Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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SF Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans Film Festival PINKWASHES War Crimes
Apartheid -- Occupation -- Invasion -- Murder -- Racism -- Ethnic Cleansing
The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival has accepted sponsorship and money from the Israeli consulate for the second year in a row. Every Palestinian queer organization, along with a number of local and international queer groups, have demanded that the festival presenter, Frameline, stand up for human rights and international law by refusing to partner with the Israeli government. The Consulate and its supporters have threatened to brand the festival as "anti-Jewish" if they decline their money. But by accepting it, and ignoring the voices and the lives of Palestinian queers, Frameline has shown itself to be anti-queer as well as anti-Palestinian.
Join the Protest
Friday, June 17, 5:30-7:00 pm
Castro Theater, San Francisco
Shame on Frameline! All Queers Count!
Sponsored by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), SouthWest Asian and No07rth African Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ), Middle East Children's Alliance, Arab \esource and Organizing Center, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Israeli Queers for Palestine, Palestinian Queers for BDS
for info: www.quitpalestine.org; quitpalestine@yahoo.com ; www.pqbds.com
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Save the Date!
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country -- from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
78441123=85207452099==/state capitals, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back. But if we're going to be successful in pushing back the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services and education, we need to build unity within our movement, including forging stronger ties with labor's allies: communities of color, students and youth, single-payer advocates, environmentalists, antiwar activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive forces.
Relying on politicians to defend us -- the so-called "friends of labor" -- has proven to be disastrous. During the past three decades, working people have suffered a dramatic decline in their standard of living while the rich have amassed an unprecedented amount of wealth at the top, regardless of which of the major parties was running the government. We have had every combination imaginable: Republicans occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, Democrats occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, or some kind of "divided government." But in each case the result for working people has been the same: conditions got worse for workers while the corporations prospered even more. Why should we continue this vicious cycle?
The working class has the power to put an end to this situation. And as the debate over the debt and the deficit intensifies, the need has never been greater for an organized campaign to demand "No Cuts, No Concessions!" whether in regard to social programs or workers' wages and benefits. We say place the burden for solving the financial crises squarely where it belongs: on the rich. They caused the crisis, let them pay for it!
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was initiated earlier this year at a historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 at Kent State University in Ohio for a national labor-community conference to spur the campaign to build a more militant fight-back movement and to launch a national campaign for an alternative agenda for working people. Together we can move forward on both fronts.
This conference is open to all who agree with its purpose, as explained in this Call. To register for the conference, please go to our website at www.laborfightback.org. If you prefer to register offline, write emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715 for a registration form.
For more information, e-mail emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715.
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Cultures of Resistance
Thursday June 30 -- 7pm, Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, 1/2 block from downtown Berkeley
The Middle East Children's Alliance & the Arab Film Festival present the Berkeley premiere of bay area filmmaker & activist Iara Lee's new feature film Cultures of Resistance.
The film won Best Documentary at the Tiburon International Film Festival and is showing around the globe, from Portugal to China to Ethiopia. Journeying through five continents, it captures creative change-makers using art and activism to turn our upside-down world right-side-up, for peace with justice. Their personal stories and strategies, told in many tongues, broaden our understanding of the geopolitical fault-lines behind modern day conflicts -- inspiring audiences to further engagement and action. Filmmaker Iara Lee will introduce the film and answer questions afterwards.
Tickets $10 general, $8 students. Benefit for clean water for children in Gaza. No one turned away for lack of funds. Wheelchair accessible.
For info: 510-548-0542, www.mecaforpeace.org, events@mecaforpeace.org
Cosponsored by: Global Studies Department/Berkeley City College and more!
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Cuba Caravan Send Off Party!!
-come help send the Cuba Caravan to Cuba
Saturday, July 9, 2011
4pm- snacks and music
5pm- program
6pm- Tamale dinner and more music
Eastside Arts Alliance,C
2277 International, Oakland ( AC #1 or 1R )
Donation requested to help support the Caravan (no one turned away)
Video- "People to People" about the Caravan
Speakers- Including Graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba
Come learn about the Caravan and help send it to Cuba.
For More Info: baypeace@baypeace.org 510-863-1737
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Physicians for a National Health Program California is having our 2nd annual California Single-Payer Health Care Summer Conference at USC's Tutor Campus Center Ballroom on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 from 9am - 5pm.
Summer Conference 2011 is designed to teach attendees about just, guaranteed, comprehensive health care for ALL who live in California. We are gearing this conference toward professionals working in health, policy, advocacy, education, and organizing arenas.
This year's conference will feature Dr. Carmen Rita Nevarez, Immediate Past President, American Public Health Association as our keynote speaker, plus three Leadership Institutes that will help you develop your skills to build the movement through public speaking, coalition building or grassroots advocacy.
Ticket prices are on a sliding scale, and people who are "new to the movement" receive a discount.
For more information and to register, go to healthisahumanright.eventbrite.com. Please also download our flyer here. Please help us spread the word!
If your organization would like to sponsor this event, you can download our sponsorship form here.
Hope you can join us this summer in Los Angeles. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Thanks,
Molly Tavella, MPH
Shearer Student Fellow
Physicians for a National Health Program California
2344 6th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 665-8523 office
(408) 892-1255 mobile
(510) 665-6027 fax
molly@pnhpcalifornia.org
www.cahpsa.org
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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
End All the Wars & Occupations-Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Haiti . . .
Money for Jobs, Healthcare & Schools-Not for the Pentagon
Friday, October 7, 2011 will be the exact 10th anniversary of the U.S./NATO war on the people of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani people have been killed, wounded and displaced, and thousands of U.S. and NATO forces killed and wounded. The war costs more than $126 billion per year at a time when social programs are being slashed.
The true and brutal character of the U.S. strategy to "win hearts and minds" of the Afghani population was described by a Marine officer, quoted in a recent ANSWER Coalition statement:
"You can't just convince them [Afghani people] through projects and goodwill," another Marine officer said. "You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That's how you start convincing them." (To read the entire ANSWER statement, click here)
Mark your calendar now and help organize for the October 7 march and die-in in downtown San Francisco. There are several things you can do:
1. Reply to this email to endorse the protest and die-in.
2. Spread the word and help organize in your community, union, workplace and campus.
3. Make a donation to help with organizing expenses.
Only the people can stop the war!
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2969 Mission St.
415-821-6545
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Empty Chairs
AFLCIONow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3juhx3GJQQ
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Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBEipg81uLw&feature=player_embedded
Original estimates of xenon and krypton releases remain the same, but a TEPCO recalculation shows dramatic increases in the release of hot particles. This confirms the results of air filter monitoring by independent scientists. Fairewinds' Arnie Gundersen explains how hot particles may react in mammals while escaping traditional detection. Reports of a metallic taste in the mouth, such as those now being reported in Japan and on the west coast, are a telltale sign of radiation exposure.
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'Fukushima media cover-up - PR success, public health disaster'
June 11, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_rAX9TzY2A&feature=player_embedded
Residents of the Fukushima district, and those who lived near-by have not only faced radiation exposure but also social exclusion... That's according to Dr. Robert Jacobs, Professor of nuclear history, at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
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QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from Taggart Siegel, director of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN. Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.
Official Film Website: http://www.queenofthesun.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoeQodrVoM
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Cops arrest journalists in Wisconsin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=568lF6C--og&feature=player_embedded
Uploaded by RTAmerica on Jun 8, 2011
Wisconsin police are filmed arresting members of the press that were covering a demonstration at the state's Capitol Building this week. A cuffed reporter is dragged to the ground as an irate cop goes after another journalist.
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Autopsy Released in Police Shooting of Man Holding Nozzle
Douglas Zerby was shot 12 times, in the chest, arms and lower legs.
Watch Mary Beth McDade's report
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-long-beach-belmont-shore-shooting,0,2471345.story
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I Wanna Be A Pirate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppynM1lcst8
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Detained for photography in Baltimore Parts 1 and 2:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iMr76atjUA
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JOFwbiI8fQ
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Arrested for Filming Police in MD?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ew29IFVHw&NR=1
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Woman 'detained' for filming police search launches high court challenge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2MtGCp5scM&NR=1
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Adam Kokesh body slammed, choked, police brutality at Jefferson Memorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUU3yCy3uI&feature=player_embedded#at=575
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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Just Released! ANONYMOUS declares war on the system! JOIN THE RESISTANCE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET4Ki5Tr_CQ&feature=player_embedded
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Andy Griffith Vs the Patriot Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZF_oZEvybw
In this episode, Sheriff Andy locks up a "Mister Blake," a suspected bank robber, and Opie, and his friend Arnold, bug a conversation between the prisoner and his lawyer with Arnold's new tape recorder.
Opie, bursts in, agitated and breathless, saying, "Paw! Paw! We hid it near the cell window..." and hands Sheriff Andy the tape recorder. "Wait, wait, what is it, Opie? What are you taking about?" asks Andy. "We bugged Mr. Blakes cell!" exclaims Opie. "You what?" responds Sheriff Andy. "We bugged the cell with Arnold's tape recorder, just listen to this, Paw!" Opie says. "I can't listen to that!" exclaims Andy. "But Paw..." says Opie, again. Interrupting Opie Andy says, "I can't listen to that, I'm not permitted!" "But, Paw, you don't understand..." pleads Opie. "Now, I can't listen to this. Now, I told you about eavesdropping..." says Andy. "But Paw, this is different..." says Opie. "Yes, its worse! You overheard a conversation that was supposed to be private. Now I can't be a party to that!" says the good Sheriff Taylor. "But Paw, if you just listen to this..." And at that moment Andy pushes the erase button. "Paw, you're erasing the tape!" cries Opie. "That what I mean to do! You bugged a conversation between a lawyer and his client. Now that's violating one of the most sacred rights of privacy," explains Andy. "But Paw..." cries Opie. "No buts!" says Andy. "But if it helps the law? ...." asks Opie. "Opie, the law can't use this kind of help...because whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law."
Unfortunately, and predictably, at the end of the show, the tape recording proved to be useful, after all, to garner a "confession" from the prisoner.
Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZF_oZEvybw
Full Episode: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwPt6JZ9izc
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gYCDawN3yk&NR=1
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THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
ustogaza1's Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/ustogaza1
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS
http://fairewinds.com/updates
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) held a special ACRS meeting Thursday May 26, 2011 on the current status of Fukushima. Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak for 5 minutes concerning the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident as it pertains to the 23 Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR's) in the US and containment integrity. Mr. Gundersen was the first engineer to brief the NRC on the implication of Main Steam Isolation Valve (MSIV) Leakage in 1974, and he has been studying containment integrity since 1972. The NRC has constantly maintained in all of its calculations and reviews that there is zero probability of a containment leaking. For more than six years, in testimony and in correspondence with the NRC, Mr. Gundersen has disputed the NRC's stand that containment systems simply do not and cannot leak. The events at Fukushima have proven that Gundersen was correct. The explosions at Fukushima show that Mark 1 containments will lose their integrity and release huge amounts of radiation, as Mr. Gundersen has been telling the NRC for many years.
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Guy on wheelchair taken down by officers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdkJxw1mPoM
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The Last Mountain': Appalachia vs. Big Coal
Janet Donovan
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/60-60/6063-qthe-last-mountainq
Actor Woody Harrelson was a surprise guest at D.C. premiere of "The Last Mountain" at E Street Cinema, also attended by Sens. Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Boxer, Director Bill Haney, and Bobby Kennedy Jr. who speaks out on West Virginia's struggle.
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RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0&feature=player_embedded
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Paradise Gray Speaks At Jordan Miles Emergency Rally 05/06/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOLz1EYDYE&feature=player_embedded
Police Reassigned While CAPA Student's Beatdown Investigated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-6IsP3dUg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Pittsburgh Student Claims Police Brutality; Shows Hospital Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j_AVsTXZc&feature=relmfu
Justice For Jordan Miles
By jasiri x
http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Even though Pittsburgh Police beat Jordan Miles until he looked like this: (Photo at website)
And even though Jordan Miles, an honor student who plays the viola, broke no laws and committed no crimes, the Federal Government decided not to prosecute the 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers who savagely beat him.
To add insult to injury, Pittsburgh's Mayor and Police Chief immediately reinstated the 3 officers without so much as a apology. An outraged Pittsburgh community called for an emergency protest to pressure the local District Attorney to prosecute these officers to the fullest extent of the law.
Below is my good friend, and fellow One Hood founding member Paradise Gray (also a founding member of the Blackwatch Movement and the legendary rap group X-Clan) passionately demanding Justice for Jordan Miles and speaking on the futility of a war of terror overseas while black men are terrorized in their own neighborhoods.
For more information on how you can help get Justice For Jordan Miles go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
http://vimeo.com/22706805
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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New Video - Lupe Fiasco ft. Skylar Grey - 'Words I Never Said'
Thu, Apr 28 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0
Lupe Fiasco addresses some heavy issues in the latest video for his new single, 'Words I Never Said,' featuring Skylar Grey. In the 5 minute and 45 second dose of reality, Lupe tackles issues such as the war on terrorism, devastation, conspiracy theories, 9/11 and genocide. From the opening lyrics of "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh*t", Lupe doesn't hold back as he voices his socio-political concerns.
