug-trafficking enterprises cannot legally claim business-expense deductions. ...'The government has brought 280E cases for years,' says Panzer, but 'as far as saying, 'hey, we can use this to go after dispensaries,' it started with Obama.'" [Obama is as slimy and dishonest as any of them if not more. When you "wish upon a star" this is what you get. To get justice, we, as working people, have to take things into our own, collective, and democratically organized hands!..bw]
By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet
Posted on May 4, 2011, Printed on May 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150840/what%27s_up_with_obama%27s_cynical_approach_to_medical_marijuana
18) Fears and Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
May 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?hp
19) Campaign ends torturous treatment of Bradley Manning!
Supporters of accused WikiLeaks source vow to fight on for open trial and freedom
By the Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
May 5, 2011
http://www.couragetoresist.org/
20) Bloomberg to Lay Off Thousands of Teachers
By DAVID W. CHEN and JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
May 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/bloomberg-budget-will-seek-400-million-more-in-cuts.html?hp
21) Japan Orders Nuclear Plant to Suspend Operations
By HIROKO TABUCHI
May 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/asia/07japan.html?hp
22) The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
UNAC (United National Antiwar Committee) statement
UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
UNACpeace@gmail.com
518-227-6947
UNACpeace.org
23) Health Crisis Rocks the Gulf in Aftermath of the Spill, But Feds and BP Turn a Blind Eye
By Brad Jacobson, AlterNet
Posted on May 2, 2011, Printed on May 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150816/health_crisis_rocks_the_gulf_in_aftermath_of_the_spill%2C_but_feds_and_bp_turn_a_blind_eye
24) The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
By FIDEL CASTRO
May 6 -8, 2011
http://counterpunch.org/castro05062011.html
25) Drone Strike in Yemen Was Aimed at Awlaki
By MARK MAZZETTI
May 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?hp
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Geronimo Statement from Onondaga Nation
"We've ID'd Geronimo" - 102 years after his death Geronimo is still being killed by U.S. Forces.
Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, on Behalf of the Haudenosaunee
Haudenosaunee
Onondaga Nation Hemlock Road
Box 319B
Via Nedrow, New York
May 3, 2011
Press Statement
"We've ID'd Geronimo" - 102 years after his death Geronimo is still being killed by U.S. Forces.
This is a sad commentary on the attitude of leaders of the U.S. military forces that continue to personify the original peoples of North America as enemies and savages. The use of the name Geronimo as a code name for Osama Bin Laden is reprehensible. Think of the outcry if they had used any other ethnic group's hero. Geronimo bravely and heroically defended his homeland and his people, eventually surrendering and living out the rest of his days peacefully, if in captivity, passing away at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1909. To compare him to Osama Bin Laden is illogical and insulting. The name Geronimo is arguably the most recognized Native American name in the world, and this comparison only serves to perpetuate negative stereotypes about our peoples. The U.S. military leadership should have known better.
It all brings to mind the August 13, 2010 statement by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg advising then Governor Paterson to "get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun" to deal with Indian affairs. This kind of thinking indicates little progress in a mature social development of United States leadership.
The military record of American Indians is exemplary. We have more men and women per capita volunteering in U.S. military services than any other ethnic group. It was American Indian code talkers that used their native languages to carry and transmit messages that Japanese and German intelligence could not decode, saving thousands of American lives in WWII. Ironically these brave men and women were using languages that American and Canadian boarding schools were doing their best to stamp out. When can we expect respect for our human dignity and human rights?
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture
"But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment - including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times - repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier's identity. ...After the capture in March 2003 of Mr. Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was subjected to the most harrowing set of the so-called enhanced measures, which included slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours. Like two other prisoners, he was subjected to waterboarding."
[The very idea that torture is debatable under a humane and democratic society is unconcionable. This is disgusting! Not in my name!!! ...bw]
By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?
As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of "enhanced interrogation techniques" like waterboarding.
Among them was John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who wrote secret legal memorandums justifying brutal interrogations. "President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today," Mr. Yoo wrote Monday in National Review, "but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration."
But a closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden's trusted courier and exposing his hide-out. One detainee who apparently was subjected to some tough treatment provided a crucial description of the courier, according to current and former officials briefed on the interrogations. But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment - including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times - repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier's identity.
The discussion of what led to Bin Laden's demise has revived a national debate about torture that raged during the Bush years. The former president and many conservatives argued for years that force was necessary to persuade Qaeda operatives to talk. Human rights advocates, and Mr. Obama as he campaigned for office, said the tactics were torture, betraying American principles for little or nothing of value.
Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002, said in a phone interview Tuesday, that coercive techniques "didn't provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information." He said that while some of his colleagues defended the measures, "everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work."
Obama administration officials, intent on celebrating Monday's successful raid, have tried to avoid reigniting a partisan battle over torture.
"The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003," said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council. "It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case that enabled us to identify this compound, and reach a judgment that Bin Laden was likely to be living there."
From the moment the first Qaeda suspects were captured, interrogators at both the military's prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the C.I.A.'s secret prisons were focused on identifying Qaeda members who served as couriers.
"We knew that it was likely that if we were ever to get Osama bin Laden, it would be because we somehow came upon somebody closely associated with him that he trusted," said Charles D. Stimson, the top Pentagon official on detainee affairs from 2004 to 2007.
In 2002 and 2003, interrogators first heard about a Qaeda courier who used the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, but his name was just one tidbit in heaps of uncorroborated claims.
After the capture in March 2003 of Mr. Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was subjected to the most harrowing set of the so-called enhanced measures, which included slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours. Like two other prisoners, he was subjected to waterboarding.
According to an American official familiar with his interrogation, Mr. Mohammed was first asked about Mr. Kuwaiti in the fall of 2003, months after the waterboarding. He acknowledged having known him but said the courier was "retired" and of little significance.
In 2004, however, a Qaeda operative named Hassan Ghul, captured in Iraq, gave a different account of Mr. Kuwaiti, according to the American official. Mr. Ghul told interrogators that Mr. Kuwaiti was a trusted courier who was close to Bin Laden, as well as to Mr. Mohammed and to Abu Faraj al-Libi, who had become the operational chief of Al Qaeda after Mr. Mohammed's capture.
Mr. Kuwaiti, Mr. Ghul added, had not been seen in some time - which analysts thought was a possible indication that the courier was hiding out with Bin Laden.
The details of Mr. Ghul's treatment are unclear, though the C.I.A. says he was not waterboarded. The C.I.A. asked the Justice Department to authorize other harsh methods for use on him, but it is unclear which were used. One official recalled that Mr. Ghul was "quite cooperative," saying that rough treatment, if any, would have been brief.
Armed with Mr. Ghul's account of the courier's significance, interrogators asked Mr. Mohammed again about Mr. Kuwaiti. He stuck to his story, according to the official.
After Mr. Libi was captured in May 2005 and turned over to the C.I.A., he too was asked. He denied knowing Mr. Kuwaiti and gave a different name for Bin Laden's courier, whom he called Maulawi Jan. C.I.A. analysts would never find such a person and eventually concluded that the name was Mr. Libi's invention, the official recalled.
Again, the C.I.A. has said Mr. Libi was not waterboarded, and details of his treatment are not known. But anticipating his interrogation, the agency pressured the Justice Department days after his capture for a new set of legal memorandums justifying the most brutal methods.
Because Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Libi had both steered interrogators away from Mr. Kuwaiti, C.I.A. officials concluded that they must be protecting him for an important reason.
"Think about circles of information - there's an inner circle they would protect with their lives," said an American official who was briefed on the C.I.A. analysis. "The crown jewels of Al Qaeda were the whereabouts of Bin Laden and his operational security."
The accumulating intelligence about Mr. Kuwaiti persuaded C.I.A. officials to stay on his trail, leading to the discovery of his real name - which American officials have not disclosed - and whereabouts. He in turn unwittingly led the agency to Bin Laden's lair, where Mr. Kuwaiti and his brother were among those who died in Monday's raid.
Before a day had passed, the torture debate had flared. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, told Fox News that the success of the hunt for Bin Laden was due to waterboarding. The next morning, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said just as flatly that "none of it came as a result of harsh interrogation practices."
David Rohde contributed reporting from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) New U.S. Account Says Bin Laden Was Unarmed During Raid
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04raid.html?hp
WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden was not carrying a weapon when he was killed by American troops in a fortified house in Pakistan, the White House said Tuesday, as it revised its initial account of the nighttime raid.
Members of a Navy Seals team burst in on Bin Laden in the compound where he was hiding and shot him in a room on an upper floor, after a fierce gun battle with other operatives of Al Qaeda on the first floor.
Bin Laden's wife, who was with him in the room, "rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed," said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, reading from the brief account, which was provided by the Defense Department. "Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed."
Mr. Carney said that Bin Laden's lack of a weapon did not mean he was ready to surrender, and he and other officials reiterated that this was a violent scene, that there was heavy fire from others in the house, and that the commandos did not know whether the occupants were wearing suicide belts or other explosives.
Still, the account diverged in some ways from one given Monday by the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. He had said Bin Laden was "engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," adding, "whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don't know."
Mr. Brennan also said then that Bin Laden used his wife as a "human shield." But officials now say that the death of another woman in the crossfire on another floor led them to draw that false conclusion.
White House officials said the discrepancies resulted from their haste to provide details about a chaotic, fast-moving military operation to an intensely interested American public. As more of the assault team's 79 members were debriefed, and their accounts were crosschecked with those of other team members, there were bound to be changes in the account, these officials said.
But the episode also reveals the pressures as the White House, intent on telling a dramatic story about a successful operation, sought to manage a 24-hour news media ravenous for immediate and vivid details. Even as Mr. Brennan was giving his account on Monday, other officials began clarifying parts of the story for reporters.
On Tuesday, one issue officials were wrestling with was whether to release a photo of Bin Laden's body.
Several experts on the rules of engagement in combat said that in a raid on a target as dangerous as Bin Laden, the Navy Seals team would be justified to open fire at the slightest commotion when they burst into a room.
"If he were surrendering, or knocked out and unconscious on the ground, that would raise serious questions," said John B. Bellinger III, legal counsel at the National Security Council and State Department in the Bush administration.
"But this is a guy who's extremely dangerous," he said. "If he's nodding at someone in the hall, or rushing to the bookcase or you think he's wearing a suicide vest, you're on solid ground to kill him."
Other experts noted that the members of the Navy Seals faced difficult conditions, moving through dim rooms under gunfire, and needing to make a split-second judgment about whether Bin Laden posed a threat.
"They say he was unarmed now, but did the Seals know he was unarmed?" said Scott L. Silliman, an expert on wartime legal doctrine at Duke University Law School. "It was in the dark. They were wearing goggles."
At the United Nations, questions arose about the killing. The organization's senior human rights official, Navi Pillay, called for more details.
While noting that Bin Laden was a dangerous man, she said any operation against him should have been done legally.
During Monday's briefing, Mr. Brennan said President Obama put a premium on protecting the commandos in the operation, saying that "we were not going to give Bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces."
None were harmed, though there was a tense moment when one of the two helicopters suffered a mechanical failure and was destroyed by the commandos.
Despite expecting Bin Laden to put up a fight, Mr. Brennan said the assault team had made contingency plans for capturing, rather than killing him. "If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn't present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that," he said.
Still, Mr. Brennan was eager to draw larger lessons from what he said was Bin Laden's use of his wife as a shield.
"Here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," he said. "I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."
Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with NBC News on Tuesday that the troops' orders were to kill Bin Laden. "But it was also, as part of their rules of engagement, if he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him," he said.
Some of the confusion in the accounts of the raid stemmed from the difference in time zones. Bin Laden had actually been killed early Monday by Pakistan time, not late on Sunday as had been initially reported.
Meanwhile, the White House continued to grapple with the question of whether to release the photo of the dead Bin Laden, or other documentary evidence. Administration officials said that they are trying to determine whether the visceral desire among Americans - and some skeptics - to see proof outweighs the potential that such images might further inflame Bin Laden's disciples.
The photo, taken after Bin Laden was killed, clearly identifies the Qaeda leader, according to one official who has viewed it. "It looks like him, covered in blood with a hole in his head," the official said.
White House officials say they are still deciding what to do, although one official said that they were leaning toward releasing the photo. Mr. Panetta told NBC News that he did not think "there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public."
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Prosecutors Are Expected to Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Bin Laden
By BENJAMIN WEISER
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/nyregion/with-bin-ladens-death-seeking-the-dismissal-of-all-charges.html?ref=world
It should happen with little or no fanfare, but it will still represent a moment that some thought might never occur: federal prosecutors in Manhattan are expected to file court papers this week that will formally ask a judge to dismiss all charges against Osama bin Laden.
The move should formally close a case against the leader of Al Qaeda that began in Federal District Court in Manhattan with an indictment on June 10, 1998, and expanded over the years with later versions, adding some two dozen defendants.
A recent version of the indictment was most recently used against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in the civilian system. Among those still charged in the indictment is Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's second in command.
The first indictment against Bin Laden ran eight pages and charged him with conspiracy to attack United States defense installations.
But if the original indictment seems almost forgotten in the post-9/11 era and the debates over civilian versus military justice, it is still offered by early investigators as proof that the authorities had grasped the threat Bin Laden posed and could have gone after him much earlier.
"It shows that in spite of whatever everyone says, there were people in the government who knew about Bin Laden prior to 9/11 and were prepared to do something about it," said Daniel J. Coleman, who in 1996 was the first F.B.I. agent detailed to the Central Intelligence Agency in the investigation of Bin Laden.
"There was a lack of political will to do anything," said Mr. Coleman, who is retired.
The indictment detailed Al Qaeda's history and Bin Laden's role as its leader. It charged that his operatives had trained and assisted Somali tribesmen in an ambush in 1993 that killed 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu.
Later indictments charged a broad conspiracy that also included the bombings on Aug. 7, 1998, of two American Embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people and the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in 2000.
