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Rally to protest the indefinite detention of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning
Saturday, June 4 ~ Leavenworth, Kansas
11:30 am - Gather at Bob Dougherty Memorial Park, N 2nd St. and Kickapoo St. (map). Unrestricted street parking is available around the park. Toilets will be available as well.
Noon - Rally
1:00 pm - March to the intersection of Metropolitan Ave. and N 7th St. (map), six blocks north-west of the rally.
2:00 pm - Vigil (until 3:00 pm) along Metropolitan Ave, primarily at N 4th St. and N 7th St. (N 7th St. is the main entrance to Fort Leavenworth. The military stockade, where Bradley is held, is deep inside the base. The federal prison, which is visible from Metropolitan Ave., is a few blocks west at N 13th St.)
3:30 pm - Organizers meeting back at Bob Dougherty Memorial Park (subject to change). Hosted by Bradley Manning Support Network, Courage to Resist, and Veterans for Peace organizers, a discussion regarding future regional and national efforts in support of Bradley Manning.
Please do not bring any weapons, alcohol, or illegal drugs, to our gathering.
For more information, see below, check this page, or call Courage to Resist at 510-488-3559
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.
Help us rent a billboard for Bradley Manning in Washington DC!
Sign the "I am Bradley Manning" photo petition at iam.bradleymanning.org
Bradley will soon have his own billboard in the Washington DC metro area, if we step up. We're launching this campaign to rent the high-profile ad space to coincide with the soon-expected start of his pre-trial court martial in the DC area.
View the billboards, donate, and help choose the design:
epicstep.com/campaign/239/support-bradley
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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MURDERER MEHSERLE WILL WALK THE STREETS SOON
Johannes Mehserle received two years for the murder of Oscar Grant.
On June 13 [postponed from June 1], he will go before Judge Perry and COULD WALK OUT FREE.
We don't know the exact date, but we do know that in June, Murderer Mehserle will be back on the streets.
We need to be ready to show them that Oakland has NOT forgotton that justice was NOT served.
On the DAY OF HIS RELEASE: The Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant will hold events at TWO PLACES:
3:00 PM: Gather at Oscar Grant Station (Fruitvale BART)
5:30 PM: Gather on 14th & Broadway
Stay tuned for more details!!!
Click here to view Facebook Event: Mehserle the Murderer is Being Released Soon:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115287888554806
Or call us at (510) 575-9005
The ANSWER Coalition is a member of the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant.
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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Why We Come (Por Que Venimos)
SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS WATCH - San Francisco Presentation:
An evening about local campaigns for Immigration Rights.
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 7:00 pm
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
Martin Luther King Room
Why We Come is a short documentary film providing an intimate look at the lives of migrants in San Rafaelâ€(tm)s Canal Area. The film was produced by the Marin Immigrant Rights Coalition Film Group. The first-person stories reveal the risks the migrants took to come to the United States to provide a better life for their families.
Following the film, Hannah Pallmeyer, staff member at La Raza Centro Legal, will provide an overview of local, state, and national campaigns for immigrant rights. She will include how immigration issues are connected to militarization and US foreign policy.
For more information, contact: Dolores Perez Priem at doloresmp@aol.com or
415-595-7306
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[BayArea LC4PJ] Creative Action Sat June 4th in SF - Teachers, Education, Social Services NOT (corporate) Tax Breaks! // Ella Baker Center invites us to Reclaim our Revenue;
Dear Everyone,
I am writing you today because anti-austerity movements are growing all over the world, including here in the U.S., and I believe this is our time to pull together and not only save the programs and services we need most but improve them. I encourage all groups involved in trying to "uncut" the budget cuts to band together and join forces. The next US Uncut creative action in SF is:
Teachers, Textbooks, Education, Public Service s NOT [corporate] Tax Breaks!
Saturday June 4th at 1pm
Meet at Union Square Park in SF
Target: Apple Computers for trying to dodge $4 billion and leading a tax cheat lobbying group (winamericacampaing.org)
This will be a fun, informative, direct action flashmob. For details visit our FB page.
Invite: everyone you know!
Our demands:
Apple: Leave the Tax Cheat Lobbying Group ) and Stop Lobbying Congress for More Tax Loopholes
Congress: No More Budget Cuts - No Multi-Billion Dollar Tax Holiday For Corporate Tax Cheats
$4 billion in tax breaks for Apple OR salaries for 90,000 teachers?
Funding for education, vital social services, job creation, and health care services is being cut on national, state and local levels. The U.S. doesn't have a spending problem (excluding it's insatiable military spending), it has a revenue problem. One of the main reasons is that 2/3 of U.S. corporations use tax loopholes to avoid over $100 billion per year in taxes -- funding that could be used to preserve the programs and services that are being cut.
Let's get creative and do something about this! US Uncut is a 5 month-old grassroots movement taking direct action against corporate tax cheats and unnecessary and unfair public service cuts across the U.S. It is creating ways for individuals and groups to get involved, among other things, by providing fact-checked research and numbers tying the amount of money being dodged by tax cheating corporations to specific cuts, which gives the public tangible ways to understand and address the issue. For example, Bank of America dodged $1.7 billion in 2009, which could have been used to save much of the Head Start and Title 1 programs for early childhood education. Apple Computers wants to dodge $4 billion by lobbying Congress for a "tax holiday" so they can bring back profits that it has stashed in a foreign tax haven -- these funds could save 90,000 teachers' jobs. US Uncut also provides downloadable materials and action plans for individuals and groups to throw an action anywhere in the country.
Apple isn't such a bad apple when compared to the level of tax cheating carried out by the banks, oil companies, GE,... but it definitely doesn't pay its fair share. They present themselves as a social responsible & progressive company, so we are challenging them to stand up to the image they're trying to project and "Pay Up!" As one of the most profitable companies in the US, they do not, in any way, NEED these tax breaks.
We've got the audience: US Uncut's campaign challenging Apple for their tax dodge is being picked up by national press and major tech and business news outlets: The Nation, CNET, Business Insider, Digital Trends, PC World, Mac Observer, 9to5mac, Macnn (ipodnn), MacTech to name a few. We only announced this a few days ago, so our bold tactics are striking a chord. Our video Apple: Tax Cheating Doesn't Sync with My Values is appearing on sites all over the web
Check it out. Join us next Saturday. Dance, shout, hoot 'n holler! We're not going to take these cuts anymore!
Looking forward to making noise with you next weekend and in the future. Let us know if you or those around you are affected by the cuts and if you want to get involved in the movement. If you're already involved, let's join forces!
In solidarity,
US Uncut SF team
find us & join actions: www.facebook.com/USUncutSanFrancisco
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From Bangladesh to the Bay Area
A Walmart Workers Truth Tour
Join worker leaders and their allies for a community educational forum on labor exploitation and worker organizing at all levels of Walmartâ€(tm)s global supply chain!
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011, 6:00pm
City College of San Francisco Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia Street (near 22nd St), Room 108
Featuring:
o Kalpona Ackter*, former Bangladeshi child garment worker turned organizer and co-founder of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity
o Walmart warehouse and retail workers organizing for respect and justice in their workplaces
o Local community and labor organizers waging campaigns for good jobs and healthy communities
o Cultural performance, food and more!
*Kalpona Akter started working in garment factories at 12 years old, working 14 hours a day for $6 a month. Fired and blacklisted for organizing at the sweatshop factory where she worked, she joined with other former garment workers to launch the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. Internationally known and respected, the Center is a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the human and labor rights of workers and children in Bangladesh. In 2010, Walmartâ€(tm)s subcontractor filed a false criminal complaint against Kalpona, which resulted in her being arrested, imprisoned for 30 days and tortured.
For more information, contact Gordon Mar at Jobs with Justice San Francisco (415) 994-2496 or gordon@jwjsf.org.
--
Gordon Mar
Coordinator
Jobs with Justice San Francisco
1050 South Van Ness, Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: (415) 994-2496
Email: gordon@jwjsf.org
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Next UNAC general meeting is Sunday, June 12, 2:00 PM at Redstone Bldg., 16th Street and Capp. (Capp Street is one block or so below Mission Street.) Third Floor Conference Room, San Francisco. MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!
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Save the Date!
NATIONAL LABOR-COMMUNITY CONFERENCE TO DEFEAT THE CORPORATE AGENDA AND FIGHT FOR A WORKING PEOPLE'S AGENDA
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio
June 24-26, 2011
Working people across the country -- from Wisconsin and Ohio to New York, Oregon, and California -- are facing unprecedented attacks by corporations and the rich with the help of the federal, state and local politicians that they fund.
The corporate agenda is clear: It is to bust unions and cut workers' pay and benefits -- both in the private and public sectors. It is to erode and privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is to dismantle the public sector and social services by denying funds for job creation, education, health care, environmental protection, and rebuilding the infrastructure. It is to ensure that taxes on the wealthy are constantly lowered while the bite on workers and the poor is constantly increased. It is to perpetuate U.S. wars and occupations whenever it serves the interests of the multinationals. It is to divide the working class by race, gender, national origin, religion, and sexual orientation. It is also to limit and restrict constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The list goes on.
In state capitals, communities and workplaces across the country, workers are fighting back. But if we're going to be successful in pushing back the attacks on collective bargaining, stopping the budget cuts and concessions, creating jobs, and defending social services and education, we need to build unity within our movement, including forging stronger ties with labor's allies: communities of color, students and youth, single-payer advocates, environmentalists, antiwar activists, immigrant rights supporters, and other progressive forces.
Relying on politicians to defend us -- the so-called "friends of labor" -- has proven to be disastrous. During the past three decades, working people have suffered a dramatic decline in their standard of living while the rich have amassed an unprecedented amount of wealth at the top, regardless of which of the major parties was running the government. We have had every combination imaginable: Republicans occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, Democrats occupying the White House with a majority in Congress, or some kind of "divided government." But in each case the result for working people has been the same: conditions got worse for workers while the corporations prospered even more. Why should we continue this vicious cycle?
The working class has the power to put an end to this situation. And as the debate over the debt and the deficit intensifies, the need has never been greater for an organized campaign to demand "No Cuts, No Concessions!" whether in regard to social programs or workers' wages and benefits. We say place the burden for solving the financial crises squarely where it belongs: on the rich. They caused the crisis, let them pay for it!
The Emergency Labor Network (ELN) was initiated earlier this year at a historic meeting of 100 union leaders and activists from around the country. Join us June 24-26, 2011 at Kent State University in Ohio for a national labor-community conference to spur the campaign to build a more militant fight-back movement and to launch a national campaign for an alternative agenda for working people. Together we can move forward on both fronts.
This conference is open to all who agree with its purpose, as explained in this Call. To register for the conference, please go to our website at www.laborfightback.org. If you prefer to register offline, write emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715 for a registration form.
For more information, e-mail emergencylabor@aol.com or call 216-736-4715.
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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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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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Andy Griffith Vs the Patriot Act
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZF_oZEvybw
[You gotta watch this...bw]
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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
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Gil Scott-Heron, Poet And Musician, Has Died
by Daoud Tyler-Ameen
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/05/27/136731274/gil-scott-heron-poet-and-musician-has-died
Gil Scott-Heron died Friday afternoon in New York, his book publisher reported. He was 62. The influential poet and musician is often credited with being one of the progenitors of hip-hop, and is best known for the spoken-word piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."
Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949. He spent his early years in Jackson, Tenn., attended high school in The Bronx, and spent time at Pennsylvania's Lincoln University before settling in Manhattan. His recording career began in 1970 with the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, which featured the first version of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The track has since been referenced and parodied extensively in pop culture.
Scott-Heron continued to record through the 1970s and early '80s, before taking a lengthy hiatus. He briefly returned to the studio for 1994's Spirits. That album featured the track "Message to the Messengers," in which Scott-Heron cautions the hip-hop generation that arose in his absence to use its newfound power responsibly. He has been cited as a key influence by many in the hip-hop community - such as rapper-producer Kanye West, who closed his platinum-selling 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with a track built around a sample of Scott-Heron's voice.
Scott-Heron struggled publicly with substance abuse in the 2000s, and spent the early part of the decade in and out of jail on drug possession charges. He began performing again after his release in 2007, and in 2010 released a new album, I'm New Here, to widespread critical acclaim.
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
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Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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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Labor Beat: Save City Colleges Refused Meeting Space at Malcolm X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PrxVy_QYY8
Part of the "reinvention" plan for Chicago City Colleges is to remove the name of Malcolm X from one of the campuses, and paint over the mural image of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, there. But these are just symbolic representations of much deeper attacks against public eduction in Chicago at the college level. The Save City Colleges coalition, made up of student groups, faculty members, union locals, and community leaders, arrived at Malcolm X on May 26 expecting to have a hearing with Chairman of the Board of Trustees Martin Cabrera and officials from City Hall, as was previously agreed to. But they found out that it was cancelled. And to add to the insult, Malcolm X security (the irony of it all!) kicked the coalition out of the building. The coalition has stated: "The grassroots organizers point to the dangerously reduced transparency of decision-making for the largest consolidated body of higher education in the state and claim that all of the above decisions had been made by administrators lacking in education experience and credentials and without good-faith consultations with employees, students or grassroots community representatives." Length - 3 min. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat is a regular cable-tv series in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Dear readers,
This episode of Frontline titled, "WikiSecrets" seems to be a comprehensive report based upon the case the government is trying to build against Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. It cleverly plays down the conviction that exposing a crime is not a crime! It also implys that supporters of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are naieve, at best and co-conspirators, at worst. The case against Manning and the one they are trying to establish against Julian Assange as presented here seems to be based on heresay, innuendo and guilt by association. Yet Bradley Manning still faces the death penalty and they're trying their best to make a case against Julian Assange.