"If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of what the f-ks'
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homie that's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say s-t
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful."
Skylar Grey (who also lends her vocals to Dirty money's 'Coming Home' and Eminem's 'I Need A Doctor') does an excellent job of complementing the Alex Da Kid produced track.
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BREAKING ALERT: Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E.: Miss. Medical Examiner Dr. Adel Shaker On Frederick Carter Hanging (4/19/2011)
http://blip.tv/file/5057532
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environment would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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VIDEO: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother
Take Back the Land- Rochester Eviction Defense March 28, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2axN1zsZno&feature=player_embedded
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B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
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Afghans for Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ror0qPcasM&NR=1
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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END THE U.S./UN/NATO KILL TEAM NOW!
WARNING: THESE ARE HORRIFIC, DISGUSTING, VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE U.S. MILITARY MAKING THE UPCOMING APRIL 10 [APRIL 9 IN NEW YORK] MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS A FIRST PRIORITY FOR WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. WE DEMAND OUT NOW! END THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND EVERYWHERE! BRING ALL THE TROOPS, UN/NATO/US/ and CONTRACTORS HOME NOW!
The Kill Team Photos More war crime images the Pentagon doesn't want you to see
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327
'Death Zone' How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling 'music video'
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/death-zone-20110327
'Motorcycle Kill' Footage of an Army patrol gunning down two men in Afghanistan
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/motorcyle-kill-20110327
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
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Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Support a documentary film about the war on Afghanistan.
Between July 1 and 12, Brazilian ecologist, anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Rodrigo Guim will be in the Bay Area to meet potential funders of a documentary featuring antiwar and human rights activist from Afghanistan, Malalai Joya. If you have any leads to send the filmmaker, or would like to schedule a meeting to know how you could contribute to the project, please write him directly at rodrigoguim@hotmail.com.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
Hello friends
This is to inform you that we have launched our new WitnessGaza.com website, and we invite you to BE A WITNESS: access it, contribute to it, and join us as we work to break Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza.
Last year, millions accessed WG.com to get up-to-the-minute information, news and videos.
Freedom Flotilla 2 will sail the end of June, and we need your support.
Please send this to your lists. If possible, please post our logo and link on your website.
We hope that you will find this all of help -- and we look forward to your ideas and participation.
All the very best,
in Peace,
Witness Gaza Team
David Rubinson
http://witnessgaza.com/
Twitter: @witnessgaza
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/WitnessGazacom/149995568385688
Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freegaza/
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/gazafriends
This is what the new WitnessGaza does:
1- WG aggregates everything published on the websites of the individual national Flotilla Initiatives, and makes it all accessible in one place, instantly and automatically. Plus, there is a NEWS section, where this information is expanded, and many other sources of news and information can be instantly accessed as well.
2- WG enables everyone everywhere, to Be a Witness - and post videos, text, breaking news, photos, or any similar content--
Anyone with internet access -- anywhere -- can post videos or photographs or content.
We will also run live streaming video of events that are happening locally, or on the ground anywhere.
Our goal is to have the whole world watch and know and then --- act.
3- WG posts links to one or two big news headlines.
4- WG enables all of this to be instantly distributed and shared via social networking sites- Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube.
5- WG publishes all the newest Twitter postings and connects instantly to Twitter for re-Tweets, or comments.
Please -- try to include our links and logos on ALL your postings, emails, letters, releases. Anything you put out.
Please include:
http://witnessgaza.com/
Twitter: @witnessgaza
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/WitnessGazacom/149995568385688
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/gazafriends
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Stop Coal Companies From Erasing Labor Union History
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-coal-companies-from-erasing-labor-union-history
In just a few hours, this petition has gained more than 17,000 signatures.
Here's some text from the petition page:
OVERVIEW
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed conflict on American soil since the Civil War and the largest labor confrontation ever. It erupted when more than 10,000 West Virginia coal miners confronted an industry-backed army for a week in 1921. The miners were fighting to gain collective bargaining rights, to escape the domination of coal operators, and for the basic right to live and work in decent, safe conditions.
The history of Blair Mountain is that of all Americans.
The coal miners who worked and struggled during the West Virginia Mine Wars formed a rock-hard union solidarity that diffused to the rest of the nation through the Appalachian outmigration that has occurred from the 1930s until today. They went to steel foundries in Pittsburgh, the car factories in Detroit, and the mills in Ohio. They carried with them the memory and heritage of the labor struggles in central Appalachia, and they were a major force in building the labor unions that in themselves helped build the prosperous middle class of the 20th century.
Blair Mountain stands at the heart of American prosperity, and the coal miners who fought and died there did so for the basic freedom of living and working in decent, safe conditions.
But most people have never heard of Blair Mountain. That's because West Virginia has, for years, resisted preserving or commemorating the site. Nowadays, major coal companies Arch Coal and Massey Energy (the one responsible for the deadly explosion last April) own a lot of the land and hold permits to blast away the landscape for the most devastating of all coal mining practices: Mountaintop removal mining. They literally want to erase history here.
This can be stopped. If only the National Register of Historic Places would list the site, then its preservation would be required. Except that federal official ultimately turned down a listing this year -- amid objections of 57 "landowners" filed by the state. According to activists, however, this list is flawed and some of these people are even dead. And, already, Friends of Blair Mountain has documented the disturbance of five locations on the 1,700 acre site.
Tell Interior Department officials and the state of West Virginia to save the site of the Battle of Blair Mountain without delay. It's time to stop the destruction of West Virginia and preserve this one small example of rebellion from the grip of Big Coal.
P.S. From June 4th-11th, supporters will unite for a weeklong solidarity march on Blair Mountain.The March on Blair Mountain is a peaceful, unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. The march commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain. It will start in Charleston, West Virginia and end 50 miles later with a rally at Blair Mountain. Please consider attending if you can!
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best wishes,
richard myers
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
Tell US Attorney Fitzgerald, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, DOJ Inspector General Fine, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders, U.N. Secy Gen Ban, and members of the media to STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Petition Text:
To: U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, President Barack Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,
cc: Vice President Biden, DOJ Inspector General Fine, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, U.N. Secy Gen Ban, and members of the media
** Drop All Charges against Carlos Montes, and immediately return all of his property!
** Stop the attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movements!
** Call Off the Chicago Grand Jury and Stop the Expanding Witchhunt against Anti-war and International Solidarity Activists!
** Hands Off Palestine Solidarity Activists!
** Throw Out the reactiviated subpoenas against Tracy Molm, Ann Pham and Sarah Martin in Minneapolis, and ALL of the 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of homes of anti-war and international solidarity activists.
**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.
I am writing to oppose the continuation and expansion of the FBI campaign of harassment of immigrant rights, anti-war and Palestine and other International Solidarity Activists, including the raid on the home of Carlos Montes and his arrest and the confiscation of his property, the 9 added subpoenas in the Chicago area, and reactivation of 3 of the original 14 subpoenas from the September 24 FBI raids of anti-war and international solidarity activists' homes.
These activists are guilty of no crime but opposition to U.S. foreign policy. On Friday, September 24, 2010 the FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis. The FBI served subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to 13 activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California, Wisconsin and North Carolina. This is not the action of a lone prosecutor. The raids were coordinated nationally, spanned several cities, and many other activists have been visited and personally threatened by the FBI.
The FBI confiscated computers, email and mailing lists, cell phones , cameras, videos, books, and passports. This is a dangerous attack on the constitutional rights of free speech of every social justice, antiwar and human rights activist and organization in the U.S. today. The right to speak, meet and write opinions is guaranteed under the constitution.
This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. Grand Jury subpoenas investigating material support of terrorism are being used to silence highly respected and well known human rights activists. This is a dangerous national effort to shut down growing opposition to U.S. wars. It cannot be allowed.
The FBI and the Grand Jury are threatening courageous individuals who have written and spoken publicly to broaden understanding of social justice issues of war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
The FBI and the U.S. government must end this campaign of intimidation against anti-war and international solidarity activists. I am outraged at this disrespect of democratic rights. I ask that you intervene immediately to:
**Stop the Grand Jury Witchhunt!
**Stop the expanded repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.
**Immediately return all confiscated materials: computers, cell phones, papers, documents, etc.
**End the grand jury proceedings against anti-war activists.
Sincerely,
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter in the form above)
You can also call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov demanding an end to the FBI raids, return of all confiscated materials and an end to the Grand Jury witchhunt. Fitzgerald is in charge of the Northern District of Illinois and responsible for the FBI raids and Grand Jury investigation.
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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U.S. Attorney Escalates Attacks on Civil Liberties of Anti-War,
Palestinian Human Rights Activists
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald first thing Monday morning! (contact info at bottom of this email)
On Friday, May 6, the U.S. government froze the bank accounts of Hatem Abudayyeh and his wife, Naima. This unwarranted attack on a leading member of the Palestinian community in Chicago is the latest escalation of the repression of anti-war and Palestinian community organizers by the FBI, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Hatem Abudayyeh is one of 23 activists from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Chicago, and his home was raided by the FBI in September of last year. Neither Hatem Abudayyeh nor Naima Abudayyeh have been charged with any crime.
One of the bank accounts frozen was exclusively in Naima Abudayyeh's name. Leaders of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, as well as Chicago's Coalition to Protect People's Rights are appalled at the government's attempt to restrict the family's access to its finances, especially so soon before Mothers' Day. Not only does the government's action seriously disrupt the lives of the Abudayyehs and their five-year-old daughter, but it represents an attack on Chicago's Arab community and activist community and the fundamental rights of Americans to freedom of speech.
The persecution of the Abudayyeh family is another example of the criminalization of Palestinians, their supporters, and their movement for justice and liberation. There has been widespread criticism of the FBI and local law enforcement for their racial profiling and scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. These repressive tactics include infiltration of community centers and mosques, entrapment of young men, and the prominent case of 11 students from the University of California campuses at Irvine and Riverside who have been subpoenaed to a grand jury and persecuted for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US. The government's attempt to conflate the anti-war and human rights movements with terrorism is a cynical attempt to capitalize on the current political climate in order to silence Palestinians and other people of conscience who exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner which does not conform to the administration's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.
The issuance of subpoenas against the 23 activists has been met with widespread opposition and criticism across the country. Six members of the U.S. Congress, including five in the past month, have sent letters to either Holder or President Obama, expressing grave concern for the violations of the civil liberties and rights of the 23 activists whose freedom is on the line. Three additional U.S. representatives have also promised letters, as thousands of constituents and other people of conscience across the U.S. have demanded an end to this assault on legitimate political activism and dissent. Over 60 Minnesota state legislators also issued a resolution condemning the subpoenas.
The Midwest activists have been expecting indictments for some time. The freezing of the Abudayyeh family's bank accounts suggests that the danger of indictments is imminent.
Take action:
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Then dial 0 (zero) for the operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
Demand Fitzgerald
-- Unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family and
-- Stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
In solidarity,
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression and
The Coalition to Protect People's Rights
For more info go to StopFBI.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Abolish the Death Penalty Blog
http://www.ncadp.org/blog.cfm?postID=165
Abolish the Death Penalty is a blog dedicated to...well, you know. The purpose of Abolish is to tell the personal stories of crime victims and their loved ones, people on death row and their loved ones and those activists who are working toward abolition. You may, from time to time, see news articles or press releases here, but that is not the primary mission of Abolish the Death Penalty. Our mission is to put a human face on the debate over capital punishment.
You can also follow death penalty news by reading our News page and by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
1 Million Tweets for Troy! April 12, 2011
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
The state of Georgia is seeking to change the drugs they use to carry out executions so they can resume scheduling execution dates, including that of Troy Davis, a man with a strong claim of innocence. Doubts in the case persist, including the fact that no physical evidence links him to the murder, most of the witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony and newer testimony implicates a different person (including an eyewitness account).
The Davis case has already generated hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters in support of clemency, including from leaders such as the Pope, Jimmy Carter and former FBI chief Bill Sessions. We need to continue to amass petitions in support of clemency, demonstrating the widespread concern about this case and what it represents.
Please help us send a message to Georgia officials that they can do the right thing - they can intervene as the final failsafe by commuting Davis' sentence. Please help us generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis!
Share this tweet alert with your friends and family that care about justice and life as soon as you can.
More information about the case is available at www.justicefortroy.org
Here are some sample tweets:
When in doubt, don't execute!! Sign the petition for #TroyDavis! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Too much doubt! Stop the execution! #TroyDavis needs us! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No room for doubt! Stop the execution of #TroyDavis . Retweet, sign petition www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Case not "ironclad", yet Georgiacould execute #TroyDavis ! Not on our watch! Petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No murder weapon. No physical evidence. Stop the execution! #TroyDavis petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recanted. No physical evidence. Stop the execution of Troy Davis www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition #TroyDavis
Thanks!