The original indictment, kept secret at first, came at a time when the C.I.A. was considering a plan to capture Bin Laden and turn him over for trial, either in the United States or in an Arab country, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Those plans were not carried out, but the law enforcement investigation continued.
"There was no question from our perspective that at the time of the June 1998 indictment, the objective was to bring Bin Laden back for trial," said Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan at the time.
Ms. White said there was always a risk he would have been killed in an attempted capture. But if Bin Laden had been captured, she added, "our expectation was that he would be tried."
Another former agent, Jack Cloonan, likened the case to that of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former Panamanian leader who was flown to Miami and tried after he was ousted in the invasion of Panama in 1989.
Mr. Cloonan said that there were even discussions about how Bin Laden would be read his rights, adding that agents had envisioned Bin Laden standing in court in shackles and "an orange jumpsuit."
The string of indictments resulted in a series of trial convictions and guilty pleas. The evidence in the early investigations offered a primer on Bin Laden and his organization. "It was essential to understanding Al Qaeda," said Ali H. Soufan, a retired F.B.I. agent who was the case agent on the Cole investigation.
Mr. Coleman said he had learned of Bin Laden's death after his son, a former Army Ranger who had been part of the initial American operations in Afghanistan after 9/11, called Sunday night and said he had heard the president would be speaking.
"It seemed really fitting," Mr. Coleman said, "that they dumped him in the same ocean" where the Cole was attacked. "The deaths of those young men and women were never avenged," he added. "There was no military response for an act of war."
Mr. Coleman and other F.B.I. agents and prosecutors involved in the early Bin Laden investigation hailed the operation that led to his death.
"We started the fight; the military ended it," Michael Anticev, an F.B.I. agent, said. "Everybody's proud."
Mr. Coleman said he hoped other defendants in the Bin Laden case would be brought to Manhattan for trial. But, he added, Bin Laden's actions dictated that he no longer deserved even treatment like a criminal. "It had gone too far," he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Palestinian Factions Sign Pact to End Rift
By ETHAN BRONNER
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/world/middleeast/05palestinians.html?ref=world
CAIRO - Rival Palestinian movements signed a historic reconciliation accord here on Wednesday vowing common cause against Israeli occupation, a product of shifting regional power relations and disillusionment with American peace efforts.
Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Fatah movement and an American ally - at least until now - joined forces with Khaled Meshal, the Syria-based head of Hamas, the Islamist group that rejects Israel's existence and accepts arms and training from Iran.
At the signing ceremony inside Egypt's intelligence headquarters, men from Mr. Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, and from Hamas, which rules Gaza - who had for four years viewed one another as solemn enemies - embraced and even joked. But they also expressed steely mutual resolve.
"We will have one authority and one decision," Mr. Meshal said from the podium. "We need to achieve the common goal: a Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital, no settlers, and we will not give up the right of return."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, visiting London, denounced the pact as "a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism." The Obama administration has been cautious, saying it needs more details. In a sign of declining relations, Mr. Abbas gave the administration no warning of the deal first publicized last week.
Much about the pact remains to be determined - how it will define resistance, whether the two sides' militaries can be coordinated and what happens to American and European aid. But it was agreed that a government of unaffiliated technocrats would prepare for elections across the West Bank and Gaza within a year.
In a sign of early change on the ground, Hamas television was beamed for the first time into the West Bank and Palestinian Authority television into Gaza.
The forces that produced this unexpected reconciliation deal are many - the changes in Egypt, the troubles of the government in Syria, the failure of peace negotiations with Israel and Mr. Abbas' plans to retire.
On Wednesday, Mr. Abbas saluted Palestinian youngsters who had taken to the streets on March 15. Compared with other recent uprisings, that rally in Gaza City was small potatoes - 10,000 calling for unity between Hamas and Fatah.
But it was the biggest turnout for an unauthorized demonstration in four years of Hamas rule. And although advertised as a call for unity, it was a sign of rising public discontent, the first clear indication that the regional earthquake would not spare the Palestinians. From that moment, negotiations grew serious.
Hamas had rejected a very similar unity agreement signed by Fatah nearly two years ago but, in truth, that offer was halfhearted. Mr. Abbas, along with his allies, the old Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, the United States and Israel, wanted Hamas to be seen as the problem. A negotiated peace deal, he believed, would force Hamas' hand later.
Mr. Abbas said last week that he had come close to an agreement with Ehud Olmert, then the prime minister of Israel, in 2008. When he tried to pick up negotiations with Mr. Netanyahu the next year, he faced a more hawkish approach.
"He wanted Israeli troops in the valley and on the heights for 40 years," Mr. Abbas told a group of Israeli guests, speaking of areas in the West Bank. "That means a continuation of the occupation."
Therefore, from September 2010 when Mr. Abbas concluded that negotiations were doomed, he began down another path - reconciliation with Hamas and a campaign for a United Nations declaration of Palestinian statehood in September. He has said repeatedly that he will not run for the presidency again and a number of people who know him believe he wants to end his career on a note of unity.
Hamas was brought on board through meetings in Cairo under the auspices of the new Egyptian government.
In late March, the new Egyptian foreign minister, Nabil el-Araby, invited a delegation from Hamas to Cairo to meet at the Foreign Ministry instead of the intelligence headquarters or a hotel meeting room - effectively upgrading them from militants to diplomats, some later said.
"The foreign minister told them, 'We do not want to talk about a 'peace process,' " said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry. "'We want a peace, and the only way to talk about peace is to end the divisions so we can have one Palestinian voice."
In turn, Hamas brought up a reopening of the Gaza border with Egypt, kept essentially closed by Mr. Mubarak in keeping with a request by Israel to isolate Hamas. The Egyptians said they would open it and things moved quickly.
Developments in Syria have also played a big role. The government of President Bashar al-Assad has faced widespread popular demonstrations in recent weeks and responded with brute force, killing hundreds. The Syrian government demanded that Hamas profess loyalty to it but Hamas, which considers itself a popular movement, has demurred. It may look for a new home.
One of the elements of the deal most appealing to Hamas is the creation of a committee to remake the Palestine Liberation Organization over the coming year. Hamas has been excluded from the P.L.O., the overarching authority of Palestinian politics. The interim committee will include the heads of all the Palestinian factions - including Mr. Meshal of Hamas - and could end up being the main power in the coming year.
"Hamas will be part of the political leadership taking major decisions," Mamoun Abu Shahla, a Gaza businessman and independent who has been involved in the process, said.
The difficulties the two sides face in reconciling their conflicting ideologies and approaches will be great, and many wonder if the agreement can ever be put into effect and whether violence could result. For now, while a committee negotiates the future of security cooperation and prisoners, each side will police its area independently. The Palestinian Legislative Council or parliament where Hamas won a majority in 2006 elections will also be revived.
The presence of Hamas politicians in the new governing structures could well mean that the United States, which labels Hamas a terrorist group, could cut off aid to the Palestinians, hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Representative Steve Chabot, a Ohio Republican and chairman of the Middle East subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs committee, met with Mr. Araby, the Egyptian foreign minister, on Monday and came away convinced that the new transitional government was what he called "a wolf in sheep's clothing" in which Hamas could have unchecked influence over the transitional government and peace talks.
But Munib al-Masri, a West Bank businessman who has been promoting reconciliation, said the deal should be given a chance.
"Hamas will change," he argued in an interview. "Bring them in. Fatah used to be just like them."
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo, Fares Akram from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Inquest Faults London Officer in 2009 Death During Protests
By SARAH LYALL
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/europe/04london.html?ref=world
LONDON - At the time, the police said that Ian Tomlinson had died of a heart attack. But after a video handed to a British newspaper by an outraged bystander showed Mr. Tomlinson collapsing after being pushed and savagely struck by a police officer wielding a baton, his family demanded an inquiry.
Now, two years later, a jury in an official inquest has reached a damning conclusion. After hearing five weeks of evidence contradicting the original account, it determined on Tuesday that Mr. Tomlinson had in fact been "unlawfully killed" by the "excessive and unreasonable" behavior of the police officer who hit him, Police Constable Simon Harwood.
As a result of Constable Harwood's attack, the jury said, "Mr. Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding, which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death."
The case has been a cause célèbre since the death of Mr. Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor whose fatal encounter with an angry army of police officers took place as he tried to make his way home during the sometimes-violent protests against a Group of 20 meeting on April 1, 2009. The verdict was a huge embarrassment for the police, which have been repeatedly accused of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators and of being unable to control violent protesters, and who seemed to be doing their best to avoid taking responsibility for Mr. Tomlinson's death.
Mr. Tomlinson, an alcoholic who had liver disease, had a number of peaceful encounters that evening with the police, who stopped him repeatedly as he walked, slowly and not very steadily, through London's financial district.
One officer, Police Constable Andrew Brown, said that he encountered Mr. Tomlinson "shuffling" toward a police cordon against a backdrop of fires, smoke and rocks being thrown by the protesters. "He was staring vacantly towards the demonstration," Constable Brown told the inquest. "I explained why he could not get through. He said he needed to get to West Smithfield where he lived - he needed to work in the morning."
A few minutes later, Mr. Tomlinson was standing with his hands in his pockets when a line of police officers clearing the area of protesters told him to get back. It was then that Constable Harwood, who told the inquest that he was panicking at the mounting violence and who had already had several altercations with people in the crowd, ran forward.
Mr. Tomlinson had already begun to move away when Constable Harwood hit him in the left thigh with his baton and then pushed him hard on his shoulder. Mr. Tomlinson fell to the ground. He got up and wandered unsteadily for a short time before collapsing again, unconscious. He died soon afterward.
The police at first said that their only contact with Mr. Tomlinson involved trying to help him. But the push was captured on video by a bystander, Chris La Jaunie, an investment banker in New York. Six days later, he released the video to The Guardian, which posted it online.
A police pathologist - who has been suspended twice for failings in other postmortem examinations - concluded that Mr. Tomlinson had had a fatal heart attack. But several experts testified at the inquest that he had in fact died from internal bleeding.
Rose Fitzpatrick, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, called the verdict a "matter of deep regret" and said the department would begin misconduct proceedings against Constable Harwood. But Mr. Tomlinson's family said the officer should face criminal prosecution.
"We've been let down for two years," Paul King, one of Mr. Tomlinson's nine children, said after the verdict. He said that the verdict was "a bit of closure," but that "we'd like to go to court and continue with the manslaughter charges."
The Crown Prosecution Service, which originally declined to prosecute anyone in the case, said Tuesday that it would review its decision in light of the inquest.
Constable Harwood denied that he had intended to harm Mr. Tomlinson. The officer "did not intend, or foresee at the time, that his push would cause Mr. Tomlinson to fall over, let alone that it would result in any injury," Constable Harwood's lawyer said in a statement.
Jenny Jones, a member of the London Assembly from the Green Party, referred to several cases in which unarmed civilians were killed by police officers, including that of Jean Charles de Menezes. Mr. Menezes, a Brazilian man, was shot dead days after the subway bombings of July 2005 by officers who mistook him for a terrorist after a series of blunders. No officer was prosecuted in the case.
"Ian Tomlinson's death must not join that list," she said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Class-Action Lawsuit Says Utah Immigration Law Violates Civil Rights
By JULIA PRESTON
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/04immigration.html?ref=us
Two national civil rights law organizations sued the State of Utah on Tuesday, seeking to block a law that gives the police new powers to question people they stop about immigration status.
The law, signed by Gov. Gary R. Herbert in March, was an effort by legislators to crack down on illegal immigration while avoiding the costly legal challenges and polarizing political furor that followed a stricter law enacted last year in Arizona.
But the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, based in Los Angeles, brought the class-action lawsuit claiming that the Utah statute violates federal civil rights and immigration law in "myriad ways," mainly by interfering with immigration enforcement that is generally reserved for federal authorities. The groups are asking a federal judge to suspend the law before it goes into effect on May 10.
The Utah legal fight is one of many battles across the country, as several of states consider immigration crackdown bills late in the legislative season, and Latino and immigrant groups mobilize to try to stop a repeat of the Arizona law, known as S.B. 1070.
A tough immigration bill in Florida was changing by the hour in the State Senate over the past two days, as business and Latino leaders argued against it and lawmakers weighed its possible impact on the state's tourism and agriculture.
A bill similar to Arizona's is moving forward in Alabama. Georgia passed a tough enforcement bill last month that is awaiting the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal.
The legislature in Utah, looking for a political formula that would satisfy immigration hardliners without antagonizing the state's growing population of Latino workers, passed three bills in March, including one that created a guest-worker program providing legal work permits to illegal immigrants living in the state. A third bill set up a partnership with the state of Nuevo León in northern Mexico to bring in temporary farm workers under an existing federal program.
The lawsuit challenged only Utah's enforcement bill. "Federal immigration law leaves no room for this kind of intrusive state legislation," said Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center.
Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, said he would vigorously defend the law. He said he had closely studied the Arizona law as well as a ruling by a federal judge that suspended central provisions of it. Mr. Shurtleff said Utah's law was written to avoid racial profiling and to codify police practices that were already routine.
Last week, Mr. Shurtleff met with Justice Department officials in Washington to try to persuade them not to bring a lawsuit against the state. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has criticized the Obama administration for failing to sue Utah, as it did Arizona.
As Florida lawmakers debated, Latino and African-American civil rights leaders warned on Tuesday that they would consider a boycott or other measures against the state if a harsh immigration law passed.
"Make no mistake about that: it will bring a loss of revenues, and it will do nothing to solve the immigration problem," said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza. She estimated that a boycott led by the groups in Arizona cost that state $490 million in lost tourism and convention business.
States have wrestled with the issue given the unlikely prospects for an overhaul of immigration laws to move forward in a divided Congress. But President Obama, in a meeting late Tuesday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he remained committed to trying to pass some form of immigration legislation this year, perhaps a bill limited to giving legal status to illegal immigrant students. The meeting was the president's third in as many weeks to try to revive some form of immigration legislation.
"The president is just absolutely dedicated to the proposition that some legislation has to move," said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the Hispanic caucus.