They blame Wikileaks for Tunisia and Egypt! As if it was wrong for the people of those countries to oust their crooked dictators! They portray Julian Assange as a criminal for leaking evidence of the stinking corruption to the masses who are struggling and demanding bread, jobs and justice.
No government has the right to murder people and keep it a secret! Unfortunately, however, this has become the common practice of the U.S. bi-partisan government of, by and for the wealthy.
FREE BRADLEY MANNING! HANDS OFF JULIAN ASSANGE! STOP THE FBI GRAND JURY INDICTMENTS AGAINST ANTIWAR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS!
--Bonnie Weinstein
WikiSecrets
The inside story of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wikileaks/?utm_source=FRONTLINE+Bulletin&utm_campaign=2526af6825-WikiSecrets5_23_2011&utm_medium=email
Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.
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"Uncle Genpachi and Tama 001 to 005";
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFeVquF84X4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsYFFu2YIb4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9-s17Hn70Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnqurSMYuiU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8EEwSvm4I4
PS:
We'd very much appreciate it if you could send us a solidarity message to our decisive rally on June 5th.
http://www.doro-chiba.org/z-undou/pdf/65f.pdf
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RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: May Day Weekend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiitdOiO6kA
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Paradise Gray Speaks At Jordan Miles Emergency Rally 05/06/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOLz1EYDYE&feature=player_embedded
Police Reassigned While CAPA Student's Beatdown Investigated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-6IsP3dUg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Pittsburgh Student Claims Police Brutality; Shows Hospital Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j_AVsTXZc&feature=relmfu
Justice For Jordan Miles
By jasiri x
http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Even though Pittsburgh Police beat Jordan Miles until he looked like this: (Photo at website)
And even though Jordan Miles, an honor student who plays the viola, broke no laws and committed no crimes, the Federal Government decided not to prosecute the 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers who savagely beat him.
To add insult to injury, Pittsburgh's Mayor and Police Chief immediately reinstated the 3 officers without so much as a apology. An outraged Pittsburgh community called for an emergency protest to pressure the local District Attorney to prosecute these officers to the fullest extent of the law.
Below is my good friend, and fellow One Hood founding member Paradise Gray (also a founding member of the Blackwatch Movement and the legendary rap group X-Clan) passionately demanding Justice for Jordan Miles and speaking on the futility of a war of terror overseas while black men are terrorized in their own neighborhoods.
For more information on how you can help get Justice For Jordan Miles go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
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Nation Behind Bars Mass Incarceration And Political Prisoners In the U.S. - Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination
Black is Back Conference on the Other Wars, March 26, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKfFEqaoSs&feature=email
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Cindy Sheehan has turned her grief into an anti-war crusade, even questioning the death of Osama bin Laden. From HLN's Dr. DREW Show Thurs. 5/5/11:
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-05-06/cindy-sheehan-mothers-war-war
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Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
http://vimeo.com/22706805
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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New Video - Lupe Fiasco ft. Skylar Grey - 'Words I Never Said'
Thu, Apr 28 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0
Lupe Fiasco addresses some heavy issues in the latest video for his new single, 'Words I Never Said,' featuring Skylar Grey. In the 5 minute and 45 second dose of reality, Lupe tackles issues such as the war on terrorism, devastation, conspiracy theories, 9/11 and genocide. From the opening lyrics of "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh*t", Lupe doesn't hold back as he voices his socio-political concerns.
"If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of what the f-ks'
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homie that's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say s-t
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful."
Skylar Grey (who also lends her vocals to Dirty money's 'Coming Home' and Eminem's 'I Need A Doctor') does an excellent job of complementing the Alex Da Kid produced track.
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BREAKING ALERT: Mass Arrests, Tear Gas, Sound Weapons used Against WIU Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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MAY DAY 1886-International Workers Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF-ADtNerPM&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: We Are One - Illinois
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOntwNsWHac
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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More troops join anti-government protests in Yemen
More soldiers have been joining anti-government protests on the streets of the capital Sana'a.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6658
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E.: Miss. Medical Examiner Dr. Adel Shaker On Frederick Carter Hanging (4/19/2011)
http://blip.tv/file/5057532
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Egyptian Soldiers Join Protest Demanding End to Military Dictatorship
Adam Hanieh: Class struggle in Egypt enters a new stage
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6626
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Row over Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning treatment (12Apr11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv8xyHhDKkY&feature=related
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AP writer--State Department on Human Rights Abuse of Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUctxdsKk9Q
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environmet would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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VIDEO: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother
Take Back the Land- Rochester Eviction Defense March 28, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2axN1zsZno&feature=player_embedded
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B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
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Afghans for Peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ror0qPcasM&NR=1
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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END THE U.S./UN/NATO KILL TEAM NOW!
WARNING: THESE ARE HORRIFIC, DISGUSTING, VIOLENT CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE U.S. MILITARY MAKING THE UPCOMING APRIL 10 [APRIL 9 IN NEW YORK] MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS A FIRST PRIORITY FOR WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. WE DEMAND OUT NOW! END THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND EVERYWHERE! BRING ALL THE TROOPS, UN/NATO/US/ and CONTRACTORS HOME NOW!
The Kill Team Photos More war crime images the Pentagon doesn't want you to see
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/the-kill-team-photos-20110327
'Death Zone' How U.S. soldiers turned a night-time airstrike into a chilling 'music video'
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/death-zone-20110327
'Motorcycle Kill' Footage of an Army patrol gunning down two men in Afghanistan
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/motorcyle-kill-20110327
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BOB MARLEY - WAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zaNwyhXn0&playnext=1&list=PLA467527F8DD7DE1F
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Frederick Alexander Meade on The Prison Industrial Complex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vqzfEYo6Lo
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BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
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Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
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Iraq Veterans Against the War in Occupied Capitol, Madison, WI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7K0wn73uJU
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Stop LAPD Stealing of Immigrant's Cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lf4kENkxo
On Februrary 19, 2011 Members of the Southern California Immigration Coalition (SCIC) organized and engaged in direct action to defend the people of Los Angeles, CA from the racist LAPD "Sobriety" Checkpoints that are a poorly disguised trap to legally steal the cars from working class people in general and undocumented people in particular. Please disseminate this link widely.
Venceremos,
SCIC
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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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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ELLA BAKER CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
CLOSE PRISONS NOT SCHOOLS!
https://secure3.convio.net/ebc/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=164&utm_campaign=bnb_close_prisons_not_schools&utm_source=email-action&utm_medium=email&s_src=bnb_close_prisons_not_schools&s_subsrc=email-action&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=k3sp4vh2j4.app332b
Carlos* was only 14 years when he was locked up in a California youth prison. Growing up in a rough neighborhood in Northern CA, there were few resources for him or his younger brothers. Carlos was swept up by gangs and ended up serving a 10 year sentence in Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), leaving his siblings and childhood behind.
For 10 long years, our state spent millions of dollars to lock him up in a cell. Meanwhile, the state spent a tiny fraction of that amount providing an inadequate education to his younger brothers.
When Carlos was finally released earlier this year, he returned to a neighborhood that hasn't changed. Resources for youth are still scarce. He worries about his little brothers growing up in a society that would rather lock them up than invest in their educations and future.
Carlos' experience is only one example of why California ranks near the bottom in education spending and performance, but we're #1 in prison spending. DJJ drains much-needed resources from California's schools and the vital community programs that would help our State thrive. It's time to close the expensive, abusive DJJ and redirect those resources into our schools.
Join Books Not Bars in calling on Governor Brown to protect our schools by closing the Division of Juvenile Justice.
On May 10, join Books Not Bars, teachers, students, and other concerned Californians at the Capitol to save our schools. For more information or if you plan on attending, please contact Jennifer Kim at Jennifer@ellabakercenter.org, or (510) 285-8234.
If you can't join us in person, take action now, then sign up for join our online rally next Tuesday by sending Gov. Brown an email now.
Justice for families.
Sumayyah Waheed
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
*Carlos' name has been changed to protect his privacy.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
www.ellabakercenter.org | 510.428.3939
1970 Broadway, Suite 450 | Oakland, CA | 94612
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U.S. Attorney Escalates Attacks on Civil Liberties of Anti-War,
Palestinian Human Rights Activists
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald first thing Monday morning! (contact info at bottom of this email)
On Friday, May 6, the U.S. government froze the bank accounts of Hatem Abudayyeh and his wife, Naima. This unwarranted attack on a leading member of the Palestinian community in Chicago is the latest escalation of the repression of anti-war and Palestinian community organizers by the FBI, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Hatem Abudayyeh is one of 23 activists from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Chicago, and his home was raided by the FBI in September of last year. Neither Hatem Abudayyeh nor Naima Abudayyeh have been charged with any crime.
One of the bank accounts frozen was exclusively in Naima Abudayyeh's name. Leaders of the national Committee to Stop FBI Repression, as well as Chicago's Coalition to Protect People's Rights are appalled at the government's attempt to restrict the family's access to its finances, especially so soon before Mothers' Day. Not only does the government's action seriously disrupt the lives of the Abudayyehs and their five-year-old daughter, but it represents an attack on Chicago's Arab community and activist community and the fundamental rights of Americans to freedom of speech.
The persecution of the Abudayyeh family is another example of the criminalization of Palestinians, their supporters, and their movement for justice and liberation. There has been widespread criticism of the FBI and local law enforcement for their racial profiling and scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. These repressive tactics include infiltration of community centers and mosques, entrapment of young men, and the prominent case of 11 students from the University of California campuses at Irvine and Riverside who have been subpoenaed to a grand jury and persecuted for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US. The government's attempt to conflate the anti-war and human rights movements with terrorism is a cynical attempt to capitalize on the current political climate in order to silence Palestinians and other people of conscience who exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner which does not conform to the administration's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.
The issuance of subpoenas against the 23 activists has been met with widespread opposition and criticism across the country. Six members of the U.S. Congress, including five in the past month, have sent letters to either Holder or President Obama, expressing grave concern for the violations of the civil liberties and rights of the 23 activists whose freedom is on the line. Three additional U.S. representatives have also promised letters, as thousands of constituents and other people of conscience across the U.S. have demanded an end to this assault on legitimate political activism and dissent. Over 60 Minnesota state legislators also issued a resolution condemning the subpoenas.
The Midwest activists have been expecting indictments for some time. The freezing of the Abudayyeh family's bank accounts suggests that the danger of indictments is imminent.
Take action:
Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300.
Then dial 0 (zero) for the operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
Demand Fitzgerald
-- Unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family and
-- Stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.
In solidarity,
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression and
The Coalition to Protect People's Rights
For more info go to StopFBI.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Abolish the Death Penalty Blog
http://www.ncadp.org/blog.cfm?postID=165
Abolish the Death Penalty is a blog dedicated to...well, you know. The purpose of Abolish is to tell the personal stories of crime victims and their loved ones, people on death row and their loved ones and those activists who are working toward abolition. You may, from time to time, see news articles or press releases here, but that is not the primary mission of Abolish the Death Penalty. Our mission is to put a human face on the debate over capital punishment.
You can also follow death penalty news by reading our News page and by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
1 Million Tweets for Troy! April 12, 2011
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
The state of Georgia is seeking to change the drugs they use to carry out executions so they can resume scheduling execution dates, including that of Troy Davis, a man with a strong claim of innocence. Doubts in the case persist, including the fact that no physical evidence links him to the murder, most of the witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony and newer testimony implicates a different person (including an eyewitness account).
The Davis case has already generated hundreds of thousands of emails, calls, and letters in support of clemency, including from leaders such as the Pope, Jimmy Carter and former FBI chief Bill Sessions. We need to continue to amass petitions in support of clemency, demonstrating the widespread concern about this case and what it represents.
Please help us send a message to Georgia officials that they can do the right thing - they can intervene as the final failsafe by commuting Davis' sentence. Please help us generate 1 million tweets for Troy Davis!
Share this tweet alert with your friends and family that care about justice and life as soon as you can.
More information about the case is available at www.justicefortroy.org
Here are some sample tweets:
When in doubt, don't execute!! Sign the petition for #TroyDavis! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Too much doubt! Stop the execution! #TroyDavis needs us! www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No room for doubt! Stop the execution of #TroyDavis . Retweet, sign petition www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
Case not "ironclad", yet Georgiacould execute #TroyDavis ! Not on our watch! Petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
No murder weapon. No physical evidence. Stop the execution! #TroyDavis petition: www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition
7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recanted. No physical evidence. Stop the execution of Troy Davis www.tinyurl.com/troyepetition #TroyDavis
Thanks!
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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The Arab Revolutions:
Guiding Principles for Peace and Justice Organizations in the US
Please email endorsement to ekishawi@yahoo.com
We, the undersigned, support the guiding principles and demands listed in this statement. We call on groups who want to express solidarity with the Arab revolutions to join our growing movement by signing this statement or keeping with the demands put forward herewith.