Exonerated Death Row Survivors Urge Georgia to:
Stop the Execution of Troy Davis
Chairman James E. Donald
Georgia State Board of Pardons & Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, GA 30334
May 1, 2011
Dear Chairperson Donald and Members of the Board:
We, the undersigned, are alive today because some individual or small group of individuals decided that our insistent and persistent proclamations of innocence warranted one more look before we were sent to our death by execution. We are among the 138 individuals who have been legally exonerated and released from death rows in the United States since 1973. We are alive because a few thoughtful persons-attorneys, journalists, judges, jurists, etc.-had lingering doubts about our cases that caused them to say "stop" at a critical moment and halt the march to the execution chamber. When our innocence was ultimately revealed, when our lives were saved, and when our freedom was won, we thanked God and those individuals of conscience who took actions that allowed the truth to eventually come to light.
We are America's exonerated death row survivors. We are living proof that a system operated by human beings is capable of making an irreversible mistake. And while we have had our wrongful convictions overturned and have been freed from death row, we know that we are extremely fortunate to have been able to establish our innocence. We also know that many innocent people who have been executed or who face execution have not been so fortunate. Not all those with innocence claims have had access to the kinds of physical evidence, like DNA, that our courts accept as most reliable. However, we strongly believe that the examples of our cases are reason enough for those with power over life and death to choose life. We also believe that those in authority have a unique moral consideration when encountering individuals with cases where doubt still lingers about innocence or guilt.
One such case is the case of Troy Anthony Davis, whose 1991 conviction for killing Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail rested almost solely on witness testimony. We know that today, 20 years later, witness evidence is considered much less reliable than it was then. This has meant that, even though most of the witnesses who testified against him have now recanted, Troy Davis has been unable to convince the courts to overturn his conviction, or even his death sentence.
Troy Davis has been able to raise serious doubts about his guilt, however. Several witnesses testified at the evidentiary hearing last summer that they had been coerced by police into making false statements against Troy Davis. This courtroom testimony reinforced previous statements in sworn affidavits. Also at this hearing, one witness testified for the first time that he saw an alternative suspect, and not Troy Davis, commit the crime. We don't know if Troy Davis is in fact innocent, but, as people who were wrongfully sentenced to death (and in some cases scheduled for execution), we believe it is vitally important that no execution go forward when there are doubts about guilt. It is absolutely essential to ensuring that the innocent are not executed.
When you issued a temporary stay for Troy Davis in 2007, you stated that the Board "will not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused." This standard is a welcome development, and we urge you to apply it again now. Doubts persist in the case of Troy Davis, and commuting his sentence will reassure the people of Georgia that you will never permit an innocent person to be put to death in their name.
Freddie Lee Pitts, an exonerated death row survivor who faced execution by the state of Florida for a crime he didn't commit, once said, "You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can't release him from the grave."
Thank you for considering our request.
Respectfully,
Kirk Bloodsworth, Exonerated and freed from death row Maryland; Clarence Brandley, Exonerated and freed from death row in Texas; Dan Bright, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Albert Burrell, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Perry Cobb, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Gary Drinkard, Exonerated and freed from death row in Alabama; Nathson Fields, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Gary Gauger, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Michael Graham, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Shujaa Graham, Exonerated and freed from death row in California; Paul House, Exonerated and freed from death row in Tennessee; Derrick Jamison, Exonerated and freed from death row in Ohio; Dale Johnston, Exonerated and freed from death row in Ohio; Ron Keine, Exonerated and freed from death row in New Mexico; Ron Kitchen, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; Ray Krone, Exonerated and freed from death row in Arizona; Herman Lindsey, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Juan Melendez, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Randal Padgett, Exonerated and freed from death row in Alabama; Freddie Lee Pitts, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Randy Steidl, Exonerated and freed from death row in Illinois; John Thompson, Exonerated and freed from death row in Louisiana; Delbert Tibbs, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; David Keaton, Exonerated and freed from death row in Florida; Greg Wilhoit, Exonerated and freed from death row in Oklahoma; Harold Wilson, Exonerated and freed from death row in Pennsylvania.
-Witness to Innocence, May 11, 2011
http://www.witnesstoinnocence.com/view_news.php?Exonerated-Death-Row-Survivors-Urge-George-to-Stop-the-Execution-of-Troy-Davis-181
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE!
In a recent New York Daily News Poll the question was asked:
Should Army pfc Bradley Manning face charges for allegedly stealing classified documents and providing them for WikiLeaks?
New York Daily News Poll Results:
Yes, he's a traitor for selling out his country! ...... 28%
No, he's a hero for standing up for what's right! ..... 62%
We need to see more evidence before passing judgment.. 10%
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/03/05/2011-03-05_wikileaks_private_loses_his_underwear.html?r=news
Sign the Petition:
We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad...
We stand with accused whistle-blower
US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning
Stand with Bradley!
A 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Manning faces decades in prison for allegedly leaking a video of a US helicopter attack that killed at least eleven Iraqi civilians to the website Wikileaks. Among the dead were two working Reuters reporters. Two children were also severely wounded in the attack.
In addition to this "Collateral Murder" video, Pfc. Manning is suspected of leaking the "Afghan War Diaries" - tens of thousands of battlefield reports that explicitly describe civilian deaths and cover-ups, corrupt officials, collusion with warlords, and a failing US/NATO war effort.
"We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," noted Barack Obama while on the campaign trail in 2008. While the President was referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Pfc. Manning's alleged actions are just as noteworthy. If the military charges against him are accurate, they show that he had a reasonable belief that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on a crisis of conscience.
After nearly a decade of war and occupation waged in our name, it is odd that it apparently fell on a young Army private to provide critical answers to the questions, "What have we purchased with well over a trillion tax dollars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?" However, history is replete with unlikely heroes.
If Bradley Manning is indeed the source of these materials, the nation owes him our gratitude. We ask Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John M. McHugh, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General George W. Casey, Jr., to release Pfc. Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him.
http://standwithbrad.org/
Bulletin from the cause: Bradley Manning Support Network
Go to Cause
Posted By: Tom Baxter
To: Members in Bradley Manning Support Network
A Good Address for Bradley!!!
We have a good address for Bradley,
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in
______(state). I am calling _____ to demand he call off the Grand Jury
and stop FBI repression against the anti-war and Palestine solidarity
movements. I oppose U.S. government political repression and support
the right to free speech and the right to assembly of the 23 activists
subpoenaed. We will not be criminalized. Tell him to stop this
McCarthy-type witch hunt against international solidarity activists!"
If your call doesn't go through, try again later.
Update: 800 anti-war and international solidarity activists
participated in four regional conferences, in Chicago, IL; Oakland,
CA; Chapel Hill, NC and New York City to stop U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald's Grand Jury repression.
Still, in the last few weeks, the FBI has continued to call and harass
anti-war organizers, repressing free speech and the right to organize.
However, all of their intimidation tactics are bringing a movement
closer together to stop war and demand peace.
We demand:
-- Call Off the Grand Jury Witch-hunt Against International Solidarity
Activists!
-- Support Free Speech!
-- Support the Right to Organize!
-- Stop FBI Repression!
-- International Solidarity Is Not a Crime!
-- Stop the Criminalization of Arab and Muslim Communities!
Background: Fitzgerald ordered FBI raids on anti-war and solidarity
activists' homes and subpoenaed fourteen activists in Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Michigan on September 24, 2010. All 14 refused to
speak before the Grand Jury in October. Then, 9 more Palestine
solidarity activists, most Arab-Americans, were subpoenaed to appear
at the Grand Jury on January 25, 2011, launching renewed protests.
There are now 23 who assert their right to not participate in
Fitzgerald's witch-hunt.
The Grand Jury is a secret and closed inquisition, with no judge, and
no press. The U.S. Attorney controls the entire proceedings and hand
picks the jurors, and the solidarity activists are not allowed a
lawyer. Even the date when the Grand Jury ends is a secret.
So please make these calls to those in charge of the repression aimed
against anti-war leaders and the growing Palestine solidarity
movement.
Email us to let us know your results. Send to info@StopFBI.net
**Please sign and circulate our 2011 petition at http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
In Struggle,
Tom Burke,
for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Activists cry foul over FBI probe
By Peter Wallsten, Published: June 13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/activists-cry-foul-over-fbi-probe/2011/06/09/AGPRskTH_print.html
2) Japan: Six More Nuclear Plant Workers May Have Exceeded Radiation Limits
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world/asia/14briefs-Japan.html?_r=1&ref=world
3) Poland and U.S. Sign Agreement to Station Air Force Personnel in Poland
By REUTERS
June 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world/europe/14briefs-Poland.html?ref=world
4) Greeks Walk Off the Job in Austerity Protest
By RACHEL DONADIO and NIKI KITSANTONIS
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/world/europe/16greece.html?hp
5) C.I.A. Building Base for Strikes in Yemen
By MARK MAZZETTI
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/middleeast/15yemen.html?ref=world
6) U.N. Charts High Jobless Rate in Gaza, Despite Israel's Easing of Blockade
By ETHAN BRONNER
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/middleeast/15gaza.html?ref=world
7) Wisconsin Court Reinstates Law on Union Rights
By MONICA DAVEY
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/politics/15wisconsin.html?ref=us
8) Oakland Whistle Blower OFD Paramedic Sean Gillis Needs Your Help Now
Help Him Expose the Mistreatment of Oscar Grant and the Cover Up
For docs related to Sean's fight go to JusticeForSeanAtOaklandFire at www.groups.google.com
You can contact those that are helping Sean at justiceforseanatoaklandfire@gmail.com
9) Watching the Detectives
By JOANNA C. SCHWARTZ
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16schwartz.html?hp
10) Can Justice Be Bought?
"Two years ago, the Supreme Court tried to bolster public trust in the nation's justice system by disqualifying a state judge in West Virginia from a case that involved a coal company executive who had spent more than $3 million to help get the judge elected."
New York Times Editorial
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16thu1.html?hp
11) Americans Support Offshore Drilling Even if Washington Wavers
By JOHN M. BRODER
June 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/business/energy-environment/17drilling.html?hp
12) Nuclear Plant, Left for Dead, Shows a Pulse
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/energy-environment/16nuclear.html?hp
13) White House Defends Continuing U.S. Role in Libya Operation
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MARK LANDLER
"The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities."
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?ref=world
14) Traces of Dioxin Found Near U.S. Base in South Korea
By MARK McDONALD
June 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/world/asia/17korea.html?ref=world
15) Nuclear Plant Safety Rules Inadequate, Group Says
"Mr. Borchardt also said that in Units 1, 2, and 3 at Fukushima, 'The cores, to some degree, are ex-vessel,' meaning that the uranium fuel had melted and leaked out of the reactor vessels.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/energy-environment/16nrc.html?ref=world
16) Most Mail Delivery in Canada Halts After Strikes
By IAN AUSTEN
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/global/16postal.html?ref=world
17) Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
18) No Strike at Macy's
By ADRIANE QUINLAN
June 16, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/no-strike-at-macys/?ref=nyregion
19) 40 Years of Drug War Hasn't Worked; "Time for a Change," Says 9-Year Veteran
By Eric Sterling, AlterNet
Posted on June 15, 2011, Printed on June 17, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151306/40_years_of_drug_war_hasn%27t_worked%3B_%22time_for_a_change%2C%22_says_9-year_veteran
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1) Activists cry foul over FBI probe
By Peter Wallsten, Published: June 13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/activists-cry-foul-over-fbi-probe/2011/06/09/AGPRskTH_print.html
CHICAGO - FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband.
The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner's home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened infant bodysuits and other clothes with socialist slogans, phrases like "Help Wanted: Revolutionaries."
The search was part of a mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers.
The probe - involving subpoenas to 23 people and raids of seven homes last fall - has triggered a high-powered protest against the Department of Justice and, in the process, could create some political discomfort for President Obama with his union supporters as he gears up for his reelection campaign.
The apparent targets are concentrated in the Midwest, including Chicagoans who crossed paths with Obama when he was a young state senator and some who have been active in labor unions that supported his political rise.
Investigators, according to search warrants, documents and interviews, are examining possible "material support" for Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorists.
The apparent targets, all vocal and visible critics of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South America, deny any ties to terrorism. They say the government, using its post-9/11 focus on terrorism as a pretext, is targeting them for their political views.
They are "public non-violent activists with long, distinguished careers in public service, including teachers, union organizers and antiwar and community leaders," said Michael Deutsch, a Chicago lawyer and part of a legal team defending those who believe they are being targeted by the investigation.
Several activists and their lawyers said they believe indictments could come anytime, so they have turned their organizing skills toward a counteroffensive, decrying the inquiry as a threat to their First Amendment rights.
Those who have been subpoenaed, most of them non-Muslim, include clerical workers, educators and in one case a stay-at-home dad. Some are lesbian couples with young children - a point apparently noted by investigators, who infiltrated the activists' circle with an undercover officer presenting herself as a lesbian mother.