In the meantime, Mr. Gonzalez said, the Hispanic lawmakers pressed Mr. Obama to set guidelines so that young students with no criminal records who are picked up by immigration agents would not be deported.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Asthma Rate Rises Sharply in U.S., Government Says
By RONI CARYN RABIN
May 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04asthma.html?ref=us
Americans are suffering from asthma in record numbers, according to a study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one in 10 children and almost one in 12 Americans of all ages now has asthma, government researchers said.
According to the report, from 2001 to 2009 the prevalence of asthma increased among all demographic groups studied, including men, women, whites, blacks and Hispanics. Black children are most acutely affected: the study found that 17 percent of black children - nearly one in five - had a diagnosis of asthma in 2009, up from 11.4 percent, or about one in nine, in 2001.
While officials at the Centers for Disease Control emphasized that asthma could be controlled if managed effectively, they were at a loss to explain why it had become more widespread even as important triggers like cigarette smoking had become less common.
"We don't know exactly why the number is going up, but, importantly, we know there are measures individuals with asthma can take to control symptoms," said Ileana Arias, principal deputy director of the centers.
Agency officials declined to comment on budgetary proposals that would reduce money for the National Asthma Control Program.
Prevention depends on educating patients about appropriate use of medications and ensuring that each patient has a written medical plan to control asthma, but the report found that only one-third of patients had been given a plan and only about half had been advised to make changes to eliminate asthma triggers at home, school and work.
Paul Garbe, chief of the Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch at the centers, noted the success of several state public health initiatives, including one in Connecticut in which asthma educators and environmental assessors were sent into homes to advise patients on what changes needed to be made and how to manage the disease.
The report found that the overall prevalence of asthma increased to 8.2 percent in 2009, when 24.6 million cases were diagnosed, from 7.3 percent in 2001, when 20.1 million cases were diagnosed - a 12.3 percent increase. Among the most affected were children, 9.6 percent of whom had asthma, and especially poor children, of whom 13.5 percent had it.
While 7.7 percent of adults were found to have asthma, the rate was higher among women (9.7 percent) and among poor adults of both sexes (10.6 percent).
Asthma costs grew to about $56 billion in 2007, up from about $53 billion in 2002, the report said, though annual deaths attributed to asthma declined to about 3,500 in 2007, from a peak of about 5,500 deaths in 1996.
Researchers are investigating several potential causes for the increase in asthma, including exposure to various allergens, traffic exhaust fumes, pesticides and certain plastics, as well as factors like obesity and diet that may play a role, said Dr. Rachel L. Miller, director of the asthma project at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
"There's no easy singular explanation," Dr. Miller said. "The more we study this, the more it raises a lot of questions. It's not a straightforward puzzle at all."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Failing Grades on Civics Exam Called a 'Crisis'
By SAM DILLON
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/education/05civics.html?ref=education
Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday.
At the same time, three-quarters of high school seniors who took the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unable to demonstrate civic skills like identifying the effect of United States foreign policy on other nations or naming a power granted to Congress by the Constitution.
"Today's NAEP results confirm that we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education," said Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court justice, who last year founded icivics.org, a nonprofit group that teaches students civics through Web-based games and other tools.
The Department of Education administered the tests, known as the nation's report card, to 27,000 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students last year. Questions cover themes including how government is financed, what rights are protected by the Constitution and how laws are passed.
Average fourth-grade scores on the test's 300-point scale rose slightly since the exam was last administered, in 2006, to 157 from 154. Average eighth-grade scores were virtually unchanged at 151. The scores of high school seniors - students who are either eligible to vote or about to be - dropped to 148 from 151. Those scores mean that about a quarter of 4th- and 12th-grade students, and about one-fifth of 8th graders ranked at the proficient or advanced levels.
"The results confirm an alarming and continuing trend that civics in America is in decline," said Charles N. Quigley, executive director of the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit group based in California. "During the past decade or so, educational policy and practice appear to have focused more and more upon developing the worker at the expense of developing the citizen."
One bright spot in the results was that Hispanic students, who make up a growing proportion of the country's population and student body, narrowed the gap between their scores and those of non-Hispanic white students. On average, Hispanic eighth-graders scored 137 and non-Hispanic whites 160. That 23-point gap was down from 29 points in 2006. Among high school seniors, the gap narrowed to 19 points from 24 in 2006.
The black-white achievement gap in civics, which is about 25 points at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels and 29 points among high school seniors, did not change significantly.
The results showed that a smaller proportion of fourth and eighth graders demonstrated proficiency in civics than in any other subject the federal government has tested since 2005, except history, American students' worst subject.
"We face difficult challenges at home and abroad," Justice O'Connor said in a statement. "Meanwhile divisive rhetoric and a culture of sound bites threaten to drown out rational dialogue and debate. We cannot afford to continue to neglect the preparation of future generations for active and informed citizenship."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) The Torture Apologists
New York Times Editorial
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05thu1.html?hp
The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden's death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Jose Rodriguez Jr. was the leader of counterterrorism for the C.I.A. from 2002-2005 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda leaders were captured. He told Time magazine that the recent events show that President Obama should not have banned so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. (Mr. Rodriguez, you may remember, ordered the destruction of interrogation videos.)
John Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department lawyer who twisted the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions into an unrecognizable mess to excuse torture, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the killing of Bin Laden proved that waterboarding and other abuses were proper. Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, said at first that no coerced evidence played a role in tracking down Bin Laden, but by Tuesday he was reciting the talking points about the virtues of prisoner abuse.
There is no final answer to whether any of the prisoners tortured in President George W. Bush's illegal camps gave up information that eventually proved useful in finding Bin Laden. A detailed account in The Times on Wednesday by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage concluded that torture "played a small role at most" in the years and years of painstaking intelligence and detective work that led a Navy Seals team to Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan.
That squares with the frequent testimony over the past decade from many other interrogators and officials. They have said repeatedly, and said again this week, that the best information came from prisoners who were not tortured. The Times article said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, fed false information to his captors during torture.
Even if it were true that some tidbit was blurted out by a prisoner while being tormented by C.I.A. interrogators, that does not remotely justify Mr. Bush's decision to violate the law and any acceptable moral standard.
This was not the "ticking time bomb" scenario that Bush-era officials often invoked to rationalize abusive interrogations. If, as Representative Peter King, the Long Island Republican, said, information from abused prisoners "directly led" to the redoubt, why didn't the Bush administration follow that trail years ago?
There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration's abuses - and ends justify the means arguments - did huge damage to this country's standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort. If that isn't enough, there is also the pragmatic argument that most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.
No matter what Mr. Yoo and friends may claim, the real lesson of the Bin Laden operation is that it demonstrated what can be done with focused intelligence work and persistence.
The battered intelligence community should now be basking in the glory of a successful operation. It should not be dragged back into the muck and murk by political figures whose sole agenda seems to be to rationalize actions that cost this country dearly - in our inability to hold credible trials for very bad men and in the continued damage to our reputation.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Killing Gaddafi's Grandbabies
By Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
May 4, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/killing-gaddafis-grandbabies
The ceremonial slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi and his family lurches forward like some savage white cult ritual. "Death to the demon and his seed," shout the priests, banshees and ice-smile oracles of the U.S. corporate media. The American (or "western") manifest mission must be sanctified in the blood of caricatures. Like the Christ-crazed hordes that surged out of Europe's far western dankness to annihilate whole cities of strangers-including tens of thousands of fellow Christians that did not speak, eat or smell as the French and English did-these modern Crusaders require ritual bloodletting before expropriating the lands and goods of their victims.
When the Arab world awoke at the beginning of the year, the highly paid presenters and rapid-vapid quippers of CNN and competing reality-creation companies were caught pitifully mission-less. Absent direction from the official scenario-producers at the White House and the State Department, there could be no coherent newsreader script, no simple theme for quipping. But direction would not be forthcoming from the Obama administration until a way could be found to put the U.S. on the "right" side of the Arab Awakening.
Where was the consummate Arab evil?
In the first days of the Egyptian rebellion, CNN and its ilk were largely on their own and visibly confused-reflecting the confusion and desperation in Washington. Then, after the White House, having no other choice, pretended to empathize with the young demonstrators at Tahrir Square, the corporate media commenced its love affair with the "new" Arab. But where was the consummate Arab evil, in the battle against which the corporate media could fulfill its role as chronicler of America's glorious, civilizing saga in the world? Who is the caricature, to be ritually tormented and slain?
Moammar Gaddafi became the foil for the Euro-American military response to the Arab Awakening. Instantaneously, CNN got its mission back. Gaddafi was perfect, having long existed in cartoon form for western consumption. With Gaddafi's gradual accommodation with the West, in the early 2000s, Iraq's Saddam Hussein became the Great Cartoon Satan, even appearing as the Devil in Comedy Central's, "South Park" cartoon show. Gaddafi, the vintage cartoon, inevitably became conflated with Saddam (all Arab strongman cartoons look alike).
A general on CNN's retainer repeatedly named the long dead Saddam as the ghoul to be obliterated by righteous American firepower. More than once, the general apologized to the audience, but he needn't have since, to the mass of CNN's viewers, Gaddafi has no more claim to his own life, history and death than did Saddam Hussein. The are both little voodoo dolls to be stuck with needles and burned and torn to pieces, along with their children.
Americans, who consume packaged lies like hot dogs, and then revere these items of consumption as sacred culture (as "American" as hot dogs), have been ready to kill Gaddafi's sons ever since Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were gunned down in 2003. In American eyes, these Arab strongmen's sons are no more than satanic versions of Daffy Duck's cartoon nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. In Gaddafi's case, two of his sons were named Saif. If Col. Gaddafi didn't distinguish sufficiently between them, why should NATO bombers? As it turned out, the Saif that died along with three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, Saif al-Arab, the youngest of the brothers, was also the least political. The grandkids, ages 6 months to two years, were, of course, totally apolitical and, presumably, quite cute. But vaunted American "compassion" does not extend to the grandbabies of evil Arab cartoon-men. CNN and other U.S. corporate outlets, all of which have reporters in Tripoli, chose to quote rebel leaders in Benghazi who cast doubt on whether the children of Gaddifi sons Mohammed and Hannibal and daughter Aisha were really dead. The rebels advised that it was likely a trick, and U.S. corporate media treated the vile slander as simply another competing factoid.
The killer couple in the White House offered no condolences or apologies, presumably on the assumption that the elder Gaddafi had invited his family to his residence to act as human shields, and was therefore responsible for their deaths.
It would not occur to most Americans that Gaddafi and his family were entitled to feel safe under international law and American law, which bar assassinations of heads of state, and that United Nations resolution 1973 does not authorize NATO to hunt down the Libyan leader or kill those around him. But he's only a cartoon, and cartoons have no rights. Neither do the countries these cartoons come from, as every American knows.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Osama, Obama and Bush: Apt Comparisons, Missed Opportunities
By Bruce A. Dixon
Black Agenda Report
May 5, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/osama-obama-and-bush-apt-comparisons-missed-opportunities
Who says there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats in the White House? Imagine for a moment that the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death had come four years earlier, while George W. Bush was still president.
Having already used the top-gun carrier landing stunt for his 2003 "mission accomplished" speech, president Bush might have had himself lowered to the announcement scene by cable from a helicopter at one of the more than one thousand U.S. military bases worldwide. With Vice President Dick Cheney hovering at some undisclosed location the president, Bush would declare yet another battlefield victory in the global war on terror. Bin Laden's body, the president might say, was promptly buried at sea within hours of his death in accordance with Muslim tradition. Minister of Fear Tom Ridge would elevate the national alert level to pale orange. Military and intelligence officials would insist that the killing of Bin Laden proves that "torture works." At the Pentagon Secretary of War Robert Gates, in consultation with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might advise withholding any photographs of the corpse, and security would be increased at U.S. embassies and installations around the world.
Instead Barack Obama made the announcement solemnly, sternly and alone at the White House. There were no references to "smokin' him out" or "mission accomplished," no ridiculous color-coded alerts, nor references to a "war on terror." Speaking from an undisclosed location, former vice president Dick Cheney congratulated President Obama, who announced that Bin Laden's body had been buried at sea shortly after his death, according to Muslim tradition. While Republicans in Congress tweet that "torture works," military and intelligence officials, who ordered and supervised torture such as General Petreaus, are quietly promoted. At the Pentagon, Secretary of War Robert Gates, consulting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly decline to release photographs of the corpse. Security was increased at U.S. embassies and installations around the world.
The real difference between Republicans and Democrats in a case like this isn't in how the White House would act. The difference is how rank and file Democrats, the so-called antiwar movement chooses to react. If this were 2006 or 2007, many would recall the widespread news reports of Bin Laden's death back in December of 2001, and the fact that Bin Laden audio or video tapes had a habit of emerging at incredibly convenient times for the Bush administration, like the eve of the 2004 election. Why should a government and military establishment, antiwar activists would wonder aloud, that told hundreds of well-documented lies to get us into Iraq alone be trusted to tell the truth now?
The difference is, those are questions that don't get asked with a Democrat in the White House. Democrat Barack Obama doesn't just start with a clean slate. Thanks to the president's bipartisan and visionary policy of "looking forward, not back" atrocities and crimes of administrations past are forgiven and forgotten, and all the excuses offered for them enshrined as unquestioned historical fact. The Pentagon says they killed Bin Laden in a weekend firefight, won't show pictures and dumped the body at sea. That's it and that's all. Unless another courageous soldier like Bradley Manning comes forth, we'll never know any different, end of story.
Assuming the official story is mostly true, could Bin Laden have been captured alive and put on trial? Not likely. No matter who was in the White House, the U.S. never had any intention of capturing Bin Laden alive and bringing him to trial. Afghan authorities in the fall of 2001 offered to apprehend and turn Bin Laden in to U.S. officials, if only they were provided with some actual proof he was responsible for 9-11. Bush spurned the offer, preferring to invade and install a new Afghan "government" of feudal warlords, drug smugglers and aid profiteers. The team allegedly sent to kill Bin Laden was not instructed to capture him alive, but to do just what it did. To kill him.