Background
The long-awaited Arab revolution has come. Like a geologic event with the reverberations of an earthquake, the timing and circumstances were unpredictable. In one Arab country after another, people are taking to the street demanding the fall of monarchies established during European colonial times. They are also calling to bring down dictatorships supported and manifested by neo-colonial policies. Although some of these autocratic regimes rose to power with popular support, the subsequent division and subjugation of the Arab World led to a uniform repressive political order across the region. The Arab masses in different Arab countries are therefore raising a uniform demand: "The People Want to Topple the Regimes!"
For the past two decades, the Arab people witnessed the invasion and occupation of Iraq with millions killed under blockade and occupation, Palestinians massacred with the aim to crush the anti-Zionist resistance, and Lebanon repeatedly invaded with the purposeful targeting of civilians. These actions all served to crush resistance movements longing for freedom, development, and self-determination. Meanwhile, despotic dictatorships, some going back 50 years, entrenched themselves by building police states, or fighting wars on behalf of imperialist interests.
Most Arab regimes systematically destroyed the social fabric of civil society, stifled social development, repressed all forms of political dissent and democratic expression, mortgaged their countries' wealth to foreign interests and enriched themselves and their cronies at the expense of impoverishing their populations. After pushing the Arab people to the brink, populations erupted.
The spark began in Tunisia where a police officer slapped and spat on Mohammad Bou Azizi, flipping over his produce cart for not delivering a bribe on time. . Unable to have his complaint heard, he self-immolated in protest, igniting the conscience of the Tunisian people and that of 300 million Arabs. In less than a month, the dictator, Zine El Abedine Ben Ali, was forced into exile by a Tunisian revolution. On its way out, the regime sealed its legacy by shooting at unarmed protestors and burning detention centers filled with political prisoners. Ben Ali was supported by the US and Europe in the fight against Islamic forces and organized labor.
Hosni Mubarak's brutal dictatorship fell less than a month after Tunisia's. The revolution erupted at a time when one half of the Egyptian population was living on less than $2/day while Mubarak's family amassed billions of dollars. The largest population recorded in Egyptian history was living in graveyards and raising their children among the dead while transportation and residential infrastructure was crumbling. Natural gas was supplied to Israel at 15% of the market price while the Rafah border was closed with an underground steel wall to complete the suffocation of the Palestinians in Gaza. Those who were deemed a threat swiftly met the fate of Khalid Said. 350 martyrs fell and 2,000 people were injured.
After Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan exploded in protest. Some governments quickly reshuffled faces and ranks without any tangible change. Some, like Bahrain and Yemen, sent out their security forces to massacre civilians. Oman and Yemen represent strategic assets for the US as they are situated on the straits of Hormuz and Aden, respectively. Bahrain is an oil country that hosts a US military base, situated in the Persian Gulf. A new round of US funded blood-letting of Arab civilians has begun!
Libyan dictator Qaddafi did not prove to be an exception. He historically took anti-imperialist positions for a united Arab World and worked for an African Union. He later transformed his regime to a subservient state and opened Libya to British Petroleum and Italian interests, working diligently on privatization and political repression. He amassed more wealth than that of Mubarak. In the face of the Libyan revolution, Qaddafi exceeded the brutality of Ben Ali and Mubarak blind-folding and executing opponents, surrounding cities with tanks, and bombing his own country. Death toll is expected to be in the thousands.
Qaddafi's history makes Libya an easy target for imperialist interests. The Obama administration followed the Iraq cookbook by freezing Libyan assets amounting to 30% of the annual GDP. The White House, with the help of European governments, rapidly implemented sanctions and called for no-fly zones. These positions were precipitated shortly after the US vetoed a resolution condemning the illegal Israeli colonization of the West Bank. Special operations personnel from the UK were captured by the revolutionary commanders in Ben Ghazi and sent back. The Libyan revolutionary leadership, the National Council clearly stated: "We are completely against foreign intervention. The rest of Libya will be liberated by the people ... and Gaddafi's security forces will be eliminated by the people of Libya."
Demands of the Solidarity Movement with Arab Revolutions
1. We demand a stop to US support, financing and trade with Arab dictatorships. We oppose US policy that has favored Israeli expansionism, war, US oil interest and strategic shipping routes at the expense of Arab people's freedom and dignified living.
2. We support the people of Tunisia and Egypt as well as soon-to-be liberated nations to rid themselves of lingering remnants of the deposed dictatorships.
3. We support the Arab people's right to sovereignty and self-determination. We demand that the US government stop its interference in the internal affairs of all Arab countries and end subsidies to wars and occupation.
4. We support the Arab people's demands for political, civil and economic rights. The Arab people's movement is calling for:
a. Deposing the unelected regimes and all of its institutional remnants
b. Constitutional reform guaranteeing freedom of organizing, speech and press
c. Free and fair elections
d. Independent judiciary
e. National self-determination.
5. We oppose all forms of US and European military intervention with or without the legitimacy of the UN. Standing in solidarity with the revolution against Qaddafi, or any other dictator, does not equate to supporting direct or indirect colonization of an Arab country, its oil or its people. We therefore call for:
a. Absolute rejection of military blockades, no-fly zones and interventions.
b. Lifting all economic sanctions placed against Libya and allowing for the formation of an independent judiciary to prosecute Qaddafi and deposed dictators for their crimes.
c. Immediately withdrawing the US and NATO troops from the Arab region.
6. We support Iraq's right to sovereignty and self determination and call on the US to immediately withdraw all occupation personnel from Iraq.
7. We recognize that the borders separating Arab nations were imposed on the Arab people by the colonial agreements of Sykes-Picot and the Berlin Conference on Africa. As such, we support the anti-Zionist nature of this revolution in its call for:
a. Ending the siege and starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza
b. Supporting the right of the Palestinian people to choose their own representation, independent of Israeli and US dictates
c. Supporting the right of the Lebanese people to defend their country from Israeli violations and their call to end vestiges of the colonial constitution constructed on the basis of sectarian representation
d. Supporting the right of the Jordanian people to rid themselves of their repressive monarchy
e. Ending all US aid to Israel.
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in
______(state). I am calling _____ to demand he call off the Grand Jury
and stop FBI repression against the anti-war and Palestine solidarity
movements. I oppose U.S. government political repression and support
the right to free speech and the right to assembly of the 23 activists
subpoenaed. We will not be criminalized. Tell him to stop this
McCarthy-type witch hunt against international solidarity activists!"
If your call doesn't go through, try again later.
Update: 800 anti-war and international solidarity activists
participated in four regional conferences, in Chicago, IL; Oakland,
CA; Chapel Hill, NC and New York City to stop U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald's Grand Jury repression.
Still, in the last few weeks, the FBI has continued to call and harass
anti-war organizers, repressing free speech and the right to organize.
However, all of their intimidation tactics are bringing a movement
closer together to stop war and demand peace.
We demand:
-- Call Off the Grand Jury Witch-hunt Against International Solidarity
Activists!
-- Support Free Speech!
-- Support the Right to Organize!
-- Stop FBI Repression!
-- International Solidarity Is Not a Crime!
-- Stop the Criminalization of Arab and Muslim Communities!
Background: Fitzgerald ordered FBI raids on anti-war and solidarity
activists' homes and subpoenaed fourteen activists in Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Michigan on September 24, 2010. All 14 refused to
speak before the Grand Jury in October. Then, 9 more Palestine
solidarity activists, most Arab-Americans, were subpoenaed to appear
at the Grand Jury on January 25, 2011, launching renewed protests.
There are now 23 who assert their right to not participate in
Fitzgerald's witch-hunt.
The Grand Jury is a secret and closed inquisition, with no judge, and
no press. The U.S. Attorney controls the entire proceedings and hand
picks the jurors, and the solidarity activists are not allowed a
lawyer. Even the date when the Grand Jury ends is a secret.
So please make these calls to those in charge of the repression aimed
against anti-war leaders and the growing Palestine solidarity
movement.
Email us to let us know your results. Send to info@StopFBI.net
**Please sign and circulate our 2011 petition at http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
In Struggle,
Tom Burke,
for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network.
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Clock Ticks for a Key Homeless Program
"The coalition has pressed the Bloomberg administration to give homeless people preference for public housing and vouchers for Section 8, a federally financed subsidy program using private housing, as previous administrations had. The administration said that was not feasible, because the Section 8 program had a waiting list of 125,000 people and public housing had a list of 144,000."
By MOSI SECRET
May 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/nyregion/new-york-city-close-to-ending-key-housing-program.html?ref=nyregion
2) Officers' Accuser Says She Was Devastated by Verdict
By JOHN ELIGON
May 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/nyregion/accuser-in-nypd-rape-case-says-she-is-devastated.html?ref=nyregion
3) Company Once Known as Blackwater Names New CEO
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/01/business/AP-US-Blackwater-New-CEO.html?src=busln
4) A Reporter at Large
The Secret Sharer
Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state?
"Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the
telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. 'I think
it's outrageous,' he says. 'The Bush people have been let off. The
telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted
are the whistle-blowers.'"
by Jane Mayer May 23, 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
5) Blood in the Amazon: Brazilian Activists Murdered as Deforestation Increases
by Benjamin Dangl
June 1, 2011
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/01-7
6) New study: You can't live on minimum wage
BY L. L. BRASIER
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
9:23 PM, May. 30, 2011
http://www.freep.com/article/20110531/NEWS06/105310351/New-study-You-can-t-live-minimum-wage
7) "IAEA today admitted there is no such thing as 'safe' levels of radiation" - Allowable radiation standard based on 'benefit', not safety
by Tashny Sukumaran
Free Malaysia Today
June 2, 2011:
http://enenews.com/iaea-today-admitted-there-is-no-such-thing-as-safe-levels-of-radiation-allowable-radiation-standard-based-on-benefit-not-safety
8) Japan Prime Minister Survives No-Confidence Vote
By MARTIN FACKLER
June 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/asia/03japan.html?ref=world
9) Brazil, After a Long Battle, Approves an Amazon Dam
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/americas/02brazil.html?ref=world
10) Former Police Chief Is Sentenced for Cover-Up in Mexican's Death
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/us/02sentence.html?ref=us
11) Americans Are Joining Flotilla to Protest Israeli Blockade
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?ref=us
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1) Clock Ticks for a Key Homeless Program
"The coalition has pressed the Bloomberg administration to give homeless people preference for public housing and vouchers for Section 8, a federally financed subsidy program using private housing, as previous administrations had. The administration said that was not feasible, because the Section 8 program had a waiting list of 125,000 people and public housing had a list of 144,000."
By MOSI SECRET
May 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/nyregion/new-york-city-close-to-ending-key-housing-program.html?ref=nyregion
With New York City's shelter population near all-time highs, the Bloomberg administration is on the verge of ending its signature housing program for homeless families, saying the program's generosity might have contributed to the problem.
The program, called Advantage, started in 2007 and offers subsidies for up to two years to help people in shelters afford their own apartments, provided they work or take part in job training. But several months ago, the administration warned that if the state followed through with its plan to stop its financial support, the city could not afford to maintain the program and would cut off aid even to those already participating.
After those warnings, the number of applicants to enter shelters dropped by 17 percent, evidence, the city said, that the program might have enticed some people to leave their homes for the promise of the subsidy.
"You never know what motivates people," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said during a recent radio show. "One theory is that some people have been coming into the homeless system, the shelter system, in order to qualify for a program that helps you move out of the homeless system."
That supposition has angered advocates for the homeless, who say that it is merely an attempt to justify budget cuts, and that the statistical argument is based on short-term fluctuations. They also note that just two months ago, when the city was lobbying for the state aid, it warned that ending Advantage would cause the homeless population to spin out of control and require the opening of at least 70 new shelters.
"To say that it was Advantage that was drawing folks into the homeless system was just unfounded and untrue," said City Councilwoman Annabel Palma, chairwoman of the general welfare committee, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services. "They have never been able to give us concrete numbers."
When questioned about the figures, the department acknowledged that the decline could be partly a result of seasonal variations. But normal fluctuations could not explain all of the drop, officials said. "Those are the people who were coming in maybe because of the subsidy," said Seth Diamond, the homeless services commissioner.
Regardless, the Bloomberg administration's conclusion reflects a significant shift in its policy toward the homeless, which has followed the mayor's centrist philosophy of mixing the social safety net with personal responsibility. In a similar vein, his administration began paying poor families for reaching certain goals, like going to the doctor for regular checkups and attending parent-teacher conferences, though programs that rewarded students with cellphones and $50 payments were abandoned because they did not significantly improve achievement.
The Advantage program was envisioned as a transitional step between homelessness and self-sufficiency. Its projected cost for the next fiscal year was $140 million, with the state and federal governments contributing $92 million of that. But the state, citing fiscal constraints, pulled its support, and with it cut off the federal matching dollars.
The City Council and Mr. Bloomberg have not settled on a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, but so far neither side has shown any inclination to save the program.
Advantage has provided rental vouchers worth up to about $1,000 a month, for up to two years, to homeless people who found jobs. In March, the city announced the program's suspension, saying that it would issue no more vouchers, and that people who already had vouchers would lose them. After that announcement, the city said, the number of applications for shelter fell.
The Legal Aid Society sued, and a judge issued a temporary order forcing the city to continue financing the vouchers that it had already issued, at least through the end of May. A decision on June payments could come as soon as Wednesday.
One of those in limbo, Kasha Phillips-Lewis, 24, qualified last year for a $962 monthly voucher, spent another five months looking for an apartment, then finally moved out of a shelter in March to a $1,070-a-month apartment on Staten Island. She learned she might lose her subsidy a few weeks later.