All 23 of the activists invoked their right not to testify before a grand jury, defying U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, whose office is spearheading the investigation.
A spokesman for Fitzgerald, the Chicago prosecutor whose past work has sometimes riled both political parties, declined to comment.
It is uncertain whether Obama is aware of the investigation. A White House official referred questions to the Justice Department, where spokesman Matthew Miller said the agency will not comment on an investigation, but he disputed any assertion that people would be targeted for political activities.
"Whenever we open an investigation, it is solely because we have a reason to do so based on the facts, evidence and the law,"Miller said.
The activists have formed the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, organized phone banks to flood Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s office and the White House with protest calls, solicited letters from labor unions and faith-based groups and sent delegations to Capitol Hill to gin up support from lawmakers.
Labor backers include local and statewide affiliates representing the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, two of the most influential unions in the liberal movement. So far, nine members of Congress have written letters to the administration asking questions.
The major national labor organizations have not gotten involved in the case and are considered likely to support Obama's reelection next year.
But some state and local union organizations are expressing alarm about the case, saying that the government appears to be scrutinizing efforts by workers to build ties with trade unionists in other countries.
"I am so disgusted when I see that so many union people have been targeted in this," said Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME Local 3800, which represents clerical workers at the University of Minnesota, including four members who are possible targets.
The union's statewide group, which says it represents 46,000 workers, called on Obama to investigate and passed a resolution expressing "grave concern" about the raids. Similar resolutions have been approved by statewide AFSCME and SEIU affiliates in Illinois.
If there are indictments, the case could test a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that found the ban on material support for designated foreign terrorist groups does not necessarily violate the First Amendment - even if the aid was intended for peaceful or humanitarian uses. The ruling held that any type of support could ultimately help a terrorist group's pursuit of violence.
The probe appears to date from 2008, as a number of activists began planning for massive antiwar demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
After the convention, the FBI's interest continued, apparently focused on the international work pursued by many of the participants. Several activists said they had traveled to Colombia or the Palestinian territories on "fact-finding" trips designed to bolster their case back home against U.S. military support for the Israeli and Colombian governments.
In 2009, a group raised money to travel and deliver about $1,000 to a Palestinian women's group, but the delegation was turned back by officials at the airport in Israel, organizers said.
Search warrants, subpoenas and documents show that the FBI has been interested in links between the activists and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah.
In the early morning of Sept. 24, 2010, agents raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, issued subpoenas to 14 activists, and tried to question others around the country, including prominent antiwar organizers in North Carolina and California.
At 7 a.m., according to documents and interviews, about a dozen armed federal agents used a battering ram to force their way into Mick Kelly's second-floor apartment, which sits over an all-night coffee shop in a working-class neighborhood of Minneapolis.
Kelly, 53, a cook in a University of Minnesota dormitory and a member of the Teamsters, said he was at work and his nightgown-clad wife, Linden Gawboy, was slow to answer the door.
Apparently by accident, the agents left something behind: a packet of secret documents headlined "Operation Order," laying out detailed instructions for the FBI SWAT team to find clues of Kelly's activism, including personal finances or those of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a far-left group he works with. The documents point to the FBI's interest in Kelly's foreign travel.
"We've done absolutely nothing wrong," Kelly said. "We don't know what this is about, but we know that our rights to organize and speak out are being violated."
In Chicago, the raid at the home of Weiner, 49, also targeted her husband, Joe Iosbaker, 52, a University of Illinois-Chicago office worker and a union steward for his SEIU local. The couple are among the grassroots activists close to the world once inhabited by Barack Obama who have been caught up in the investigation.
Like others, Weiner and Iosbacker have been fixtures on the local liberal political scene, protesting police actions, attending antiwar rallies, leading pay equity fights and even doing some volunteer work for Obama's past campaigns.
Tom Burke, who received a subpoena Sept. 24, had in 2004 discussed the plight of murdered Colombian trade unionists with then-state senator Obama.
"He was a sympathetic ear," Burke said, recalling that Obama told him the murders were a "human rights problem."
Hatem Abudayyeh, one of seven Palestinians to be subpoenaed in the investigation, recalls encountering Obama in the community during his years as a state legislator. Abudayyeh, 40, is executive director of the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago advocacy group that hosted then-state senator Obama for at least two events.
The role of the undercover officer, which defense lawyers said was confirmed in their talks with prosecutors, became clear in the weeks following the raids. She had joined a Minneapolis antiwar group, then joined demonstrations at the School of the Americas military training site in Fort Benning, Georgia, and at one point flying with a group to Israel on the trip that was thwarted at the airport.
"They were smart sending a 40-year-old lesbian," said Meredith Aby, 38, a high school civics teacher and longtime organizer. "A good match," added Jess Sundin, a university clerical worker.
Aby and Sundin, whose homes were raided and who received subpoenas, had helped lead a group called the Anti-War Committee that had coordinated with antiwar activists across the country to plan the demonstrations at the Republican convention.
Civil libertarians and other critics say the investigation fits a pattern for the FBI, pointing to a Justice Department inspector general's report - issued three days before the raids - chiding the agency for monitoring the domestic political activities of Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups in the name of combating terrorism.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee and a close Obama ally, wrote Holder in April conveying the activists' concerns that the probe was infringing on their rights.
"Clearly we need to have a bright line where people can exercise their civil rights, their civil liberties, to peacefully protest," Schakowsky said in an interview.
Holder experienced the activists' anger first hand last month, when Tracy Molm, 30, an AFSCME organizer whose apartment was raided, stood to interrupt a speech he was giving at the University of Minnesota. Holder, unaware that she was a possible investigation target, agreed to meet with her after the speech.
In a small room off the auditorium, with the attorney general flanked by aides and security, Molm demanded to know why the administration was pursuing the inquiry, she recalled later in an interview.
"He said they had a predicate for the investigation," Molm said. "I said, 'The predicates after 9/11 are nothing.'"
"We're going to have to agree to disagree," Holder replied, according to Molm.
At that point, Molm revealed that her apartment had been raided as part of the investigation. Holder and Justice Department officials abruptly ended the discussion.
(c) The Washington Post Company
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2) Japan: Six More Nuclear Plant Workers May Have Exceeded Radiation Limits
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world/asia/14briefs-Japan.html?_r=1&ref=world
Six more workers at the tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant have exceeded the radiation exposure limit, according to the preliminary results of tests announced by the Health and Labor Ministry on Monday. The new cases bring the total to eight. Three of the men were control room operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and five worked to restore power that was knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said none of them were showing immediate health problems but they would require long-term monitoring as they had an increased risk of cancer. All eight have been transferred to desk jobs.
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3) Poland and U.S. Sign Agreement to Station Air Force Personnel in Poland
By REUTERS
June 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/world/europe/14briefs-Poland.html?ref=world
Poland and the United States signed a deal on Monday to allow the United States Air Force to station personnel in Poland. The agreement, endorsed by President Obama during his visit to Warsaw late last month, provides for a small air detachment to be in place by 2013 to train Polish pilots in use of F-16 warplanes and C-130 transport planes.
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4) Greeks Walk Off the Job in Austerity Protest
By RACHEL DONADIO and NIKI KITSANTONIS
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/world/europe/16greece.html?hp
ATHENS - Thousands of Greeks joined a nationwide strike on Wednesday against sharp cuts to government spending as Parliament debated another round of painful austerity measures intended to secure more international aid and avert a financial crisis.
The police fired tear gas and scuffled with protesters in the central Syntagma Square in Athens, and some in the crowd tried to prevent legislators from entering Parliament. Police officials said they had detained 10 people.
A year after Greece received its first international bailout, the Socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, is facing his greatest challenge yet as he tries to balance the demands of the International Monetary Fund and the markets with those of his electorate.
Schools, tax offices and other public services were closed, and hospitals operated at sharply reduced staffing levels. But air traffic controllers did not join the general strike and flights were little affected.
The government's credibility is at a low among Greeks, who feel they are unfairly footing the bill for their government's mistakes. Opinion polls show the Socialists slipping behind the center-right opposition for the first time since the current government was elected in 2009.
"We had the first set of measures, that's over, now they want a second," said Angeliki Kolandretsou, 63, a retired private nurse, as she stood in the protest holding a large Greek flag. "But what will we see from this? Nothing at all. It will just go to the banks."
"Last year we said, 'O.K., they'll cut our salaries, they'll cut our pensions, let's see what happens,' " she added. "But absolutely nothing has been achieved and now we're back to square one."
A mother of two, Ms. Kolandretsou said that her monthly pension had been cut to 640 euros a month from 700, or to about $915 from $1,000, and that her 42-year-old son, unemployed for five years, had moved back home to live with her. "I never used to come to demonstrations," she said, with tears in her eyes. "But I'm worried about my children and my grandchildren."
The new austerity measures aim to raise about $9.1 billion this year through additional tax increases and cuts to public sector spending. They include a "solidarity tax," ranging from 1 to 4 percent according to income, and an additional 3 percent tax on the incomes of civil servants - whose salaries have already been cut by up to 20 percent over the past year.
The government is expected to vote on the new measures later this month.
An emergency tax will also be imposed on owners of large properties, yachts and swimming pools. The new austerity drive also aims to slash the Greek civil service, which employs about 700,000 people, by a quarter over the next few years.
Mr. Papandreou, who has a five-seat majority in Parliament, is expected to face an uphill battle to get his government fully behind the measures amid growing rifts within his party. The center-right opposition is opposed to his austerity measures.
Critics accuse the government of saddling Greeks with deeply unpopular wage and pension cuts while failing to adequately address rampant tax evasion or take on the powerful labor unions that remain a pillar of the Socialist Party's power base.
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5) C.I.A. Building Base for Strikes in Yemen
By MARK MAZZETTI
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/middleeast/15yemen.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency is building a secret air base in the Middle East to serve as a launching pad for strikes in Yemen using armed drones, an American official said Tuesday.
The construction of the base is a sign that the Obama administration is planning an extended war in Yemen against an affiliate of Al Qaeda that has repeatedly tried to carry out terrorist plots against the United States.
The clandestine American operations in Yemen are currently being run by the military's Joint Special Operations Command, with the C.I.A.'s assistance and with the approval of Yemen's fragile authoritarian government.
But with Yemen's embattled government on the brink of collapse, Obama administration officials are concerned that a future government might not support American operations. By putting the operations under C.I.A. control, they could be carried out as a "covert action," which can be undertaken without the support of the host government.
The construction of the base, first reported by The Associated Press, is further evidence that the administration sees armed drones as the weapon of choice to hunt and kill militants in countries where a large American military presence is untenable. Since he took office, President Obama has drastically escalated the C.I.A.'s bombing campaign in Pakistan using armed drones, and the spy agency has carried out more than 25 strikes there this year.
The American official would not disclose the country where the C.I.A. base was being built, but the official said that it would most likely be completed by the end of the year. Discussions about the C.I.A.'s taking over operations in Yemen began last year, the official said, before the political uprising and violence that broke out in the country in recent months.
Last month, the military renewed its campaign of airstrikes in Yemen, using drone aircraft and fighter jets to attack Qaeda militants. One of the attacks was aimed at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who is one of the most prominent members of the Qaeda affiliate group, which is called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
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6) U.N. Charts High Jobless Rate in Gaza, Despite Israel's Easing of Blockade
By ETHAN BRONNER
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/middleeast/15gaza.html?ref=world
JERUSALEM - A report issued Tuesday shows unemployment in Gaza standing at 45.2 percent for the second half of 2010, one of the highest rates in the world, even though Israel eased its blockade of the Palestinian coastal strip in that period.
The report, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants, shows the jobless rate up over the first half of the year, with a loss of some 8,000 jobs.
But it also compared the second half of 2010 with the same period in 2009, a common approach for economies where many jobs are seasonal. That number shows that unemployment fell 1.09 percent, a figure more in keeping with other international analyses of the Gazan economy.
One of the goals of Israel's economic embargo on Gaza, which began four years ago, was to weaken Hamas and its grip on Gaza. But most of the new jobs last year were accounted for by the public sector, meaning the Hamas government; there was only a slight increase in private commerce.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations agency, said, "The hope was for a growth in the private sector, but exports are at a standstill."
"Hamas has been able to increase public employment by at least one-fifth," Mr. Gunness said. "The policy of weakening Hamas seems to have failed, but the policy has been highly successful at punishing the people of Gaza."
He said that the number of Gazans coming to the agency because of special hardship, defined as earnings of $1.60 a day or less, had increased to 300,000 from 100,000 in the past four years. "The very poorest of the poor are the hardest hit," Mr. Gunness said.
The biggest source of regular income in Gaza is the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank and dominated by Fatah, the movement that is rival to Hamas. The Authority pays some 65,000 people not to work to protest Hamas's violent ouster of Fatah from Gaza in 2007, after Hamas won parliamentary elections the year before.
Hamas is the next largest source of jobs, and it is growing the fastest, with some 25,000 people on its payroll.
Recent reports by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have generally shown Gaza's economy to be growing. The data put out by the United Nations agency show 2008 to have had higher unemployment than the full year of 2010 - 44.9 percent versus 43.6 percent.
Israeli officials said that the report seemed intended to paint as bleak a picture as possible. They also criticized the use of the so-called broad employment figures, which include the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work - over the more commonly used number of those recently looking for work. The narrower number for Gaza unemployment in 2010, according to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics, is 37.8 percent.
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7) Wisconsin Court Reinstates Law on Union Rights
By MONICA DAVEY
June 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/us/politics/15wisconsin.html?ref=us
The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for significant cuts to collective bargaining rights for public workers in the state, undoing a lower court's decision that Wisconsin's controversial law had been passed improperly.
The Supreme Court's ruling, issued at the close of the business day, spared lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Capitol from having to do what some of them strongly hoped to avoid: calling for a new vote on the polarizing collective bargaining measure, which had drawn tens of thousands of protesters to Madison this year and led Democratic lawmakers to flee the city in an effort to block the bill.
Republican leaders had warned on Monday that if the Supreme Court did not rule by Tuesday, they would feel compelled to attach the same measure to the state's budget bill, which is expected to be approved this week.
Four months after the fight began, the decision ended, at least for now, lingering questions about when and whether the cuts would take effect, but it also underscored the state's partisan divide, which seems to grow wider by the day. The ruling was 4 to 3, split along what many viewed as the court's predictable conservative-liberal line. One of the dissenting justices even raised the specter of a "partisan slant" by the other side.
The majority of the justices concluded that a lower court was wrong when it found that the Legislature had forced through the cuts in collective bargaining without giving sufficient notice - 24 hours - under the state's open-meetings requirements. The measure passed in early March, three weeks after the State Senate's Democrats fled to Illinois to block the vote from occurring.
In its written decision, the court cited the importance of the separation of powers, and said the Legislature had not violated the state's Constitution when it relied on its "interpretation of its own rules of proceeding" and gave slightly less than two hours' notice before meeting and voting. In the end, the provision passed without the attendance of any of the Senate's 14 Democrats.
Justice David T. Prosser, whose re-election bid was threatened this year because he was seen as a conservative who would cast the deciding vote on the collective bargaining measure if it came before the court, voted to overturn the lower court ruling. He issued his own opinion concurring with the majority.
Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, who is viewed by many as leading the court's liberal wing, wrote a scathing opinion that accused the majority of a "hasty judgment."
"It is long on rhetoric and long on story-telling that appears to have a partisan slant," Chief Justice Abrahamson wrote of Justice Prosser's opinion, later adding, "This kind of order seems to open the court unnecessarily to the charge that the majority has reached a pre-determined conclusion not based on the facts and the law, which undermines the majority's ultimate decision."
Republicans, who won control of both legislative chambers and the governor's office in last November's elections, praised the ruling, and said they could now move forward with what some of them describe as a fiscally wise budget.
"The Supreme Court's ruling provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and focus on getting Wisconsin working again," Gov. Scott Walker said.
Scott and Jeff Fitzgerald - brothers and Republican leaders in the Legislature - issued a statement describing the ruling as unsurprising. "We followed the law when the bill was passed, simple as that," they said.
Democrats said the court's decision was unsurprising given a battle that has turned so fierce. Protesters, again, were mounting at the Capitol. Democratic leaders said they planned to remind voters of the collective bargaining bill in the weeks before Senate recall elections that grew out of the fight.
"I guarantee you, some Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief about not having to take this up again," said Senator Christopher Larson, a Democrat. "On the other hand, these justices just sent a reminder to voters of what has happened here."
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8) Oakland Whistle Blower OFD Paramedic Sean Gillis Needs Your Help Now
Help Him Expose the Mistreatment of Oscar Grant and the Cover Up
For docs related to Sean's fight go to JusticeForSeanAtOaklandFire at www.groups.google.com
You can contact those that are helping Sean at justiceforseanatoaklandfire@gmail.com .
Sean Gillis (SG) is a paramedic's teacher for the Oakland Fire Department (OFD). SG ran the Merritt College EMT training program until he was forced to quit Merritt.
SG and the OFD Medical Director blew the whistle on the OFD for misconduct committed by Fire personnel treating Oscar Grant on the BART platform on January 1st, 2009. Grant was only bandaged on one side of his body even though he had wounds on both his front and back.
To cover up the mistreatment, the file for Oscar Grant was destroyed and the computer archive of his Patient Care Report deleted.
The Medical Director ordered a review. Even though the Medical Director is technically the highest medical authority at OFD, his order was ignored. OFD stopped the Medical Director's paychecks, and he worked for six (6) months without pay. When he finally left, the Medical Director turned to SG and said, "You're next."
The Medical Director was right. OFD targeted SG for harassment, forced him to quit Merritt College, took away his office, work vehicle and mailbox, wrote a letter of resignation for SG to sign and tried to force him to sign it without reading it, eliminated SG's lunch break, began monthly performance reviews, suspended him, and, now, seeks a special review for the purpose of terminating him.
SG is defending himself before the State Personnel Board. OFD is refusing to provide SG documents he needs to defend himself.
SG made a public records request for the Grant file and staff meeting audio tapes with racist comments from the boss and inappropriate statements about Oscar Grant. The Fire Department refuses to confirm or deny the destruction of the Grant file and falsely claims the recordings don't exist while top brass review (and destroy?) the tapes.
Support from the Oscar Grant Community is urgently needed. So far, OFD has been able to suppress the story of what happened to Oscar Grant after he was shot, what OFD failed to do, and what OFD has done to people that stood up for Oscar Grant. Help us:
1. Spread the word about what happened to Oscar Grant.
2. Call the District Attorney. Demand the DA investigate mistreatment of Oscar Grant, destruction of his file, retaliation against Michaels and Gillis, concealment of the tapes.
3. Call the City Attorney handling the public records requests. Demand the City admit that the Grant documents were destroyed or produce them and release the tapes.
For docs related to Sean's fight go to JusticeForSeanAtOaklandFire at www.groups.google.com
You can contact those that are helping Sean at justiceforseanatoaklandfire@gmail.com .
Support from the Oscar Grant Community is urgently needed. So far, OFD has been able to suppress the story of what happened to Oscar Grant after he was shot, what OFD failed to do, and what OFD has done to people that stood up for Oscar Grant. Help us:
For docs related to Sean's fight go to JusticeForSeanAtOaklandFire at www.groups.google.com
You can contact those that are helping Sean at justiceforseanatoaklandfire@gmail.com .
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9) Watching the Detectives
By JOANNA C. SCHWARTZ
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16schwartz.html?hp
Los Angeles
ACCORDING to a report released yesterday by John C. Liu, the New York City comptroller, over the last five years the city has paid more than $500 million in settlements and judgments against the New York Police Department, often involving misconduct claims against individual officers - and that doesn't include attorneys' salaries and administrative costs.
The number of claims for offenses like false arrest and brutality has surged by 43 percent over the last five years; in 2010, 8,104 claims were filed and $136 million was paid out.
Given New York's yawning budget gap, the city should do all it can to bring such costs under control. Fortunately, there are a few simple reforms that could save the city millions.
While New York City pays the Police Department's skyrocketing legal bills, the department makes almost no effort to learn from lawsuits brought against it and its officers. The department does not track which officers were named, what claims were alleged or what payouts were made in the thousands of suits brought every year.
What's more, officers' personnel files contain no record of the allegations and results of lawsuits filed against them. Neither the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau nor the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigates allegations made in lawsuits, and police officials review only the litigation files of the few dozen cases each year that result in payments of $250,000 or more.
Because the department ignores lawsuits, it cannot analyze or learn from them; instead, the city effectively writes off these suits as the extraordinarily high cost of doing police business.
In contrast, a small but growing group of police departments around the country have found innovative ways to analyze information gathered from lawsuits. They investigate lawsuit claims as they would civilian complaints, and they discipline, retrain or fire officers when the claims are substantiated. They look for trends in lawsuits suggesting problem officers, units and practices, and they review the evidence developed in the cases for personnel and policy lessons.
In Los Angeles County, for example, the Board of Supervisors requires the Sheriff's Department to submit a corrective action plan for every case with a payout of over $20,000, including the steps the department will take to avoid similar cases in the future.
The New York comptroller's office has called on the Police Department to monitor lawsuit claims for almost a decade, but the department has refused to act. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has opposed reviewing lawsuit data, noting that settlements may be agreed to for reasons unrelated to the merits of the claims.
Mayor Bloomberg has a point: settlements are not necessarily proof of wrongdoing. But if New York truly is interested in reducing the costs of litigation, it should collect and assess lawsuit data regardless of the outcomes. After all, to reduce the costs of suits, one must understand what types of cases are brought and how all payouts - not just payouts in meritorious cases - can be reduced.
The City Council should pass a bill that would require the department to provide information about claims and payouts to the council. The city pays the department's legal bills; the department should show the city what it is paying for. If the department will not review lawsuit claims, the council and independent researchers can analyze the data instead.
As an alternative, the city could require the Police Department to settle lawsuits out of its own budget, instead of the city's general coffers. Perhaps if the department held its own purse strings, it would find more to learn from litigation.
Such an approach has already been taken elsewhere in the city government. Almost 10 years ago, the city required the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which operates public hospitals and clinics, to pay legal costs out of its budget. The corporation has subsequently reduced payouts, in part by reviewing past claims and learning from them.
Thousands of times each year, New Yorkers sue the police, seeking compensation and justice in court. The Police Department should learn from those lawsuits, reducing the frequency and cost of civil rights violations and freeing up valuable dollars for its libraries, teachers and firefighters.
Joanna C. Schwartz is an acting professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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10) Can Justice Be Bought?
"Two years ago, the Supreme Court tried to bolster public trust in the nation's justice system by disqualifying a state judge in West Virginia from a case that involved a coal company executive who had spent more than $3 million to help get the judge elected."
New York Times Editorial
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16thu1.html?hp
Two years ago, the Supreme Court tried to bolster public trust in the nation's justice system by disqualifying a state judge in West Virginia from a case that involved a coal company executive who had spent more than $3 million to help get the judge elected.
At a time when torrents of special interest campaign spending is threatening the appearance and reality of judicial impartiality, the ruling in Caperton v. Massey drove home the need for states to adopt more rigorous rules for recusal. The message has largely gone unheeded.
For the most part, state courts set their own recusal rules. According to New York University's Brennan Center for Justice and Justice at Stake Campaign, so far, courts in nine states - Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Utah and Washington State - have made recusal mandatory when contributions by a party or attorney exceed a certain threshold amount or create a question about the judge's impartiality.
Courts in two other states are considering similar proposals. But several other states have rejected stronger rules - or have actually weakened them.
In 2009, Nevada's top court rejected a reform commission's modest proposal to make recusal mandatory when a judge received contributions totaling $50,000 or more from a party or lawyer over the previous six years.
Last year, in Wisconsin - home to some of the nastiest big-money judicial races - the State Supreme Court rejected proposals to trigger recusal at $1,000 or $10,000 contribution levels. Then the court weakened the recusal standard, adopting a new rule that campaign donations or expenditures can never be the sole basis for a judge's disqualification.
The remaining states, including epicenters of special-interest-dominated contests like Illinois and Pennsylvania, have done nothing to keep campaign cash from tainting the courtroom. The Supreme Court has ensured the money problem will get worse with its 2010 ruling allowing unlimited special interest spending in all campaigns.
Many judges wrongly view mandatory disqualification rules involving election money as a personal insult and a threat to judicial independence. The real threat to independence lies in doing nothing to protect judicial integrity in the face of obvious conflicts.
The American Bar Association should be leading the way here. In an encouraging step, the group's president, Stephen Zack, has seen to it that the issue will be taken up at the August meeting of the association's House of Delegates. By adding a strong recusal provision to its influential model code of judicial conduct, the bar association would provide needed guidance to state judiciaries and help goad them to do the right thing.
A good rule would have four basic elements. It should explicitly recognize that recusal may be necessary because of campaign spending by litigants or their lawyers. It should specify that the final decision about whether a judge's impartiality can reasonably be questioned not be left to the challenged judge. It should require that decisions on recusal requests be in writing. Finally, litigants and attorneys must be required to disclose any campaign spending relating to a judge or judges hearing their case.
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11) Americans Support Offshore Drilling Even if Washington Wavers
By JOHN M. BRODER
June 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/business/energy-environment/17drilling.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The last year and a half has brought a rapid sequence of reversals in the Obama administration's policy toward oil and gas exploration on public lands and in United States waters.
Since the beginning of 2010, Washington has caromed from a restrictive approach to drilling to a permissive policy closely mirroring that of the Bush administration to a near-total shutdown of offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. After that fatal accident, the administration decreed a deepwater drilling moratorium, lifted it six months later, then took five more months before beginning to issue drilling permits.
Throughout that time, the American public's attitudes toward domestic oil and gas development have been remarkably consistent: Americans are in favor of it, though Democrats and those on the coasts are much less likely than Republicans and those in the South and Southwest to be supportive.
National support for offshore drilling and for domestic oil and gas development generally dipped for a time after the BP disaster - from a strong majority to a bare majority - but quickly rebounded.
A Gallup poll taken immediately after the gulf spill showed that 50 percent of Americans supported offshore drilling while 46 percent opposed it. By March of this year, public support had risen to 60 percent versus 37 percent.
The administration's offshore drilling policy, like its fervor for domestic production more generally, has gone through rapid changes. In March 2010, President Obama announced that the United States would make vast tracts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Arctic oceans available for leasing by oil and gas companies. After the BP spill began on April 20, 2010, he declared those areas off-limits for at least five years. Then, last month, the president announced that he would permit accelerated development in Alaska, the gulf and along parts of the Atlantic coast.
Administration officials defend the policy changes as reasonable responses to changed circumstances. Mr. Obama came to office as a proponent of increased domestic oil and gas development, as part of a broader strategy to reduce oil imports. Accordingly, they said, he took steps to accelerate development. He then imposed a sharp cutback after the BP disaster to give regulators and oil companies time to put new safeguards in place.
After the president was satisfied that drilling could resume safely, and in response to public anxiety about high fuel costs, he shifted back to a more pro-development stance, the aides said.
"These spikes in gas prices are often temporary," Mr. Obama said on May 14 in a radio and Internet address, "and while there are no quick fixes to the problem, there are a few steps we should take that make good sense."
The public's support for offshore drilling has tracked changes in the price of gasoline. When gas prices were near record highs in the summer of 2008 and again this spring, support for domestic drilling was highest.
Conversely, unease about the effects of offshore drilling peaked after the BP accident, which killed 11 rig workers and spewed nearly five million barrels of crude into the gulf.
"News of that incident has faded, possibly lessening Americans' resistance to coastal area drilling," Gallup said when releasing its poll in March that showed 60 percent of Americans supportive.
The poll found that 49 percent of Americans favor opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, a step the Obama administration strongly opposes. That is the highest level of support for drilling in the Arctic refuge since Gallup first asked the question in 2002.
The nationwide poll of 1,021 adults was conducted by telephone in early March.
"Timing is everything," said Jack N. Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry's most prominent lobbying group in Washington. "As the price of gasoline has increased, public attention has turned once again to the question of energy. When they hear their elected officials continue to resist development of American resources, they are appalled."
The Gallup survey found that men are more likely than women to support drilling offshore and in Alaska and support is much higher among Republicans than Democrats. It also found regional variations, with the strongest backing for aggressive oil exploration in the South and the most significant opposition along the East and West Coasts.
And while the public appears to support exploiting domestic oil and gas resources, there is also skepticism about the economic and environmental costs of America's continued reliance on oil. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in March asked how important it was for the United States to develop an alternative to oil as a major source of energy. Fully 94 percent of respondents said it was very or somewhat important to do so.
The Times/CBS News poll was conducted by telephone with 1,266 adults nationwide.
Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow in Washington at the Center for American Progress, said that while the public tends to support more domestic oil and gas drilling, they see it as only one egg in a basket of policies to lower energy costs, reduce dependence on foreign oil and clean up the environment.
"Americans generally support an all-of-the-above strategy," Mr. Weiss said. "They say, 'Let's have more offshore drilling, but also higher mileage standards for our cars and trucks. Let's crack down on the speculators and invest in electric cars, natural gas trucks and biofuels.' "
Mr. Gerard said that Mr. Obama's sporadic and reluctant support for increased domestic production was largely politically driven and not part of a comprehensive energy strategy. But he praised the president for at least appearing responsive to public opinion in calling for more American oil and gas.
"Until the economy gets back on track, until the unemployment rate comes down, and with the price of energy high, I think you'll see the president focus more and more on the supply side," he said. "And as pressure continues to mount as we get closer to Election Day, I think you'll see more of that."
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12) Nuclear Plant, Left for Dead, Shows a Pulse
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/energy-environment/16nuclear.html?hp
HOLLYWOOD, Ala. - Spider webs line the 50-story cooling towers, parts have been amputated for the scrap value of their nickel or copper, and the control room still has analog dials at Bellefonte 1, a half-built nuclear plant here that was shelved 23 years ago.
This does not seem like a particularly opportune moment to breathe life back into a reactor that was designed before the computer age. But its owner, the quasi-governmental Tennessee Valley Authority, says the plant may be its best bet for generating cleaner and more economical new electricity.
Since an earthquake and tsunami unleashed a nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima reactors in March, several countries have distanced themselves from nuclear energy. The German chancellor announced her intention to shutter all of the country's nuclear facilities by 2022, and the Swiss Parliament is heading in the same direction.
A modern reactor project in Texas was canceled after Fukushima, and one in Maryland fell apart last year. And even before the catastrophe in Japan, the nuclear industry as a whole had been suffering from a surfeit of generating capacity, the cheap price of natural gas and the high price of construction.
So why is the Tennessee Valley Authority - which recently announced it would close 18 antiquated and dirty coal-fired plants - trying to revive a reactor that for years has served only as a salvage heap?
Right now, said Eric T. Beaumont, a nuclear expert and partner in Copia Capital, a private investment firm in Chicago, "it doesn't seem like the most prudent use of money."
"They should definitely be doing something different," said Louis A. Zeller, science director for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, a regional advocacy group. He likes to call Bellefonte "the zombie reactor" because it is neither dead nor alive.
Mr. Zeller and other skeptics say that beyond the obvious challenges the nuclear industry faces, the Bellefonte 1 project has inescapable flaws. The reactor is too expensive and too antiquated, they contend, and it lies in an earthquake zone.
But the authority is moving forward, estimating that Bellefonte 1 could be up and running as early as 2020, half a century after it was conceived. Cost estimates for completing the reactor run $4 billion to $5 billion on top of the $4 billion that has already been invested.
Thomas Kilgore, the authority's president and chief executive, said finishing it now would make more sense later. "Why nuclear?" he said. "Once you get the unit built, you've got inflation locked out."
Mr. Beaumont, the industry analyst, said that "based on cost, I absolutely think you can say it's crazy." But that assessment might change over time, he allowed.
The Environmental Protection Agency could force additional coal-generated power plants to close as it polices greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the demand for cleaner sources of energy, he said. The price of natural gas will eventually rise, making nuclear energy more competitive, he added, and at some point, existing nuclear plants will wear out.
T.V.A. executives have another troublesome variable to deal with, unpredictable changes in demand, which is what they say caused them to shut down construction in 1988.
"I can't forecast out 8 or 10 years," Mr. Kilgore said, but "we just know when we get there, Bellefonte 1 is a good economic proposition."
Because the plant already has a precious construction license, albeit from 1974, and because of the authority's independent status, it faces far fewer obstacles than most other reactor builders.
The T.V.A. does not answer to state regulators. It has no shareholders to worry. As a federally chartered corporation established in 1933 as part of the New Deal, it is overseen by nine directors who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Today it supplies electricity across parts of seven states, serving roughly nine million people.
It also enjoys financial advantages that most public utilities lack, borrowing money at rates similar to those paid by the United States Treasury, which is critical for building hugely expensive reactors.
That makes it one of the very few American builders that could pull off a nuclear power comeback in this climate. With the exception of Watts Bar 1, another T.V.A. plant that was mothballed for a time but was finished in 1996, no new reactor construction has been started since the early 1990s. Two new plants in Georgia and South Carolina are awaiting construction permits, and the authority is working on finishing a second Watts Bar reactor similar in vintage to Bellefonte 1 that is expected to be completed next year.
Authority managers have said they would ask their board this summer for money to complete Bellefonte 1; last year the board voted to allocate $248 million just to explore that possibility.
Currently, the T.V.A. gets 60 percent of its energy from fossil fuels, mostly coal, and in addition to the 18 generators it recently agreed to shut at the urging of the E.P.A., it must decide whether to scrub or close several more. The authority's goal is to have 50 percent of its generation come from "low or zero carbon-emitting sources" by 2020, which is why Bellefonte 1 is a dinosaur back in play.
Bellefonte 1 is the most on-again, off-again nuclear project in the country. In 1970, the T.V.A. said that within eight years it would build two nuclear reactors here for $650 million. Construction did not start until 1974, and by 1988, the authority had spent more than six times what it had budgeted.
When it realized there was no immediate need for the power, construction ceased. In 1994, the authority tried to arrange to sell the plant's output to the Philadelphia Electric Company. That deal fell through. In 1997, it tried to make another deal with the Energy Department, which needed a reactor to make tritium for nuclear weapons. But another T.V.A. reactor was enlisted.
Representative Mo Brooks, a Republican whose Congressional district covers northern Alabama, said he was all for completing the plant. "More people have been killed by coal than nuclear, by far, when you talk about the mining, the pollution of the water and the air pollution," he said. "Nuclear's not perfect, but it seems to be better than any alternative."
The City Council in nearby Scottsboro and the Jackson County Commission both adopted resolutions last year favoring either completion of Bellefonte 1 or construction of a new reactor.
Residents say Bellefonte 1 will do wonders for the local economy. Operating the completed plant is expected to take 2,800 workers, which would make it the largest employer in the county.
"Had it not been for the T.V.A., we would still be watching TV by candlelight," said Ron Bailey, the vice president for business development at the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce.
Kayla Thomas, 27, a school cafeteria worker shopping in Scottsboro with her 8-year-old daughter, Trinity, said the region needed a "pick-me-up."
"Even if some of those people are coming from out of town, guess what, they're going to be spending the money here," she said.
The prospect of nuclear accidents does not worry her, Ms. Thomas said. "Anything is going to have its safety issues," she said, using her fingers to draw quote marks in the air around the word safety.
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13) White House Defends Continuing U.S. Role in Libya Operation
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MARK LANDLER
"The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities."
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.
In a 38-page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission was prying loose Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's grip on power.
In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the report asserted that "U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops." Still, the White House acknowledged, the operation has cost the Pentagon $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September at the current scale of operations.
The report came one day after the House Speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had sent a letter to Mr. Obama warning him that he appeared to be out of time under the Vietnam-era law that says presidents must terminate a mission 60 or 90 days after notifying Congress that troops have been deployed into hostilities, unless lawmakers authorize the operation to continue.
Mr. Boehner had demanded that Mr. Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline. On Wednesday, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said he was still reviewing the documents, adding that "the creative arguments made by the White House raise a number of questions that must be further explored."
The escalating confrontation with Congress reflects the radically altered political landscape in Washington: a Democratic president asserting sweeping executive powers to deploy American forces overseas, while Republicans call for stricter oversight and voice fears about executive-branch power getting the United States bogged down in a foreign war.
"We are acting lawfully," said Harold H. Koh, the State Department legal adviser, who expanded on the administration's reasoning in a joint interview with the White House counsel, Robert Bauer.
The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces had not been in "hostilities" at least since early April, when NATO took over the responsibility for the no-fly zone and the United States shifted to primarily a supporting role - providing refueling and surveillance to allied warplanes, although remotely piloted drones operated by the United States periodically fire missiles, too.
They argued that United States forces are at little risk because there are no troops on the ground and Libyan forces are unable to exchange fire with them meaningfully. And they said the military mission was constrained by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which authorized air power for the purpose of defending civilians.
"We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own," said Mr. Koh, a former Yale Law School dean and outspoken critic of the Bush administration's expansive theories of executive power. "We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of 'hostilities' envisioned by the War Powers Resolution."
Jack L. Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, said the Obama theory would set a precedent expanding future presidents' unauthorized war-making powers, especially given the rise of remote-controlled combat technology.
"The administration's theory implies that the president can wage war with drones and all manner of offshore missiles without having to bother with the War Powers Resolution's time limits," Mr. Goldsmith said.
It remains to be seen whether majorities in Congress will acquiesce to the administration's argument, defusing the confrontation, or if the theory will fuel greater criticism. Either way, because the statute does not define hostilities and the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, the debate is likely to be resolved politically, said Richard H. Pildes, a New York University law professor.
Also on Wednesday, 10 lawmakers - led by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina - filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order Mr. Obama to pull out of the Libya operation because Congress did not authorize it. That lawsuit faces steep challenges, however, because courts in the past have dismissed similar cases on technical grounds.
The administration had earlier argued that Mr. Obama could initiate the intervention on his own authority as commander in chief because its anticipated nature, scope and duration fell short of a "war" in the constitutional sense. Since then, the conflict has dragged on for longer than expected, and the goal of the NATO allies has all but openly shifted from merely defending civilians to forcing the Libyan leader, Colonel Qaddafi, from power. But Mr. Koh and Mr. Bauer said that while regime change in Libya might be a diplomatic goal, the military's mission was separate and remained limited to protecting civilians.
While many presidents have challenged the constitutionality of other aspects of the War Powers Resolution - which Congress enacted over President Richard M. Nixon's veto - no administration has declared that the section imposing the 60-day clock is unconstitutional, and in 1980, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded that it was within Congress's power to enact such a limit.
Mr. Bauer and Mr. Koh said that the 1980 memorandum remained in force, but that their legal argument was not invoking any constitutional challenge to bolster their interpretation of hostilities.
It was not clear whether the Justice Department had endorsed the White House's interpretation of hostilities. Mr. Bauer declined to say whether it had signed off on the theory, saying he would not discuss interagency deliberations. In his letter on Tuesday, Mr. Boehner demanded to know whether there was internal dissent about the administration's legal stance.
Mr. Koh noted that there had been disputes about whether the 60-day clock of the War Powers Resolution (a deadline that can be extended for 30 days under some circumstances) applied to deployments in which - unlike in Libya - there were troops on the ground and American casualties.
Still, such previous cases involved peacekeeping missions in which the United States had been invited in, and there were only infrequent outbreaks of violence - as in Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia. The Libyan operation, by contrast, is an offensive mission involving sustained bombardments of a government's forces.
Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.
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14) Traces of Dioxin Found Near U.S. Base in South Korea
By MARK McDONALD
June 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/world/asia/17korea.html?ref=world
SEOUL, South Korea - Trace amounts of dioxin have been found in water samples taken near an American Army base in South Korea, according to a joint investigation into alleged chemical dumping that analysts said could have repercussions for the alliance between South Korea and the United States.
The discovery of the dioxin near Camp Carroll, in southeastern South Korea, was part of an initial report on water and soil tests being conducted by both countries.
The dioxin was found in three streams near Camp Carroll, investigators said, and all the samples were well within safe drinking standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Tests of three other streams and 10 wells were negative for dioxin.
Dioxin, a component of the powerful defoliant Agent Orange, has been linked to an array of diseases, including cancer, heart conditions and birth defects. Agent Orange was widely used during the Vietnam War to expose the hiding places of enemy soldiers in jungles, swamps and forests.
Military officials in Seoul said Agent Orange also was sprayed along the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea in 1968. The spraying lasted about two months, they said, until local supplies of the herbicide were exhausted.
Political analysts said they have been encouraged by an unusually high level of cooperation between American and Korean military investigators, in part because the collaboration could defuse anger among those in South Korea who resent the American military presence here. Some 28,500 U.S. forces, primarily from the army, are currently based in South Korea.
"There has been no delay in conducting investigations of the allegations and in extending full cooperation to the Korean government," said Evans Revere, the former No. 2 diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul who is now a lecturer and diplomat-in-residence at Princeton University.
"Transparency is really important here," he said, "because of the need to deal with the inevitable conspiracy theories that will arise in the Korean media and among the political opposition."
But Mr. Revere, a longtime American diplomat in Asia, said the Agent Orange issue was a sensitive one and had the "potential to have a significant impact on popular attitudes toward the U.S.-South Korea alliance."
Three former American soldiers - Steven House, Richard Cramer and Robert Travis - recently said they had helped to bury about 250 drums of waste at Camp Carroll in 1978. Their allegations were first aired by KPHO, a television station in Phoenix, Arizona.
The men said the disposal site was a deep trench near a helicopter pad at Camp Carroll. The ditch was about 100 yards long and wide enough to accommodate a dump truck, they said.
Mr. Travis said the 55-gallon drums were olive-drab green, marked with a stripe and labeled "chemical type - Agent Orange." He said some of the barrels were "dated 1967 for the Republic of Vietnam."
The U.S. Army has acknowledged that pesticides, herbicides and other toxic compounds were buried at Camp Carroll, but the chemicals and some 60 tons of contaminated soil were later dug up and removed. An American military spokesman in Seoul, Lt. Col. Jeffrey S. Buczkowski, said the army was still searching its records to discover what became of the excavated chemicals and soil.
Investigators said Thursday they could not link the discovery of the dioxin to the chemicals buried in 1978. Meanwhile, the South Korean military is conducting environmental tests at 85 former American bases that have been returned to South Korean control.
The commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson, held a town hall meeting two weeks ago with South Korean residents who live or work near Camp Carroll.
"I pledge that I will do everything necessary to determine the truth," General Johnson said at the meeting. "My focus is to ensure there is no risk to the health of the people on Camp Carroll or off Camp Carroll. And if there is, I'll fix it."
Although the investigation of the alleged chemical dumping is not yet complete, some observers saw little chance that public anger here would reach the level that caused hundreds of thousands of Koreans to take to the streets in the summer of 2008 to protest - sometimes violently - the lifting of a ban on imports of American beef. The ban was first imposed in 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was detected in the United States.
The 2008 demonstrations, while ignited by the beef controversy, were also deeply tied to widespread frustrations over the early policies of the recently elected president, Lee Myung-bak.
"The beef issue was more about Lee Myung-bak and his leadership style," said Mr. Revere, "and the beef scare provided a convenient pretext to bash him."
The simple geography of a possible contamination near Camp Carroll, located 150 miles southeast of Seoul, also would dampen any nationwide outrage, said Lim Seong-ho, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.
"While the alleged hazards of mad cow disease could have affected anybody, the chemical danger is far away from most of citizens," Mr. Lim said. "Certainly, some groups and people will try to reignite anti-American sentiment. But the chemical dumping is restricted to a small part of a remote area and does not bring a terrible sense of danger to the mind of the Korean public."
Some analysts saw possible comparisons between the Agent Orange issue and an incident in 2002, when an American armored vehicle killed two 14-year-old Korean girls walking to a birthday party. The accident became a flashpoint for local opposition to the 37,000 U.S. troops then stationed in South Korea. The subsequent acquittal of two American sergeants by a U.S. military panel elevated public outrage into outright anger.
At the time, Mr. Revere said, the South Korean government failed to "defend the alliance" against media speculations and "well-organized anti-American elements who sought to exploit the tragedy for political ends."
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15) Nuclear Plant Safety Rules Inadequate, Group Says
"Mr. Borchardt also said that in Units 1, 2, and 3 at Fukushima, 'The cores, to some degree, are ex-vessel,' meaning that the uranium fuel had melted and leaked out of the reactor vessels.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/energy-environment/16nrc.html?ref=world
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Nuclear safety rules in the United States do not adequately weigh the risk that a single event would knock out electricity from both the grid and from emergency generators, as an earthquake and tsunami recently did at a nuclear plant in Japan, officials of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday.
A task force created after the accident at the nuclear plant, Fukushima Daiichi, delivered an oral progress report on Wednesday to the five-member commission. In that session, commission officials said they had learned that some of the safety equipment installed at American nuclear plants over the years, including hardware added after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is not maintained or inspected as diligently as the original components are.
A crucial reason for the extensive damage to the Fukushima plant's reactors was the loss of electricity needed to run water pumps and to reposition valves. The American nuclear industry has argued in recent months that its reactors are better prepared to cope with that kind of emergency.
But Charlie Miller, the chairman of the task force, said that studies by safety experts in the United States had analyzed the risk of losing electricity from the grid or from on-site emergency generators, but not both at the same time.
Steven P. Kraft, an executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association, speaking after the meeting said that in the past it was "not considered credible" that a single event could knock out both supplies. In view of recent events, he said, it is time to prepare for the possibility of an extended blackout.
One of the commissioners, George E. Apostolakis, pointed out that existing safety analyses also assume that electricity will be restored within four or eight hours after a power cutoff, but that blackouts on the grid often last far longer. "Why do we still assume things that are now, in retrospect, unrealistic?" he asked.
The task force, appointed in April, is supposed to complete its investigation in August but is periodically updating the commission. In another finding, it warned that emergency vents that had been added to American reactors to protect against a hydrogen explosion after an accident might not function, just as they proved inoperable in Fukushima.
"It may be a challenge to open the vent path in a scenario like the Fukushima accident," said Mr. Miller, who said that the types of valves used, and their accessibility in the event that they had to be operated manually, needed further evaluation.
Another challenge is that the commission's inspectors have not been trained to evaluate the condition of a variety of hardware or review procedures that were adopted as extra precautions after the Sept. 11 attacks. "We do not have the same kind of regulatory oversight on those enhancements," said R. William Borchardt, the commission's executive director for operations.
The commission's staff, which has been struggling to obtain as much information as possible about the Fukushima reactors, has revised its view of the condition of a pool of spent fuel at the plant's Unit 4 reactor, Mr. Borchardt said Wednesday.
An assumption that that pool was dry or nearly dry, raising the possibility of a massive release of radioactive materials, led the United States ambassador to Japan to recommend that Americans stay 50 miles away from the plant. The Japanese authorities had ordered the evacuation of people within about 12 miles of the plant.
"It's unlikely that the pool ever went completely dry," Mr. Borchardt told the commissioners. "The staff welcomes this as very good news, as it's one indication that the event may not have been as serious as previously believed for Unit 4." He said the conclusion was based on a recent video of the pool.
The commission has never explained why its chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said that the pool was empty or nearly empty. But since the March 11 accident at Fukushima, the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, has reported a variety of instrument readings that later came into question.
Mr. Borchardt also said that in Units 1, 2, and 3 at Fukushima, "The cores, to some degree, are ex-vessel," meaning that the uranium fuel had melted and leaked out of the reactor vessels.
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16) Most Mail Delivery in Canada Halts After Strikes
By IAN AUSTEN
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/business/global/16postal.html?ref=world
OTTAWA - For the second day in a row, Canada's labor minister took steps toward legislating an end to major work stoppage on Wednesday.
Lisa Raitt, the labor minister, introduced a motion that can lead to back-to-work legislation, after Canada Post locked out its 48,000 unionized workers after 12 days of rotating strikes. While a small number of postal employees in rural areas covered by a separate contract remained at work, the lockout effectively shut down the country's postal system.
On Tuesday, Ms. Raitt said the government would move to end a strike by 3,800 customer service agents at Air Canada, which was causing some difficulties for travelers.
Neither the post office nor the Canadian Union of Postal Workers appeared confident that they would swiftly reach an agreement through negotiations. If that impasse continues, it is unlikely that Parliament would pass back-to-work legislation until later next week.
The post office said that the union's strike action had significantly cut mail volume, costing it about 100 million Canadian dollars ($103 million), and had prompted the lockout.
Despite that, Denis Lemelin, the president of the postal workers union, told reporters at a news conference that he still wanted a new contract that would be achieved through talks, not imposed by government action.
"We are supposed to be in a free society with free speech and free negotiations," he said.
In a statement, Canada Post said that Deepak Chopra, its chief executive, was prepared to meet with the union if it "moves off its costly demands and works with Canada Post to address pressing issues that are challenging the business."
Like Air Canada, Canada Post has a deficit in its pension funding currently totaling 3.2 billion Canadian dollars ($3.3 billion) in its case. It wants new employees to work an additional five years before they are eligible for a pension. It is also proposing a separate, lower wage structure for new employees.
Robert Campbell, the chairman of a an advisory panel that studied Canada Post for the government in 2008 and the president of Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, said that it would be difficult for the postal workers' union, which has historically been among Canada's most militant labor bodies, to accept a different approach to wages and benefits for new employees.
At the same time, Mr. Campbell said that after 15 years of "building a reasonable, reliable commercial operation," the management at Canada Post now found that "that strategy has kind of run itself out." It faces increased competition from several companies, including United Parcel Service Canada and the Canadian arm of FedEx. At the same time, its first-class mail business is being eroded rapidly by the Internet.
As a result, Mr. Campbell said, Canada has no choice but to reduce its cost structure.
Canada Post, which is government-owned but not directly subsidized, has one advantage over its private sector competitors. It is the only company that is able to deliver to every address in Canada, a challenge given the country's land mass and relatively small population, roughly a tenth that of the United States.
The strike works both ways for FedEx. James Anderson, a spokesman for its Canadian unit , said the company had introduced a contingency plan to handle increased volumes.
But Canada Post uses FedEx for its express international mail and parcel business. And FedEx uses Canada Post to ease the entry of parcels from merchants in the United States into Canada.
While some Canadian news media reports suggested that other shippers were offering discounts to permanently lure customers away from Canada Post, Pat Stanghieri, the vice president of U.P.S. Canada, said that was not the case with his company.
"I don't think we view this really as an opportunity," he said.
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17) Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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18) No Strike at Macy's
By ADRIANE QUINLAN
June 16, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/no-strike-at-macys/?ref=nyregion
Mary Altaffer/Associated PressThe Macy's flagship store at Herald Square in Manhattan, where there will be no picket lines, after all.
There will be no picket lines on 34th Street, no marching in Herald Square. Tourists who feared their jaunts to New York might be ruined by a strike at Macy's need worry no longer: the department store and its employees reached a tentative agreement on a new contract.
The deal was reached around 7 a.m. Thursday after an all-night negotiating session, as talks continued beyond the union-imposed midnight deadline that would have put roughly 4,000 employees on strike at the flagship store in Manhattan, and three others in the Bronx, Queens and Westchester.
The workers must still ratify the contract through a vote.
While neither side would discuss specifics until after the contract is presented to the first group of employees at 5 p.m. Thursday, Joan Solomon, a Macy's worker who participated in the contract talks, said that a new health care plan is more affordable than the one previously presented.
Before the deal was reached, union officials said that management had proposed terms that would have raised health care costs, shift an unspecified number of full-time workers to part-time schedules, and institute a starting salary of $7.50 - all things that the union had been contesting.
Ken Bordieri, president of Local 1-S of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, called the tentative agreement a "solid contract," and a spokeswoman for Macy's, Elina Kazan, said in a statement that the new contract "addresses the economic and business realities of the retailing industry, while keeping jobs at Macy's among the best in the department store industry."
Stuart Appelbaum, the union's president, felt the agreement was symbolic in a union-busting recession. "All we hear is that working people have to give concessions and provide givebacks and just feel lucky to have any job at all and just agree with what is offered," he said. "These negotiations serve as an important symbol for working people in New York that you can make gains for yourself and your family."
Riding the bus back to her home in Canarsie, Brooklyn, after the all-night negotiation session, Ms. Solomon, who has worked at the flagship store's cosmetics counter for the past 15 years, said she was tired but happy. "You're not going to please everybody," she said. "But I'm quite sure the majority will be pleased."
She said she was going home to sleep until 5 p.m., when she needed to return to Manhattan for a vote. She, for one, said she would vote yes. The contract could be ratified by Wednesday, when the last group of the union's 3,800 workers covered under the contract will vote.
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19) 40 Years of Drug War Hasn't Worked; "Time for a Change," Says 9-Year Veteran
By Eric Sterling, AlterNet
Posted on June 15, 2011, Printed on June 17, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151306/40_years_of_drug_war_hasn%27t_worked%3B_%22time_for_a_change%2C%22_says_9-year_veteran
The "War on Drugs" was launched by President Richard Nixon 40 years ago this week. In 1980, at the end of its first decade, I began a nine-year career as a "captain" in the war on drugs. I was the attorney in the U.S. House of Representatives principally responsible for overseeing DEA and writing anti-drug laws as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime.
White House leadership
The heart of Nixon's 5,300-word message to Congress on June 17, 1971 was a plan "to consolidate at the highest level a full-scale attack on the problem of drug abuse in America" in a White House Office. The office was dismantled soon after Nixon resigned having been resisted by Cabinet secretaries and anti-drug agencies.
Soon after the Reagan Administration took office in 1981, Democrats in Congress began attacking the disorganization of the anti-drug effort, and mocked administration witnesses who insisted that President Reagan was really in charge. Senator Joseph Biden's (D-DE) proposal to create a "drug czar" passed Congress in 1982 but led to President Reagan's only veto of an anti-crime, anti-drug package. The resulting political outrage led to appointment of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to lead a South Florida anti-drug task force, a "mini drug czar."
Hearings I set up for the House Judiciary Committee helped lead to the 1984 enactment of an anti-drug strategy board led by the attorney general, and then its replacement in 1988 with our current White House "drug czar," the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). But, 40 years on, our anti-drug effort is no better managed now than when Nixon decried bureaucratic red-tape and jurisdictional disputes among agencies.
After 22 years, ONDCP has proven to be an ineffectual waste of money. Anti-drug efforts remain haphazard and uncoordinated. Federal anti-drug prosecutions are unfocused, wasteful and racially discriminatory. An examination of the 25,000 federal drug cases concluded each year reveals two outrageous facts. First, instead of high-impact investigations targeting the most dangerous and powerful drug traffickers, the typical federal cases target the lowest level offenders: local street dealers, lookouts, bodyguards, couriers, "mules," etc. selling small quantities of drugs that are tiny specks in the picture of the national and global drug trade. Second, the defendants in these cases are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. Only about one in four federal drug defendants is white.
This regular pattern of mostly unimportant cases with very long sentences imposed predominately on racial minorities makes out a prima facie case of a pattern or practice of racial discrimination. But this well-known pattern has been ignored by the attorney general and the director of ONDCP in an egregious abandonment of their leadership responsibilities.
Another issue crying out for high-level coordination reveals the fundamental failure of the drug war approach. For most of the history of ONDCP, it has campaigned against state medical marijuana laws. Since 1996, 16 states have passed laws that recognize patient use of marijuana for medical treatment. But this conflicts with current federal law. As the leader of the drug war, the drug czar has done nothing to coordinate federal research, regulatory and enforcement efforts necessary to resolve this conflict that leads medical patients and doctors to legal danger and unsatisfactory medical care.
ONDCP's signature "achievement" has been to spend $1.4 billion in a youth anti-drug media campaign that has been demonstrated by the government's independent evaluators and the GAO to be utterly ineffectual.
Death and Disease
In his 1971 message, Nixon lamented 1,000 narcotics deaths in New York City in 1970, then the epicenter of the heroin addiction problem. At the end of 1979, the annual number of drug abuse deaths was 7,101, which grew to 9,976 in 1986, the year basketball star Len Bias died from a cocaine-induced seizure. But the death rate from illegal drugs has exploded! In 2007, there were an estimated 38,000 drug overdose deaths nationwide. The death rate has grown from 3.0 per 100,000 in 1980 to 12.8 in 2006.
Since 1981, when HIV entered the bloodstream of America's injecting drug users, epidemiologists' projects to protect the lives of drug users have been stymied by drug warriors. In 1998, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala endorsed sterile syringe exchange as scientifically proven to prevent the spread of blood-borne disease among injecting drug users. But implementing this lifesaving approach was blocked by White House ONDCP director, General Barry McCaffrey.
In February 2005, Bush White House ONDCP director John Walters was found by the Washington Post to have completely misrepresented the scientific research supporting syringe exchange. The opposition of the White House directors of drug policy is due to the distorting effects of the language and values of war introduced by President Nixon. The emotional mobilization for war against drugs (and drug users) barred acceptance of scientific findings that sterile needle exchange protected drug users from HIV and hepatitis and other blood-borne disease. In a war on drugs, users weren't supposed to be protected from disease and death, they were to be stopped from using drugs.
I recall a member of Congress in the late 1980s saying that America won't have to worry about the heroin problem anymore since the addicts will all soon die from AIDS. This indifference to the lives and dignity of drug users has been a hallmark of the war on drugs. Indeed, between 1999 and 2007, over 48,000 persons died in the U.S. from AIDS due to transmission by infected needles. These deaths are in large part due to the absolutist ideology of the drug war that Nixon inspired.
Drug Use and Treatment
Nixon said his initiative "must be judged by the number of human beings who are brought out of the hell of addiction, and by the number of human beings who are dissuaded from entering that hell."
Most school-based prevention efforts, such as D.A.R.E., have been proven to be ineffective. Yet hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on such efforts by federal, state and local governments and with private contributions. Not surprisingly, drug use has continued to grow, especially marijuana use. In 2009, there were 21.8 million users of illicit drugs.
Nevertheless, Nixon drove a dramatic expansion of federally funded drug treatment using methadone in many cities, and crime went down in time for the 1972 election. But over the long term, as the anti-drug effort conformed to the strident rhetoric of war that Nixon popularized, the supply of drug treatment has not kept pace with the demand. By 2008, an estimated 7,559,000 Americans needed drug treatment, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, but 6,351,000 did not receive any treatment. From 2002 to 2008, among youth aged 12 to 17, the number who received drug treatment declined from 142,000 to 111,000. Nixon's goal to expand drug treatment to meet the need has never been met.
Federal Anti-Drug Costs
Nixon asked Congress for $159 million dollars for his initiatives, plus an unspecified amount to pay 325 additional agents for what became the DEA.
Over the past 40 years, the federal government has spent, cumulatively, roughly a half trillion dollars on the "war on drugs." By FY 1975, federal anti-drug spending had climbed to $680 million. For the past 20 years, federal spending on drugs has exceeded $15 billion per year including the costs of imprisonment.
The costs are now so high, for a decade the "drug czars" seem to regularly conceal almost one-third of the anti-drug spending by excluding it from the formal anti-drug budget they report to Congress. ONDCP says that $14.8 billion was spent in FY 2009 to fight drugs. But another $6.9 billion was also spent in FY 2009 on anti-drug programs such as the incarceration of federal drug prisoners.
The FY 2011 formal anti-drug budget request is for $15.5 billion, excluding imprisonment and the many other costs which remain concealed in the budget submission.
The cost of imprisoning federal drug prisoners has been over $3 billion annually since FY 2008. On June 9, 2011 the total federal prison population exceeded 216,000. As of May 20, 2011, 50.8 percent of convicted federal prisoners were drug offenders.
Economic Impact
Nixon wanted research and "development of necessary reports, statistics, and social indicators for use by all public and private groups."
Unfortunately, we do not have a clear idea of the cost to the economy from the unemployment and underemployment of tens of millions who have criminal records for drug use or distribution. With criminal records, many such men are unmarriageable and can't obtain credit.
What has it meant to the shareholders and investment funds that own Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, and the union workers who build cars and components, that instead of the 200,000 prisoners in state and federal prisons in 1972, now there are about 1.6 million adults in prison (and another 600,000 in jails)? This is a population of about 1.4 million mostly young men (prime car owners) who can't buy a car.
America's economy is famously consumer driven and is terribly hurt when tens of millions of residents can't work and can't buy the goods manufactured and sold by American businesses. This constriction of our domestic market is not a problem our Japanese and German competitors face.
Veterans
Nixon asked for $14 million "to make the facilities of the Veterans Administration available to all former servicemen in need of drug rehabilitation." SAMHSA, using data from National Surveys on Drug Use and Health from 2004-2006 indicate that out of a veteran population of 25.9 million persons, an annual average 7.1 percent of veterans met the criteria for a past year substance use disorder, and another 1.5 percent had co-occurring serious psychological distress and substance use disorder. We all know the population of veterans with physical and psychological injuries is rapidly growing and that substance abuse is growing in that population. The ONDCP focuses on the criminal cases, touting special criminal courts to treat veterans who commit crimes, while treatment in general languishes.
International initiatives
A major feature of Nixon's message stressed the need for international cooperation. He had already stumbled badly when "Operation Intercept" in September 1969 created enormous traffic jams at the Mexico-U.S. border, and severely damaged trade and bilateral relations.
Opium grown in Turkey was the source of 80 percent of the heroin consumed in the U.S. in 1968. Nixon made an overture to Turkey and they cracked down on illegal opium growing and required cultivation licenses. Opium is now grown legally there to make morphine, and none is diverted to heroin. Instead of following this successful legalization strategy, Nixon's successors tried to rely only on forceful crop eradication. But enforcement is like squeezing a balloon. The drug production shifts to new countries which render such successes meaningless. Sadly, expanding production of opium and heroin has become a disaster for other nations such as Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Afghanistan, fueling insurrection, wholesale corruption and widespread assassination.
Support for Prohibition Is Vanishing
In the face of threats of prosecution from the federal government, stuck in the ideology of the "war on drugs," state legislatures and governors continue to pass medical marijuana laws. On May 10, 2011, Maryland's governor signed a law creating a complete medical use defense to a marijuana prosecution and creating a state commission to write a model medical marijuana law. On May 13, 2011, Delaware's governor signed a medical marijuana law, making it the sixteenth state with a comprehensive law to protect medical use of marijuana. On June 2, 2011, Vermont's governor signed a law to add medical marijuana dispensaries to that state's medical marijuana law.
On June 7, 2011, the Connecticut legislature voted to decriminalize possession of less than a half ounce of marijuana and the governor has promised to sign the law. In November 2010, in California, 46.5 percent of the voters supported legalizing marijuana, and polls revealed that 30 percent of "no" voters said they supported legalization but not in the form of Proposition 19 that was the regime on the ballot.
I have been involved in making drug policy professionally for more than 30 years -- three-quarters of the war on drugs. On June 14, I joined five veteran police officers (local, state and federal), a former judge, and a corrections commissioner -- all speakers from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - to bring to ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske LEAP's indictment of the failures of war on drugs policy. We held a press conference on the sidewalk outside his office near the White House. As it was breaking up, four construction workers asked my chief of staff what it was all about. She told them it was about legalizing drugs. Immediately they started telling her all the various reasons why our drug policy is a failure.
For 10 minutes they described the racial disparity in arrests, the drug violence in Mexico and in American neighborhoods, the deaths from drug overdose, the pointlessness of arresting a drug dealer who gets immediately replaced or putting drug users in jail. They noted the parallels between the failure of alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition. They noted the tax revenues from drug sales that we are losing. This telling anecdote reveals how broadly the public understands that Nixon's "war on drugs" has been a widespread failure.
The next step is for the drug policy reform community to present concrete proposals for analysis to legislators and the public. Surely most of us can agree with prestigious groups such as the Global Commission on Drug Policy that the facts of the war on drugs after 40 years are clear signs we need a very different strategy.
Eric E. Sterling has been president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a private non-profit educational organization, since 1989.
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