The Afghan war is not going well, even with a quarter million military, contractors, U.S. officials, and mercenaries on the ground spending upwards of $2 billion-a-week. The American public, especially Democrats, don't support it, and even General Petreaus concedes it cannot be won. If President Obama were the courageous, transformative and visionary leader his worshippers would like to believe, Bin Laden's reported death would be an opportunity to declare victory and leave. But transformation and courageous vision have never been Barack Obama's strong suit. This president has already blown many such opportunities.
Remember when the White House controlled, with no congressional oversight whatsoever, the global research, financial resources and manufacturing plants of General Motors? Obama could have ordered it to produce electric cars and trucks, and ordered the Post Office and federal agencies to buy them. He could have made GM produce high-speed railcars, or building materials that conserve energy, a real "green jobs" program. Instead, he bailed out the investors, stuck the workers with responsibility for their own pensions, and let GM go back to making the same things the same ways they were making before.
Then there was healthcare, where Obama in 2005 told audiences first we (Democrats) take the House and Senate, then we take the White House, and then we get single-payer health care. Instead we got bailouts for big pharma and private health insurance. There was the reconfiguration of NAFTA and the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to enable workers to form unions, both of which Obama endorsed in front of key audiences, and flipped on once in office. Whether it's been Wall Street, "clean coal," "safe nukes," a path to citizenship for the undocumented, an answer to black joblessness and foreclosures, or offshore drilling and the Gulf cleanup, the only courage Barack Obama has found is the courage to betray Democratic voters, who will vote for him anyway because he's not Michelle Bachman.
The killing of Bin Laden, if that's what it was, and the celebrations around it only ratify and affirm the lies that war, torture and empire are good and necessary, especially when carried out by Democrats.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Marietta GA. He's one of the principals of a technology and consulting firm and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) The Phony Antiwar Movement
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report
May 3, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/phony-antiwar-movement
Two university researchers have proven, by the numbers, what the real antiwar movement has known for years: that many of the folks that turned out in such large numbers to demonstrate against America's wars when George Bush was president, were really only opposed to Republican wars. Thus, when Barack Obama captured the White House, the so-called antiwar movement largely collapsed.
The new study was put together by Michael Heaney, of the University of Michigan, and Fabio Rojas, of Indiana University. It shows, essentially, that many Democrats were motivated to pick up peace placards and shout antiwar slogans more by their dislike of George Bush and the Republicans, than for genuine opposition to America's multiple wars around the globe-wars that Obama expanded upon, while adding his own, new theaters of war. Professor Heaney puts it this way. "The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead," says Heaney, "attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated." The professor concluded that, "The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions."
In other words, much of the antiwar movement was phony, a cynical gathering of partisan Democrats who were really never all that concerned for the victims of U.S. imperial warfare, or for the huge dislocations that the national security state places on the U.S. economy. No, they just wanted their guy, the Democrat, to win. Once Obama was safely in the White House, the antiwar movement was all but dismantled, having served its partisan political purpose. For the phony antiwarrior, imperialism with a Democratic face is just fine.
Heaney and Rojas came to their conclusions by surveying 5,400 participants in 27 antiwar demonstrations in Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities from January 2007 to December 2009. The researchers carefully constructed the respondents' political and activist histories and affiliations. A clear pattern emerged: once Obama was elected, Democratic activists dropped out of antiwar politics. People affiliated with third parties remained, and became more central to the now smaller, but more radical, movement.
It really didn't require a university degree to understand that United for Peace and Justice, UFPJ, the antiwar umbrella group during the height of protest, was behaving more as an arm of the Democratic Party than as principled peace activists. The shallowness of these phony antiwarriors was so obvious; UFPJ was widely derided as United for Peanut Butter and Jelly.
A much smaller antiwar movement survives under the leader of UNAC, the United National Antiwar Committee.
The people that like the Democratic Party more than peace, are gone-and are not likely to return until the Republicans recapture the White House-at which point these phony peace advocates will pretend that they never left.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Obama's Killing Spree
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report
May 4, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama%E2%80%99s-killing-spree
"Extrajudicial killing is now the rule, and not the exception for the United States."
Barack Obama was trying for a double homicide this weekend. He hoped to kill both Muammar Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden in one fell swoop. Bin Laden's luck ran out, but Gaddafi used up another of his nine lives and survives while his son and three of his grandchildren are dead, killed in a NATO attack on their home.
The United States government murdered members of Gaddafi's family in a blatant violation of American and international law. The peace prize laureate is in fact a typical American president, using lies and outright thuggery in order to promote the dictates of the American empire.
That empire is on its way out, but the final demise may take years, or decades, and the raw power of American military might well continue to bring devastation to the world. The Gaddafi family and Osama bin Laden are but the latest victims in the body count.
Not only were these killings assassinations and therefore illegal under American law, but they play a terrible role in promoting beliefs in exceptionalism and exceptional suffering. Judging from the gloating and celebration invoked by bin Laden's death, one would think that Americans were completely innocent of bringing bloodshed to any part of the world.
Obviously that is not true. Not only is America guilty of many crimes committed both within and outside of its borders, but the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001 became the pretext for an orgy of even greater numbers of killings. Thousands of Afghan civilians have died for the simple reason that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda planned the attacks while using that country as a base. The occupation of Iraq was born out of an utter and complete lie, a claim that Saddam Hussein was, like al Qaeda, a threat to the safety of Americans.
"One would think that Americans were completely innocent of bringing bloodshed to any part of the world."
The Obama administration is not quite so ham fisted as the Bush regime, but Muammar Gaddafi has taken on the role played by Saddam Hussein. Just last year, we were assured that Gaddafi was a friend and an ally of the United States, and that the Reagan era attempt to kill him was a long distant memory, never to be repeated because Gaddafi was now on the good list of foreign policy makers.
How times have changed. Last month Obama, British prime minister Cameron, and French president Sarkozy issued a joint statement which said in part, "Colonel Gaddafi must go, and go for good." Well, killing someone certainly insures they are gone for good, and the three intended to make good on that threat.
Extrajudicial killing is now the rule, and not the exception for the United States. Not only that, but our court system, which in the pre-Bush days were used for terrorism trials, are now off limits politically. When the Obama administration briefly planned to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in New York, all hell broke loose. New Yorkers were told, falsely, that their lives would be at risk and their city would have to shut down. Of course, the expense would have been great, but it would have been possible to carry out a civilian court trial had the Obama administration not knuckled under to pressure to ignore the rules of law.
Obama, the so-called change agent, has proven to be exactly like his predecessors. His poll numbers are high because he killed people in a far away place. One of the victims was a perpetrator of a crime against Americans, but had the country not fallen into such a lawless state, he might have been brought to trial in a courtroom. The United States is now less civilized than ever, and even if Obama had been inclined to do so, most Americans would howl and moan at the prospect of bin Laden receiving true justice. It is a pity. It would have been wonderful indeed for the United States to make even a small attempt to live up to the ideals it once followed. Even the Nazi leadership were tried in open court.
"The United States is now less civilized than ever."
On Thursday Obama will go to the site of the old World Trade Center and make a speech about why he had to kill bin Laden and why it was right to do so. The Peace Prize winner will once again give a lofty, well written speech about why it makes no sense to be peaceful.
The carnival atmosphere is growing more awful by the moment. The corporate media (*link lies) immediately told the story of the bin Laden killing by repeating government lies about women used as human shields and has now descended into worship of the black ops, special, wonderful, very elite, calm, cool, collected and totally awesome troops who did the killing. CIA director Leon Panetta is even suggesting who should portray him in a movie. It would be easy to make fun of Panetta, but he knows of what he speaks. Hollywood will come calling and the only question remaining will be who will portray the peace prize winning killer president.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) WHY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL SHOULD BE
RELEASED FROM PRISON NOW
It's not bleeding-heart liberal judges who are giving Mumia a second chance
by Michael Coard
Posted on 5/2/2011 at 8:00AM
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/05/02/why-mumia-abu-jamal-should-be-released-from-prison-now/
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals was correct when, on April 26th, it ruled that Mumia Abu-Jamal should not be executed as a result of being found guilty of the 1981 shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. That original decision resulted from jury instructions given by trial Judge Albert Sabo in 1982 that were so flawed that they could have misled the jurors into thinking that they had to be unanimous regarding mitigating factors that could have resulted in a life sentence instead of death. That ruling-which was required based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent and which was perfectly consistent with the revisions made in death penalty hearing forms promulgated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Rules Committee in 1989-was a good start, but it needs a great finish, which would be the immediate release of Mumia. And here's why.
Let's deal with a few of the irrefutable factual points and then at least one unarguable legal point. Here's the first fact: The prosecution's own ballistics expert performed standard tests to determine whether the gun that Mumia supposedly had was the same one from which the fatal bullet was fired. However, that expert conceded that the tests were "inconclusive." In other words, that gun was not shown to have fired the shot that killed Faulkner.
The second fact is that the police-who had Mumia in custody at the scene of the crime they say he committed-claimed that due to an oversight, they failed to perform the standard gunpowder residue test on Mumia's hands. An oversight? In a high profile case involving the alleged cold-blooded execution of a heroic white police officer by a supposedly crazed black revolutionary? Or is it more likely that they did perform the test but didn't get the results they wanted so they destroyed the evidence because if there's no gunpowder on Mumia's hands then he couldn't have fired a gun? They certainly couldn't admit that. By the way, they did test his jacket and Faulkner's jacket and found gunpowder residue on both because they had been shot-so why not test Mumia's hands? Hmmm.
The third fact is that the widely publicized assertion that Mumia confessed by saying: "I shot the motherfucker, and I hope he dies" is shaky at best-and completely fabricated at worst. No one had heard anything about a purported confession until a police officer, not a few minutes into the investigation but 64 days into it mentioned it. When asked why in the world it took so long to report such critically important evidence, the officer said he hadn't realized its importance and also had forgotten because he had been emotionally overwhelmed. He actually said that. And this was despite the fact that another officer who had been with Mumia from the time he was found lying in the street until the time he was being treated in the hospital wrote that "the Negro male made no comment." And a physician stated that the life-threatening bullet wound in Mumia's chest made it medically impossible for him to have spoken at all.
As an aside, albeit an important one, there was only one alleged eyewitness account to the actual shooting as verified by in-court police documents. This is contrary to widespread media accounts of out-of-court statements by police and prosecutors that there were several eyewitnesses to the actual shooting. The one eyewitness, Cynthia White, was a very popular and very busy prostitute in the neighborhood where the shooting occurred; she testified that Mumia-while firing-was running toward Faulkner immediately after the officer and Mumia's brother, Billy Cook, had begun walking together to the police car where they arrived without incident. But this is contradicted by another prosecution witness whose name is Robert Chobert and who did not see the actual shooting but said that Faulkner had spread Billy across the car and was swung at and punched by Billy. By the way, isn't it quite curious that the only supposed eyewitness later got all of her many pending criminal charges (i.e., those resulting from numerous hooking arrests) summarily dropped? And what about the white female court stenographer who heard trial Judge Sabo say, "I'm gonna help the prosecution fry that nigger?" And speaking of Sabo, isn't he the same judge who had 24 of the 32 death penalty cases he presided over reversed?
And as far as the law is concerned, the U.S. Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky made it clear that a defendant is denied a fair trial when the prosecution unconstitutionally excludes blacks from the jury panel through the use of peremptory challenges. In Mumia's case, the D.A.'s office used 10 of 15 peremptories to dump African Americans, and later got rid of another. That means the prosecutor used about 70 percent of those challenges to knock black folks off the jury. Based on this, even the Third Circuit in 2008 came very close, in a razor-sharp, 2-1 vote, to going beyond its mere re-sentencing order to actually ordering-shockingly-a re-trial. And to those who think that only bleeding-heart liberal judges have been issuing orders to save Mumia's life, it was two George H.W. Bush appointees on the Third Circuit in 2008 and 2011 and a Reagan appointee on the District Court in 2001. I guess the proper interpretation of the law can sometimes cut across party lines.
These are just a few of many irrefutable factual points and at least one of many unarguable points of law. You can agree if you like. Or you can disagree if you like. But you can't change the facts, and you can't change the law. And no amount of yelling and screaming and name-calling and anger and emotionalism is going to help. Quite the contrary, it's only going to hurt by exposing the weakness of your position. That's why you should not only follow the lead of the Third Circuit but should go a step farther. And that's because their recent ruling was a good start but justice demands a great finish. Although it's been 29 years that Mumia's been on death row, justice delayed is not always justice denied.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) A Bin Laden Hunter on Four Legs
By GARDINER HARRIS
May 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/05dog.html?ref=us
The identities of all 80 members of the American commando team who thundered into Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden are the subject of intense speculation, but perhaps none more so than the only member with four legs.
Little is known about what may be the nation's most courageous dog. Even its breed is the subject of great interest, although it was most likely a German shepherd or a Belgian Malinois, military sources say. But its use in the raid reflects the military's growing dependence on dogs in wars in which improvised explosive devices have caused two-thirds of all casualties. Dogs have proved far better than people or machines at quickly finding bombs.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, said last year that the military needed more dogs. "The capability they bring to the fight cannot be replicated by man or machine," he said.
Maj. William Roberts, commander of the Defense Department's Military Working Dog Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, said the dog on the raid could have checked the compound for explosives and even sniffed door handles to see if they were booby-trapped.
And given that Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a narrow, dark hole beneath a mud shack in Iraq, the Seal team might have brought the dog in case Bin Laden had built a secret room into his compound.
"Dogs are very good at detecting people inside of a building," Major Roberts said.
Another use may have been to catch anyone escaping the compound in the first moments of the raid. A shepherd or a Malinois runs twice as fast as a human.
Tech Sgt. Kelly A. Mylott, the kennel master at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, called dogs ideal for getting someone who is running away without having to shoot them. "When the dogs go after a suspect, they're trained to bite and hold them," Sergeant Mylott said.