"I was in a panic mode," said Ms. Phillips-Lewis, who has a toddler daughter. "I am now working 25 hours a week but that still isn't enough to cover a $1,070 apartment plus heat and gas and electricity and traveling money. That's not including diapers and extra food."
When asked whether she had encountered people who had left their homes and entered the shelter system to gain access to Advantage's safety net, she replied, "absolutely not."
Another participant, Amanda Cotto, 24, said she knew about Advantage and was hoping to secure a voucher when she left home with her young daughter last year after getting into a fight with her mother.
"A lot of my friends explained to me what the program was," Ms. Cotto said. "And when I got to the shelter, they explained it more." She qualified for a voucher and now lives in a $492 two-bedroom apartment in East Harlem.
She said she did not leave home to avail herself of the voucher, but she agreed with the mayor that some people did.
"The majority of people who go into shelters" can get an apartment on their own, she said, "but they want it for free."
More than 21,000 families have participated since Advantage began. At first, they contributed only $50 a month toward rent, but the rules were later changed to require them to pay 30 percent of their income in their first year and 40 percent in their second year to "emphasize self-sufficiency," Mr. Diamond said.
But the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, criticizes Advantage as a "revolving door back to homelessness," contending most families could not attain self-sufficiency in two years. The group calculates about 25 percent of families returned to the shelter system after leaving the program. Under a court order dating back decades, the city is required to provide shelter to any homeless person who qualifies.
The city disputes the coalition's numbers, but Mr. Diamond said "even using the coalition's interpretation," the program was a success.
Still, the overall shelter population, at 36,600 people, is near a record high, though the numbers have dropped from last year.
The coalition has pressed the Bloomberg administration to give homeless people preference for public housing and vouchers for Section 8, a federally financed subsidy program using private housing, as previous administrations had. The administration said that was not feasible, because the Section 8 program had a waiting list of 125,000 people and public housing had a list of 144,000.
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2) Officers' Accuser Says She Was Devastated by Verdict
By JOHN ELIGON
May 31, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/nyregion/accuser-in-nypd-rape-case-says-she-is-devastated.html?ref=nyregion
Five days after two New York police officers were acquitted of rape charges, their accuser broke her silence, releasing a statement in which she said she was "devastated and disappointed by the jury's decision."
The woman, in a 574-word statement released on Tuesday, said she had waited two and a half years "for closure that will now never come."
"Hearing that verdict," she said, "brought me to my knees; it brought me back to my bedroom on that awful night when my world was turned upside down by the actions of two police officers who were sent there to protect, but instead took advantage of their authority and broke the law."
Prosecutors had accused one of the officers, Kenneth Moreno, of having sex with the woman while she lay face-down and dazed in her bed, while his partner, Franklin Mata, stood guard. The officers were called to the woman's East Village apartment building to escort her inside because she was too drunk to make it on her own. After helping her up to her fifth-floor apartment, the officers returned three more times. They said they were returning just to check on her, and Mr. Moreno said he was counseling the woman about her drinking.
While the officers were acquitted of the most serious charges against them, they were convicted of three misdemeanor counts of official misconduct for returning to the woman's apartment while they were supposed to be on patrol. When they are sentenced on June 28, they could receive up to a year in jail on each count - up to a maximum of two years.
Despite the acquittal, the woman indicated that she did not believe it was a full exoneration of the officers, who were fired hours after the verdict was delivered. In her opening sentence, she wrote, "I know that in a criminal trial a verdict of not guilty does not necessarily mean the defendants were found innocent."
The woman, who asked not to be identified, still has a $57 million lawsuit pending against the city and the officers.
She still believed, she said, that there were good police officers in New York.
"Not a single officer in uniform sat behind the defendants when I testified," she said. "That speaks volumes."
The verdict has stunned many people across the city, with some even taking to the streets in protest.
"I am also so amazed and touched by the thousands of people who have expressed their outrage at what happened to me," she said. "How amazing are the people of New York City, and all over the country, to speak up in my honor. For me, public opinion will be the ultimate verdict."
But for those who supported the officers, the verdict was seen as a validation of their accounts and a repudiation of what the woman testified to. Although the woman acknowledged at trial that she had blacked out on much of the evening because she got drunk at a party celebrating a job promotion, she said she vividly remembered being penetrated by the officer and being unable to stop him.
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Moreno's wife, Julia, said the woman lacked credibility.
"I'm just glad that the jurors saw it the way it was and not some fantasy that somebody was trying to shove down their throats," Ms. Moreno said.
Joseph Tacopina, one of Mr. Moreno's lawyers, wrote in an e-mail that the "verdict should be respected."
"Although the accuser cites 'public opinion' as the 'ultimate verdict,' we are a nation of laws; not mob justice," he wrote. "It was the jury, and not the 'public,' that heard all of the testimony in this case, including that of the accuser, and rendered a verdict consistent with the evidence and the law."
For the woman, her case was indicative of the difficulties of prosecuting sex crimes.
"One's word is not enough in these days of C.S.I. and DNA," she wrote. "Even if people believe you, you are tested beyond what any crime victim should have to endure."
She criticized questions from defense lawyers that "seek to shame and humiliate you."
"How saddening, how utterly disheartening," she said.
The woman thanked Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, for swiftly firing Mr. Moreno and Mr. Mata because of the official-misconduct convictions.
She also praised the prosecutors, Coleen Balbert and Randolph Clarke, and the district attorney's investigator, Edward Tacchi, writing that "I cry as I write this because I know they are hurting just like me."
After the verdict, the woman said, Mr. Tacchi told her, "I am saddened for this injustice, and so sorry to you for this failure."
That set off an outpouring of emotion, she recalled. "I lost it," she said. "My heart broke."
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3) Company Once Known as Blackwater Names New CEO
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/01/business/AP-US-Blackwater-New-CEO.html?src=busln
MOYOCK, N.C. (AP) - The North Carolina-based global security company once known as Blackwater has named a new CEO as it continues to rebuild its business after years of bad publicity.
Moyock-based XE (ZEE) Services said Wednesday that Air Force veteran and government contractor Ted Wright will start as chief executive June 13.
Most recently, Wright was an executive with Houston-based military contractor KBR Inc.
Investor group USTC Holdings bought Xe last year and has been trying to rehabilitate the image of the company that became famous as Blackwater.
Under that name, the firm provided guards and services to the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It drew harsh criticism from members of Congress and others after a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 people.
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4) A Reporter at Large
The Secret Sharer
Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state?
by Jane Mayer May 23, 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1O8TUZVGn
On June 13th, a fifty-four-year-old former government employee named Thomas Drake is scheduled to appear in a courtroom in Baltimore, where he will face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, the government's electronic-espionage service, he is accused, in essence, of being an enemy of the state. According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act-the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency's headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of "unauthorized disclosure." The aim of this scheme, the indictment says, was to leak government secrets to an unnamed newspaper reporter, who is identifiable as Siobhan Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman wrote a prize-winning series of articles for the Sun about financial waste, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dubious legal practices in N.S.A. counterterrorism programs. Drake is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal law-enforcement agents. If he is convicted on all counts, he could receive a prison term of thirty-five years.
The government argues that Drake recklessly endangered the lives of American servicemen. "This is not an issue of benign documents," William M. Welch II, the senior litigation counsel who is prosecuting the case, argued at a hearing in March, 2010. The N.S.A., he went on, collects "intelligence for the soldier in the field. So when individuals go out and they harm that ability, our intelligence goes dark and our soldier in the field gets harmed."
Top officials at the Justice Department describe such leak prosecutions as almost obligatory. Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General who supervises the department's criminal division, told me, "You don't get to break the law and disclose classified information just because you want to." He added, "Politics should play no role in it whatsoever."
When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government." But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks-more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama's Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book "Necessary Secrets" (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, "Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history-even more so than Nixon."
One afternoon in January, Drake met with me, giving his first public interview about this case. He is tall, with thinning sandy hair framing a domed forehead, and he has the erect bearing of a member of the Air Force, where he served before joining the N.S.A., in 2001. Obsessive, dramatic, and emotional, he has an unwavering belief in his own rectitude. Sitting at a Formica table at the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Drake-who is a registered Republican-groaned and thrust his head into his hands. "I actually had hopes for Obama," he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the "war on terror."
"But power is incredibly destructive," Drake said. "It's a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he's rather naïve about national security. He's accepted the fear and secrecy. We're in a scary space in this country."
The Justice Department's indictment narrows the frame around Drake's actions, focussing almost exclusively on his handling of what it claims are five classified documents. But Drake sees his story as a larger tale of political reprisal, one that he fears the government will never allow him to air fully in court. "I'm a target," he said. "I've got a bull's-eye on my back." He continued, "I did not tell secrets. I am facing prison for having raised an alarm, period. I went to a reporter with a few key things: fraud, waste, and abuse, and the fact that there were legal alternatives to the Bush Administration's 'dark side' "-in particular, warrantless domestic spying by the N.S.A.
The indictment portrays him not as a hero but as a treacherous man who violated "the government trust." Drake said of the prosecutors, "They can say what they want. But the F.B.I. can find something on anyone."
Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says of the Drake case, "The government wants this to be about unlawfully retained information. The defense, meanwhile, is painting a picture of a public-interested whistle-blower who struggled to bring attention to what he saw as multibillion-dollar mismanagement." Because Drake is not a spy, Aftergood says, the case will "test whether intelligence officers can be convicted of violating the Espionage Act even if their intent is pure." He believes that the trial may also test whether the nation's expanding secret intelligence bureaucracy is beyond meaningful accountability. "It's a much larger debate than whether a piece of paper was at a certain place at a certain time," he says.
Jack Balkin, a liberal law professor at Yale, agrees that the increase in leak prosecutions is part of a larger transformation. "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state," he says. In his view, zealous leak prosecutions are consonant with other political shifts since 9/11: the emergence of a vast new security bureaucracy, in which at least two and a half million people hold confidential, secret, or top-secret clearances; huge expenditures on electronic monitoring, along with a reinterpretation of the law in order to sanction it; and corporate partnerships with the government that have transformed the counterterrorism industry into a powerful lobbying force. Obama, Balkin says, has "systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration."
On March 28th, Obama held a meeting in the White House with five advocates for greater transparency in government. During the discussion, the President drew a sharp distinction between whistle-blowers who exclusively reveal wrongdoing and those who jeopardize national security. The importance of maintaining secrecy about the impending raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was likely on Obama's mind. The White House has been particularly bedevilled by the ongoing release of classified documents by WikiLeaks, the group led by Julian Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began releasing a vast trove of sensitive government documents allegedly leaked by a U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning; the documents included references to a courier for bin Laden who had moved his family to Abbottabad-the town where bin Laden was hiding out. Manning has been charged with "aiding the enemy."
Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, attended the meeting, and said that Obama's tone was generally supportive of transparency. But when the subject of national-security leaks came up, Brian said, "the President shifted in his seat and leaned forward. He said this may be where we have some differences. He said he doesn't want to protect the people who leak to the media war plans that could impact the troops." Though Brian was impressed with Obama's over-all stance on transparency, she felt that he might be misinformed about some of the current leak cases. She warned Obama that prosecuting whistle-blowers would undermine his legacy. Brian had been told by the White House to avoid any "ask"s on specific issues, but she told the President that, according to his own logic, Drake was exactly the kind of whistle-blower who deserved protection.
As Drake tells it, his problems began on September 11, 2001. "The next seven weeks were crucial," he said. "It's foundational to why I am a criminal defendant today."
The morning that Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. was, coincidentally, Drake's first full day of work as a civilian employee at the N.S.A.-an agency that James Bamford, the author of "The Shadow Factory" (2008), calls "the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known." Drake, a linguist and a computer expert with a background in military crypto-electronics, had worked for twelve years as an outside contractor at the N.S.A. Under a program code-named Jackpot, he focussed on finding and fixing weaknesses in the agency's software programs. But, after going through interviews and background checks, he began working full time for Maureen Baginski, the chief of the Signals Intelligence Directorate at the N.S.A., and the agency's third-highest-ranking official.
Even in an age in which computerized feats are commonplace, the N.S.A.'s capabilities are breathtaking. The agency reportedly has the capacity to intercept and download, every six hours, electronic communications equivalent to the contents of the Library of Congress. Three times the size of the C.I.A., and with a third of the U.S.'s entire intelligence budget, the N.S.A. has a five-thousand-acre campus at Fort Meade protected by iris scanners and facial-recognition devices. The electric bill there is said to surpass seventy million dollars a year.
Nevertheless, when Drake took up his post the agency was undergoing an identity crisis. With the Cold War over, the agency's mission was no longer clear. As Drake puts it, "Without the Soviet Union, it didn't know what to do." Moreover, its technology had failed to keep pace with the shift in communications to cellular phones, fibre-optic cable, and the Internet. Two assessments commissioned by General Michael Hayden, who took over the agency in 1999, had drawn devastating conclusions. One described the N.S.A. as "an agency mired in bureaucratic conflict" and "suffering from poor leadership." In January, 2000, the agency's computer system crashed for three and a half days, causing a virtual intelligence blackout.
Agency leaders decided to "stir up the gene pool," Drake says. Although his hiring was meant to signal fresh thinking, he was given a clumsy bureaucratic title: Senior Change Leader/Chief, Change Leadership & Communications Office, Signals Intelligence Directorate.