Some dogs are big enough that, when they leap on a suspect, the person tends to drop to the ground, Sergeant Mylott said. Others bite arms or legs. "Different dogs do different things," she said. "But whatever they do, it's very difficult for that person to go any further."
Finally, dogs can be used to pacify an unruly group of people - particularly in the Middle East. "There is a cultural aversion to dogs in some of these countries, where few of them are used as pets," Major Roberts said. "Dogs can be very intimidating in that situation."
Sergeant Mylott said that dogs got people's attention in ways that weapons sometimes did not. "Dogs can be an amazing psychological deterrent," she said.
There are 600 dogs serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that number is expected to grow substantially over the next year, Ensign Brynn Olson of the United States Central Command said. Particularly popular with the troops are the growing number of Labrador retrievers who wander off-leash 100 yards or more in front of patrols to ensure the safety of the route. A Silver Star, one of the Navy's highest awards, was awarded posthumously in 2009 to a dog named Remco after he charged an insurgent's hide-out in Afghanistan.
The training of dogs in Navy Seal teams and other Special Operations units is shrouded in secrecy. Maj. Wes Ticer, a spokesman for United States Special Operations Command, said the dogs' primary functions "are finding explosives and conducting searches and patrols."
"Dogs are relied upon," he continued, "to provide early warning for potential hazards, many times, saving the lives of the Special Operations Forces with whom they operate."
Last year, the Seals bought four waterproof tactical vests for their dogs that featured infrared and night-vision cameras so that handlers - holding a three-inch monitor from as far as 1,000 yards away - could immediately see what the dogs were seeing. The vests, which come in coyote tan and camouflage, let handlers communicate with the dogs with a speaker, and the four together cost more than $86,000. Navy Seal teams have trained to parachute from great heights and deploy out of helicopters with dogs.
The military uses a variety of breeds, but by far the most common are the German shepherd and the Belgian Malinois, which "have the best overall combination of keen sense of smell, endurance, speed, strength, courage, intelligence and adaptability to almost any climatic condition," according to a fact sheet from the military working dog unit.
Suzanne Belger, president of the American Belgian Malinois Club, said she was hoping the dog was one of her breed "and that it did its job and came home safe." But Laura Gilbert, corresponding secretary for the German Shepherd Dog Club of America, said she was sure the dog was her breed "because we're the best!"
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) What's Up With Obama's Cynical Approach to Medical Marijuana?
"In reality, however, the Obama administration has attacked medical-marijuana providers on several fronts. Since January 2010, it has staged more than 90 raids on dispensaries and growers, according to figures collected by the patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. That represents a pace double the Bush administration's, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. The administration has also threatened state officials with prosecution if they participate in licensing or regulating medical marijuana. The Internal Revenue Service has expanded auditing dispensaries for tax evasion, on the grounds that drug-trafficking enterprises cannot legally claim business-expense deductions. ...'The government has brought 280E cases for years,' says Panzer, but 'as far as saying, 'hey, we can use this to go after dispensaries,' it started with Obama.'"
By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet
Posted on May 4, 2011, Printed on May 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150840/what%27s_up_with_obama%27s_cynical_approach_to_medical_marijuana
In October 2009, the Justice Department declared that prosecuting medical-marijuana users and caregivers who clearly comply with state laws was not a wise use of its resources. That declaration has dominated public perception of President Barack Obama's policy on the issue-minimal progress, but is a welcome improvement on his predecessors.
In reality, however, the Obama administration has attacked medical-marijuana providers on several fronts. Since January 2010, it has staged more than 90 raids on dispensaries and growers, according to figures collected by the patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. That represents a pace double the Bush administration's, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. The administration has also threatened state officials with prosecution if they participate in licensing or regulating medical marijuana. The Internal Revenue Service has expanded auditing dispensaries for tax evasion, on the grounds that drug-trafficking enterprises cannot legally claim business-expense deductions.
In April, ASA gave Obama an F for his policy on medical marijuana. He's "no better than Bush," says Hermes.
Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws calls that stance "hyperbolic." "The previous ten presidents did nothing," he says. Obama has "taken the federal hand off the scale a wee bit."'
Most notably, the Veterans Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have revised regulations to acknowledge the use of medical marijuana.
For example, although federal zero-tolerance laws prohibit illegal-drug users from living in public housing or receiving rent subsidies such as Section 8, HUD has given local housing authorities in states that allow medical marijuana the discretion to not evict users.
Still, St. Pierre worries that the combination of raids and IRS harassment is seriously endangering medical marijuana. An unfavorable court decision regarding the IRS audits "could end medical cannabis," he warns. "They're going the Al Capone route."
The VA is the bright spot, says Michael Krawitz of Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access. Although it still forbids its doctors from recommending marijuana, and possession is illegal on VA property, last year it changed its regulations so that medical-marijuana use is no longer an automatic violation of "pain contracts"-agreements patients sign in which they state that they're not going to abuse their prescription painkillers.
In practice, Krawitz says, some VA doctors still refuse to accept medical-cannabis use, but "the feedback I've gotten from veterans, especially Vietnam-era veterans, is that it's the first time the VA did something because it's the right thing to do. Vets really appreciate that."
Overall, he says, "I'm just completely baffled by what the administration is doing. They're using the DEA and the IRS, but they're trying to look like they're not going after medical marijuana."
Raids Keep Coming
Meanwhile, federal raids on dispensaries continue. On March 14, on the eve of the Montana Senate's vote to repeal the state's medical-marijuana law, federal agencies raided 26 growers and dispensaries there. Hermes calls that "intimidation, with specific intent to undermine a state law." On April 28, DEA agents raided more than five dispensaries in Spokane, Washington.
The Spokane raids came three weeks after Michael C. Ormsby, federal prosecutor for eastern Washington, had sent letters to the landlords of more than 40 dispensaries in the area, warning them that their property could be forfeited if they continued to rent to drug traffickers.
"Nearly half have reported that they have evicted their tenants to comply with federal law," says Ormsby spokesperson Tom Rice.
The touchstone here is a memorandum that Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden sent to federal prosecutors in October 2009. In it, he told them that they "should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana." Prosecuting cancer patients and their caregivers, he added, "is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources."
However, a February 2011 letter from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, federal prosecutor for the Bay Area and Northern California, to Oakland City Attorney John Russo significantly narrowed that policy. While the "Ogden Memorandum" says the federal government will not prosecute individual patients, she wrote, "we will enforce the [law] vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity regarding marijuana, even if such activity is permitted under state law."
The Ogden memo does not grant dispensaries anything remotely resembling immunity, Rice emphasizes. He points to clauses that state that "prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the department" and "claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, purposes, and conditions of those laws."
Did the department consider whether Spokane dispensaries were in compliance with state law before authorizing the raids? "No," Rice replies. One dispensary, he says, "was across the street from a grade school."
St. Pierre is not shocked by the raids. Many growers push the limits, he explains. "The regrettable thing about the medical-cannabis industry is that it's often acting in violation of state law," he says. "50,000 plants is crossing that Rubicon."
One thing that provoked the backlash in Montana, he adds, is that some dispensary owners were "charismatic." "Charismatic" in this context sounds like a euphemism for the kind of evangelistic stoner who believes that because they're doing Jah's work, providing the herb for the healing of the nations, they don't have to worry about following the finicky feinschmeckery of bureaucratic details-and that making money is doing well by doing good.
Bill Panzer, a veteran Oakland defense lawyer, voices similar sentiments. Twenty-five years ago, he says, his clients were mostly pot smugglers "who knew they were taking a risk. Now, I'm representing people who think everything they're doing is completely legal. They're in for a rude awakening."
California law is so murky, he says, that 98 percent of the state's thousand-odd dispensaries might be illegal. The only form that would be definitely legal, he adds, would be "a true socialist collective" in which all cultivated herb was divided equally among the members. Instead, he says, lots of people are setting up co-ops and "acting like sellers." The Obama administration has also continued Bush-era prosecutions of medical-marijuana providers. On May 2, Californians Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer turned themselves in to begin serving five-year federal mandatory-minimum sentences. Fry, a breast-cancer survivor, and Schafer, a hemophiliac, were raided in 2001. In 2007, they were convicted of manufacturing and conspiracy charges for growing more than 100 plants over several years. "The Obama administration vigorously fought an appeal of their sentence," says ASA.
In any case, the federal Controlled Substances Act maintains that marijuana has no valid medical use, and thus any distribution of it in the guise of "medicine" constitutes criminal sale of a controlled substance. In the last few months, federal prosecutors have sent letters reiterating that to governors and other officials in several states, including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Rhode Island, and Washington. The letters threatened that any official involvement in licensing or regulating medical marijuana would expose state employees to prosecution.
"We maintain the authority to enforce the CSA against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activity is permitted under state law," the Colorado letter, dated April 26, stated. "It is well settled that a State cannot authorize violations of federal law."
On April 14, the two federal prosecutors in Washington state warned Gov. Christine Gregoire that if the state licensed medical-marijuana cultivation and distribution, government employees who worked with such a system could be prosecuted, and state property forfeited.
On April 29, Gregoire vetoed most of a bill to regulate medical-cannabis sales and production. The provisions she rejected included state licensing of dispensaries and a state register of patients. She said she feared state workers would be subject to arrest, and she urged the federal government to move marijuana to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act.
IRS
The IRS first went after dispensaries during the Bush administration, but it has greatly expanded such efforts under Obama.
More than two dozen dispensaries are now being audited, according to Henry Wykowski, a former Justice Department tax prosecutor now in private practice in San Francisco. Most are in California, he says, including the massive Harborside facility in Oakland and a smaller one in Marin County; at least one is in Colorado. Allen St. Pierre says he expects the probes to expand to Rhode Island, Maine, Montana, and New Mexico.
The law involved is Section 280E of the federal tax code, which prohibits drug-trafficking enterprises from claiming business expenses as deductions. "The government has brought 280E cases for years," says Panzer, but "as far as saying, 'hey, we can use this to go after dispensaries,' it started with Obama."
"I think the IRS didn't know what to do, because of the conflict between federal law and state law," says Wykowski. "When it became clear that there weren't going to be wholesale prosecutions, they decided it was OK to audit."
However, the one case to reach the courts so far yielded highly favorable results for medical marijuana. In 2007, the IRS assessed a defunct San Francisco dispensary called CHAMP--Californians Helping Alleviate Medical Problems--for $426,000 in back taxes and penalties on $2 million in sales. A three-lawyer team that included Panzer and Wykowski got the bill reduced to less than $5,000. The IRS refused to negotiate-which is highly unusual in tax cases, says Wykowski-and lost in court.
The IRS argued that because CHAMP sold marijuana illegally, those sales should count as "an expanding drop of ink in a glass of water" to disqualify deductions, Panzer explains. But because the dispensary also provided social services, including counseling, nursing, housing assistance, and massage; hosted support groups for AIDS patients and others; and put on social events, the judge agreed that 90 percent of its rent was deductible.
Paradoxically, the judge also let CHAMP deduct the wholesale cost of the medical pot it sold. This is a principle called "cost of goods" that dates back to Prohibition, Wykowski explains. The issue is complex, but basically, he says, there is legal authority that people cannot be forced to incriminate themselves in order to pay taxes. The '70s Harlem heroin dealer Nicky Barnes used to file tax returns anonymously, and "the right to selectively assert Fifth Amendment privilege has been recognized by the courts."
It would be self-incriminatory for a taxpayer to report their occupation as "marijuana grower," Wykowski adds. Disallowing the cost-of-goods deduction "would have made it impossible for any dispensary to remain in business." Still, with the IRS continuing to audit dispensaries under Section 280E, that makes lawyers in the field fear a bad precedent. Other dispensaries may not have as strong a case, keep good records, or have the financial and legal resources to defend themselves.
"We are concerned that someone who doesn't know what they're doing will take a bad case to court and lose, and jeopardize everyone else in the industry," Wykowski says." The conflicts between federal and state law and between tax and criminal law also create a massive record-keeping dilemma for dispensaries. If they keep accurate and complete records, they can prove that they're acting like a legitimate business, a legitimate medical-services provider-but they're potentially handing the federal government a cut-and-paste indictment.
"The same records that can help you in state court can screw you over in federal court," says Panzer. If the amount of cannabis a dispensary grows, buys, or distributes is tallied cumulatively over several years, it can be large enough to trigger a five- or ten-year mandatory-minimum sentence.
Rescheduling
The overriding fact is that the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970, puts marijuana in Schedule I, saying it has "a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision." Thus, the law does not recognize "medical use" as a valid defense to charges of possession, sale, or cultivation. As far as federal law is concerned, medical-marijuana users are the equivalent of junkies, no matter how sick they are, and the dispensaries and growers that supply them are little different from crack dealers and meth-lab operators.
This rule is tied into a host of other laws intended to prohibit money-laundering and the like. Medical-marijuana users in public housing and landlords who rent to dispensaries run afoul of laws intended to close crackhouses.
The obvious solution, at least to those in the medical-marijuana movement, would be for the federal government to move marijuana out of Schedule I and into the realm of legitimate prescription drugs. Even moving it to Schedule II would gain it that status, although under controls as strict as those for OxyContin or medical cocaine. Marinol, the synthetic THC that is the prime legal cannabinoid drug, is in Schedule III, along with codeine.
That is not likely to happen soon. The Drug Enforcement Administration has jurisdiction over scheduling. In 2002, a coalition including NORML, ASA, and Virginia cannabis-policy expert Jon Gettman filed a petition to reschedule marijuana for medical use. It "has been languishing without a response from the DEA for nearly nine years," says an angry Dale Gieringer of California NORML. "They're sitting on our petition."
The DEA, he says, has also "blocked efforts to establish a legal medical marijuana research garden," which would provide the scientific background needed to obtain Food and Drug Administration approval.
"If the federal government would stop fighting the rescheduling process, we could have a resolution," says St. Pierre. "They're not choosing to lead."
The DEA, headed by Bush holdover Michelle Leonhart, remains resistant. Its official stance, the lead item in "DEA Position on Marijuana," a 54-page booklet issued in July 2010, is that medical marijuana is a "fallacy," that "smoked marijuana is not medicine," and there is "no sound scientific evidence that smoked marijuana can be used safely and effectively as medicine."
It blames "organizers of the 'medical' marijuana movement" for failing to ensure that "the product meets the standards of modern medicine?. [There is] no safety regulation, no way to measure its effectiveness (beyond anecdotal stories), and no insurance coverage." It calls the entire idea that marijuana has medical use "false-trickery [sic] used by those promoting wholesale legalization."
"I don't think that's happening any time soon," a DEA spokesperson who refused to give his name said of rescheduling. "I don't see any movement on that. The science hasn't borne it out."
Steven Wishnia is a New York-based journalist and musician. The author of Exit 25 Utopia and The Cannabis Companion, he has won two New York City Independent Press Association awards for his coverage of housing issues.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Fears and Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
May 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?hp
From G.D.P. to private-sector payrolls, from business surveys to new claims for unemployment insurance, key economic indicators suggest that the recovery may be sputtering.
And it wasn't much of a recovery to start with. Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.
It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.
It's not as if our political class is feeling complacent. On the contrary, D.C. economic discourse is saturated with fear: fear of a debt crisis, of runaway inflation, of a disastrous plunge in the dollar. Scare stories are very much on politicians' minds.
Yet none of these scare stories reflect anything that is actually happening, or is likely to happen. And while the threats are imaginary, fear of these imaginary threats has real consequences: an absence of any action to deal with the real crisis, the suffering now being experienced by millions of jobless Americans and their families.
What does Washington currently fear? Topping the list is fear that budget deficits will cause a fiscal crisis any day now. In fact, a number of people - like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of President Obama's debt commission - have settled on a specific time frame: terrible things will happen within two years unless we make drastic spending cuts.
I have no idea where that two-year deadline comes from. After all, what we do in the next couple of years hardly matters at all for U.S. solvency, which mainly depends on what we'll do in the long run about Medicare and taxes. And, for what it's worth, actual investors - people putting real money on the line - are notably unworried about any near-term fiscal crisis: the Treasury Department continues to have no trouble selling debt and remains able to borrow very cheaply, indicating high confidence on the part of investors that debts will be repaid in full.
Do the scare-mongers even believe their own stories? Maybe not. As Jonathan Chait of The New Republic notes, the politicians most given to apocalyptic rhetoric about the deficit are also utterly opposed to any tax increase; they argue that debt is destroying America, but they'd rather let that happen than accept even a dime of higher taxes. Yet the inconsistency and probable insincerity of their fear-mongering hasn't stopped it from having a huge effect on policy debate.
The deficit isn't the only unfounded fear. I've written before about misguided inflation fear, but, for now, let me focus on a new issue that has suddenly begun to loom large in opinion pieces and remarks on talk shows: fear of a disastrous plunge in the dollar. (Who sends out the memos telling people what to worry about, and why don't I get them?)
What you would never know from all the agitated dollar discussion is that the recent dollar slide is actually tiny compared with big drops in the past, notably under the administration of George W. Bush and during Ronald Reagan's second term. And you'd also never know that those earlier dollar slides, far from hurting the economy, were beneficial, because they helped U.S. manufacturing compete on world markets.
Which brings me back to the destructive effect of focusing on invisible monsters. For the clear and present danger to the American economy isn't what some people imagine might happen one of these days, it's what is actually happening now.
Unemployment isn't just blighting the lives of millions, it's undermining America's future. The longer this goes on, the more workers will find it impossible ever to return to employment, the more young people will find their prospects destroyed because they can't find a decent starting job. It may not create excited chatter on cable TV, but the unemployment crisis is real, and it's eating away at our society.
Yet any action to help the unemployed is vetoed by the fear-mongers. Should we spend modest sums on job creation? No way, say the deficit hawks, who threaten us with the purely hypothetical wrath of financial markets, and, in fact, demand that we slash spending now now now - which might well send us back into recession. Should the Federal Reserve do more to promote expansion? No, say the inflation and dollar hawks, who have been wrong again and again but insist that this time their dire warnings about runaway prices and a plunging dollar really will be vindicated.
So we're paying a heavy price for Washington's obsession with phantom menaces. By looking for trouble in all the wrong places, our political class is preventing us from dealing with the real crisis: the millions of American men and women who can't find work.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Campaign ends torturous treatment of Bradley Manning!
Supporters of accused WikiLeaks source vow to fight on for open trial and freedom
By the Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
May 5, 2011
http://www.couragetoresist.org/
Hundreds-of-thousands of individuals globally celebrate today the confirmation that their efforts to end the torturous pre-trial confinement conditions inflicted upon US Army PFC Bradley Manning have been successful. Manning's lead defense attorney, David E. Coombs of Rhode Island, has personally verified that Manning is indeed being held in Medium Custody confinement at the Joint Regional Corrections Facility (JRCF) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, as claimed by the Army last week.
"We won this battle because 600,000 individuals took the time to write letters and sign petitions, because thousands called the White House switchboard, because 300 of America's top legal scholars decried Bradley's pre-trial conditions as a clear violation of our Constitution's 5th and 8th Amendments," declared Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network. "We won this battle because over a hundred concerned citizens engaged in civil disobedience at the White House and at Quantico, and because our grassroots campaign shows no sign of slowing."
These new conditions reflect a dramatic improvement for Manning following his transfer to Fort Leavenworth on April 20, 2011, after having suffered extreme solitary-like confinement at US Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. During the nine months at Quantico, Manning was denied meaningful exercise, social interaction, sunlight, and was at times kept completely naked. These conditions were unique to Manning and were illegal under US military law as they clearly amounted to pre-trial punishment.
"I was able to tour the [Fort Leavenworth] facility and meet with PFC Manning last week. PFC Manning is now being held in Medium Custody. He is no longer under...harsh pretrial confinement conditions. Unlike at Quantico, PFC Manning's cell has a large window that provides adequate natural light....PFC Manning is able to have all of his personal items in his cell, which include his clothing, his legal materials, books and letters from family and friends....Each pre-trial area (including PFC Manning's) has four cells, and each pre-trial detainee is assigned to his own cell. The cells are connected to a shared common area, with a table, a treadmill, a television and a shower area....PFC Manning and his group are taken to the outdoor recreation area [for approximately two hours daily]," explained Coombs on his blog at www.armycourtmartialdefense.info hours ago.
"President Obama's recent pronouncement that Bradley Manning 'broke the law' amounts to Unlawful Command Influence, something clearly prohibited because it's devastating to the military justice system. Manning will eventually be judged by a jury of career military officers and noncommissioned officers. Will they be able to set aside the declaration of their commander in chief?" explains attorney Kevin Zeese, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. "Along with the illegal pre-trial punishment already inflicted upon Bradley, the government has more than enough legal basis to drop the prosecution. Instead, the death penalty or life in prison hangs over Manning's head."
After nearly a year in confinement, the Army is expected to soon announce Manning's first public hearing, an Article 32 pre-trial proceeding, which will be held in the Washington DC area. Scores of international solidarity events are already being planned.
US Army intelligence analyst Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, 23-years-old, was arrested in Iraq on May 26, 2010. He still awaits his first public court hearing, now expected to begin in June 2011. Over 4,300 individuals have contributed over $333,000 towards PFC Manning's legal fees and related public education efforts. The Bradley Manning Support Network is dedicated to thwarting the military's attempts to hold a secret court martial, and to eventually winning the freedom of PFC Manning.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Bloomberg to Lay Off Thousands of Teachers
By DAVID W. CHEN and JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
May 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/bloomberg-budget-will-seek-400-million-more-in-cuts.html?hp
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Friday that he intended to eliminate 4,100 teaching jobs through layoffs, and about 2,000 through attrition, the first significant layoffs of teachers since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.
The job cuts are part of Mr. Bloomberg's effort to slice an additional $400 million from various city agencies. He needs to plug a multibillion-dollar deficit in his $65.6 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1. That budget is about the same size as the current one.
Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, criticized the mayor's lack of transparency in releasing his budget. "This document is political," he said. "This is not the way we should be running the city."
The deep cuts to the city's schools are similar to what the mayor proposed in February, though the number of layoffs is slightly less.
Mr. Bloomberg, during his budget presentation at City Hall, faulted the state for the necessity of layoffs among the 75,000 teachers. In 2008, he said, the state paid 45 percent of the city's education costs; next fiscal year, he said, the state would pay 39 percent.
"I understand the frustration that parents and teachers feel; I feel it too," he said. "We are not going to walk away from our education system."
The mayor's budget proposal must still be approved by the City Council; Speaker Christine C. Quinn and other members said they would do everything possible to prevent such major cuts to the work force.
Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito said teacher layoffs were "unacceptable."
"We continue to ask the least among us to bear the brunt," she said. "I'm really concerned."
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mr. Bloomberg have clashed over the city's financial situation with Mr. Cuomo saying that the city has enough money to avoid massive layoffs.
But all of the news will not be bleak. The Bloomberg administration said that it would open 10 new senior centers, each serving 250 to 300 people. One of the centers will cater to the visually impaired, while another will be designed to serve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender older people.
Heeding calls from members of the Council and advocates for children from low-income families, the mayor retreated from his initial budget proposal to eliminate almost 16,000 child care slots.
The city said it would preserve 4,400 of the 16,000 slots for low-income children at day care centers that faced elimination. An additional 10,500 slots will be covered by the Department of Youth and Community Development's Out-of-School Time program, which provides after-school recreational and academic programs. The total cost is about $40 million.
That leaves more than 1,000 slots facing elimination, though the Council may provide additional money as it finishes up the budget over the coming weeks.
"While it is a step in the right direction, it is unclear if what the administration has put on the table is really an appropriate solution to the significant reduction of funding to the child care system," said Council Member Annabel Palma, chairwoman of the General Welfare Committee. "More conversations and details are needed since it is unclear how services can remain intact for all 16,500 children with $40 million instead of $91 million; it is also unclear what the impact will be on existing out-of-school programs, providers, child care centers and classrooms."
The city has benefited from better-than-expected tax revenue, with money from banking taxes up as Wall Street has rebounded. Personal income taxes are also strong, about 9 percent higher so far this fiscal year compared with the previous year, according to the Independent Budget Office. In addition, sales tax revenue is up slightly.
Council members seemed universally upset by the budget - both the content and presentation.
Several dismissed the $40 million that the administration had touted in additional child care funding as a "shell game" because the net result was still a $50 million drop in funding compared to last year. They also said the administration was unwilling to consider any tax increases, such as a tax on the wealthy, and unwilling to tap more money out of a health care retirement fund.
"This is three-card monte," said Councilman David Greenfield of Brooklyn, a Democrat who has often been a Bloomberg ally. "They leak a story about how they've restored money but they've done anything but restore child care. It's fundamentally dishonest."
He continued, "The unmistakable message for the administration to the City of New York is our children are not worth funding."
Several took umbrage at the fact that unlike in most years, Mr. Bloomberg did not show up to give his usual short address to members before turning the presentation over to his budget director, Mark Page. They also described Mr. Page's presentation as unusually brief - about 30 minutes versus the normal hour.
"His attitude was like, 'gotta go,' " Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn said. "It reflects the mayor's disdain, his disrespect and his lack of coalition-building with the City Council."
Ms. James added that there were a few unpleasant surprises in the briefing, including the news that a $1.2 million program for a sexual assault response team within the Health and Hospitals Corporation would be cut entirely.
Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Japan Orders Nuclear Plant to Suspend Operations
By HIROKO TABUCHI
May 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/asia/07japan.html?hp
TOKYO - The Japanese prime minister said Friday that he had ordered a nuclear plant in central Japan closed until it could build stronger defenses against earthquake and tsunami risks in the region.
Nuclear safety advocates have long warned that the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, about 120 miles southwest of Tokyo, lies on a part of the Japanese coast especially prone to seismic activity. The government's own experts estimate that there is a close to 90 percent chance of an earthquake of about magnitude 8.0 hitting the area within the next 30 years.
In 2009, Hamaoka's operator, Chubu Electric Power, decommissioned the plant's two oldest reactors after deciding that upgrading them to withstand the earthquake risks would be too costly. Those reactors were built in the 1970s, around the same time as those at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was ravaged in the March 11 quake and tsunami.
The operator argued that the remaining three reactors, built in the 1980s, were safe enough to withstand a major earthquake. But the crisis at Fukushima has heightened concerns over the risks posed by quakes and tsunamis to the scores of reactors in operation in Japan.
"I have asked Chubu Electric to halt all its reactors at Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant," Prime Minister Naoto Kan said at a press conference late Friday. "This is the result of considering the tremendous repercussions a major accident at Hamaoka would have on the entire Japanese society," he said.
Mr. Kan suggested that Chubu Electric would be asked to strengthen its defenses, for example by bolstering its sea walls, before a restart could be authorized.
"More than anything, I have the safety and security of the Japanese people in mind," he said.
Environmental groups quickly lauded Mr. Kan's decision, and urged the Japanese government to consider halting all 55 reactors in the earthquake-prone nation.
"Greenpeace welcomes Prime Minister Kan's request to close Hamaoka, one of the most dangerous nuclear reactors in Japan," said Junichi Sato, executive director in Japan for the environmental organization.
"The government must continue to close and decommission existing plants, cancel all new reactors," he said. "Only then can the Japanese people feel their government is truly putting their safety first."
At Fukushima Daiichi, workers have been struggling to bring the plant's most-damaged reactors under control after the tsunami knocked out all power to the facility. Three of the reactors overheated and suffered hydrogen explosions. The plant is operated by Tokyo Electric Power, known here as Tepco.
On Thursday, Tepco workers entered one of the reactors for the first time since the explosions to install a ventilator to help lower radiation levels in the reactor building.