The 9/11 attacks caught the U.S.'s national-security apparatus by surprise. N.S.A. officials were humiliated to learn that the Al Qaeda hijackers had spent their final days, undetected, in a motel in Laurel, Maryland-a few miles outside the N.S.A.'s fortified gates. They had bought a folding knife at a Target on Fort Meade Road. Only after the attacks did agency officials notice that, on September 10th, their surveillance systems had intercepted conversations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia warning that "the match begins tomorrow" and "tomorrow is Zero Hour."
Drake, hoping to help fight back against Al Qaeda, immediately thought of a tantalizing secret project he had come across while working on Jackpot. Code-named ThinThread, it had been developed by technological wizards in a kind of Skunk Works on the N.S.A. campus. Formally, the project was supervised by the agency's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, or SARC.
While most of the N.S.A. was reeling on September 11th, inside SARC the horror unfolded "almost like an 'I-told-you-so' moment," according to J. Kirk Wiebe, an intelligence analyst who worked there. "We knew we weren't keeping up." SARC was led by a crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney, whom Wiebe describes as "one of the best analysts in history." Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.'s biggest problem-data overload-and then solved it. But the agency's management hadn't agreed.
Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man with wisps of dark hair; he has the quiet, tense air of a preoccupied intellectual. Now retired and suffering gravely from diabetes, which has already claimed his left leg, he agreed recently to speak publicly for the first time about the Drake case. When we met, at a restaurant near N.S.A. headquarters, he leaned crutches against an extra chair. "This is too serious not to talk about," he said.
Binney expressed terrible remorse over the way some of his algorithms were used after 9/11. ThinThread, the "little program" that he invented to track enemies outside the U.S., "got twisted," and was used for both foreign and domestic spying: "I should apologize to the American people. It's violated everyone's rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world." According to Binney, Drake took his side against the N.S.A.'s management and, as a result, became a political target within the agency.
Binney spent most of his career at the agency. In 1997, he became the technical director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, a division of six thousand employees which focusses on analyzing signals intelligence. By the late nineties, the N.S.A. had become overwhelmed by the amount of digital data it was collecting. Binney and his team began developing codes aimed at streamlining the process, allowing the agency to isolate useful intelligence. This was the beginning of ThinThread.
In the late nineties, Binney estimated that there were some two and a half billion phones in the world and one and a half billion I.P. addresses. Approximately twenty terabytes of unique information passed around the world every minute. Binney started assembling a system that could trap and map all of it. "I wanted to graph the world," Binney said. "People said, 'You can't do this-the possibilities are infinite.' " But he argued that "at any given point in time the number of atoms in the universe is big, but it's finite."
As Binney imagined it, ThinThread would correlate data from financial transactions, travel records, Web searches, G.P.S. equipment, and any other "attributes" that an analyst might find useful in pinpointing "the bad guys." By 2000, Binney, using fibre optics, had set up a computer network that could chart relationships among people in real time. It also turned the N.S.A.'s data-collection paradigm upside down. Instead of vacuuming up information around the world and then sending it all back to headquarters for analysis, ThinThread processed information as it was collected-discarding useless information on the spot and avoiding the overload problem that plagued centralized systems. Binney says, "The beauty of it is that it was open-ended, so it could keep expanding."
Pilot tests of ThinThread proved almost too successful, according to a former intelligence expert who analyzed it. "It was nearly perfect," the official says. "But it processed such a large amount of data that it picked up more Americans than the other systems." Though ThinThread was intended to intercept foreign communications, it continued documenting signals when a trail crossed into the U.S. This was a big problem: federal law forbade the monitoring of domestic communications without a court warrant. And a warrant couldn't be issued without probable cause and a known suspect. In order to comply with the law, Binney installed privacy controls and added an "anonymizing feature," so that all American communications would be encrypted until a warrant was issued. The system would indicate when a pattern looked suspicious enough to justify a warrant.
But this was before 9/11, and the N.S.A.'s lawyers deemed ThinThread too invasive of Americans' privacy. In addition, concerns were raised about whether the system would function on a huge scale, although preliminary tests had suggested that it would. In the fall of 2000, Hayden decided not to use ThinThread, largely because of his legal advisers' concerns. Instead, he funded a rival approach, called Trailblazer, and he turned to private defense contractors to build it. Matthew Aid, the author of a heralded 2009 history of the agency, "The Secret Sentry," says, "The resistance to ThinThread was just standard bureaucratic politics. ThinThread was small, cost-effective, easy to understand, and protected the identity of Americans. But it wasn't what the higher-ups wanted. They wanted a big machine that could make Martinis, too."
The N.S.A.'s failure to stop the 9/11 plot infuriated Binney: he believed that ThinThread had been ready to deploy nine months earlier. Working with N.S.A. counterterrorism experts, he had planned to set up his system at sites where foreign terrorism was prevalent, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Those bits of conversations they found too late?" Binney said. "That would have never happened. I had it managed in a way that would send out automatic alerts. It would have been, Bang!"
Meanwhile, there was nothing to show for Trailblazer, other than mounting bills. As the system stalled at the level of schematic drawings, top executives kept shuttling between jobs at the agency and jobs with the high-paying contractors. For a time, both Hayden's deputy director and his chief of signals-intelligence programs worked at SAIC, a company that won several hundred million dollars in Trailblazer contracts. In 2006, Trailblazer was abandoned as a $1.2-billion flop.
Soon after 9/11, Drake says, he prepared a short, classified summary explaining how ThinThread "could be put into the fight," and gave it to Baginski, his boss. But he says that she "wouldn't respond electronically. She just wrote in a black felt marker, 'They've found a different solution.' " When he asked her what it was, she responded, "I can't tell you." Baginski, who now works for a private defense contractor, recalls her interactions with Drake differently, but she declined to comment specifically.
In the weeks after the attacks, rumors began circulating inside the N.S.A. that the agency, with the approval of the Bush White House, was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-the 1978 law, known as FISA, that bars domestic surveillance without a warrant. Years later, the rumors were proved correct. In nearly total secrecy, and under pressure from the White House, Hayden sanctioned warrantless domestic surveillance. The new policy, which lawyers in the Justice Department justified by citing President Bush's executive authority as Commander-in-Chief, contravened a century of constitutional case law. Yet, on October 4, 2001, Bush authorized the policy, and it became operational by October 6th. Bamford, in "The Shadow Factory," suggests that Hayden, having been overcautious about privacy before 9/11, swung to the opposite extreme after the attacks. Hayden, who now works for a security-consulting firm, declined to respond to detailed questions about the surveillance program.
When Binney heard the rumors, he was convinced that the new domestic-surveillance program employed components of ThinThread: a bastardized version, stripped of privacy controls. "It was my brainchild," he said. "But they removed the protections, the anonymization process. When you remove that, you can target anyone." He said that although he was not "read in" to the new secret surveillance program, "my people were brought in, and they told me, 'Can you believe they're doing this? They're getting billing records on U.S. citizens! They're putting pen registers' "-logs of dialled phone numbers-" 'on everyone in the country!' "
Drake recalled that, after the October 4th directive, "strange things were happening. Equipment was being moved. People were coming to me and saying, 'We're now targeting our own country!' " Drake says that N.S.A. officials who helped the agency obtain FISA warrants were suddenly reassigned, a tipoff that the conventional process was being circumvented. He added, "I was concerned that it was illegal, and none of it was necessary." In his view, domestic data mining "could have been done legally" if the N.S.A. had maintained privacy protections. "But they didn't want an accountable system."
Aid, the author of the N.S.A. history, suggests that ThinThread's privacy protections interfered with top officials' secret objective-to pick American targets by name. "They wanted selection, not just collection," he says.
A former N.S.A. official expressed skepticism that Drake cared deeply about the constitutional privacy issues raised by the agency's surveillance policies. The official characterizes him as a bureaucrat driven by resentment of a rival project-Trailblazer-and calls his story "revisionist history." But Drake says that, in the fall of 2001, he told Baginski he feared that the agency was breaking the law. He says that to some extent she shared his views, and later told him she feared that the agency would be "haunted" by the surveillance program. In 2003, she left the agency for the F.B.I., in part because of her discomfort with the surveillance program. Drake says that, at one point, Baginski told him that if he had concerns he should talk to the N.S.A.'s general counsel. Drake claims that he did, and that the agency's top lawyer, Vito Potenza, told him, "Don't worry about it. We're the executive agent for the White House. It's all been scrubbed. It's legal." When he pressed further, Potenza told him, "It's none of your business." (Potenza, who is now retired, declined to comment.)
Drake says, "I feared for the future. If Pandora's box was opened, what would the government become?" He was not about to drop the matter. Matthew Aid, who describes Drake as "brilliant," says that "he has sort of a Jesus complex-only he can see the way things are. Everyone else is mentally deficient, or in someone's pocket." Drake's history of whistle-blowing stretches back to high school, in Manchester, Vermont, where his father, a retired Air Force officer, taught. When drugs infested the school, Drake became a police informant. And Watergate, which occurred while he was a student, taught him "that no one is above the law."
Drake says that in the Air Force, where he learned to capture electronic signals, the FISA law "was drilled into us." He recalls, "If you accidentally intercepted U.S. persons, there were special procedures to expunge it." The procedures had been devised to prevent the recurrence of past abuses, such as Nixon's use of the N.S.A. to spy on his political enemies.
Drake didn't know the precise details, but he sensed that domestic spying "was now being done on a vast level." He was dismayed to hear from N.S.A. colleagues that "arrangements" were being made with telecom and credit-card companies. He added, "The mantra was 'Get the data!' " The transformation of the N.S.A., he says, was so radical that "it wasn't just that the brakes came off after 9/11-we were in a whole different vehicle."
Few people have a precise knowledge of the size or scope of the N.S.A.'s domestic-surveillance powers. An agency spokesman declined to comment on how the agency "performs its mission," but said that its activities are constitutional and subject to "comprehensive and rigorous" oversight. But Susan Landau, a former engineer at Sun Microsystems, and the author of a new book, "Surveillance or Security?," notes that, in 2003, the government placed equipment capable of copying electronic communications at locations across America. These installations were made, she says, at "switching offices" that not only connect foreign and domestic communications but also handle purely domestic traffic. As a result, she surmises, the U.S. now has the capability to monitor domestic traffic on a huge scale. "Why was it done this way?" she asks. "One can come up with all sorts of nefarious reasons, but one doesn't want to think that way about our government."
Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with "dictionary selection," in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, "General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn't put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need-it was getting every fish in the sea."
Binney considers himself a conservative, and, as an opponent of big government, he worries that the N.S.A.'s data-mining program is so extensive that it could help "create an Orwellian state." Whereas wiretap surveillance requires trained human operators, data mining is automated, meaning that the entire country can be watched. Conceivably, U.S. officials could "monitor the Tea Party, or reporters, whatever group or organization you want to target," he says. "It's exactly what the Founding Fathers never wanted."
On October 31, 2001, soon after Binney concluded that the N.S.A. was headed in an unethical direction, he retired. He had served for thirty-six years. His wife worked there, too. Wiebe, the analyst, and Ed Loomis, a computer scientist at SARC, also left. Binney said of his decision, "I couldn't be an accessory to subverting the Constitution."
Not long after Binney quit the N.S.A., he says, he confided his concerns about the secret surveillance program to Diane Roark, a staff member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the agency. Roark, who has flowing gray hair and large, wide-set eyes, looks like a waifish poet. But in her intelligence-committee job, which she held for seventeen years, she modelled herself on Machiavelli's maxim that it is better to be feared than loved. Within the N.S.A.'s upper ranks she was widely resented. A former top N.S.A. official says of her, "In meetings, she would just say, 'You're lying.' "
Roark agrees that she distrusted the N.S.A.'s managers. "I asked very tough questions, because they were trying to hide stuff," she says. "For instance, I wasn't supposed to know about the warrantless surveillance. They were all determined that no one else was going to tell them what to do."
Like Drake and Binney, Roark was a registered Republican, skeptical about bureaucracy but strong on national defense. She had a knack for recruiting sources at the N.S.A. One of them was Drake, who introduced himself to her in 2000, after she visited N.S.A. headquarters and gave a stinging talk on the agency's failings; she also established relationships with Binney and Wiebe. Hayden was furious about this back channel. After learning that Binney had attended a meeting with Roark at which N.S.A. employees complained about Trailblazer, Hayden dressed down the critics. He then sent out an agency-wide memo, in which he warned that several "individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow. . . . Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them." Roark says of the memo, "Hayden brooked no opposition to his favorite people and programs."
Roark, who had substantial influence over N.S.A. budget appropriations, was an early champion of Binney's ThinThread project. She was dismayed, she says, to hear that it had evolved into a means of domestic surveillance, and felt personally responsible. Her oversight committee had been created after Watergate specifically to curb such abuses. "It was my duty to oppose it," she told me. "That is why oversight existed, so that these things didn't happen again. I'm not an attorney, but I thought that there was no way it was constitutional." Roark recalls thinking that, if N.S.A. officials were breaking the law, she was "going to fry them."
She soon learned that she was practically alone in her outrage. Very few congressional leaders had been briefed on the program, and some were apparently going along with it, even if they had reservations. Starting in February, 2002, Roark says, she wrote a series of memos warning of potential illegalities and privacy breaches and handed them to the staffers for Porter Goss, the chairman of her committee, and Nancy Pelosi, its ranking Democrat. But nothing changed. (Pelosi's spokesman denied that she received such memos, and pointed out that a year earlier Pelosi had written to Hayden and expressed grave concerns about the N.S.A.'s electronic surveillance.)