Another nuclear facility operated by Tepco, the Kashiwazaki-Kariya Nuclear Power Plant on the Sea of Japan coast, was damaged in a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in 2007. Fire broke out at one of the reactors, though it was quickly put out, and Tepco officials said there had not been a widespread release of radiation.
The plant was shut down for almost two years for repairs and inspections. Since then, four of its seven reactors have been restarted.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
UNAC (United National Antiwar Committee) statement
UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
UNACpeace@gmail.com
518-227-6947
UNACpeace.org
(Please forward widely)
The U.S. government has used the pretext of finding Osama bin Laden to justify their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Now that bin Laden is dead, they can no longer claim this motive. Our demand remains the same: Bring the troops home NOW!
The Obama Administration does not intend to end military operations. The war apparatus of weaponry, drones, bases, mercenaries, and reliance on highly secret special forces like JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) to do its dirty work with no oversight by Congress or the public has increased along with an escalating war budget. Violence and war are the conflict resolution methods preferred by the U.S. leadership.
In pursuit of oil and domination, the U.S. so-called “War on Terror” has caused the deaths of tens of thousands Afghans, well over a million Iraqis, as well as the loss of 6,000 U.S. soldiers. To pay for this bloodshed and destruction, the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars to expand the war machine and benefit the rich that could have gone for jobs, education, health care and green energy alternatives. As poll after poll has demonstrated, the U.S. population has turned against these wars and wants the troops brought home.
President Obama is using the assassination of bin Laden to re-legitimize U.S. militarism and to build up popular support for U.S. military actions abroad and his own re-election at home. The country is put on high alert to create an atmosphere of heightened fear and anger, a tactic frequently used when Americans turn against government policies. Soon after President Obama announced the killing of bin Laden, hyper-patriotic flag waving demonstrations broke out on campuses, in front of the White House and even at baseball games.
The jingoistic atmosphere engendered by Obama’s extra-judicial assassination of bin Laden has put Muslim Americans in jeopardy. It has increased Islamophobia across America. After the announcement of bin Laden’s murder, racists defiled a mosque in Portland, Maine with the slogan “Osama today, Islam tomorrow.” In Oregon, a Muslim center had to cancel an event after receiving threats. Mosques across the country, fearful of attacks, have increased security. This is the ugly impact at home of the so-called “War on Terror” abroad. UNAC urges the entire antiwar movement to stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters against these racist attacks.
The administration will no doubt use the ‘successful’ mission to justify further secrecy, denying any kind of democratic oversight over U.S. foreign policy. It sets a precedent for saying the U.S. has the right to attack anyone that the administration designates an enemy at any place, any time and legitimizes secret renditions, torture and indefinite incarceration without trial. These increased Executive powers are included in current legislation and reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act and must be opposed.
Our democracy, civil rights, and civil liberties are threatened. They will argue that the need for secrecy makes it even more important to prosecute Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks for publicizing documents that expose the lies and criminal behavior of the government. On top of that, it will be used to further authorize FBI harassment and grand jury probes against antiwar and Palestine solidarity activists. All of these victims of the U.S. government are put in further jeopardy by the atmosphere created by the assassination of bin Laden. Eventually those fighting the massive cutbacks and attacks on unions will become the victims of this restriction of our civil liberties.
The extra-judicial assassination of bin Laden, like the NATO bombing of Libya, is clearly designed to remind the masses of workers and students rising up in the Middle East against U.S.-backed dictators that Washington is still boss. It is also an attempt to roll back the growing opposition to the occupation of Afghanistan by war-weary working people in the U.S. There is no possibility that this assassination will bring security, democracy, or peace in the Middle East or America.
We will not be intimidated. In spite of U.S. grandstanding and the wars without end, millions of people around the world are throwing off the yoke of years of repression and claiming their right to determine their own destiny. The Arab Spring shows that people will not allow fear and militarization to suppress the yearning for freedom. People across the U.S. are not fooled by government lies and have turned against the wars and occupations. The unions and their supporters in the thousands in Wisconsin stood up against the corporate-controlled state government to fight back against the attack on collective bargaining and the cut backs of social services. Their actions inspired many and others will follow.
This is the time to forge unity and to step up our opposition to U.S. wars and occupations. We must stand with those who are victimized and those who struggle for freedom and a better life. We need to build a movement independent of all political parties that mobilizes powerful mass actions to challenge reactionary government policies. We need to march and continue to march until we meet our goals of peace and justice.
Bring the Troops, War Contractors, Mercenaries and War Dollars Home NOW!
U.S. Out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya NOW!
NO to Islamophobia!
Hands Off the Arab Spring!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) Health Crisis Rocks the Gulf in Aftermath of the Spill, But Feds and BP Turn a Blind Eye
By Brad Jacobson, AlterNet
Posted on May 2, 2011, Printed on May 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150816/health_crisis_rocks_the_gulf_in_aftermath_of_the_spill%2C_but_feds_and_bp_turn_a_blind_eye
Contrary to many national stories covering the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a health crisis in the region has developed among exposed workers and residents. And it's not so "mysterious."
In recent meetings with public health, medical and chemical experts in Louisiana -- the Gulf state hardest hit by the worst offshore oil spill in history -- AlterNet found a striking symmetry between debilitating chronic symptoms being reported among those sickened and the known effects of chemicals in the toxic brew of oil, dispersant and burned crude to which they were exposed.
One year later, persistent coughing, wheezing, headaches, fatigue, loss of balance, dry itchy eyes, runny nose, nosebleeds, rectal bleeding, skin lesions, gastrointestinal pain, cardiac arrhythmia and memory loss are common complaints -- all consistent with exposure to chemicals released in the water and air since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast.
In addition to these physical heath issues, mental health experts are finding an increase in associated psychological distress, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, which are fueled by converging concerns over health, loss of livelihood and general insecurity about the future.
While long-term studies are underway, such as the National Institute of Health's projected 10-year monitoring of 55,000 cleanup workers, experts stressed both the need for those affected to be assessed for chemical exposure immediately and lamented the lack of access to medical doctors trained to diagnose and treat such exposure.
Nearly every source AlterNet interviewed in Louisiana called the health situation "a mess" and said it is not being adequately addressed.
Current Manifestations of Physical and Psychological Impacts
Dr. Mike Robichaux, a highly regarded ear, nose and throat doctor in Raceland, Louisiana, is seeing many of the most commonly reported physical symptoms, and some more unique, in scores of patients he's treated pro bono at night, working nearly round the clock after regular office hours.
On average, Robichaux, who's also a former state senator, said he sees four or five new patients a week with health complaints that manifested after the oil spill.
Recently, he's found a spike in "absolutely fantastic" amounts of memory loss. He said it took him awhile to figure it out because many of his patients we're forgetting to mention the problem until their wives asked Robichaux if they'd discussed it.
University of Maryland School of Medicine neurologist Lynn Grattan, who was in Raceland to begin a study on Robichaux's patients, said of their memory loss, "It's nothing we've ever seen before."
Additionally, Robichaux is detecting a pattern of extremes in blood sugar levels that he hasn't observed in his thirty-seven years of practicing medicine.
"People are coming in with dizziness and they're having these bizarre symptoms of heart rates racing up and down," he said. "Their blood sugars are shooting way up and then screeching down in a much more exaggerated fashion than anything I've ever seen."
He believes "there's no question" these symptoms and others he's treating are attributable to the oil and dispersant because "it's such an exaggerated thing" and virtually all of his patients say they had none of these health problems before the spill.
James Diaz, director of environmental and occupational health sciences at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, said he's "not surprised at all" by many of the current chronic symptoms being reported -- respiratory, dermatologic, ocular and neurological -- because they are consistent with exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, chemicals in crude oil and dispersants.
Diaz, who worked for 16 years as an occupational medical doctor on an emergency flight team that treated injured offshore oil workers and is an expert on chronic and carcinogenic effects of chemical exposure, believes the "most serious" early phase chronic illnesses will be neurological.
"These agents are water soluble, attack the irritative membranes," he explained, "Then when they get into the body, they're lipophilac, which means they love to concentrate in tissues that have a lot of fat -- the brain, the covering of nerves."
Diaz said that, as opposed to respiratory, skin and ocular disorders, there are few options for treating neurological disorders, which include reported symptoms such as balance issues and memory loss.
"Once we get into central nervous system disorders, there's not a lot we can do," he said grimly.
Since late last year, Wilma Subra, a chemist and microbiologist in New Iberia, Louisiana, has analyzed approximately 150 blood samples of sickened workers and residents across the Gulf Coast -- from New Iberia to the Florida Panhandle -- and has found alarming elevated levels of toxic chemicals consistent with those in BP crude, including benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene.
Subra, a McArthur Genius Award-winning environmental scientist and former consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, analyzed these samples serving as technical advisor to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN).
She and Marylee Orr, executive director of LEAN, continue to receive calls daily from cleanup workers, divers and coastal residents whose list of ailments continues to grow but mirror most of the respiratory, dermatological, ocular and neurological disorders repeatedly reported to AlterNet in its meetings with sources in Louisiana.
"Marylee and I have been the voice of the fishers [who volunteered in the cleanup] from the very beginning, when they weren't protected, they weren't trained," said Subra. "Now we're the voice of the sick people."
A recently published health survey of 954 Louisiana residents living in seven oil-impacted coastal communities found that nearly three-quarters of those who believed they were exposed to crude oil or dispersant reported feeling symptoms. Nearly half of all respondents reported an "unusual increase in health symptoms" consistent with exposure, including coughing, skin and eye irritation, and headaches.
Tulane University's Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and the environmental justice group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, both based in New Orleans, jointly conducted the on-the-ground survey.
Sophia Curdumi, the program manager of Tulane's Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and a public health researcher at the university who took part in the survey, said that the symptoms the residents described to her and her colleagues were remarkably consistent with what she's hearing elsewhere.
"Skin rashes, a lot of upper respiratory issues, increased mucous, coughing, perpetual runny nose," Curdumi said. "I've had folks say that they've had to start using inhalers were they didn't have to before. And eye problems -- itchy, runny eyes. Headaches. And fatigue."
She continued, "Fatigue is the one thing that keeps coming up. People are just saying, 'I'm so tired, my husband's so tired, everyone's so exhausted all the time.'"
Curdumi then noted that such fatigue might be attributable to a combination of chemicals in the environment and also the increased stress because their livelihoods are in jeopardy.
Howard Osofsky, head of the psychiatry department at Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, supported Curdumi's insight.
Regarding attendant psychological manifestations from the disaster, Osofsky said that it's difficult to pinpoint how much is related to stress and how much is related to environment.
"But certainly there are symptoms which can be related to stress," he said. "We're seeing high percentages of people reporting fatigue, difficulty sleeping, headaches, stomach aches, back aches, pains in their legs."
Osofsky, who is a co-author of the April New England Journal of Medicine report on the effects of the Gulf oil spill, also pointed out that he's finding expected "elevated quantities" of post-traumatic stress, generalized anxiety disorders, symptoms of depression, increase in use of alcohol and family difficulties, such as a spike in domestic violence.
"These symptoms seem to be greater the more the family was disrupted by the oil spill," he said, adding, "We see irritability, we see anger, we see the tremendous uncertainty of what's going to happen with their lives."
Elmore Rigamer, a psychiatrist who is director for Catholic Charities in New Orleans, which is performing ongoing mental health outreach to the most oil-affected coastal communities in Louisiana, is witnessing this firsthand.
He said anxiety over livelihood is a primary concern of these residents, who have one main skill: fishing. The astonishing number of them who've yet to return to the only work they've ever known supports his assessment.
As of March 31, out of 466 heads of household interviewed by Catholic Charities during outreach in the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jefferson and Lafayette, nearly 80 percent said they have not been able to return to fishing.
"When your income is gone and you don't have a lot of reserves or flexibility in working in other places, a lot of anxiety and depression come with that," Rigamer said.
"If that continues," he noted, "then naturally that spills over into the family -- problems with substance abuse, alcohol primarily, and family fractiousness and quarrels and it ripples through to the children."
Rigamer said he's also witnessed the convergence of psychological and physical impacts in these communities, in which many have reported upper respiratory problems they say they've never had prior to the spill or preexisting conditions, such as asthma, which have grown much worse since.
Too Few Doctors Trained to Diagnose and Treat Exposure
A dearth of doctors with the proper medical background to diagnose and treat patients for chemical exposure, experts roundly cited, is another critical factor in the Gulf health crisis.
Private physicians like Dr. Robichaux in Raceland and those in Gulf area clinics and hospitals might be treating people who complain of symptoms they attribute to chemicals from the oil spill. But most of these doctors are only treating the symptoms, primarily with antibiotics and corticosteroids, which, if they have any effect, often merely alleviate symptoms temporarily without addressing the underlying cause of illness.
"Things that are carrying me are just corticosteroids," said Robichaux. "I mean that's about all I can give to these guys with their respiratory problems. I'll give them a shot of cortisone and put them on antibiotics."
If he administers cortisones by mouth it could cause G.I. tract problems, which some of them have as well, so he's forced to give them injections instead.
Robichaux said he regularly observes patients "getting better and worse, better and worse, better and worse" and openly acknowledges the limitations of what he can provide.
Studies of the long-term effects on people exposed to oil and dispersants from the Gulf oil spill, which have only just begun recently, are cold comfort to Robichaux, his patients and others suffering or seeking relief for those who are.
"We're worried about treating people that are sick today," he said.
To date, however, no major funding -- whether from BP or the federal government -- has addressed the needs of those sickened by the oil spill in the immediate term.
James Diaz of LSU, who recently published a report in the peer-reviewed Journal of Disaster Medicine that predicts potential chronic health effects from the Gulf oil spill, stressed that everyone exposed, heavily or lightly, should be screened by physicians trained to treat chemical exposure.
He said this is necessary not only for their immediate health but also to prevent potential catastrophic illnesses in the future.