Roark, feeling powerless, retired. Before leaving Washington, though, she learned that Hayden, who knew of her strong opposition to the surveillance program, wanted to talk to her. They met at N.S.A. headquarters on July 15, 2002. According to notes that she made after the meeting, Hayden pleaded with her to stop agitating against the program. He conceded that the policy would leak at some point, and told her that when it did she could "yell and scream" as much as she wished. Meanwhile, he wanted to give the program more time. She asked Hayden why the N.S.A. had chosen not to include privacy protections for Americans. She says that he "kept not answering. Finally, he mumbled, and looked down, and said, 'We didn't need them. We had the power.' He didn't even look me in the eye. I was flabbergasted." She asked him directly if the government was getting warrants for domestic surveillance, and he admitted that it was not.
In an e-mail, Hayden confirmed that the meeting took place, but said that he recalled only its "broad outlines." He noted that Roark was not "cleared to know about the expanded surveillance program, so I did not go into great detail." He added, "I assured her that I firmly believed that what N.S.A. was doing was effective, appropriate, and lawful. I also reminded her that the program's success depended on it remaining secret, that it was appropriately classified, and that any public discussion of it would have to await a later day."
During the meeting, Roark says, she warned Hayden that no court would uphold the program. Curiously, Hayden responded that he had already been assured by unspecified individuals that he could count on a majority of "the nine votes"-an apparent reference to the Supreme Court. According to Roark's notes, Hayden told her that such a vote might even be 7-2 in his favor.
Roark couldn't believe that the Supreme Court had been adequately informed of the N.S.A.'s transgressions, and she decided to alert Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, sending a message through a family friend. Once again, there was no response. She also tried to contact a judge on the FISA court, in Washington, which adjudicates requests for warrants sanctioning domestic surveillance of suspected foreign agents. But the judge had her assistant refer the call to the Department of Justice, which had approved the secret program in the first place. Roark says that she even tried to reach David Addington, the legal counsel to Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had once been her congressional colleague. He never called back, and Addington was eventually revealed to be one of the prime advocates for the surveillance program.
"This was such a Catch-22," Roark says. "There was no one to go to." In October, 2003, feeling "profoundly depressed," she left Washington and moved to a small town in Oregon.
Drake was still working at the N.S.A., but he was secretly informing on the agency to Congress. In addition to briefing Roark, he had become an anonymous source for the congressional committees investigating intelligence failures related to 9/11. He provided Congress with top-secret documents chronicling the N.S.A.'s shortcomings. Drake believed that the agency had failed to feed other intelligence agencies critical information that it had collected before the attacks. Congressional investigators corroborated these criticisms, though they found greater lapses at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.
Around this time, Drake recalls, Baginski warned him, "Be careful, Tom-they're looking for leakers." He found this extraordinary, and asked himself, "Telling the truth to congressional oversight committees is leaking?" But the N.S.A. has a rule requiring employees to clear any contact with Congress, and in the spring of 2002 Baginski told Drake, "It's time for you to find another job." He soon switched to a less sensitive post at the agency, the first of several.
As for Binney, he remained frustrated even in retirement about what he considered the misuse of ThinThread. In September, 2002, he, Wiebe, Loomis, and Roark filed what they thought was a confidential complaint with the Pentagon's Inspector General, extolling the virtues of the original ThinThread project and accusing the N.S.A. of wasting money on Trailblazer. Drake did not put his name on the complaint, because he was still an N.S.A. employee. But he soon became involved in helping the others, who had become friends. He obtained documents aimed at proving waste, fraud, and abuse in the Trailblazer program.
The Inspector General's report, which was completed in 2005, was classified as secret, so only a few insiders could read what Drake describes as a scathing document. Possibly the only impact of the probe was to hasten the end of Trailblazer, whose budget overruns had become indisputably staggering. Though Hayden acknowledged to a Senate committee that the costs of the Trailblazer project "were greater than anticipated, to the tune of, I would say, hundreds of millions," most of the scandal's details remained hidden from the public.
In December, 2005, the N.S.A.'s culture of secrecy was breached by a stunning leak. The Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that the N.S.A. was running a warrantless wiretapping program inside the United States. The paper's editors had held onto the scoop for more than a year, weighing the propriety of publishing it. According to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, President Bush pleaded with the paper's editors to not publish the story; Keller told New York that "the basic message was: You'll have blood on your hands." After the paper defied the Administration, Bush called the leak "a shameful act." At his command, federal agents launched a criminal investigation to identify the paper's source.
The Times story shocked the country. Democrats, including then Senator Obama, denounced the program as illegal and demanded congressional hearings. A FISA court judge resigned in protest. In March, 2006, Mark Klein, a retired A.T. & T. employee, gave a sworn statement to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was filing a lawsuit against the company, describing a secret room in San Francisco where powerful Narus computers appeared to be sorting and copying all of the telecom's Internet traffic-both foreign and domestic. A high-capacity fibre-optic cable seemed to be forwarding this data to a centralized location, which, Klein surmised, was N.S.A. headquarters. Soon, USA Today reported that A.T. & T., Verizon, and BellSouth had secretly opened their electronic records to the government, in violation of communications laws. Legal experts said that each instance of spying without a warrant was a serious crime, and that there appeared to be hundreds of thousands of infractions.
President Bush and Administration officials assured the American public that the surveillance program was legal, although new legislation was eventually required to bring it more in line with the law. They insisted that the traditional method of getting warrants was too slow for the urgent threats posed by international terrorism. And they implied that the only domestic surveillance taking place involved tapping phone calls in which one speaker was outside the U.S.
Drake says of Bush Administration officials, "They were lying through their teeth. They had chosen to go an illegal route, and it wasn't because they had no other choice." He also believed that the Administration was covering up the full extent of the program. "The phone calls were the tip of the iceberg. The really sensitive stuff was the data mining." He says, "I was faced with a crisis of conscience. What do I do-remain silent, and complicit, or go to the press?"
Drake has a wife and five sons, the youngest of whom has serious health problems, and so he agonized over the decision. He researched the relevant legal statutes and concluded that if he spoke to a reporter about unclassified matters the only risk he ran was losing his job. N.S.A. policy forbids initiating contact with the press. "I get that it's grounds for 'We have to let you go,' " he says. But he decided that he was willing to lose his job. "This was a violation of everything I knew and believed as an American. We were making the Nixon Administration look like pikers."
Drake got in touch with Gorman, who covered the N.S.A. for the Baltimore Sun. He had admired an article of hers and knew that Roark had spoken to her previously, though not about anything classified. He got Gorman's contact information from Roark, who warned him to be careful. She knew that in the past the N.S.A. had dealt harshly with people who embarrassed it.
Drake set up a secure Hushmail e-mail account and began sending Gorman anonymous tips. Half in jest, he chose the pseudonym The Shadow Knows. He says that he insisted on three ground rules with Gorman: neither he nor she would reveal his identity; he wouldn't be the sole source for any story; he would not supply her with classified information. But a year into the arrangement, in February, 2007, Drake decided to blow his cover, surprising Gorman by showing up at the newspaper and introducing himself as The Shadow Knows. He ended up meeting with Gorman half a dozen times. But, he says, "I never gave her anything classified." Gorman has not been charged with wrongdoing, and declined, through her lawyer, Laura Handman, to comment, citing the pending trial.
Starting on January 29, 2006, Gorman, who now works at the Wall Street Journal, published a series of articles about problems at the N.S.A., including a story describing Trailblazer as an expensive fiasco. On May 18, 2006, the day that Hayden faced Senate confirmation hearings for a new post-the head of the C.I.A.-the Sun published Gorman's exposé on ThinThread, which accused the N.S.A. of rejecting an approach that protected Americans' privacy. Hayden, evidently peeved, testified that intelligence officers deserved "not to have every action analyzed, second-guessed, and criticized on the front pages of the newspapers."
At the time, the government did not complain that the Sun had crossed a legal line. It did not contact the paper's editors or try to restrain the paper from publishing Gorman's work. A former N.S.A. colleague of Drake's says he believes that the Sun stories revealed government secrets. Others disagree. Steven Aftergood, the secrecy expert, says that the articles "did not damage national security."
Matthew Aid argues that the material Drake provided to the Sun should not have been highly classified-if it was-and in any case only highlighted that "the N.S.A. was a management nightmare, which wasn't a secret in Washington." In his view, Drake "was just saying, 'We're not doing our job, and it's having a deleterious effect on mission performance.' He was right, by the way." The Sun series, Aid says, was "embarrassing to N.S.A. management, but embarrassment to the U.S. government is not a criminal offense in this country." (Aid has a stake in this debate. In 1984, when he was in the Air Force, he spent several months in the stockade for having stored classified documents in a private locker. The experience, he says, sensitized him to issues of government secrecy.)
While the Sun was publishing its series, twenty-five federal agents and five prosecutors were struggling to identify the Times' source. The team had targeted some two hundred possible suspects, but had found no culprits. The Sun series attracted the attention of the investigators, who theorized that its source might also have talked to the Times. This turned out not to be true. Nevertheless, the investigators quickly homed in on the Trailblazer critics. "It's sad," an intelligence expert says. "I think they were aiming at the Times leak and found this instead."
Roark was an obvious suspect for the Times leak. Everyone from Hayden on down knew that she had opposed the surveillance program. After the article appeared, she says, "I was waiting for the shoe to drop." The F.B.I. eventually contacted her, and in February, 2007, she and her attorney met with the prosecutor then in charge, Steven Tyrrell, who was the head of the fraud section at the Justice Department. Roark signed an affidavit saying that she was not a source for the Times story or for "State of War," a related book that James Risen wrote. She also swore that she had no idea who the source was. She says of the experience, "It was an interrogation, not an interview. They treated me like a target."
Roark recalls that the F.B.I. agents tried to force her to divulge the identity of her old N.S.A. informants. They already seemed to know about Drake, Binney, and Wiebe-perhaps from the Inspector General's report. She refused to coöperate, arguing that it was improper for agents of the executive branch to threaten a congressional overseer about her sources. "I had the sense that N.S.A. was egging the F.B.I. on," she says. "I'd gotten the N.S.A. so many times-they were going to get me. The N.S.A. hated me." (The N.S.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigations.)
In the months that followed, Roark heard nothing. Finally, her lawyer placed the case in her "dead file."
On July 26, 2007, at 9 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, armed federal agents simultaneously raided the houses of Binney, Wiebe, and Roark. (At Roark's house, in Oregon, it was six o'clock.) Binney was in the shower when agents arrived, and recalls, "They went right upstairs to the bathroom and held guns on me and my wife, right between the eyes." The agents took computer equipment, a copy of the Inspector General complaint and a copy of a commercial pitch that Binney had written with Wiebe, Loomis, and Roark. In 2001, the N.S.A. indicated to Binney that he could pursue commercial projects based on ThinThread. He and the others thought that aspects of the software could be used to help detect Medicare fraud.
Binney professed his innocence, and he says that the agents told him, "We think you're lying. You need to implicate someone. " He believed that they were trying to get him to name Roark as the Times' source. He suggested that if they were looking for criminal conspirators they should focus on Bush and Hayden for allowing warrantless surveillance. Binney recalls an agent responding that such brazen spying didn't happen in America. Looking over the rims of his owlish glasses, Binney replied, "Oh, really?"
Roark was sleeping when the agents arrived, and didn't hear them until "it sounded as if they were going to pull the house down, they were rattling it so badly." They took computers and a copy of the same commercial pitch. Her son had been interested in collaborating on the venture, and he, too, became a potential target. "They believed everybody was conspiring," Roark says. "For years, I couldn't talk to my own son without worrying that they'd say I was trying to influence his testimony." Although she has been fighting cancer, she has spoken with him only sparingly since the raid.
The agents seemed to think that the commercial pitch contained classified information. Roark was shaken: she and the others thought they had edited it scrupulously to insure that it did not. Agents also informed her that a few scattered papers in her old office files were classified. After the raid, she called her lawyer and asked, "If there's a disagreement on classification, does intent mean anything?" The question goes to the heart of the Drake case.
Roark, who always considered herself "a law-and-order person," said of the raid, "This changed my faith." Eventually, the prosecution offered her a plea bargain, under which she would plead guilty to perjury, for ostensibly lying to the F.B.I. about press leaks. The prosecutors also wanted her to testify against Drake. Roark refused. "I'm not going to plead guilty to deliberately doing anything wrong," she told them. "And I can't testify against Tom because I don't know that he did anything wrong. Whatever Tom revealed, I am sure that he did not think it was classified." She says, "I didn't think the system was perfect, but I thought they'd play fair with me. They didn't. I felt it was retribution."
Wiebe, the retired analyst, was the most surprised by the raid-he had not yet been contacted in connection with the investigation. He recalls that agents locked his two Pembroke Welsh corgis in a bathroom and commanded his daughter and his mother-in-law, who was in her bathrobe, to stay on a couch while they searched his house. He says, "I feel I'm living in the very country I worked for years to defeat: the Soviet Union. We're turning into a police state." Like Roark, he says of the raid, "It was retribution for our filing the Inspector General complaint."
Under the law, such complaints are confidential, and employees who file them are supposed to be protected from retaliation. It's unclear if the Trailblazer complaint tipped off authorities, but all four people who signed it became targets. Jesselyn Radack, of the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower advocacy group that has provided legal support to Drake, says of his case, "It's the most severe form of whistle-blower retaliation I have ever seen."
A few days after the raid, Drake met Binney and Wiebe for lunch, at a tavern in Glenelg, Maryland. "I had a pretty good idea I was next," Drake says. But it wasn't until the morning of November 28, 2007, that he saw armed agents streaming across his lawn. Though Drake was informed of his right to remain silent, he viewed the raid as a fresh opportunity to blow the whistle. He spent the day at his kitchen table, without a lawyer, talking. He brought up Trailblazer, but found that the investigators weren't interested in the details of a defunct computer system, or in cost overruns, or in the constitutional conflicts posed by warrantless surveillance. Their focus was on the Times leak. He assured them that he wasn't the source, but he confirmed his contact with the Sun, insisting that he had not relayed any classified information. He also disclosed his computer password. The agents bagged documents, computers, and books, and removed eight or ten boxes of office files from his basement. "I felt incredibly violated," he says.
For four months, Drake continued coöperating. He admitted that he had given Gorman information that he had cut and pasted from secret documents, but stressed that he had not included anything classified. He acknowledged sending Gorman hundreds of e-mails. Then, in April, 2008, the F.B.I. told him that someone important wanted to meet with him, at a secure building in Calverton, Maryland. Drake agreed to the appointment. Soon after he showed up, he says, Steven Tyrrell, the prosecutor, walked in and told him, "You're screwed, Mr. Drake. We have enough evidence to put you away for most of the rest of your natural life."
Prosecutors informed Drake that they had found classified documents in the boxes in his basement-the indictment cites three-and discovered two more in his e-mail archive. They also accused him of shredding other documents, and of deleting e-mails in the months before he was raided, in an attempt to obstruct justice. Further, they said that he had lied when he told federal agents that he hadn't given Gorman classified information.
"They had made me into an enemy of the state just by saying I was," Drake says. The boxes in his basement contained copies of some of the less sensitive material that he had procured for the Inspector General's Trailblazer investigation. The Inspector General's Web site directs complainants to keep copies. Drake says that if the boxes did, in fact, contain classified documents he didn't realize it. (The indictment emphasizes that he "willfully" retained documents.) The two documents that the government says it extracted from his e-mail archive were even less sensitive, Drake says. Both pertained to a successor to Trailblazer, code-named Turbulence. One document listed a schedule of meetings about Turbulence. It was marked "unclassified/for official use only" and posted on the N.S.A.'s internal Web site. The government has since argued that the schedule should have been classified, and that Drake should have known this. The other document, which touted the success of Turbulence, was officially declassified in July, 2010, three months after Drake was indicted. "After charging him with having this ostensibly serious classified document, the government waved a wand and decided it wasn't so classified after all," Radack says.
Clearly, the intelligence community hopes that the Drake case will send a message about the gravity of exposing government secrets. But Drake's lawyer, a federal public defender named James Wyda, argued in court last spring that "there have never been two documents so benign that are the subject of this kind of prosecution against a client whose motives are as salutary as Tom's."
Drake insists, too, that the only computer files he destroyed were routine trash: "I held then, and I hold now, I had nothing to destroy." Drake, who left the N.S.A. in 2008, and now works at an Apple Store outside Washington, asks, "Why didn't I erase everything on my computer, then? I know how to do it. They found what they found."
Not everyone familiar with Drake's case is moved by his plight. A former federal official knowledgeable about the case says, "To his credit, he tried to raise these issues, and, to an extent, they were dealt with. But who died and left him in charge?"
In May, 2009, Tyrrell proposed a plea bargain: if Drake pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the Espionage Act and agreed to coöperate against the others, he would get a maximum of five years in prison. "They wanted me to reveal a conspiracy that didn't exist," Drake says. "It was all about the Times, but I had no knowledge of the leak." Drake says that he told prosecutors, "I refuse to plea-bargain with the truth."
That June, Drake learned that Tyrrell was leaving the government. Tyrrell was a Republican, and Drake was hopeful that a prosecutor appointed by the Obama Administration would have a different approach. But Drake was dismayed to learn that Tyrrell's replacement, William Welch, had just been transferred from the top spot in the Justice Department's public-integrity section, after an overzealous prosecution of Ted Stevens, the Alaska senator. A judge had thrown out Stevens's conviction, and, at one point, had held Welch in contempt of court. (Welch declined to comment.)
In April, 2010, Welch indicted Drake, shattering his hope for a reprieve from the Obama Administration. But the prosecution's case had shrunk dramatically from the grand conspiracy initially laid out by Tyrrell. (Welch accidentally sent the defense team an early draft of the indictment, revealing how the case had changed.) Drake was no longer charged with leaking classified documents, or with being part of a conspiracy. He is still charged with violating the Espionage Act, but now merely because of unauthorized "willful retention" of the five documents. Drake says that when he learned that, even with the reduced charges, he still faced up to thirty-five years in prison, he "was completely aghast."
Morton Halperin, of the Open Society Institute, says that the reduced charges make the prosecution even more outlandish: "If Drake is convicted, it means the Espionage Law is an Official Secrets Act." Because reporters often retain unauthorized defense documents, Drake's conviction would establish a legal precedent making it possible to prosecute journalists as spies. "It poses a grave threat to the mechanism by which we learn most of what the government does," Halperin says.
The Espionage Act has rarely been used to prosecute leakers and whistle-blowers. Drake's case is only the fourth in which the act has been used to indict someone for mishandling classified material. "It was meant to deal with classic espionage, not publication," Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University who is an expert on the statute, says.
The first attempt to apply the law to leakers was the aborted prosecution, in 1973, of Daniel Ellsberg, a researcher at the RAND Corporation who was charged with disclosing the Pentagon Papers-a damning secret history of the Vietnam War. But the case was dropped, owing, in large part, to prosecutorial misconduct. The second such effort was the case of Samuel L. Morison, a naval intelligence officer who, in 1985, was convicted for providing U.S. photographs of a Soviet ship to Jane's Defence Weekly. Morison was later pardoned by Bill Clinton. The third case was the prosecution, in 2005, of a Defense Department official, Lawrence Franklin, and two lobbyists for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, and the case against the lobbyists collapsed after the presiding judge insisted that prosecutors establish criminal intent. Unable to prove this, the Justice Department abandoned the case, amid criticism that the government had overreached.
Drake's case also raises questions about double standards. In recent years, several top officials accused of similar misdeeds have not faced such serious charges. John Deutch, the former C.I.A. director, and Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, both faced much less stringent punishment after taking classified documents home without authorization. In 2003, Sandy Berger, Clinton's national-security adviser, smuggled classified documents out of a federal building, reportedly by hiding them in his pants. It was treated as a misdemeanor. His defense lawyer was Lanny Breuer-the official overseeing the prosecution of Drake.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who served in the Bush Justice Department, laments the lack of consistency in leak prosecutions. He notes that no investigations have been launched into the sourcing of Bob Woodward's four most recent books, even though "they are filled with classified information that he could only have received from the top of the government." Gabriel Schoenfeld, of the Hudson Institute, says, "The selectivity of the prosecutions here is nightmarish. It's a broken system."
Mark Feldstein, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, warns that, if whistle-blowers and other dissenters are singled out for prosecution, "this has gigantic repercussions. You choke off the information that the public needs to judge policy."
Few people are more disturbed about Drake's prosecution than the others who spoke out against the N.S.A. surveillance program. In 2008, Thomas Tamm, a Justice Department lawyer, revealed that he was one of the people who leaked to the Times. He says of Obama, "It's so disappointing from someone who was a constitutional-law professor, and who made all those campaign promises." The Justice Department recently confirmed that it won't pursue charges against Tamm. Speaking before Congress, Attorney General Holder explained that "there is a balancing that has to be done . . . between what our national-security interests are and what might be gained by prosecuting a particular individual." The decision provoked strong criticism from Republicans, underscoring the political pressures that the Justice Department faces when it backs off such prosecutions. Still, Tamm questions why the Drake case is proceeding, given that Drake never revealed anything as sensitive as what appeared in the Times. "The program he talked to the Baltimore Sun about was a failure and wasted billions of dollars," Tamm says. "It's embarrassing to the N.S.A., but it's not giving aid and comfort to the enemy."
Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. "I think it's outrageous," he says. "The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers." _
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1O8TUZVGn
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5) Blood in the Amazon: Brazilian Activists Murdered as Deforestation Increases
by Benjamin Dangl
June 1, 2011
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/01-7
Early in the morning on May 24, in the northern Brazilian Amazon, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva got onto a motorcycle near the nature reserve they had worked on for over two decades. As the couple rode past the jungle they dedicated their lives to protecting, gunmen hiding near a bridge opened fire, killing them both.
Brazilian law enforcement officials said that the killing appeared to be the work of hired gunmen, due to the fact that an ear was cut off each of the victims. This is often done to prove to whoever paid for the killings that the job was carried out.
The murder took place the same day the Brazilian Congress passed a change to the forestry code that would allow agribusinesses and ranchers to clear even more land in the Amazon jungle. Deforestation rose 27 percent from August 2010 to April 2011 largely due to soybean plantations. The levels will likely rise if the changes to the forestry code are passed by the Senate.
Ribeiro knew he was in danger of being killed for his struggle against loggers, ranchers and large scale farmers who were deforesting the Amazon. In fact, just six months earlier, in November 2010 at an environmental conference in Manaus, Brazil, he told the audience "I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment. ... As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest."
The life and death of Ribeiro has been rightly compared to that of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, union leader and environmentalist who fought against logging and ranching, winning international attention for his successful campaigns against deforestation. In 1988, Mendes was murdered by gunmen hired by ranchers.
Just two weeks before he was killed, Mendes also spoke hauntingly about the likelihood that he would be murdered for his activism. "I don't want flowers, because I know you are going to pull them up from the forest. The only thing I want is that my death helps to stop the murderers' impunity..."
Yet since the murder of Mendes, impunity in the Brazilian countryside has become the norm. In the past 20 years, over 1,150 rural activists have been killed in conflicts related to land. Of these murders, less than 100 cases have gone to court, only 80 of the killers have been convicted, and just 15 of the people who hired the gunmen were found guilty, according to Catholic Land Pastoral, a group monitoring land conflicts. Impunity reigns in rural areas due to the corruption of judicial officials and police, and the wealth and power of the ranchers, farmers and loggers who are often the ones who order the killings.
The recent murder of Ribeiro and Santo combined with the danger posed by changes to the forestry code are devastating indications of the direction Brazil is heading in the Amazon. For some, the expansion of logging, ranching and soybean operations into the Amazon are inevitable steps toward economic progress. But for others, a different kind of progress is necessary if the planet is to survive. As Chico Mendes explained just days before his death in 1988, he wanted to "demonstrate that progress without destruction is possible."
Benjamin Dangl has worked as a journalist throughout Latin America and is the author of the new book, Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press). For more information, visit DancingwithDynamite.com. Email Bendangl@gmail.com
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6) New study: You can't live on minimum wage
BY L. L. BRASIER
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
9:23 PM, May. 30, 2011
http://www.freep.com/article/20110531/NEWS06/105310351/New-study-You-can-t-live-minimum-wage
Cameo Thomas of Jackson works two jobs as a nursing home aide to support her 4-year-old twin sons.
One job pays $9.50 an hour, the other $13.05. Sometimes she works 60 hours a week to make ends meet -- hard physical labor, most of it on her feet.
"Sometimes I get off work and think, 'Man, I'm going to need a new pair of shoes,' " the 23-year-old said.
Working harder and longer may not be enough to support a family in Michigan, particularly for employees in low-paying jobs such as retail sales, clerical work and home health care, according to a new study released today.
The Basic Economic Security Tables for Michigan, a study that analyzes the cost of essential needs for singles and families across Michigan, found the cost of providing basic necessities -- such as shelter, food and transportation -- far exceeds minimum wage and the paychecks of people working full-time in low-paying job categories.
Among the findings:
• Single Michigan residents without children must earn $12.24 an hour to support themselves.
• A mother with two young children -- like Thomas -- needs $24.49 an hour to house, clothe and feed her children. That's three times the minimum wage.
The report was done by Wider Opportunities for Women and the Michigan League for Human Services.
"It's staggering," said Gilda Jacobs, president of the league. Jacobs noted that although the state's unemployment rate is dropping, the number of requests for food assistance is climbing because many of the new jobs being created are low-paying.
"So if you put $60 worth of gas in your car, you can't buy your kid milk," she said. "With these kinds of salaries, you can't support your kids, you can't buy them clothes, save for college, or have money on hand for a car repair."
The detailed report helps explain why families often come up short at the end of the month when it's time to pay bills.
"The final income tally can be a bit of a sticker shock," said Matt Unrath of Wider Opportunities for Women, the advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that created the report using public data. "But when you go expense by expense, it makes sense. Whenever I make a presentation on this, families will say, 'Wow, so it's not my fault.' With these incomes, it's nearly impossible to cover the expenses, even if you worked 80 or 90 hours a week."
Herman Proby, who counsels low-income families at the Baldwin Center in Pontiac, spent a recent afternoon with a single mother of three who makes $7.54 an hour as a telemarketer.
"That's $880 a month," Proby said. "How do you live on that? When I ask her, she says there aren't any jobs out there. And there aren't. We're seeing a lot of people who are working hard, but not getting very far."
For Thomas, though, the future is looking brighter. She completed three years of classes and financial counseling in the Michigan $AVE$ program for low-income families and learned how to budget. Through the program, administered by Jackson's Community Action Agency, she has saved enough money to put a down payment soon on a house. The $AVE$ program matches her savings.
And she's continuing to work toward a college degree in criminal justice so she can some day work as a probation officer. Along the way, she's raising her sons, who are already looking forward to a birthday party in December, when they turn 5.
"Oh boy," she said. "I better start budgeting for that now."
For more information, visit wowonline.org
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7) "IAEA today admitted there is no such thing as 'safe' levels of radiation" - Allowable radiation standard based on 'benefit', not safety
by Tashny Sukumaran
Free Malaysia Today
June 2, 2011:
http://enenews.com/iaea-today-admitted-there-is-no-such-thing-as-safe-levels-of-radiation-allowable-radiation-standard-based-on-benefit-not-safety
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today admitted there is no such thing as "safe" levels of radiation. [...]
CAP vice-president Mohideen Abdul Kader told reporters after meeting the IAEA panel that they had agreed to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before allowing the plant to start operations.
Mohideen also said that the IAEA's radiation standards were merely an "international consensus" as studies had not found a safe level of radiation.
He also cited a study from the National Academy of Science which said that one out of five workers would suffer from cancer if exposed to what the IAEA deemed an allowable radiation level.
"The panel said there should be sufficient justification for the project," said Mohideen, "as their standards are not based on what is safe but how great the benefit."
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8) Japan Prime Minister Survives No-Confidence Vote
By MARTIN FACKLER
June 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/world/asia/03japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO - Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a bruising no-confidence vote in Parliament on Thursday, but only after promising to resign once his government makes progress in overcoming Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis and recovering from the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
The offer to resign appeared aimed at avoiding a destructive split in his governing Democratic Party, where there has been rising discontent with what many call Mr. Kan's plodding and indecisive response to the triple disaster. But it also appeared almost certain to prolong the political paralysis that has gripped Japan for years by making of Mr. Kan the latest Japanese prime minister to last only a short time in office.
Mr. Kan won the vote Thursday in the 480-seat lower house by a comfortable margin of 293-152, suggesting that his ploy to hold his party together had worked. In offering to resign, he said that he wanted to keep the Democrats intact to prevent power from reverting to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which sponsored the no-confidence vote.
In the buildup to the vote, the prime minister faced the threat of mass defections by Democratic lawmakers loyal to the party's disgruntled former kingmaker, Ichiro Ozawa. While it was unclear if these defections would have cost Mr. Kan the no-confidence vote, Mr. Ozawa was also making noises about possibly splitting off to form a new party.
"I want the younger generation to take over my responsibilities once I fulfill my duty," Mr. Kan told Parliament, signaling his intention to quit in the often oblique language of Japanese politics. "I will not destroy this Democratic Party."
While Mr. Kan left unclear when he would actually step down, some members of his party called for him to do so after the expected passage in the summer of a supplementary budget with additional funds for reconstruction. While the supplementary budget will likely total in the tens of billions of dollars, economists say it could cost at least a quarter of a trillion dollars to fully rebuild from the March 11 disaster, which left more than 24,000 dead or missing.
If he leaves office before the end of summer, Mr. Kan, a former civil activist who has been in office for just a year, would become the sixth prime minister to resign in five years. The succession of short-lived, ineffective prime ministers has been blamed for contributing to Japan's inability to escape from its two-decade-long economic and social stagnation.
In the aftermath of the March 11 tragedy, there had been hopes in Japan that the shock could motivate the nation to find a way out of its morass. However, voters appear to be increasingly disappointed with the response of their national leadership. Recent polls show voter approval of Mr. Kan's handling of the earthquake and its aftermath down near 20 percent or even lower.
In particular, Mr. Kan has come under intense public criticism for his government's apparently clumsy handling of the nuclear crisis, as well for delays in building temporary housing for the tens of thousands still homeless from the earthquake and tsunami, which ravaged hundreds of miles of coastline in northern Japan. His government has also suffered from the perception that it has not been forthcoming in informing the public about the risks from the radiation that continues to spew from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The spectacle of the no-confidence vote had led the public to sour on the political maneuvering at a time when many Japanese express hunger for strong leadership to lead their nation to recovery. On the streets of Tokyo, voters expressed disappointment and disgust with lawmakers on both sides for engaging in what they called petty political struggles.
"Sure, Prime Minister Kan is a weak leader but this is not the time for such political games," said Harumi Ishihara, 55, a commuter in Tokyo's crowded Shibuya train station. "It's irresponsible to do this when so many people are suffering in the northeast."
Ms. Ishihara echoed the view of many voters here that the opposition Liberal Democrats bore equal blame for the political paralysis, for trying to weaken Mr. Kan at a time when the country should be focused on rebuilding. Local media coverage has also been harsh in its coverage of the role of Mr. Ozawa, a scandal-tainted political operator whom many here see as trying to extract political revenge for Mr. Kan's exclusion of Mr. Ozawa and many of his supporters from the current cabinet.
Newspaper editorials blamed both Mr. Kan and the Liberal Democratic leader, Sadakazu Tanigaki, for the political impasse. "These parliamentary maneuvers are a joke and sickening," the daily Asahi Shimbun said in a recent editorial.
The Japanese media have also taken a dim view of the role of Yukio Hatoyama, the previous prime minister and a political ally of Mr. Ozawa. Mr. Hatoyama's announcement Wednesday that he would back the no-confidence vote along with Mr. Ozawa was seen as a factor in forcing Mr. Kan's promise to step aside.
On Thursday, Mr. Hatoyama explained his decision to turn against Mr. Kan by echoing the fears of many in the party that Mr. Kan's unpopularity could hurt the Democrats in future elections.
"This is not a time for stagnation," Mr. Hatoyama said in Parliament. "The atmosphere inside the party is very grim."
Apparently appeased by Mr. Kan's offer to resign, Mr. Hatoyama and other Democratic critics of Mr. Kan ended up voting against the no-confidence measure. Mr. Ozawa abstained from the vote.
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9) Brazil, After a Long Battle, Approves an Amazon Dam
"The $17 billion dam, which is expected to start producing electricity in 2015, would divert the Xingu River along a 62-mile stretch in Pará State. Environmental groups say it will flood more than 120,000 acres of rain forest and settlements, displacing 20,000 to 40,000 people and releasing large quantities of methane. The Ibama spokeswoman put the number of displaced people at 20,000 but insisted that no indigenous people would be removed from their lands."
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/americas/02brazil.html?ref=world
SÃO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's environmental agency gave final approval on Wednesday for a giant hydroelectric power plant in the Amazon rain forest that has been at the center of a protracted battle between the government and environmentalists over the fate of indigenous people.
After three decades of planning, the environmental agency, Ibama, granted a license to the North Energy consortium for the dam, which will be the world's third largest, capable of producing 11,200 megawatts of electricity.
Opponents said they would not give up the fight against the Belo Monte dam, which they said would flood a large part of the Xingu River basin, affecting local fishing and forcing tens of thousands of indigenous people from their native lands.
"We will not cede an inch," said Antônia Melo, the coordinator of Xingu Vivo Para Sempre, a group based in Altamira, a city that will be partly flooded. "Our indignation and our strength to fight only increases with every mistake and every lie of this government."
Belo Monte became a priority for the previous government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who contended that the plant was critical to Brazil's future energy needs. His successor, President Dilma Rousseff, has remained committed to the project.
The license was granted by the environmental agency after "robust technical analysis," the government said in a news release. The North Energy consortium will pay $1.9 billion for "social-environmental measures," to help people affected by the dam's construction and to offset environmental effects, an agency spokeswoman said. The government itself has committed $314 million, she said.
Conservationists have become increasingly critical of Brazil's efforts to protect the Amazon rain forest. Brazil's deforestation numbers increased sharply over the past nine months, and the lower house of Congress last week approved a revision of the Forest Code that would open up protected areas to deforestation while granting amnesty to agribusiness developers for previous forest-clearing. The Senate has yet to vote on the measure.
"The government has an important choice - to go back to a future of wasteful publicly funded mega-projects and frontier chaos, or ahead, to the future of a sustainable and equitable green economy leader, with rule of law, good governance and a secure natural and investment environment," said Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund.
The $17 billion dam, which is expected to start producing electricity in 2015, would divert the Xingu River along a 62-mile stretch in Pará State. Environmental groups say it will flood more than 120,000 acres of rain forest and settlements, displacing 20,000 to 40,000 people and releasing large quantities of methane. The Ibama spokeswoman put the number of displaced people at 20,000 but insisted that no indigenous people would be removed from their lands.
"This is a tragic day for the Amazon," said Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. "Despite all the promises the dam builders are making around mitigation and compensation, this dam is going to spell disaster for the local people."
Myrna Domit contributed reporting.
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10) Former Police Chief Is Sentenced for Cover-Up in Mexican's Death
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/us/02sentence.html?ref=us
A former Pennsylvania police chief who was convicted of impeding a federal investigation into the beating death of a Mexican immigrant was sentenced to 13 months in prison on Wednesday, a lower-than-expected term in a case that had become a cause célèbre for Hispanics.
Judge A. Richard Caputo of Federal District Court in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., said the sentencing guidelines were too harsh for Matthew Nestor, the former police chief in Shenandoah, Pa., according to Mr. Nestor's lawyer, Joseph Nahas. A presentencing report by probation officials had recommended 57 to 71 months.
Another officer, William Moyer, a lieutenant who was convicted of lying to federal investigators, was sentenced to three months, said his lawyer, Enid Harris.
The men were accused of helping a group of white teenage football players cover up their roles in the death of Luis Ramírez, 25, an illegal immigrant who was fatally beaten in 2008 in Shenandoah.
In January, a jury acquitted the officers of the most serious charges, but convicted them of obstructing the investigation and lying to investigators. Both men have said they will appeal.
"The sentencing was extremely fair," Mr. Nahas said by telephone, referring to that of his client, Mr. Nestor. "But on the other hand, he's innocent, so one day is too much."
Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which prosecuted the case, said in a statement that the officers "chose to obstruct the very investigation they were charged with conducting."
But Mr. Nahas argued that his client had a good chance of winning on appeal. Prosecutors accused Mr. Nestor of misdirecting the federal investigation into Mr. Ramírez's death by omitting the names of the suspects from a police report and by failing to mention that shortly after the attack, he had spoken on the phone with Tamara Piekarsky, the mother of one of the two young men convicted in the assault.
"How did those two omissions obstruct a federal investigation?" Mr. Nahas said. "It was not material."
The two men convicted of a hate crime by a federal jury in October - Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky - were each sentenced this year to nine years in prison.
Their lawyers argued that the federal trial amounted to double jeopardy - being tried twice for the same crime - because they had already been acquitted of the most serious charges in a trial in state court in 2009. They are also appealing.
Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino rights group, called the sentence "disappointing," but said the fact that the officers had been convicted and sentenced at all showed that "we're on the path to justice having been done."
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11) Americans Are Joining Flotilla to Protest Israeli Blockade
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
June 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?ref=us
When an international flotilla sails for Gaza this month to challenge Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory, among the boats will be an American ship with 34 passengers, including the writer Alice Walker and an 86-year-old whose parents died in the Holocaust.
A year ago, nine people in a flotilla of six boats were killed when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish boat in international waters off the coast of Gaza. The Israelis said their commandos were attacked and struck back in self-defense, but the Turks blamed the Israelis for using live ammunition. The raid soured relations between Israel and Turkey and intensified pressure on Israel to end the naval blockade.
Organizers said the new flotilla, scheduled to leave in late June from a port they would not identify, had at least 1,000 passengers on about 10 boats. One boat will carry Spaniards, another Canadians, another Swiss and another Irish.
The Americans have named their boat "The Audacity of Hope," lifting the title of a book by President Obama to make a point, said Leslie Cagan, a political organizer who is the coordinator of the American boat.
"We're sending a message to our own government that we think it could play a much more positive role in not only ending the siege of Gaza, but also ending the whole occupation" of Palestinian land, she said. "The phrase does capture what we believe, which is that it is possible to make change in a positive way, and that's a very hopeful stance."
After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, Israel imposed an embargo on the area, with Egypt's help, essentially trapping the population in an effort to enforce security and to squeeze the militant group. Although Israel has maintained the sea blockade, it loosened the land blockade after the international condemnation that followed the raid on the Turkish boat. And last week, Egypt officially reopened the Rafah border crossing, allowing more people to pass between Egypt and Gaza.
Noam Katz, minister for public diplomacy at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said in an interview, "We see this flotilla as a political statement in order to support Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is a terror organization that took control of Gaza and its people and is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. We have a blockade, and we are going to enforce this blockade."
The American passengers say they support the Palestinian people, not Hamas. They liken their strategy to that of the Freedom Riders, who 50 years ago rode buses to the American South to challenge segregation.
Gabriel Schivone, a student at the University of Arizona who is joining the flotilla, said, "It's in the tradition of Dr. King's direct-action principles, to create a situation so tension-packed that it forces the world to look and see what's happening to the Palestinians."
To explain why she was joining the flotilla, Hedy Epstein, the 86-year-old, said, "The American Jewish community and Israel both say that they speak for all Jews. They don't speak for me. They don't speak for the Jews in this country who are going to be on the U.S. boat, and the many others standing behind us."
The American boat is owned by a Greek company and registered in Delaware, Ms. Cagan said. It will carry letters from Americans to Palestinians, not aid. About a quarter of the passengers are Jewish. Among the crew is a former captain in the Israeli Air Force who refused to fly missions in Gaza.
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