Diaz pointed out that studies of two prior oil spills, the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska and the 2002 Prestige oil spill off the coast of Spain, provide peer-reviewed, evidence-based results on some of the long-term health effects of exposure to these chemicals. He cited these studies in his Journal of Disaster Medicine report.
One study, for example, found that 14 years after the Exxon-Valdez spill, workers with high exposure to weathered crude oil and dispersants had a significant increase in respiratory disease, neurological disorders and multiple chemical sensitivities.
A study of fishermen exposed to crude oil and dispersants during the Prestige oil spill found significantly increased levels of persistent lower respiratory tract problems, biomarkers of chronic airway injury and DNA damage two years after the spill.
"We ought to be looking at molecular biomarkers that could alert us to the potential for chronic disease, whether it's an inflammatory disease or a malignant disease," said Diaz, who also lamented the scarcity of physicians trained to treat chemical exposure.
"In other words," he emphasized, "we ought to be practicing secondary prevention...to see if there is an indicator, a warning sign, for the develop of the disease process."
The primary long-term danger of exposure to chemicals in the crude oil and dispersants, he explained, is DNA damage, which could result in chronic inflammation and multiple forms of cancer over time, including cancer of the lungs, liver, kidney, blood and colon.
Citing chemist Wilma Subra's analysis of blood samples for chemical markers related to the oil spill, Diaz said that such analyses are only helpful in aggregate with assessing immunological, molecular biomarkers, which provide the only definitive window into what is actually occurring inside the body.
He added, "What we really want to do is diagnose disease early when we can do something about it."
These tests are also crucial, he noted, to identify which people are more genetically predisposed to illness from these chemicals.
This should especially concern public health authorities in Louisiana, Diaz said, because his research has found that many regional southeastern coastal residents in the state -- those in areas who also tended to be more heavily exposed to the oil and dispersants -- do exhibit increased genetic predispositions that make them more vulnerable than the general population.
Such people have less of an ability to metabolize polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in petrochemicals and glycols in dispersants, he explained, which puts them at much greater risk for various kinds of cancer; lung, liver and kidney diseases; mental health disorders and fetal alcohol syndrome.
Insufficient Funding, Budget Cuts and Lack of Political Will Cited
Subra acknowledged the limitations of her blood sample analyses and would applaud an army of occupational doctors diagnosing and treating people across the Gulf for chemical exposure.
Unfortunately, she said, "That's not happening," and blames both a lack of money and political resolve.
In fact, Subra said, it has worked like that in some cases, such as with a Superfund site or a waste site, where she's been able to compel federal agencies to send medical specialists trained to treat issues associated with specific chemicals.
"They come down, they train the doctors, they do grand rounds and they're there for consulting," she explained, adding, "In this case, none of that is happening."
Edward Trapido, associate dean for research and professor of epidemiology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, said that people who feel they've been exposed to something "not of their own doing" might have reason to believe they would be able to receive either low-cost or no-cost treatment.
"It ought to be a priority," he said, "but at this point it hasn't been set up and I don't really expect that it will."
He cited state and federal budget cuts as at least one reason.
Trapido is currently leading an LSU study on the physical and mental health of 2,000 wives and female partners of the most heavily oil-and-dispersant exposed male cleanup workers, which has received initial funding by the National Institute of Health (NIH).
But even long-term studies such as this and the NIH oft-referenced "10-year" study of cleanup workers have no guarantee they'll be sufficiently funded and carried to completion.
In fact, Trapido revealed to AlterNet that at a recent meeting at the Institute of Medicine, he addressed the issue directly with Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, whom Trapido said had justified the projected 10-year study "on the basis that we don't have any long-term results."
Yet Trapido, who has worked at the NIH and knows intimately its vulnerability to transient -- and potentially partisan -- political appointees, as well as budgetary limitations, said that when he asked Collins if he could guarantee the NIH study will last more than five years, he replied, "No."
Diaz also disclosed to AlterNet that the NIH-funded LSU study that Trapido is leading up has thus far only received enough money to collect specimens.
"They're paying for us to collect samples from people exposed, but they're not paying for the laboratory tests," he explained. "So we're just stockpiling the blood in a repository."
Supplemental funding is needed, he said, in order to actually test any of these samples.
Many public health experts, including Trapido, also expressed frustration over the fact that the NIH has only recently begun its study, forever losing the ability to collect crucial biomarker data in the interim. On a more optimistic note, Trapido said, "I think that one of the goals of the community is to get BP to fund a clinic in the area that will treat health problems."
But he added, "Unless BP decides to fund it, there's no money."
Elmore Rigamer of Catholic Charities echoed this hope, expressing frustration with the poor physical health of the people in the coastal communities he's treating that existed even before the oil spill happened.
"I feel at a loss because the people in these communities don't have access to total healthcare," said Rigamer, which complicates his task of adequately addressing their mental health issues.
"We would still have all these horses of the apocalypse we're talking about," he continued, "but it's unthinkable to me that we have people down there who have diabetes and -- even before BP, even before they lost all their ways -- they couldn't go to a doctor because they didn't have the $70 bucks for a visit."
He continued, "So one of the legacies we would like to have is opening a clinic down there, a federally qualified health center."
But Diaz doesn't expect this anytime soon.
He cited budget cuts, too, but also that it's not in the interest of BP to provide money that would help properly diagnose and treat illnesses that may have been caused by its oil spill.
"BP doesn't want to address the healthcare impact because they're trying to limit their liability," he said. "They are trying to reach an immediate economic settlement."
Christi Julian, program manager of the Catholic Charities outreach program, said that the state received $15 million in funding from BP and provided $6.7 of that to Catholic Charities.
But the state designated this BP money to Catholic Charities on the condition that all of it is used solely to treat mental health impacts related to the Gulf oil spill, not physical ones, Julian revealed to AlterNet.
In the meantime, volunteers and outreach employees in the affected coastal communities will continue to do the heavy lifting for those sickened by the spill, with whatever they can provide.
"When somebody comes to a doctor, you are going to treat symptomatically," Rigamer said, in context to the lack of occupational medical doctors. "You're not going to let them walk out without giving them anything, knowing that you're not hitting the root cause."
Dr. Robichaux in Raceland, who is also known in these parts for his doggedness when he served as state senator, looked exhausted before his nighttime interview with AlterNet even began.
By the end, his eyes red with fatigue and large frame slightly hunched, he appeared to be struggling from crumpling over his bureau.
Beleaguered but unbowed, though, he said, "You just do the best you can do, that's all you can do."
Brad Jacobson is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and contributing reporter for AlterNet. You can follow him on Twitter @bradpjacobson.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden
By FIDEL CASTRO
May 6 -8, 2011
http://counterpunch.org/castro05062011.html
Those persons who deal with these issues know that on September 11 of 2001 our people expressed its solidarity to the US people and offered the modest cooperation that in the area of health we could have offered to the victims of the brutal attack against the Twin Towers in New York.
We also immediately opened our country’s airports to the American airplanes that were unable to land anywhere, given the chaos that came about soon after the strike.
The traditional stand adopted by the Cuban Revolution, which was always opposed to any action that could jeopardize the life of civilians, is well known.
Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people. Such behavior, which has been maintained for more than half a century, gives us the right to express our views about such a sensitive matter.
On that day, at a public gathering that took place at Ciudad Deportiva, I expressed my conviction that international terrorism could never be eradicated through violence and war.
By the way, Bin Laden was, for many years, a friend of the US, a country that gave him military training; he was also an adversary of the USSR and Socialism. But, whatever the actions attributed to him, the assassination of an unarmed human being while surrounded by his own relatives is something abhorrent. Apparently this is what the government of the most powerful nation that has ever existed did.
In the carefully drafted speech announcing Bin Laden’s death Obama asserts as follows:
"…And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts."
That paragraph expressed a dramatic truth, but can not prevent honest persons from remembering the unjust wars unleashed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hundreds of thousands of children who were forced to grow up without their mothers and fathers and the parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace.
Millions of citizens were taken from their villages in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and many other countries of the world.
Still engraved in the minds of hundreds of millions of persons are also the horrible images of human beings who, in Guantánamo, a Cuban occupied territory, walk down in silence, being submitted for months, and even for years, to unbearable and excruciating tortures. Those are persons who were kidnapped and transferred to secret prisons with the hypocritical connivance of supposedly civilized societies.
Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended and its religious traditions desecrated.
How could he now prevent the women and children of the person who was executed out of the law and without any trial from explaining what happened? How could he prevent those images from being broadcast to the world?
Having assassinated him and plunging his corpse into the bottom of the sea are an expression of fear and insecurity which turn him into a far more dangerous person.
The US public opinion itself, after the initial euphoria, will end up by criticizing the methods that, far from protecting its citizen, will multiply the feelings of hatred and revenge against them.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
25) Drone Strike in Yemen Was Aimed at Awlaki
By MARK MAZZETTI
May 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?hp
WASHINGTON — A missile strike from an American military drone in a remote region of Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in the country, American officials said Friday.
The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
It was the first American strike in Yemen using a remotely piloted drone since 2002, when the C.I.A. struck a car carrying a group of suspected militants, including an American citizen, who were believed to have Qaeda ties. And the attack came just three days after American commandos invaded a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda.
The attack on Thursday was part of a clandestine Pentagon program to hunt members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group believed responsible for a number of failed attempts to strike the United States, including the thwarted plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet on Dec. 25, 2009, as it was preparing to land in Detroit.
Although Mr. Awlaki is not thought to be one of the group’s senior leaders, he has been made a target by American military and intelligence operatives because he has recruited English-speaking Islamist militants to Yemen to carry out attacks overseas. His radical sermons, broadcast on the Internet, have a large global following.
The Obama administration has taken the rare step of approving Mr. Awlaki’s killing, even though he is an American citizen.
Troops from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command are in charge of the mission in Yemen, with the help of the C.I.A. Over the past two years, the military has carried out strikes in Yemen using cruise missiles from Navy ships and munitions from Marine Harrier jets.
Thursday’s strike was the first known attack in the country by the American military for nearly a year. Last May, American missiles mistakenly killed a provincial government leader, and the Pentagon strikes were put on hold.
More recently, officials have worried that American military strikes in Yemen might further stoke widespread unrest that has imperiled the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
26) Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later
By TIM ARANGO
May 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html?hp
This photograph so moved me that it was an inspiration to an intaglio print that I made. I used the photograph as a sculptural border to my print titled, "We must save our beautiful children." The print was displayed at a California Society of Printmakers (CSP) show in Sausalito, CA in 2009. I am a current member of the CSP. -—Bonnie Weinstein
MOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war.
“My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets.
“My mother and father were killed, just like that.”
The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.
The photograph of Samar is frozen in history, but her life moved on, across a trajectory that is emblematic of what so many Iraqis have endured. In a country whose health care system has almost no ability to treat the psychological aspects of trauma, thousands of Iraqis are left alone with their torment.
Now a striking 12-year-old, Samar lives on the outskirts of Mosul in a two-story house with four other families, mostly relatives.
The household is a cramped bustle of activity as women cook and clean and children scramble about. Samar’s older sister, Intisar, and her husband, an unemployed former police officer, care for her. Two of his sons are policemen, and their salaries support the extended family.
The pains of war have been visited on thousands of Iraqis, but even here Samar’s story stands apart. Three years after her parents were killed, her brother Rakan died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house where she lives now. Rakan had been seriously wounded in the shooting that killed their parents, and he was sent to Boston for treatment after Mr. Hondros’s photos were published. An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan’s treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad.
Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said.
Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat. She spends her days cleaning, listening to music on her purple MP3 player and watching episodes of her favorite television show, the Turkish soap opera “Forbidden Love,” about lovers named Mohanad and Samar.
“I am Samar,” she said, wearing a long red dress and sitting on the couch next to Mr. Ali. Two of her siblings, also in the car when their parents were killed, sat nearby.
“I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali said. “All of them take pills.”
He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone. “When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said. Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying. “When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.”
The photo of Samar had far-reaching impact, for it was visual testimony to a particular scourge of this war: the shooting of innocent civilians as they approached American checkpoints or foot patrols, killings made possible by liberal rules of engagement aiming to protect soldiers from suicide car bombers. The image was a point of discussion at the highest reaches of the Pentagon as it considered ways to reduce civilian casualties.
The Iraq war delivered few singular images for the popular imagination, partly because the country was too dangerous for photographers to move around freely, but also because in an age of saturated media coverage and short attention spans, it may be more difficult for news images to take root in the collective memory.
The military also set strict rules for embedded journalists that kept many graphic images from the public eye; the military asked Mr. Hondros to leave his embed assignment after he shot the pictures of Samar.
Liam Kennedy, a professor at University College Dublin, researches conflict photography and uses Mr. Hondros’s image of Samar in his class as one of the few photos from the Iraq war that could stand out in history, comparing it to the famous Vietnam image by the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut of a young girl running from a napalm attack.
“It really seems to say something of what’s going on at the time,” Professor Kennedy said. “All the arbitrariness of the violence that was going on at that time is summed up by that girl.”
Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch, keeps a copy of the photo on a bulletin board in her office in New York. She remembers crying when she first saw the photo in a newspaper, and having to explain the image to her children.
“At the time, I thought it captured perfectly the horrors of the war that was not really understood by Americans,” she said. “Everything in that girl’s face symbolized what I felt all Iraqis must feel.”
She added, “I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what life will be like for this girl?’ ”
Mr. Hondros spoke about the photograph in a 2007 interview with the syndicated news program “Democracy Now.”
“I think one of the reasons the photo had this sort of resonance that it does is because it has a sort of empty feeling,” he said. “You know, the poor girl, all alone in the world now, just standing there in the dark.”
This week Samar, hugging a pillow to her chest, recalled: “He was taking pictures of me, I remember. Then he stopped, and they brought me a jacket and put me in the truck and treated the wound on my hand. And they gave me some toys.”
She had never seen the picture until this week, but she said she understood that it showed the world “the sad thing that is happening in Iraq.”
Near the end of the interview, she pointed to a family photograph on the wall. “I always dream about my father and mother and brother,” she said.
Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment