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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-June 29, 2011
Pelican Bay Prisoners Go On Hunger Strike to Protest Grave Conditions
Lawyers, Advocates, Organizations Hold Press Conference, Voice Prisoner Demand
Press Contact: Isaac Ontiveros
Communications Director, Critical Resistance
Office: 510 444 0484; Cell: 510 517 6612
What: Press Conference
When: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 11:00am
Where: Elihu M. Harris State of California Office Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland, CA
Oakland-Prisoners at the notorious Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, CA will initiate an indefinite hunger strike on July 1st, 2011 to protest condition in the prison's Security Housing Unit (SHU). Lawyers and advocates who have been in contact with the prisoners will hold a press conference Thusday June 30th at the Oakland Federal Building, at 11am to rally support for the strike and put pressure on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to respond to the prisoners' demands. Prisoners have delivered their demands to Pelican Bay warden Greg Lewis, the CDCR, and to Governor Jerry Brown. Their demands include an end to long-term solitary confinement, collective punishment, and forced interrogation on gang affiliation. The prisoners have also stated that they are willing to give up their lives unless their demands are met.
"The prisoners inside the SHU at Pelican Bay know the risk that they are taking going on hunger strike," says Manuel LaFontaine, of All of Us or None, an organization that supports former prisoners and part of a Bay Area-based Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition supporting Pelican Bay's prisoners. La Fontaine continues, "The CDCR must recognize that the SHU produces conditions of grave violence, such that people lose their lives in there all the time." U.S. and international human rights organizations have condemned Security Housing Units as having cruel, inhumane, and torturous conditions. SHU prisoners are kept in windowless, 6 by 10 foot cells, 231/2 hours a day, for years at a time. The CDCR operates four Security Housing Units in its system at Corcoran,California Correctional Institution, Valley State Prison for Women as well as Pelican Bay.
Recent work and hunger strikes in Georgia and Ohio prisons were successful in both winning some concessions and alerting the public to the conditions inside US prisons. "People who are in prison are already being punished. They are still human beings and should not have to lose their civil and human rights" says Karen Shain, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
Pelican Bay's hunger strike begins amidst the recent landmark Supreme Court ruling condemning California's prison overcrowding and order the reduction of its population by at least 33,000 people. At the center of the overcrowding ruling were dozens of prisoner deaths a year due to the lack of basic medical and other healthcare. Thursday's Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity press conference will touch off several events happening in cities across North America in the coming weeks.
Legal workers, advocates, and experts on the California prison system will be available for comment and interviews.
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June 30 solidarity call out: Support the strike! Stop the cuts! UK Uncut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucQ48ScFH1E&feature=player_embedded
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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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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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CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY SPECIAL CIRCULAR: PELICAN BAY HUNGER STRIKE BEGINS JULY 1
(Please post widely)
CONTENTS:
-- Introduction
-- Campaign to End the Death Penalty Solidarity Statement
-- CEDP Statement of Solidarity with Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers
-- Solidarity Statement from Corcoran State Prisoners
-- Take Action!
INTRODUCTION
Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California's Pelican Bay state prison have announced that they will begin an indefinite hunger strike on July 1. Although prison officials aim to keep prisoners silenced and divided, the hunger strike has shown solidarity across racial, ethnic and religious lines and demands improvements in cruel and inhumane prison conditions.
In his statement "Why Prisoners are Protesting", prisoner Mutop DuGuya states, "Effective July 1st we are initiating a peaceful protest by way of an indefinite hunger strike in which we will not eat until our core demands are met.....we have decided to put our fate in our own hands. Some of us have already suffered a slow, agonizing death in which the state has shown no compassion toward these dying prisoners. Rather than compassion they turn up their ruthlessness. No one wants to die. Yet under this current system of what amounts to intense torture, what choice do we have? If one is to die, it will be on our own terms."
Prisons in this country stand as silent tombs. Millions are warehoused in "correctional" facilities that serve only to punish and dehumanize. These prisoners in Pelican Bay are standing bravely against tortuous conditions and those of us on the outside must stand with them and shine a light into the dark cages that politicians want us to forget.
CAMPAIGN TO END THE DEATH PENALTY SOLIDARITY STATEMENT
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) stands in solidarity with the prisoners of Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) who will be engaged in a hunger strike on July 1 in protest of their deplorable conditions.
The prisoners at Pelican Bay prison in California live in a world in which collective punishment is common, sunlight is rare, and food is used as a tool of coercion. They live in a world that is so unlike the world that most of us take for granted that it strains our comprehension. The world of the prisoners has one goal, to create passive, compliant prisoners; prisoners who will not clamor for more; prisoners who will not rock the boat; prisoners who will not threaten to expose just how rotten the prison system is.
This world has failed. While these demands show us a world turned upside down, they also show us a prison population that is fighting back against their appalling conditions. The prisoners have stated that their hunger strike will be indefinite until their demands are met. This means they could face serious health issues or even death. For them, a fighting death is preferable to the hell they are living.
The Campaign to End the Death Penalty supports the Pelican Bay hunger strikers and stand with all prisoners who seek to better their lives. We stand in solidarity with these brave fighters in their quest for justice and humanity.
The demands of the prisoners clearly show the capricious and dehumanizing conditions in which they the prisoners are calling for:
1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
Debriefing produces false information - wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.
3. End long-term solitary confinement. Segregation should be used as a last resort and prisoners require access to adequate healthcare and natural sunlight.
4. Provide wholesome, nutritious meals and access to vitamins.
5. Expand and provide constructive programming such as photos of loved ones, weekly phone calls, extension of visitation time, calendars, and radios, etc.
You can read the prisoner's full text of their demands here: http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/take-action/
SOLIDARITY STATEMENT FROM CORCORAN STATE PRISONERS
Statement of Solidarity with the Pelican Bay Collective Hunger Strike on July 1st.
From: the N.C.T.T. Corcoran SHU
Greetings to all who support freedom, justice, and equality. We here of the N.C.T.T. SHU stand in solidarity with, and in full support of the July 1st hunger strike and the 5 major action points and sub-points as laid out by the Pelican Bay Collective in the Policy Statements (See, "Archives", P.B.S.P.-SHU-D corridor hunger strike).
What many are unaware of is that facility 4B here in Corcoran SHU is designated to house validated prisoners in indefinite SHU confinement and have an identical ultra-super max isolation unit short corridor modeled after corridor D in Pelican Bay, complete with blacked out windows a mirror tinted glass on the towers so no one but the gun tower can see in [into our cells], and none of us can see out; flaps welded to the base of the doors and sandbags on the tiers to prevent "fishing" [a means of passing notes, etc. between cells using lengths of string]; IGI [Institutional Gang Investigators] transports us all to A.C.H. [?] medical appointments and we have no contact with any prisoners or staff outside of this section here in 4B/1C C Section the "short corridor" of the Corcoran SHU. All of the deprivations (save access to sunlight); outlines in the 5-point hunger strike statement are mirrored, and in some instances intensified here in the Corcoran SHU 4B/1C C Section isolation gang unit.
Medical care here, in a facility allegedly designed to house chronic care and prisoners with psychological problems, is so woefully inadequate that it borders on intentional disdain for the health of prisoners, especially where diabetics and cancer are an issue. Access to the law library is denied for the most mundane reasons, or, most often, no reason at all. Yet these things and more are outlined in the P.B.S.P.-SHU five core demands.
What is of note here, and something that should concern all U.S. citizens, is the increasing use of behavioral control (torture units) and human experimental techniques against prisoners not only in California but across the nation. Indefinite confinement, sensory deprivation, withholding food, constant illumination, use of unsubstantiated lies from informants are the psychological billy clubs being used in these torture units. The purpose of this "treatment" is to stop prisoners from standing in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and prevent them from exercising their basic human rights.
Many lawsuits have been filed in opposition to the conditions in these conditions ... [unreadable] yet the courts have repeatedly re-interpreted and misinterpreted their own constitutional law ... [unreadable] to support the state's continued use of these torture units. When approved means of protest and redress of rights are prove meaningless and are fully exhausted, then the pursuit of those ends through other means is necessary.
It is important for all to know the Pelican Bay Collective is not (emphasis in original) alone in this struggle and the broader the participation and support for this hunger strike, the other such efforts, the greater the potential that our sacrifice now will mean a more humane world for us in the future. We urge all who reads these words to support us in this effort with your participation or your voices call your local news agencies, notify your friends on social networks, contact your legislators, tell your fellow faithful at church, mosques, temple or synagogues. Decades before Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs were described by Congressman Ralph Metcalfe as "the control unit treatment program is long-term punishment under the guise of what is, in fact, pseudo-scientific experimentation."
Our indefinite isolation here is both inhumane and illegal and the proponents of the prison industrial complex are hoping that their campaign to dehumanize us has succeeded to the degree that you don't care and will allow the torture to continue in your name. It is our belief that they have woefully underestimated the decency, principles, and humanity of the people. Join us in opposing this injustice without end. Thank you for your time and support.
In Solidarity,
N.C.T.T. Corcoran - SHU
4B/1C - C Section
Super-max isolation Unit
TAKE ACTION!
The Hunger Strikers need support from outside of prison bars. Here are a few things you can do:
Sign the Petition. http://www.change.org/petitions/support-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-at-pelican-bay-state-prison
Get the word out about the hunger strike and the prisoner's demands to your family, friends, church, community groups, and over social networking sites.
Attend protests in solidarity. Rallies planned in San Francisco, Eureka, CA, Montreal, Toronto and New York. Send protest info to: http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/take-action/ to be listed!
Stay informed. Check the blog regularly for updates http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/.
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Carlos Montes' Court Date is July 6. Call AG Holder that day!
(202) 514-2001
Support Carlos Montes!
National Call-in Day to
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Please call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
at (202) 514-2001
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in ______(state). I am calling to tell Attorney General Holder:
1. Drop the charges! Hands off Carlos Montes!
2. Stop the FBI raids and Grand Jury repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists.
3. Return all property to Carlos Montes and the other activists raided by the FBI.
On Wednesday, July 6, Carlos Montes will go to a Los Angeles court to face six felony charges and enter a plea. The charges all deal with firearms, ammunition and permits. Like millions of other Americans, Carlos has for years held legal permits for guns. The fact is that the charges against Carlos carry a total penalty of up to 18 years, and are aimed at his effective political organizing against war and for people's civil rights.
Carlos is a longtime Chicano activist known for his leadership during the 1968 L.A. high school reform walkouts (see HBO film "Walkout!") and the immigrants' rights mega-marches of 2006. More recently in September 2010, Carlos Montes' name appeared on the FBI search warrant left in the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, where the protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention were centered. The attack on Carlos Montes is part of a sweeping campaign tied to 23 Midwest activists whose homes the FBI raided or who were subpoenaed to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's Grand Jury in Chicago, as the Washington Post reported.
In addition, when the LA Sheriffs broke down Carlos' door and ransacked his home, they took political documents, a computer, cell phones and meeting notes having nothing to do with the legal charges. Later, the FBI approached Carlos to ask him questions about the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the target of this new McCarthyism. Those who know the history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement understand the repression Montes now faces.
When Carlos went to court on June 16, he demanded police and court documents. Not surprisingly, the District Attorney grew angry, at first refusing, and eventually relenting. There is the not-so-hidden hand of the FBI at work here and its goal is to disrupt and criminalize activists and movements for social justice.
Make no mistake: The U.S. government trial of Carlos Montes is an attack on the immigrants' rights and anti-war movements. So please call July 6 and let Attorney General Holder know we are building a movement that will not bow down to dirty tricks and political repression.
In addition, the Los Angeles Committee to Stop FBI Repression
is mobilizing to pack the courtroom at
8:30a.m. on July 6 when Carlos Montes appears at
Alhambra Courthouse,
150 W Common Wealth, Alhambra, CA 91801. See map.
We invite others to organize solidarity protests, events, or participate in the CSFR Call In Day on July 6, as you see fit.
Please sign the petition for Carlos on the International Action Center website.
Visit www.StopFBI.net or write StopFBI@gmail.com or call 612-379-3585.
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 55414
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STOP BOMBING LIBYA!
Sat. July 9, 12 noon
Protest at Powell and Market Sts., SF
Please bring your friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers to the San Francisco protest on Saturday July 9, 2011, to demand "Stop the Bombing of Libya!" There will be a joint action that day in Washington, D.C. in front of the White House.
Contrary to the absurd argument that the bombing of Libya does not constitute a "hostility," this is fierce and illegal war aimed at carrying out regime change in the country that possesses the largest oil reserves in Africa and the ninth largest in the world.
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Tripoli on June 17 against the U.S./NATO bombing and the terrible toll it has taken on the people, economy and infrastructure of Libya. Of course, you didn't see any coverage of this huge demonstration in the corporate media. That massive outpouring of humanity undoubtedly included many people who have grievances against the current Libyan government. But the people of Tripoli, like people everywhere, stand together against bombing by foreign powers in pursuit of an imperial agenda. Libyans want peace and they must be free to determine their own destiny.
The people of the United States are adding their voice of opposition on Saturday, July 9 in San Francisco and at the White House. By a margin of 2-to-1, the American people oppose this illegal and criminal war. There is no such thing as a "humanitarian" cruise missile. The U.S. government is spending $10 million a day bombing Libya while it bombs Afghanistan and still occupies Iraq with 47,000 troops.
In the name of "protecting civilians" NATO is killing civilians-and describing them as "legitimate military targets."
On June 20, for instance, NATO and the Pentagon pummeled the birthday party of a four-year-old boy with heavy missiles. They killed 16 civilians, including the four-year-old and his mom, as well as other children and their parents. The four-year-old was the grandson of Khweldi el-Hamedi, an associate of Colonel Gaddafi who participated in the 1969 coup that overthrew the old monarchy.
NATO is killing the civilian family members of the Libyan government in an attempt to break the will of those they have targeted for destruction and overthrow. The Pentagon used the same type of tactic in the 1991 Iraq war.
At a time when the U.S. government says that it is broke and that tens of thousands of teachers and nurses and other workers are being fired because of the "budget crisis," there seems to be limitless funds for war, bombing, invasion and occupation.
Please join us Saturday, July 9!
Three ways that you can help:
1. Endorse.
2. Download the flyer or poster and help spread the word.
3. Make a donation.
Call 415-821-6545 or visit www.ANSWERsf.org for more info or to volunteer.
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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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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July 12-22
THE UNIMAGINABLE JOURNEY of S. Brian Willson an American Peacemaker
BAY AREA TOUR DATES:
TUESDAY JULY 12 • SANTA ROSA 7:15pm - Santa Rosa Friends House, 684 Benicia Dr.
WEDNESDAY JULY 13 • WALNUT CREEK 7:00pm - Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center, 55 Eckley Ln.
THURSDAY JULY 14 • SEBASTOPOL 7:00pm - Community Church of Sebastopol, 1000 Gravenstein Hwy North (sponsored by Copperfields)
FRIDAY JULY 15 • SAN RAFAEL 7:30pm - First United Methodist Church, 9 Ross Valley Dr. (at Third)
SUNDAY JULY 17 • SAN FRANCISCO 12:30pm - First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin St. (at Geary)
MONDAY JULY 18 • BERKELEY 6:00pm (talk begins at 7) - Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. (at Bonita)
TUESDAY JULY 19 • SAN JOSE 7:00pm - San Jose Peace AND Justice Center, 48 S. 7th St.
WEDNESDAY JULY 20 • CAPITOLA 7:30pm - Capitola Book Café, 1475 41st Ave., Capitola
FRIDAY JULY 22 • SEASIDE 5:00pm - Peace Resource Center, 1364 Fremont Blvd.
BLOOD ON THE TRACKS is available for purchase from your favorite bookseller or from PM Press: www.pmpress.org (ISBN 978-1-60486-421-2)• For more information: bloodonthetracks.info • "Like" the book page on Facebook!
Follow Brian's journey...from high school jock...to Viet Nam commander...to peace activist...seeking right livelihood...and now...cycling to your town with his new book!
SUMMER 2011 BOOK TOUR
SPONSORS
Global Exchange
Joanna Macy
Unitarian Universalists for Peace, San Francisco
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians
Veterans For Peace San Francisco
Mt. Diablo Peace Center (Walnut Creek)
KPFA
ANSWER - SF Bay Area
Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition (BALASC)
Peaceworkers (San Francisco)
Marin Task Force on the Americas
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Buddhist Peace Fellowship (Marin County)
School of the Americas Watch West (SOAWW)
The Metta Center
Pace e Bene
San Francisco Friends Meeting - Peace Committee
American Friends Service Committee Pacific Mountain Region
Progressive Democrats of America- San Francisco (PDA-SF)
Western States Legal Foundation
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (Palo Alto)
VFW Bill Motto Post 5888
Veterans For Peace Santa Cruz
People United for Peace of Santa Cruz County
Resource Center for Nonviolence
GI Rights Hotline, Santa Cruz Node
Ecumenical Peace Institute (Berkeley)
CODE PINK
Marin Friends Meeting
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Physicians for a National Health Program California is having our 2nd annual California Single-Payer Health Care Summer Conference at USC's Tutor Campus Center Ballroom on Saturday, July 16th, 2011 from 9am - 5pm.
Summer Conference 2011 is designed to teach attendees about just, guaranteed, comprehensive health care for ALL who live in California. We are gearing this conference toward professionals working in health, policy, advocacy, education, and organizing arenas.
This year's conference will feature Dr. Carmen Rita Nevarez, Immediate Past President, American Public Health Association as our keynote speaker, plus three Leadership Institutes that will help you develop your skills to build the movement through public speaking, coalition building or grassroots advocacy.
Ticket prices are on a sliding scale, and people who are "new to the movement" receive a discount.
For more information and to register, go to healthisahumanright.eventbrite.com. Please also download our flyer here. Please help us spread the word!
If your organization would like to sponsor this event, you can download our sponsorship form here.
Hope you can join us this summer in Los Angeles. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Thanks,
Molly Tavella, MPH
Shearer Student Fellow
Physicians for a National Health Program California
2344 6th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 665-8523 office
(408) 892-1255 mobile
(510) 665-6027 fax
molly@pnhpcalifornia.org
www.cahpsa.org
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FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE AND POLICE STATE TERROR
Saturday, August 20 at 2:00pm
Location: In front of SF City Hall, Polk Street side, between Grove & McAllister
On the 34th Birthday of Idriss Stelley, Killed by SFPD on 6-12-01 at the Sony Metreon Complex,
The event is meant to launch a citywide police accountability and transparency COLLECTIVE comprised of socially mindful grassroots entities , social/racial Justice activists, and "progressive "city officials, as well as mayoral candidates, HOLD THEM TO THEIR PROMISES !
Performances, music, spoken word, and speakers.
If you would like to speak or perform,
please contact Jeremy Miller at 415-595-2894, djasik87.9@gmail.com,
or mesha Monge-Irizarry at 415-595-8251
Please join our facebook group at
Idriss Stelley Foundation !
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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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(Please forward widely)
Save the dates of October 6, 15 to protest wars; and May 15-22, 2012--Northern California UNAC will be discussing plans for solidarity actions around the Chicago G-8 here.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC) CALLS FOR ACTIONS IN OCTOBER
TO MARK 10 YEARS OF WAR ON AFGHANISTAN
On June 22, the White House defied the majority of Americans who want an end to the war in Afghanistan. Instead of announcing the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops, contractors, bases, and war dollars, Obama committed to removing only one twentieth of the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan over the next eight months. Another 23,000 will supposedly be withdrawn just in time to influence the 2012 elections. Even if the President follows thru on this plan, nearly 170,000 US soldiers and contractors will remain in Afghanistan. All veterans and soldiers will be raising the question, "Who will be the last U.S. combatant to die in Afghanistan?"
In truth, the President's plan is not a plan to end the war in Afghanistan. It was, instead, an announcement that the U.S. was changing strategy. As the New York Times reported, the US will be replacing the "counterinsurgency strategy" adopted 18 months ago with the kind of campaign of drone attacks, assassinations, and covert actions that the US has employed in Pakistan.
At a meeting of the United National Antiwar Committee's National Coordinating Committee, held in NYC on June 18, representatives of 47 groups voted to endorse the nonviolent civil resistance activities beginning on October 6 in Washington, D.C. and to call for nationally coordinated local actions on October 15 to protest the tenth anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan. UNAC urges activists in as many cities as possible to hold marches, picket lines, teach-ins, and other events to say:
· Withdraw ALL US/NATO Military Forces, Contractors, and Bases out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya NOW!
· End drone attacks on defenseless populations in Pakistan and Yemen!
· End US Aid to Israel! Hands Off Iran!
· Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! Money for Jobs and Education, Not for War and Incarceration!
Note these dates of upcoming significant events:
· November 11-13 UNAC National Conference - a gathering of all movement activists to learn, share, plan future actions.
· May 15-22, 2012 International Protest Actions against war criminals attending NATO meeting and G-8 summit in Chicago.
Challenge the NATO War Makers in Chicago May 15-22, 2012
NATO and the G8 are coming to Chicago - so are we!
The White House has just announced that the U.S. will host a major international meeting of NATO, the US-commanded and financed 28-nation military alliance, in Chicago from May 15 to May 22, 2012. It was further announced that at the same time and place, there will be a summit of the G-8 world powers. The meetings are expected to draw heads of state, generals and countless others.
At a day-long meeting in New York City on Saturday, June 18, the United National Antiwar Committee's national coordinating committee of 69 participants, representing, 47 organizations, unanimously passed a resolution to call for action at the upcoming NATO meeting.
UNAC is determined to mount a massive united outpouring in Chicago during the NATO gathering to put forth demands opposing endless wars and calling for billions spent on war and destruction be spent instead on people's needs for jobs, health care, housing and education.
CHALLENGE THE NATO WAR MAKERS
Whereas, the U.S. is the major and pre-eminent military, economic and political power behind NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and
Whereas, the U.S. will be hosting a major NATO gathering in the spring of 2012, and
Whereas, U.S. and NATO-allied forces are actively engaged in the monstrous wars, occupations and military attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, the Middle East and elsewhere,
Be it resolved that:
1) UNAC, in conjunction with a broad range of groups and organizations that share general agreement with the major demands adopted at our 2010 Albany, NY national conference, initiate a mass demonstration at the site of the NATO gathering, and
2) UNAC welcomes and encourages the participation of all groups interested in mobilizing against war and for social justice in planning a broad range of other NATO meeting protests including teach-ins, alternative conferences and activities organized on the basis of direct action/civil resistance, and
3) UNAC will seek to make the NATO conference the occasion for internationally coordinated protests, and
4) UNAC will convene a meeting of all of the above forces to discuss and prepare initial plans to begin work on this spring action.
Resolution passed unanimously by the National Coordinating Committee of UNAC on Saturday, June 18, 2011
click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
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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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Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant Main Building Underwater, 10 Mile Mandatory Evacuation Area
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zosA6pPH_E&feature=player_embedded
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Gundersen: Intake Structure that cools reactor and spent fuel pool is probably most vulnerable part of Ft. Calhoun nuke plan - Critical that it stays dry (VIDEO)
June 28th, 2011 at 06:26 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ESVDI2OQZ4&feature=player_embedded
Arnie Gundersen on Five O'clock Shadow with Robert Knight, WBAI, June 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm EDT:
* Intake structure probably the most vulnerable, not auxiliary and containment buildings...
* Intake structure draws in river water that cools reactor and spent fuel pool... critical that it stay dry...
* If gets water in it and emergency service water pumps fail then you've got a case where you're going to cause fuel damage...
* Probably the most vulnerable at Ft Calhoun...
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Black Agenda Report Morning Shot 6.21.2011: Defying The Tomb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LKj0RFjZ9Q&feature=player_embeddedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LKj0RFjZ9Q&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Give It Back!
http://blip.tv/labor-beat/give_it_back-5315509
The Executive Summit of CEOs and CFOs at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago on June 14, 2011 was the target of a broad coalition of community and labor organizations, put together by Stand Up! Chicago. Several thousand protesters successfully pulled off 3 coordinated feeder marches (housing, jobs, education) that transformed the hub of corporate Chicago at Michigan and Wacker into protest central. We begin with the small band of movement artists (teachers, students and activists) as they plan the visuals and create the huge puppets (Kings of Corporate Welfare) which became the visual rallying points of the Give It Back march and rally. We show the process of how the big march came together and how working people were able to appropriate Chicago's showplace of big business and convert it into a movement theatrical backdrop. The CEOs at the Hyatt went on with their meeting, and a city-wide movement gained confidence in its organizing skills. Rod Wilson of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization observed: "This is definitely the beginning, not the end, not the culminating, but the beginning." Length - 18:33. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Japanese Anti-Nuc Song Gone Viral
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AylBxsiUSws&feature=related
Kazuyoshi Saito On Ustream 2011/04/08
Song and Lyrics: Kazuyoshi Saito
"You have been telling a lie"
When we walk around this country,
we can find 54 Nuke power plants
My text book and CM always told me,
"It's SAFE"
You have been telling a lie,
then your excuse is just "UNEXPECTED"
I remember the clear sky,
but now, it turns black rain
You've been telling a lie,
it was exposed after all, I know
Yeah, it was a lie, "Nuke is completely safe"
You've been telling a lie,
I just wanna eat such a delicious spinach once again.
Yeah, it was a lie,
You should have noticed this ball game
We can't stop the contaminated wind anymore
Do you accept if you find it about how many people would be exposed by the radiation?
How do you think? I'm asking you, Jap Gov.
When you leave this town,
Could you find delicious water?
Tell me, whatever, there's no way to hide
They are all suck, Tepco, Hepco, Chuden and Kanden
We never dream a dream anymore
But they are all suck
They still keep going
They are truely suck
I wanna take action, how could I handle this feeling?
They are telling a lie....
We are all suck....
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Flood Alert: Brownsville,NE Levee Breach- Cooper Nuclear Plant
Jun 20, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcIrqrKLIyM
Brownsville NE levee is breaching at Brownsville Bridge -
Brownsville is where the Cooper Nuclear Plant is located
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Dr Helen Caldicott - Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4ITrXVJMKeQ
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Choosing a Profession
An old country preacher had a teenage son, and it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young Men his age, the boy didn't really know what he wanted to do, and he didn't seem too concerned about it. One day, while the boy was away at school, his father decided to try an experiment. He went into the boy's room and placed on his study table four objects...
1. A Bible.....?
2. A silver dollar.....?
3. A bottle of whisky......?
4. And a Playboy magazine.....?
'I'll just hide behind the door,' the old preacher said to himself. 'When he comes home from school today, I'll see which object he picks up.
If it's the Bible, he's going to be a preacher like me, and what a blessing that would be!
If he picks up the dollar, he's going to be a business man, and that would be okay, too.
But if he picks up the bottle, he's going to be a no-good drunken bum, and Lord, what a shame that would be.
And worst of all if he picks up that magazine he's going to be a
skirt-chasing womanizer.'
The old man waited anxiously, and soon heard his son's foot-steps as he entered the house whistling and headed for his room.
The boy tossed his books on the bed, and as he turned to leave the room he spotted the objects on the table..
With curiosity in his eye, he walked over to inspect them. Finally, he picked up the Bible and placed it under his arm. He picked up the silver dollar and dropped into his pocket. He uncorked the bottle and took a big drink, while he admired this month's centerfold.
'Lord have mercy,' the old preacher disgustedly whispered.
'He's gonna run for Congress.'
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Stop Police Brutality: Justice for Eric Radcliff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB8GpiXuSV4&NR=1
22 year old Eric Radcliff was shot and killed by police officers from the 35th district on the morning of Saturday May 21st, 2011. According to witnesses he was unarmed. The incident took place on the 5800 Block of Mascher Street in the 5th and Olney Section.
OUR COMMUNITY DEMANDS JUSTICE
WE THE FAMILIES AND FRIENDS OF ERIC RADCLIFF ARE CONCERNED THAT JUSTICE HAS NOT BEEN SERVED. WE BELIEVE THAT THE POLICE OFFICERS USED EXCESSIVE FORCE. ERIC DID NOT HAVE TO DIE.
OUR DEMANDS
1. Open An Investigation Into the May 21st Shooting Death of 22 year old Eric Radcliff by officers of the Philadelphia Police Department's 35th District.
2. End Police Brutality! Serve and Protect, Not Disrespect and Victimize!
3. LETS GET OUR HOUSE IN ORDER. Let's Unite for Real Security and To Build a Better Future for Ourselves
Please come Join in UNITY AND LOVE! God is Good, We ARE winning!
JusticeforEricRadcliff@gmail.com
215-954-2272 for more information
VIA Justice for Eric Radcliff
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Stop Police Brutality: Justice for Albert Pernell Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGyR9Y2LPss
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*High Alert* - Fire -Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant near Omaha Nebraska- Flooding Missouri River
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHZdub3n0mI&feature=player_embedded
\Five O'Clock Shadow" with Robert Knight and Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates
Fire knocks out spent fuel cooling pool at nuclear plant near Omaha - Operating under heightened alert level because of nearby flooding on Missouri River.
On June 6, 2011, the Fort Calhoun pressurized water nuclear reactor 20 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska entered emergency status due to imminent flooding from the Missouri River. A day later, there was an electrical fire requiring plant evacuation. Then, on June 8th, NRC event reports confirmed the fire resulted in the loss of cooling for the reactor's spent fuel pool.
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Empty Chairs
AFLCIONow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3juhx3GJQQ
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Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBEipg81uLw&feature=player_embedded
Original estimates of xenon and krypton releases remain the same, but a TEPCO recalculation shows dramatic increases in the release of hot particles. This confirms the results of air filter monitoring by independent scientists. Fairewinds' Arnie Gundersen explains how hot particles may react in mammals while escaping traditional detection. Reports of a metallic taste in the mouth, such as those now being reported in Japan and on the west coast, are a telltale sign of radiation exposure.
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'Fukushima media cover-up - PR success, public health disaster'
June 11, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_rAX9TzY2A&feature=player_embedded
Residents of the Fukushima district, and those who lived near-by have not only faced radiation exposure but also social exclusion... That's according to Dr. Robert Jacobs, Professor of nuclear history, at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
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QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from Taggart Siegel, director of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN. Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this engaging and ultimately uplifting film weaves an unusual and dramatic story of the heartfelt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers from around the world including Michael Pollan, Gunther Hauk and Vandana Shiva. Together they reveal both the problems and the solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature.
Official Film Website: http://www.queenofthesun.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoeQodrVoM
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Autopsy Released in Police Shooting of Man Holding Nozzle
Douglas Zerby was shot 12 times, in the chest, arms and lower legs.
Watch Mary Beth McDade's report
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-long-beach-belmont-shore-shooting,0,2471345.story
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I Wanna Be A Pirate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppynM1lcst8
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Detained for photography in Baltimore Parts 1 and 2:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iMr76atjUA
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JOFwbiI8fQ
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Arrested for Filming Police in MD?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ew29IFVHw&NR=1
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Woman 'detained' for filming police search launches high court challenge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2MtGCp5scM&NR=1
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Adam Kokesh body slammed, choked, police brutality at Jefferson Memorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUU3yCy3uI&feature=player_embedded#at=575
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
ustogaza1's Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/ustogaza1
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS
http://fairewinds.com/updates
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) held a special ACRS meeting Thursday May 26, 2011 on the current status of Fukushima. Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak for 5 minutes concerning the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident as it pertains to the 23 Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR's) in the US and containment integrity. Mr. Gundersen was the first engineer to brief the NRC on the implication of Main Steam Isolation Valve (MSIV) Leakage in 1974, and he has been studying containment integrity since 1972. The NRC has constantly maintained in all of its calculations and reviews that there is zero probability of a containment leaking. For more than six years, in testimony and in correspondence with the NRC, Mr. Gundersen has disputed the NRC's stand that containment systems simply do not and cannot leak. The events at Fukushima have proven that Gundersen was correct. The explosions at Fukushima show that Mark 1 containments will lose their integrity and release huge amounts of radiation, as Mr. Gundersen has been telling the NRC for many years.
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Guy on wheelchair taken down by officers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdkJxw1mPoM
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Paradise Gray Speaks At Jordan Miles Emergency Rally 05/06/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJOLz1EYDYE&feature=player_embedded
Police Reassigned While CAPA Student's Beatdown Investigated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK-6IsP3dUg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Pittsburgh Student Claims Police Brutality; Shows Hospital Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_j_AVsTXZc&feature=relmfu
Justice For Jordan Miles
By jasiri x
http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Even though Pittsburgh Police beat Jordan Miles until he looked like this: (Photo at website)
And even though Jordan Miles, an honor student who plays the viola, broke no laws and committed no crimes, the Federal Government decided not to prosecute the 3 undercover Pittsburgh Police officers who savagely beat him.
To add insult to injury, Pittsburgh's Mayor and Police Chief immediately reinstated the 3 officers without so much as a apology. An outraged Pittsburgh community called for an emergency protest to pressure the local District Attorney to prosecute these officers to the fullest extent of the law.
Below is my good friend, and fellow One Hood founding member Paradise Gray (also a founding member of the Blackwatch Movement and the legendary rap group X-Clan) passionately demanding Justice for Jordan Miles and speaking on the futility of a war of terror overseas while black men are terrorized in their own neighborhoods.
For more information on how you can help get Justice For Jordan Miles go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
http://vimeo.com/22706805
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing, Discusses Global Radiation Exposures and Consequences with Gundersen from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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New Video - Lupe Fiasco ft. Skylar Grey - 'Words I Never Said'
Thu, Apr 28 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0
Lupe Fiasco addresses some heavy issues in the latest video for his new single, 'Words I Never Said,' featuring Skylar Grey. In the 5 minute and 45 second dose of reality, Lupe tackles issues such as the war on terrorism, devastation, conspiracy theories, 9/11 and genocide. From the opening lyrics of "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullsh*t", Lupe doesn't hold back as he voices his socio-political concerns.
"If you turn on TV all you see's a bunch of what the f-ks'
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain't Jersey Shore, homie that's the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn't say s-t
That's why I ain't vote for him, next one either
I'm a part of the problem, my problem is I'm peaceful."
Skylar Grey (who also lends her vocals to Dirty money's 'Coming Home' and Eminem's 'I Need A Doctor') does an excellent job of complementing the Alex Da Kid produced track.
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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W.E. A.L.L. B.E.: Miss. Medical Examiner Dr. Adel Shaker On Frederick Carter Hanging (4/19/2011)
http://blip.tv/file/5057532
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. However, several times throughout, the narrator tends to imply that if it werent for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuba's natural environment would be destroyed by the influx of tourism, ergo, the embargo is saving nature. But the Cuban scientists and naturalists tell a slightly different story. But I don't want to spoil the delightfully surprising ending. It's a beautiful film of a beautiful country full of beautiful, articulate and well-educated people....bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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VIDEO: SWAT Team Evicts Grandmother
Take Back the Land- Rochester Eviction Defense March 28, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2axN1zsZno&feature=player_embedded
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B. D. S. [Boycott, Divest, Sanction against Israel]
(Jackson 5) Chicago Flashmob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4tXe2HKqqs&feature=player_embedded
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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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BP Oil Spill Scientist Bob Naman: Seafood Still Not Safe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VdxvMnDls
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Exclusive: Flow Rate Scientist : How Much Oil Is Really Out There?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsHl3kn63ZA&NR=1
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Keep the Arboretum Free
Dear Arboretum Supporter,
It's been a few months since the Board of Supervisors extended the non-resident fee at the Arboretum until September 30th, 2013. Such policy and ongoing decisions are continuing to greatly impact our neighborhoods and city resources and out of this widespread concern a new coalition has formed - Take Back Our Parks. Community and park advocates have joined together from across the city, including representatives from Keep Arboretum Free, with the common goals of keeping parks and recreation facilities open and accessible to all, stopping privatization of public park properties, protecting the natural character of our parklands and ensuring inclusive community input in planning and decision-making.
This past week a key effort was made towards some of these goals when four City Supervisors placed a measure on the November ballot to put a moratorium on fees for park resources and the long-term leasing of club-houses to private organizations. The Parks For The Public measure can be an important step towards ending the loss of access and growing privatization that is a fallout of the Recreation and Park Department's strategy of using parks as a revenue source and which has imposed policies such as the Arboretum fee.
Please visit the TBOP website to learn more about the Parks For The Public ordinance available for voters on the ballot this fall: http://www.takebackourparks.org/
It is vital that the public have a chance to shape the issues regarding our parks. We encourage you to write to the four sponsoring Supervisors (Avalos, Campos, Mar and Mirkarimi) to thank them for introducing Parks For The Public and let them know that you support limiting the privatization and unwarranted commercialization of our parks.
Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org
John.Avalos@sfgov.org
Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
David.Campos@sfgov.org
Please help spread the news about this measure to your community in the city and thank you very much for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Campaign to Keep The Arboretum Free
www.keeparboretumfree.org
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
* take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
* ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Stop Coal Companies From Erasing Labor Union History
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-coal-companies-from-erasing-labor-union-history
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
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/
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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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!
Take Action! Tweet for Troy!
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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"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
Suggested text: "My name is __________, I am from _______(city), in
______(state). I am calling _____ to demand he call off the Grand Jury
and stop FBI repression against the anti-war and Palestine solidarity
movements. I oppose U.S. government political repression and support
the right to free speech and the right to assembly of the 23 activists
subpoenaed. We will not be criminalized. Tell him to stop this
McCarthy-type witch hunt against international solidarity activists!"
If your call doesn't go through, try again later.
Update: 800 anti-war and international solidarity activists
participated in four regional conferences, in Chicago, IL; Oakland,
CA; Chapel Hill, NC and New York City to stop U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald's Grand Jury repression.
Still, in the last few weeks, the FBI has continued to call and harass
anti-war organizers, repressing free speech and the right to organize.
However, all of their intimidation tactics are bringing a movement
closer together to stop war and demand peace.
We demand:
-- Call Off the Grand Jury Witch-hunt Against International Solidarity
Activists!
-- Support Free Speech!
-- Support the Right to Organize!
-- Stop FBI Repression!
-- International Solidarity Is Not a Crime!
-- Stop the Criminalization of Arab and Muslim Communities!
Background: Fitzgerald ordered FBI raids on anti-war and solidarity
activists' homes and subpoenaed fourteen activists in Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Michigan on September 24, 2010. All 14 refused to
speak before the Grand Jury in October. Then, 9 more Palestine
solidarity activists, most Arab-Americans, were subpoenaed to appear
at the Grand Jury on January 25, 2011, launching renewed protests.
There are now 23 who assert their right to not participate in
Fitzgerald's witch-hunt.
The Grand Jury is a secret and closed inquisition, with no judge, and
no press. The U.S. Attorney controls the entire proceedings and hand
picks the jurors, and the solidarity activists are not allowed a
lawyer. Even the date when the Grand Jury ends is a secret.
So please make these calls to those in charge of the repression aimed
against anti-war leaders and the growing Palestine solidarity
movement.
Email us to let us know your results. Send to info@StopFBI.net
**Please sign and circulate our 2011 petition at http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
In Struggle,
Tom Burke,
for the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
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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
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
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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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Courage to Resist needs your support
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
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Intense Clashes Ease in Cairo
"Many of those who rushed to Tahrir Square on Tuesday expressed disbelief at the intensity of the fighting. 'This is not what we called for when we took to the streets on January 25th,' said Salma Samer, 23. 'This is not the revolution we imagined.' ...Protest groups called for an open sit-in in Tahrir Square to start on Wednesday, earlier than originally planned, and are demanding an immediate end to emergency law and the removal of several top officials, including the interior minister, the finance minister and the prosecutor general. By late afternoon thousands were still in the square and the surrounding streets. It was unclear how many planned to spend the night. 'I will bring my tent and camp out in Tahrir until Tantawi leaves,' said Mohammed Abdel Moti, 47. 'There won't be any true justice while the military is in power.'"
By DINA SALAH AMER
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/world/middleeast/30egypt.html?hp
2) Feds Show Fake Safety Records in W.Va. Mine Blast
"Federal investigators first revealed they had found two sets of books - one focused on safety, the other on production - during a private meeting with the victims' families Tuesday night. It's one of the few revelations to come from the ninth briefing since the investigation began last summer into the deadliest U.S. coalfield disaster in four decades."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/29/us/AP-US-Mine-Explosion-Families.html?ref=us
3) Hackers Release More Data From Arizona Police
By RIVA RICHMOND
June 29, 2011, 1:51 pm
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/hackers-release-more-data-from-arizona-police/?src=busln
4) Unemployment Rises in More Than Half of US Metros
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/29/business/AP-US-Metro-Unemployment.html?src=busln
5) Public Workers Strike in Britain Over Pensions
By SARAH LYALL
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/world/europe/01britain.html?hp
6) Five Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment
By Kevin Gosztola, AlterNet
Posted on June 30, 2011, Printed on June 30, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151468/5_outrageous_examples_of_fbi_intimidation_and_entrapment
7) US extends drone strikes to Somalia
First drone strike in Somalia reported to have wounded senior al-Shabab militants
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk
June 30, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/30/us-drone-strikes-somalia
8) Al Qaeda still greatest danger, U.S. adviser says
"Speaking at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Brennan said, 'Indeed, this is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts.'"
From Carol Cratty, CNN Senior Producer
June 29, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/29/counterterrorism.strategy/
9) As Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns and Vermont Rages ...
We've Almost Lost Nebraska
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
June 29, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.com/wasserman06292011.html
10) A Safety Valve for Inmates, the Arts, Fades in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/us/01prison.html?ref=us
11) Cuomo Will Seek to Lift Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing
By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/cuomo-will-seek-to-lift-drilling-ban.html?ref=nyregion
12) Democratic Action by Working People Critical in Today’s Environmental Crisis
By Bonnie Weinstein
July/August 2011 Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/
13) Fukushima: The End of Nuclear Power?
By Dave Walters with an Introduction by Stuart King
July/August Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_11/julaug_11_02.html
14) Secrets of the Deep Future
How Capitalist Energy Crimes Have Screwed Up Our Planet For Longer Than You Will Ever Know... and What You Can Do About It Now
By Chris Kinder
July/August Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_11/julaug_11_03.html
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1) Intense Clashes Ease in Cairo
"Many of those who rushed to Tahrir Square on Tuesday expressed disbelief at the intensity of the fighting. 'This is not what we called for when we took to the streets on January 25th,' said Salma Samer, 23. 'This is not the revolution we imagined.' ...Protest groups called for an open sit-in in Tahrir Square to start on Wednesday, earlier than originally planned, and are demanding an immediate end to emergency law and the removal of several top officials, including the interior minister, the finance minister and the prosecutor general. By late afternoon thousands were still in the square and the surrounding streets. It was unclear how many planned to spend the night. 'I will bring my tent and camp out in Tahrir until Tantawi leaves,' said Mohammed Abdel Moti, 47. 'There won't be any true justice while the military is in power.'"
By DINA SALAH AMER
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/world/middleeast/30egypt.html?hp
CAIRO - Clashes between Cairo residents and security forces eased Wednesday afternoon after deepening into pitched street battles, the first since the revolution that toppled Egypt's government five months ago.
The clashes began Tuesday evening when the police refused to allow a crowd of people to enter a central theater for an event commemorating protesters killed during the 18-day revolution in January. Many in the crowd said they were relatives of those who died and fought with the police to gain entry. The police responded by attacking the crowd, until they reached the square. There, thousands of people, outraged at hearing of the harsh police action, joined in the clashes, which lasted into the night.
On Wednesday morning, tear gas hung over the streets around the debris-strewn central Tahrir Square as the police fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, who responded with stones and homemade firebombs. At least 75 civilians were hospitalized and an additional 500 were treated at the scene, said the health minister, Hatem Ashraf Shehata. At least 32 police officers were also injured, he said.
The crowds chanted against the country's transitional government, which took power in January after the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, was forced out of office. "Down with Field Marshal Tantawi!" they shouted, in reference to the leader of the transitional government. "Down with the regime!" Many called for the removal of top officials and for trials of former senior members of the Mubarak government to move forward faster.
The street battles wound down by Wednesday afternoon, and the army deployed around the Interior Ministry building, which had been the site of intense fighting. In a statement posted on Facebook, the cabinet of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said the clashes were part of an organized effort to generate chaos in the country and urged all young Egyptians to protect the revolution. The Interior Ministry called the crowds armed thugs.
Many of those who rushed to Tahrir Square on Tuesday expressed disbelief at the intensity of the fighting. "This is not what we called for when we took to the streets on January 25th," said Salma Samer, 23. "This is not the revolution we imagined."
The prime minister said Wednesday on state television that the police only used violence in self-defense and to protect public property. He added that Egypt was slowly moving toward stability before the clashes and that a police reform program was under way.
Protest groups called for an open sit-in in Tahrir Square to start on Wednesday, earlier than originally planned, and are demanding an immediate end to emergency law and the removal of several top officials, including the interior minister, the finance minister and the prosecutor general.
By late afternoon thousands were still in the square and the surrounding streets. It was unclear how many planned to spend the night. "I will bring my tent and camp out in Tahrir until Tantawi leaves," said Mohammed Abdel Moti, 47. "There won't be any true justice while the military is in power."
Lara El Gibaly contributed reporting.
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2) Feds Show Fake Safety Records in W.Va. Mine Blast
"Federal investigators first revealed they had found two sets of books - one focused on safety, the other on production - during a private meeting with the victims' families Tuesday night. It's one of the few revelations to come from the ninth briefing since the investigation began last summer into the deadliest U.S. coalfield disaster in four decades."
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/29/us/AP-US-Mine-Explosion-Families.html?ref=us
BEAVER, W.Va. (AP) - Coal company managers pressured miners to generate a second set of reports omitting chronic safety problems to mislead inspectors before an underground explosion killed 29 men last year, federal regulators said Tuesday.
Kevin Stricklin, coal administrator for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, said top management at the Upper Big Branch mine was required to countersign safety inspection books that collect miners' daily reports on conditions. The mine was owned by Massey Energy until Alpha Natural Resources bought its rival this month.
"The investigation team concluded that the managers were aware that chronic hazardous conditions were not recorded," he said during a briefing on the federal investigation. Testimony from some of the 266 witnesses MSHA has interviewed also "indicated that management pressured examiners to not record hazards in the books."
Federal investigators first revealed they had found two sets of books - one focused on safety, the other on production - during a private meeting with the victims' families Tuesday night. It's one of the few revelations to come from the ninth briefing since the investigation began last summer into the deadliest U.S. coalfield disaster in four decades.
Alpha Natural Resources spokesman Ted Pile said Wednesday the company was hearing about the faked reports for the first time.
"It's a claim I'm sure we'll look into as we conduct our own review of what happened," Pile said in an email to The Associated Press.
In a public briefing Wednesday, Stricklin showed side-by-side comparisons of records that purported to document the same shift on three different dates in the month before the accident. In each case, the official book that inspectors would have seen showed few, if any, hazards, while the production reports indicated various problems with faulty machinery, explosive methane gas and bad roof conditions.
"If a coal mine wants to keep two sets of books, that's their own business," Stricklin said. "They can keep five sets of books if they want. But what they're required to do is list all the hazards in the official book.
"This is the book that not only MSHA looks at ... but it should be the book that miners and other people who are going into the mine should look at so they would be aware of any conditions in the mine before they go in," Stricklin said.
On April 5, 2010, the day of the blast, a pre-shift inspection report identified very few hazards. But Stricklin says other documents showed six of 10 conveyor belts needed to be coated with pulverized limestone to prevent coal dust from exploding, and five belts needed cleaning.
Bobbie Pauley, the only woman who worked underground at Upper Big Branch, said she was not surprised by MSHA's revelation.
"You put in an inspection report what you wanted the inspectors to see," said Pauley, who lost fiance Howard "Boone" Payne in the blast.
"Zero, zero, zero deters MSHA from coming back. If they see a potential problem recorded in a book, then they're going to come back and investigate it time after time after time," she said. "Well, no coal operator wants to be pounded by MSHA every day.
Pauley returned to Upper Big Branch only briefly after the explosion and now works aboveground at another former Massey operation bought out by Alpha. She was among some 200 people attending Wednesday's briefing.
MSHA has drafted its final report but told victims' families it likely won't be delivered until October.
The explosion also remains the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and MSHA has said it won't release some information to avoid hindering that probe. It largely reiterated its past public statements, offering more detail but no new theories.
So far, only one Massey employee has been indicted. Security chief Hughie Stover is charged with three federal crimes for allegedly lying to the FBI and MSHA and obstructing justice by ordering a subordinate to throw away thousands of pages of security documents from the mine.
MSHA contends the explosion started with a small, naturally occurring release of methane or natural gas that was then fueled by coal dust into a devastating inferno that tore through the mine in a series of explosions over a few minutes. The agency has blamed a poorly maintained cutting head on a piece of mining equipment for sparking the blast and a malfunctioning water sprayer for failing to douse it.
An independent investigation commissioned by former Gov. Joe Manchin reached the same conclusion last month.
That study accused Massey of ignoring the most basic safety practices in the industry, allowing highly explosive coal dust and methane gas to accumulate, and failing to provide either enough fresh air flow or enough pulverized limestone on the mine's walls to render coal dust inert.
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3) Hackers Release More Data From Arizona Police
By RIVA RICHMOND
June 29, 2011, 1:51 pm
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/hackers-release-more-data-from-arizona-police/?src=busln
Hackers on Wednesday publicly exposed for the second time information they claimed to have stolen from the computer systems and personnel of the Arizona state police, in a continuation of a nearly two-month hacking spree.
A hacker group known as Lulz Security last week leaked case files, phone numbers and addresses of officers from the department in what it said was a response to the state's tough laws aimed at illegal immigrants. The latest cache contained material from officers' personal e-mail accounts, including "humiliating dirt," according to a statement from the hackers posted on The Pirate Bay, a site for users of the file-sharing tool BitTorrent, which the hackers used to distribute the data.
A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said it was looking into the hackers' claims and whether its systems had been breached.
The hackers no longer call themselves Lulz Security, or LulzSec for short, after disbanding last weekend and rejoining the larger hacker collective Anonymous. They are now working under a new banner they call "AntiSec," protesting corruption and censorship.
One of the police department's spokesmen was singled out for attack in the latest data release for "bragging" about the department's security upgrades, promising the hackers would be caught and calling them "a cyber terrorism group."
"The same fate will meet anyone else who tries to paint us as terrorists in an Orwellian attempt to pass more pro-censorship or racial-profiling police state laws," the group warned in its statement.
It also said it had spared one former officer from having his personal information exposed because it learned that he was a Navajo and planned on suing the department for racial discrimination.
The disclosure followed the release on Tuesday of a pile of stolen content tied to the governments of Brazil, Australia, Anguilla and Zimbabwe; a right-wing Columbian police unit; and to Universal Music and Viacom. In a statement, the group said the action was retaliation "against corrupt Governments (in our world this is all Governments) and corrupt companies."
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4) Unemployment Rises in More Than Half of US Metros
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/06/29/business/AP-US-Metro-Unemployment.html?src=busln
WASHINGTON (AP) - Unemployment rates rose last month in more than half of the nation's largest metro areas, driven higher by weak private-sector hiring and natural disasters.
The unemployment rate increased in 210 metro areas in May, the Labor Department said Wednesday. It fell in 131 cities and remained unchanged in 37. That's a sharp reversal from April, when unemployment rates dropped in more than 90 percent of metro areas.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate ticked up in May to 9.1 percent and employers added just 54,000 net jobs. Employers added an average of 220,000 jobs per month in the previous three months.
Tornadoes and flooding shut some companies down in the South in late April and May. And a parts shortage stemming from the March 11 earthquake in Japan affected U.S. auto production. The metro employment data isn't seasonally adjusted and as a result can be volatile from month to month.
One of the biggest increases was in Tuscaloosa, Ala., which was struck a deadly tornado that killed 41 people in late April. The unemployment rate there rose from 8.1 percent in April to 9.3 percent in May.
Toyota, Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and Chrysler were all forced to shut down some or all of their North American factories because of the parts shortage. At least 13 metro areas in South Carolina and Louisiana, where many factories are located, saw significant gains in their unemployment rates. Detroit, Ann Arbor and Battle Creek, Mich., also saw big increases.
The sharpest increase in unemployment was in Yuma Ariz. The unemployment rate there rose from 25.3 percent in April to 27.9 percent in May. Competition from farmers in neighboring Mexico has left some cotton, wheat and lettuce growers out of work. Agriculture drives about 40 percent of Yuma's economy.
Many of the areas with the steepest declines are tourist destinations. Hotels and tourist attractions add workers for the summer season. Ocean City, N.J., reported the sharpest decline. The unemployment there fell from 13.3 percent in April to 11.6 percent in May.
Other steep drops were in three California metro areas: Madera-Chowchilla, Santa Cruz-Watsonville and Salinas. All three cities are big farming communities that demand more seasonal workers at this time of year.
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5) Public Workers Strike in Britain Over Pensions
By SARAH LYALL
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/world/europe/01britain.html?hp
LONDON - Hundreds of thousands of teachers and public-sector workers across Britain walked off their jobs on Thursday to protest the government's proposed changes to their pension plans. Union officials warned that this could be the beginning of a wave of strikes this summer and fall over pensions and public-sector budget cuts.
"Today's action across the country demonstrates the anger and distress that this government is causing teachers," Christine Blower, head of the National Union of Teachers, said in a statement.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, told reporters that he was disappointed by the strike. "I understand that there are really strong feelings about pensions, and we absolutely want to ensure that everyone in the public, especially teachers, have decent pensions," he said, visiting an elementary school in south London. "But I just don't think it's a good idea to have gone out on strike today."
Many schools were operating with skeleton staffs; some were shut altogether. Teachers interviewed in the crowd that marched across London on Thursday said that many of their schools had closed down entirely. The government estimated that a third of schools are closed, another third are partly closed and the remainder are fully open.
Lectures and classes were canceled at an estimated 75 universities. Numerous government services were affected, including ports and airports, where up to 14,000 staff members of the agency that handles immigration and customs matters were due to walk out.
Other agencies, like the court system, social security benefits offices and unemployment centers had contingency plans to keep going, but might have to offer reduced service with managers taking the jobs of union workers, the government said.
The unions estimated that as many as 750,000 people would join the walkout.
The strike is the latest development in an increasingly bitter dispute between the affected unions - including the National Union of Teachers, the Public and Commercial Services Union, and the University and College Union - and the Conservative-led coalition government.
Ms. Blower said that the government had helped provoke the strike by refusing to budge in talks aimed at breaking the impasse. "In our negotiations, the government has refused to offer any movement on the three core issues of teachers having to work longer, pay more and get far less in retirement."
The government, whose austerity budget is beginning to take effect around the country, says that the current pension system is unsustainable and unaffordable. It has raised the working age and is now proposing that workers pay a larger proportion of their salaries into their pension plans each month. The government has also proposed recalculating pensions so that they will be based not on a worker's final salary, but on a "career average" salary, taking into account the worker's entire working life.
Most workers can currently begin receiving their pensions at 60. In one of the proposals being considered, the age would rise to 66 by 2020.
Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, which represents many of Britain's unions, said that the strikes were being held in large part because of the deep public-sector cuts already imposed by the government.
"Nobody wants to see our schools and job centers closed," he told reporters. "But our resolve is strong, our determination is absolute and we will see this through until we reach a just and fair settlement."
Francis Maude, the government minister in charge of pension policy, said that because talks between the government and the unions were still going on, it was unacceptable for the teachers in particular to go on strike.
"It's absolutely unjustifiable for parents up and down the country to be inconvenienced like this, forced to lose a day's work, when they're trying to go out to work to earn money to pay the taxes which are going to support teachers' pensions," he told the BBC.
Dave Prentis, leader of Unison, which has 1.3 million members and is Britain's largest public-sector union, said that he had not yet balloted his members about going on strike. But he warned the government that that could change if they continued to be "treated with disdain."
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6) Five Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment
By Kevin Gosztola, AlterNet
Posted on June 30, 2011, Printed on June 30, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151468/5_outrageous_examples_of_fbi_intimidation_and_entrapment
In 2010, the FISA court approved all 1,506 requests by the FBI to electronically monitor suspects. They were also generous with granting "national security letters," which allow the FBI to force credit card companies, financial institutions, and internet service providers to give confidential records about customers' subscriber information, phone number, email addresses and the websites they've visited. The FBI got permission to spy on 14,000 people in this way.
Do they really think there are 14,000 terrorists living in the US?
That's just the beginning.
Now, the FBI is claiming the authority to exercise more surveillance powers, which include undocumented database searches, lie detector tests, trash searches, surveillance squads, investigations of public officials, scholars and journalists and rules that would provide more freedom for agents and informants to not disclose participation in organizations that are targets of FBI surveillance.
Here are five cases of FBI abuse that show the FBI deserves more scrutiny, not a free pass to continue fighting the so-called "war on terror."
1. FBI's Use of Warrantless GPS Tracking
Given the fact that Americans have a constitutional right to privacy, one might think you have to get a warrant to place a GPS device in a location that can track a suspect 24 hours a day. Yet, in many cases, law enforcement officers are attaching GPS devices without first getting a warrant.
In October 2010, 20-year old Arab-American student Yasir Afifi was concerned that he had found a pipe bomb when he noticed a "black, rectangular device" attached to his car. Upon finding the device, he posted photos to Reddit.com hoping someone could tell him what was on his vehicle. A couple days later, FBI agents showed up at his apartment to "retrieve the device."
Turns out, the mysterious device resembling a bomb, which had understandably petrified Afifi, was a GPS device.
As a lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) details, "after requesting counsel, the FBI agents continued to make demands of Mr. Afifif and interrogate him...They asked him whether he was a national security threat, whether he was excited about an upcoming (but undisclosed) trip abroad, whether he was having financial difficulties, whether he had been to Yemen, why he traveled overseas, and many other questions."
Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller are being sued for violating Afifi's constitutional rights.
Nevertheless, the Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to allow government to attach GPS devices on "suspects' vehicles to track their every move." According to the Justice Department, "A person traveling on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another," and that is why, as of April 2011, they wanted a lower court's decision that reversed a conviction and life sentence for a drug dealer whose vehicle had a GPS attached without a warrant undone.
The ACLU of Delaware filed a brief at the end of May urging Delaware to uphold its ruling on the case of the drug dealer. The brief asserts, "The Fourth Amendment protects all persons, regardless of their location, from government searches, absent exigent circumstances, unless a court has issued a warrant upon proof of probable cause." It adds, despite the rise in use of "sophisticated electronics," the New York Court of Appeals, for example, does not find the public's "socially reasonable expectation that our communications and transactions will remain to a large extent private" has diminished.
Additionally, the FBI's use of warrantless GPS tracking is invasive, for the reason outlined by a Washington, DC, federal appeals court:
A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups - and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.
The US Supreme Court agreed on June 27 to hear the case on whether police can attach a GPS tracking devices to a suspect's vehicle without obtaining a warrant. The court's decision could have profound implications for US citizens because a majority carry a "tracking device" every day-a cell phone. It could define whether the FBI would be able to circumvent traditional wiretapping guidelines and just use this loophole to tap citizens through their cell phones.
2. FBI Targeting WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning Supporters
David House, co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, has faced harassment since November 2010, when Department of Homeland Security agents detained him at O'Hare International Airport on his return trip from Mexico.
A press release posted by the Bradley Manning Support Network described how House had his laptop seized and was "questioned extensively" about his support for alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. House requested a copy of his research data from the computer that was seized. His request was denied.
House faced intrusive and intimidating tactics that included copying and possibly disseminating the contents of his USB drive, camera and laptop, all because he joined a lawful group.
"The search and seizure of my laptop has had a chilling effect on the activities of the Bradley Manning Support Network, by silencing once-outspoken supporters and causing donors to retreat. Our government should not be treating lawful activists like suspects," House said. Days later, the FBI approached House at a computer conference.
The FBI has also been at the center of attempts to intimidate WikiLeaks supporters, especially those involved in organizing with the Bradley Manning Support Network, a grassroots group.
In April of this year, House sent a message on Twitter reporting that FBI agents had gone to "interrogate a West Coast friend at his place of work." He described how his friend, who is not involved in computers or activism, was pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement and was held for four hours after the interrogation. His friend was released after repeated banging on the interrogation room's door. He had taken notes during the interrogation on "a scrap of magazine paper during his four-hour detention" but was made to surrender his notes before leaving his detention.
The friend said that the FBI agents wanted to know what he knew about House, his beliefs and his lifestyle. There were no questions about Manning.
The ACLU has come to House's defense and filed a lawsuit against the DHS. The ACLU has called for the "return or destruction of any of House's personal data still in the custody of the government and disclosure of whether and to whom the data has been disseminated." If not for the ACLU sending a letter to DHS, House would likely have not been able to get his seized laptop, camera and USB drive back after seven weeks.
The FBI recently subpoenaed House to appear before a federal grand jury empanelled to investigate WikiLeaks in Alexandria, Virginia. He pled the fifth and refused to answer questions on possible violations of the Espionage Act. House also has alleged that agents from various government agencies tried to bribe him for information on Boston-area hackers.
Additionally, Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who represented WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hope conference, has been detained and searched regularly for nearly a year. On July 29, 2010, he was detained for three hours at the Newark airport. His bag was searched, receipts in his bag were photocopied and his laptop was inspected. Appelbaum refused to answer questions because he did not have a lawyer present. He was not allowed to make a phone call and three mobile phones he was carrying were seized and have yet to be returned.
Days later, he was approached by two FBI agents at a Defcon conference after he made a presentation about the Tor Project.
FBI agents wanted to chat but Appelbaum said he had nothing to say. An agent claimed he was interested in hearing how his rights were being trampled because "sometimes it's nice to have a conversation to flesh things out." The agents said they were at the conference for official and personal reasons.
Appelbaum continues to be detained at US airports. He was detained when returning from a vacation in Iceland on January 10 at the Seattle airport, in a Houston airport when returning from Siberia on April 12 and on June 14, he was subjected to detention without charge when he arrived at the Seattle airport from Iceland.
3. FBI Spied on Children While Using 'Roving Wiretaps,' Intentionally Misled Courts on Freedom of Information Act Requests
The FBI Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), which is responsible for reviewing the activities of the US intelligence community, found one instance where the FBI spent a week monitoring children. According to the IOB report, a language specialist listening to the wiretap knew the FBI did not have the right target, but continued to listen in to the children for five more days.
The report was obtained by digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) through its FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project. The FLAG Project requested records of intelligence violations from the FBI's use of provisions of the PATRIOT Act that were due to expire, particularly Section 215. The request contained evidence of "multiple reports of potential violations," but the FBI managed to keep most of the revelations secret by redacting a significant portion of the documents requested. The FBI's target is unknown and the aforementioned spying was only discovered after comparing the redacted documents to documents from a previous EFF FOIA request.
The incident involving the FBI listening to children constitutes a "roving wiretap" violation. Roving wiretaps are wiretaps that follow the surveillance target. They are typically used when it is believed a target is changing locations to deliberately avoid electronic surveillance.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has said that roving wiretaps are designed to allow law enforcement to track targets who evade surveillance by "frequently changing phones." They used to only be permitted for criminal investigations but the PATRIOT Act has "insufficient checks to protect innocent Americans from unwarranted government surveillance." Now under the PATRIOT Act the FBI does not have to know the target is present at the location being tapped.
Beyond the abuse of wiretapping, the FBI appears to be playing games with FOIA requests. It has improperly used "outside the scope" redactions to cover up misconduct.
A post by Jennifer Lynch of EFF indicates the US District Court for the Central District of California found "the FBI lied to the court about the existence of records requested" under FOIA. The FBI "materially and fundamentally misled the court" on its filings related to the case of Islamic Shura Council of S. Cal v. FBI, a case related to the FBI surveillance of the Muslim organization.
Additionally, according to EFF, the FBI argued it was "allowed to mislead the court when it believed revealing information would 'compromise national security.'"
The Court did not go along with this assertion by the FBI:
"The Government argues that there are times when the interests of national security require the Government to mislead the Court. The Court strongly disagrees. The Government's duty of honesty to the Court can never be excused, no matter what the circumstance. The Court is charged with the humbling task of defending the Constitution and ensuring that the Government does not falsely accuse people, needlessly invade their privacy or wrongfully deprive them of their liberty. The Court simply cannot perform this important task if the Government lies to it. Deception perverts justice. Truth always promotes it."
Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, containing the roving wiretaps provision was recently extended by Congress, despite a bipartisan alliance that attempted to challenge the extension of expiring provisions with little to no debate.
4. FBI Entrapment of Muslims
When David Williams' younger brother, Lord McWilliams, was hospitalized with liver cancer early in 2009, Williams, 24, was devastated. He had spent the last two years, after serving a five-year prison sentence for selling drugs, being a father figure for McWilliams.
Williams knew he had to find a way to make money so his younger brother could get a liver transplant. In April 2009, an acquaintance named James Cromitie told him that someone named Maqsood could give him $250,000, luxury cars and financing for a barbershop if he helped carry out a terrorist attack in the United States. Williams became part of the scheme because Cromitie allegedly had a plan for getting the money without carrying out a terror plot.
Maqsood was a paid informant named Shahed Hussain, who had spent the last eight months working to get Cromitie to plant bombs at a local synagogue. Hussain had done previous work for the FBI and was involved in a controversial case against a pizza-parlor owner and local imam in Albany, New York.
As a report published by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice of the New York University School of Law in May and titled, "Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the 'Homegrown Threat' in the United States," describes, "On May 13, 2009, at the FBI's direction, Hussain drove Cromitie, David, and two others-Laguerre Payen and Onta Williams (no relation to David)-to the Bronx to conduct surveillance on various synagogues. Next he drove them to Connecticut to look at the Stinger missile they were to use. Unbeknownst to David and the others, the weapons were fake and supplied by the FBI."
Hussain drove Cromitie, Payen and David and Onta Williams to the Bronx on May 20th. In front of the proposed targets, the FBI placed two cars. The four led by Cromitie were to place explosives in the cars' trunks. Hussain dropped off David Williams, drove the other three men to the first car and then Hussain turned off a recording device he had been wearing. The men were arrested soon after.
The FBI raided Williams' younger brother's home immediately after the arrests. Williams was locked up in White Plains, where people would slip him notes calling him a terrorist. According to David's aunt Alicia McWilliams, at the jury selection in White Plains, snipers were placed on the roof for "show," making it seem like Williams' trial might lead to an attempted terror attack.
McWilliams claims that Williams was "pulled into a political game. The case was directed, produced and scripted by the FBI and all they needed were puppets."
The CHRGJ report looks at this case and two others to show the "profound toll government policies are taking on Muslim communities and families." It details how "counterterrorism law-enforcement policies and practices are undermining U.S. human rights obligations to guarantee the rights to nondiscrimination; a fair trial; freedom of religion expression and opinion; as well as the right to an effective remedy when rights violations take place."
Relaxed FBI guidelines have made it possible to rely on informants like Hussain. Guidelines put into place by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey allowed the FBI to authorize informants and other surveillance techniques without any factual predicate or nexus to suspected criminal conduct," which meant the FBI could have informants "gather names, emails, and phone numbers of particularly devout mosque attendees, without any particular nexus to suspected criminal activity." And, under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, guidelines were established that did not explicitly prohibit using informants to engage in entrapment.
Informants present a particular problem because they may be receiving a benefit for helping the FBI target individuals (for example, a reduction in a criminal sentence or a change in immigration status, etc). They may also be receiving payment for their service. The "dangerous incentive structure," inevitably helps to increase the possibility of abuse of authority by the FBI. As former FBI agent Mike German says:
If the government targets somebody based on political advocacy, and can lure a few people into committing bad acts, then a successful prosecution in those cases justifies future targeting of people who are in the same position. . . Whether these cases could survive an entrapment defense is not the relevant question. It's whether it's appropriate for the government to act in a way where they're aggrandizing the nature of the threat. It's just difficult to understand what the legitimate government interest is in these cases."
Williams and the other men were found guilty in October 2010. In May of this year, a judge denied the defendants' motions for dismissal "on the basis of outrageous government conduct and entrapment." The men are currently in the process of being sentenced for their participation in this scheme and prosecutors are pushing for life sentences for three of the four men, including Williams.
5. The Criminalization of Travel by the FBI
At least 23 antiwar, labor and international solidarity activists have been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago. Several of the activists from Chicago, the Twin Cities in Minnesota and other areas have had their homes raided by the FBI with documents, cell phones, storage disks, computers and children's artwork seized.
The FBI alleges the activists have provided "material support for terrorism." In the past months, it has been discovered the FBI used an informant named Karen Sullivan to spy on an antiwar organization for months as it made plans for the 2008 Republican National Convention. The FBI also flubbed the investigation when an agent left documents in the home of one of the subpoenaed activists.
A troubling aspect of the investigation is how it effectively criminalizes outspoken citizens who travel to other countries to meet groups that may have beliefs or agendas that are in conflict with US foreign policy. For example, Sarah Smith, a Jewish American woman and avid traveler who lives in Chicago, received a call from the FBI on December 3, 2010. The agent, Robert Parker, asked Smith to meet with him and answer some questions.
Smith asked what questions the agent had, and he said he was not at liberty to discuss the questions. This made Smith think she needed a lawyer. The agent told Smith that it was not necessary to have a lawyer because she was not in trouble. He claimed he had some routine questions about a trip and said, "I think you know which trip I'm talking about." Realizing Parker wanted to talk to her about the trip she took to Israel and Palestine in August, just months ago, she reached out to a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild.
"We went on an educational trip in which we met with NGOs, teachers, nonviolent protesters," explains Smith. "We didn't meet with anyone who is on any terrorist list. We didn't give money to anyone that is on a terrorist list. We wanted to see what it was like for ourselves, to live in Israel with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank."
Suppressing the right of American groups to travel is not new to U.S. government policy. In 1992, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) mounted a case on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Geo-Vista Global Experiences and Veterans for Peace asserting regulations on group travel to Vietnam and Cambodia were "making it impossible to organize academic study groups, to travel with study groups, to travel with colleagues to assess humanitarian aid and to engage in group fact-finding trips."
Secretary of State James Baker eventually lifted the regulations, making it permissible for groups to travel to the two countries.
Tom Burke is another traveler alleged to have provided "material support to terror." Burke was at home with his wife and daughter on September 24, 2010 and began to receive phone calls from people in Chicago and Minneapolis informing them the FBI had raided their homes. Burke thought the FBI might be coming to raid his house. He decided his daughter needed to get to kindergarten before the FBI entered his home. He left with his daughter.
Burke thought he needed to write a press release, took his computer and got in his car to go find a web café. On the way he noticed that his car was being followed. He called his wife and they agreed he should drive to the parking garage at her work. As Burke reached the parking garage, the car that had been following him sped off. An SUV sped into the road right behind him and followed him into the garage. Burke was served with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. His wife was later served with a subpoena too.
"We've been doing solidarity work with people in other countries who get killed for doing what they do," Burke explains. "When I went to Colombia in 2003 with a labor union delegation, at that time three Colombian trade unionists were being killed every single week. And that was the scariest week of my life." Burke was with the human rights director of the oil workers union. All week he had to have armed security, know who was with the group and whether they were in a safe place.
Months into targeting the activists, there is no evidence that any of these activists provided "material support for terrorism."
Reminiscent of how animal rights and environmental activists have been targeted in recent years, the FBI is going after the activists, wrecking their lives, intimidating Americans who believe in their right to dissent. It is pressing on, widening its investigation despite a growing backlash against the investigation. And some of the activists fear indictments from the investigation may be coming soon.
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7) US extends drone strikes to Somalia
First drone strike in Somalia reported to have wounded senior al-Shabab militants
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk
June 30, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/30/us-drone-strikes-somalia
The US has conducted its first drone strike on Islamist militants in Somalia, marking the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country.
The missile strike on a vehicle in the southern town of Kismayo, reported last week as a helicopter assault, wounded two senior militants with al-Shabab and several foreign fighters according to the Washington Post.
Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA.
The CIA-run programmes are controversial. Although they provide the Obama administration with a low-risk weapon against Islamist militants, they stir intense anti-American hostility among the local population.
Opposition is most vociferous in Pakistan, where the government said on Wednesday it was shutting down a big CIA drone base, and had ordered US personnel based there to leave.
The closure of Shamsi airbase is unlikely to end the strikes. The CIA has moved its drones to bases across the border in Afghanistan, and some strikes have already taken place from there, according to a senior Pakistani military official.
Racked by decades of civil war, Somalia has become an al-Qaida hub, after Yemen and Pakistan's tribal belt. The US military previously targeted militants based there using helicopter gunships, special forces teams and cruise missiles fired from aircraft carriers.
The US has also flown surveillance drones over Somalia - one was shot down in October 2009 - but now they are being used for assassination. The targets of the 23 June strike were reportedly close to Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.
In May, Awlaki escaped a drone strike in Yemen carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite military unit that orchestrated the Osama bin Laden raid. Now control of the Yemen strikes is reported to be passing to the CIA.
The closure of Shamsi airbase is a blow to President Barack Obama efforts to flush al-Qaida from Pakistan. Shamsi, in western Balochistan province, was the launchpad for strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the tribal belt, particularly in Waziristan.
Washington politicians have warmly embraced the drone strikes, which allow them to target elusive enemies in remote parts of the world with little risk to US personnel. In Pakistan, drone strikes have killed 2,500 people since 2004, according to higher estimates.
Military analysts say they represent the future of airborne warfare. Ground personnel help the pilotless craft take off, but control quickly passes to remote-control pilots stationed thousands of miles away in the US.
The CIA drones are controlled from a suburban facility near the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, while military drones are controlled from airbases in Texas, Nevada and elsewhere.
Shamsi was built by Arab sheikhs for falcon hunting trips, but has been occupied by the CIA since at least 2004, when Google Earth images showed Predator drones parked on the runway.
Pakistani defence ministry officials said they were closing the base in retaliation to slowed payments from the coalition support fund - a multibillion-dollar US subsidy for Pakistani military operations.
A senior US official in Islamabad said the government was engaging in "diplomacy by headlines" but Pakistan's leaders are also responding to hostile public opinion. A recent Pew poll found that just 3% of Pakistanis favoured drone strikes.
The CIA is likely to continue its Pakistan campaign from its Afghan bases. In unusually direct comments on Wednesday, Obama's counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said the US would continue to "deliver precise and overwhelming force against al-Qaida" in the tribal areas.
The widening drone campaign has elicited concerns from human rights activists about civilian casualties, and from legal experts about the consequences of an unaccountable form of warfare. Last year a senior UN official warned of the risks of a "PlayStation warfare" mentality.
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8) Al Qaeda still greatest danger, U.S. adviser says
"Speaking at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Brennan said, 'Indeed, this is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts.'"
From Carol Cratty, CNN Senior Producer
June 29, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/29/counterterrorism.strategy/
Washington (CNN) -- A new U.S. counterterrorism strategy released Wednesday focuses on the ability of al Qaeda and its network to inspire people in the United States to attack the homeland, said John Brennan, White House counterterrorism adviser.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Brennan said, "Indeed, this is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts."
He added, "We are doing everything in our power to prevent another terrorist attack on our soil. ... It's not enough to simply be prepared for attacks, we have to be resilient and recover quickly should an attack occur."
Brennan said the ability to snap back quickly in the event of an attack would deny al Qaeda "the economic damage and disruption it seeks."
He made it clear the administration wants to follow a strategy of drone strikes and targeted raids against terrorists and avoid prolonged wars.
"Al Qaeda seeks to bleed us financially by drawing us into long, costly wars that also inflame anti-American sentiment," he said. "Our best offense won't always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us."
The U.S. can't go after every terrorist group and must focus attention on those that seek to harm the U.S., Brennan said. He said al Qaeda and its affiliates still represent the greatest danger, even after the May raid by U.S. Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Brennan said the U.S. wants to work with allies to bring terrorists down, but he would not rule out future unilateral strikes even in the territory of allies.
"As the president has said repeatedly, if we have information about the whereabouts of al Qaeda, we will do what is required to protect the United States -- as we did with bin Laden."
According to Brennan, the cache of videos and writings seized at bin Laden's compound shows the al Qaeda leader worried "al Qaeda is losing the larger battle for hearts and minds." Bin Laden "knew that he had failed to portray America as being at war with Islam" and that had hampered efforts to recruit more Muslims to his cause.
Brennan said bin Laden "called for more large-scale attacks against America, but encountered resistance from his followers and he went for years without seeing any spectacular attacks."
The president's counterterrorism adviser questioned how well Ayman al Zawahiri will do as the new paramount leader of al Qaeda, saying he "lacks bin Laden's charisma and perhaps the loyalty and respect of many in al Qaeda." But Brennan acknowledged Zawahiri might try to launch new attacks to prove he and al Qaeda are still relevant.
Brennan admitted there is a concern that Americans could become complacent since there hasn't been a large-scale attack here since 9/11 and since Osama bin Laden has been killed. But with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 coming soon, Brennan said, "We want to make sure that we're as vigilant and we're as poised to detect and thwart these attacks."
He added Congress is well aware of the need to stay focused on the threat of terrorism.
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9) As Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns and Vermont Rages ...
We've Almost Lost Nebraska
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
June 29, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.com/wasserman06292011.html
Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt and drowning of its most lethal industry.
We know only two things for certain: worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it---at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.
Indeed, the assurances from the nuke power industry continue to flow like the floodwaters now swamping the Missouri Valley heartland.
But major breakthroughs have come from a Pennsylvania Senator and New York's Governor on issues of evacuation and shut-down. And a public campaign for an end to loan guarantees could put an end to the US industry once and for all.
FUKUSHIMA: The bad news continues to bleed from Japan with no end in sight. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is an out-of-control radioactive freight train, headed to the core of an endangered planet.
Widespread internal radioactive contamination among Japanese citizens around Fukushima has now been confirmed. Two whales caught some 650 kilometers from the melting reactors have shown intense radiation.
Plutonium, the deadliest substance known to our species, has been found dangerously far from the site.
Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government have admitted to three 100% meltdowns but can't confirm with any reliability the current state of those cores. There's reason to believe one or more have progressed to "melt-throughs" in which they burn through the thick stainless steel pressure vessel and onto the containment floor.
The molten cores may be covered with water. But whether they can melt further through the containments and into the ground remains unclear.
Possibilities may include a "China Syndrome" scenario in which one or more still-molten cores does melt through the containment and hits ground water. That could lead to a steam explosion that could blow still larger clouds of radioactive steam, water and debris into the atmosphere and ocean.
At least three explosions have occurred, one of which may have involved criticality.
There is no doubt at least two containments were breached very early in the disaster. Unit Four is cracked and sinking. The status of its used radioactive fuel pool, which has clearly caught fire, is uncertain. Also unclear is the ability of the owners to sustain the stability of Units Five and Six, which were shut when the quake/tsunami hit.
That stability depends on continued power to run cooling systems, which could disappear amidst seismic aftershocks many believe are inevitable. A very substantial quake hit after the tremors that led to Indonesia's devastating tsunami, and few doubt it could happen again---soon---at Fukushima.
All the above is dependent on reports controlled primarily by Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government. There is every reason to believe the situation is worse than it seems, and that those in charge don't really know the full of the extent of the damage or how to cope with it.
Just five years ago a quake shut seven reactors at Kashiwazaki. The entire nation of Japan sits on a wide range of fault lines. Tsunami is a Japanese word
Radiation from Fukushima has long since been detected throughout the northern hemisphere, with health effects that will be debated forever.
Some fifty reactors still operate in Japan. According to some, the Japanese public has the legal right to shut them all.
Let us pray they do. Yesterday.
LOS ALAMOS: A massive wildfire has swept at least to the outskirts of the national laboratory that was at the core of the program that built the Atomic Bomb.
The first explosion irradiated a nearby valley on July 16, 1945. Then came the two that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There are significant quantities of stored radioactive material in and around Los Alamos. How much there is, where it is, how badly it is threatened, how much (if any) has already been engulfed in flames remains to be seen. Evacuations are underway.
Official reassurances are not reliable.
Nor are estimates of the potential for radioactive fallout to spread throughout North America and beyond.
VERMONT YANKEE: Entergy, owner of the one reactor in Vermont, has sued to shred a solemn public contract.
The one thing certain here is the company's contempt for the sanctity of its own word.
Years ago Entergy sought official permits at VY. It promised in return that the state could choose to shut the reactor on March 21, 2012, which it's now done.
In recent years VY has spewed tritium into groundwater and the Connecticut River, in some cases from underground pipes whose existence the company denied. A cooling tower has collapsed.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the reactor's license and asked the federal Justice Department to intervene on behalf of the utility.
The request trashes any credibility retained by the NRC. The Commission was established in the mid 1970s to be a disinterested party on which the public could rely. For it to now take a partisan stand on behalf of a reactor owner it's bound to regulate thoroughly contaminates the core of its existence.
Entergy has sued so it can buy some $65 million in radioactive fuel the people of Vermont do not want burned on their land.
This will go to the US Supreme Court, where the future legal sanctity of any and all public contracts signed by any corporation, nuclear or otherwise, may be determined.
NEBRASKA: The flooding Missouri River continues to threaten at least two heartland reactors.
Late reports indicate Cooper may still be running, with public assurances it could be shut very quickly. What might happen if the operators are a little bit late has not been explained.
Nor is there much to go on about the impacts of flooded cores and fuel cooling ponds on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers or the eco-systems along the way to a Gulf of Mexico still reeling from BP's toxic dose.
But an almost surreal set of circumstances surrounds the true nature of design specifications and protections in place (or not) at Ft. Calhoun.
They may be best summarized by what happened to a "flood berm" meant to protect Ft. Calhoun. This huge rubberized water-filled sausage was sixteen feet at the base and eight feet high.
But CNN has quoted a company representative as saying a some sort of equipment "came in contact" with the berm and punctured it.
Not to worry: the "same level of protection is in place" as had been prior to the installation of the berm.
In other words, the device was installed to protect the reactor. Then somebody punctured it. But things are as they were before so they must not have needed that berm in the first place. Got it?
It's as yet unclear whether flood waters will continue to rise at these two reactors, whether the operators can protect them, and what will happen if they can't.
The corporate media is carrying virtually zero coverage of any of the above stories. All are subject to rapid, dangerous changes about which we may have little reliable information.
But we do know for sure that US Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) now wants to see more deeply into one of the key holes in the nuclear façade: evacuation.
After Three Mile Island's 1979 partial melt-down, new federal legislation allegedly gave states more power over how to get people out of the path of a melting nuke.
But after an as-yet unopened Perry reactor was damaged by a 1986 earthquake, Ohio's then-Governor Richard Celeste sued to keep Perry shut pending a state evacuation study.
The NRC refused and won in federal court. Perry opened. Ohio's official study then said evacuation was virtually impossible.
A quarter-century later, Casey wants to see what it might now take to move downwinders out of harm's way from a TMI, Perry, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Vermont Yankee, Cooper, Ft. Calhoun.....you name it.
Casey's being joined by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose demands for the shut-down of Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan, have left its owners "shaken."
Cuomo and Casey might do well to join governors of states like Vermont, Massachusetts, California and others in testing the law on evacuation planning. Populations have vastly increased at virtually all US reactor sites since TMI. And the ugly realities that define the so-called "Peaceful Atom" are still making themselves all too apparent.
Whether the US will now turn with Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Israel and others away from atomic power and toward a green-powered Earth is up to us. The Solartopian technologies of wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, bio-fuels, increased efficiency and conservation are now demonstrably cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable, more job-producing and quicker to install than anything atomic energy can promise.
A $36 billion loan guarantee give-away still mars the proposed 2012 federal budget. Constant pressure on Congress and the White House can kill that, and any other proposed funding for still more of these nightmares.
The stream of reactor disasters spewing from this dying industry is certain to escalate. The toll rises with each leak at Fukushima, every flame at Los Alamos, each legal brief at Vermont Yankee, every foot of Nebraska floodwater.
The need to stop the madness grows more desperate every day.
Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com
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10) A Safety Valve for Inmates, the Arts, Fades in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/us/01prison.html?ref=us
NORCO, Calif. - Fifteen men darted across the room, their faces slathered in greasepaint, reciting lines from "Tartuffe." The stage, such as it was, was a low-ceilinged recreation room and the cast was a troupe of felons who had just stepped in from the dusty yard of the California Rehabilitation Center.
For four hours, they conducted workshops under the direction of the Actors' Gang, an ensemble from Los Angeles, which goaded them into acting out emotions that could be put to use in the 17th-century Molière farce about, appropriately enough, a con man working a swindle.
"Why are you angry?" Sabra Williams, the prison project director, demanded of the jostling lineup of actor-prisoners.
"They gave me too much time," shouted one of the inmates, Ron Reiber, his face red and veins bulging.
"Now go to happy!" she said.
The room burst into giddy smiles and rubbery limbs from men in prison jumpsuits.
Two years ago, arts in corrections programs were a mainstay of prisons across the country, embraced by administrators as a way to channel aggression, break down racial barriers, teach social skills and prepare inmates for the outside world. There was an arts coordinator in each of the 33 California state prisons, overseeing a rich variety of theater, painting and dance.
But these programs have become a fading memory, casualties of the budget crises that have overwhelmed state and local governments nationwide. Nowhere is that truer than here, where prisons are so overcrowded that the Supreme Court in May ordered the state to start releasing inmates.
"The artist facilitator - that position was eliminated," said Violette Peters, who filled the role for four years at this medium-security prison in the desert, which, with 4,410 inmates, is at double its capacity. "So now I'm a corrections case analyst. I work in the records department, which has nothing to do with the arts programs."
Only two prison arts programs are left in California, and both rely on volunteers and private contributions. The one here is run by the Actors' Gang, whose artistic director is the actor Tim Robbins. Mr. Robbins has become nearly as familiar a figure at the prison as the warden himself. (The actor, walking through the prison yards, sets off a rustle of recognition among inmates who recall his movie role as a prisoner in "The Shawshank Redemption.")
Laurie Brooks, the executive director of the William James Association, which runs an acting workshop in San Quentin State Prison, said these programs were first championed in 1979 by Jerry Brown during an earlier term as governor. "We enjoyed this real lush period when there was this boom in prison growth," Ms. Brooks said. "There really isn't any state-funded support for arts programs anymore."
The Actors' Gang presumably has the fund-raising advantage of its association with Mr. Robbins and its following in Los Angeles, where it staged its own version of "Tartuffe" in the spring. But even it has struggled to raise money. During a break one scorching morning, Ms. Williams asked that this article note that the Actors' Gang had received a $500 donation in makeup supplies from Mehron Makeup, an act of kindness, she said, that deserved notice.
"People don't give money because they don't see us," she said.
Advocates say these programs have reduced recidivism rates, though there is no conclusive research on that. But prison officials and inmates suggest that the workshops - by forcing inmates to confront emotions and to deal with other inmates they might ignore or fight with outside - can produce fundamental changes in behavior and character.
"No. 1, it breaks down racial barriers," said Ms. Peters, the former arts facilitator. "It breaks down gang barriers. It's a safe place for them to come and get away from institutional stresses. And they tend to remain disciplinary-free: If you are busy writing a poem, you can't be doing drugs."
Lt. Brian Davis, the public information officer at the Norco prison, who sat in on the sessions, said: "They build self-confidence. I see the inmates starting to work together, and somewhere along the line the fear goes away."
One inmate, Robert Paxton, 23, said the program "gives me a place to be silly - be myself."
"You know, this whole prison situation, where you have to act macho and put up these mental barriers, this really allowed like a mental vacation," Mr. Paxton said. "It makes doing time that much more easier."
The workshops and rehearsals are antic and oddly entertaining: guards can be spotted peering through a window (even when Mr. Robbins is not on hand). The inmates are animated, campy, energized, liberated and fearlessly engaged, comfortable even playing women in this sea of gang tattoos and muscles.
And there is no attempt to pretend that this is not taking place where it is taking place. The real actors are issued panic buttons to attach to their belts, in case they are cornered. And Mr. Robbins draws heavily on the inmates' lives in training them in the commedia dell'arte style that is the heart of the Actors' Gang method, with its ornate costumes and makeup, exaggerated expressions and comedic movements, focusing on four basic emotional states: Anger, fear, happiness and sadness.
So it was that Mr. Robbins also asked the actors what made them angry. "This place turned me into a dope addict!" one shouted. Mr. Reiber followed with a cut-the-tension answer: "Prison food."
Mr. Robbins instructed the inmates to feel fear, again by connecting it to their own experiences. "What is Tartuffe afraid of?" he said, wearing a wool skullcap and dressed in black. "Being discovered. Because that would mean jail for him."
"Something is coming after you!" he said urgently to the inmates as they scampered around. "What is it?"
"Cops!" one inmate yelled.
"Cops!" Mr. Robbins responded, clapping his hands in delight. "Then run!"
No one seemed more surprised at the experience than the inmates, as they said during the concluding sessions of two workshops conducted over the course of the past few months, one for the general prison population and one for a segregated population of former gang members and sex offenders. Prison officials asked that the last names of the segregated inmates not be used, saying that they could be put in danger.
"I know this," said one of those inmates as he sat on the floor in a circle with Mr. Robbins, Ms. Williams and the other inmates. He and his fellow prisoners had just performed scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." "I'm thinking about Shakespeare in the shower. I don't think I ever did that before."
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11) Cuomo Will Seek to Lift Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing
By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
June 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/cuomo-will-seek-to-lift-drilling-ban.html?ref=nyregion
The Cuomo administration is expected to lift what has been, in effect, a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial technology used to extract natural gas from shale, people briefed on the administration's discussions said on Thursday.
Administration officials are discussing maintaining a ban on the process inside New York City's sprawling upstate watershed, as well as a watershed used by the city of Syracuse, according to people briefed on the plan. But by allowing the process in other parts of the state, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo would open up New York to one of the fastest-growing - critics would say reckless - areas of the energy industry.
When the decision will be made public is less certain. On Friday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation is due to release a long-awaited study of the process, widely known as hydrofracking. But it was unclear if the Cuomo administration would use the occasion to announce its broader policy plans related to the issue as well. The report will likely include recommendations, and then there will be a period for public comments before a final determination can be made.
Hydrofracking has spurred intense protests from environmental activists, who say it threatens the cleanliness of ground water. The process involves injecting large volumes of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, deep into the ground to break up rock formations and release natural gas. It is legal in a number of other states, including Pennsylvania.
A primary concern among environmental groups has been the leftover waste water that can be contaminated with toxins buried underground, including naturally occurring radioactive elements or carcinogens like benzene.
Drilling for natural gas has been promoted both because it burns more cleanly than coal and it can reduce dependence on imported energy.
Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for the governor, said it was "baseless speculation and premature" to say the state's current moratorium on hydrofracking would be lifted.
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12) Democratic Action by Working People Critical in Today’s Environmental Crisis
By Bonnie Weinstein
July/August 2011 Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/
The Earth’s environment is reeling from catastrophic forms of energy extraction and use, not only from nuclear power plants, but from coal extraction by mountain-top removal1, which not only poisons the land and ground water, but demolishes pristine mountains. And by gas extraction from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which produces the powerful greenhouse gas, methane, and also dumps toxins used in the process into the environment2.
This does not even take into account the weapons of mass destruction the U.S. is producing and unleashing across the globe. Nor does it take into account the massive pollution due to the dependence on fossil fuels by the transportation and all other forms of for-profit industries.
The future of humanity and the planet Earth, at this point in time, is dubious, at best. We are in a crisis of monumental proportions, across all borders, across all industry and across all social and political aspects of human interaction.
Our only hope for survival, as a species, will depend upon a massive worldwide effort by the majority—by working people, scientists and engineers—to reverse the damages already caused, and to prevent new, and worse catastrophes from occurring.
The only way to achieve this is to take control of energy production and industry away from those who put private profit before everything else.
Current nuclear crisis
At Fukushima, TEPCO, the energy company that runs the nuclear power plant, announced that they had a “melt through.3” (A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor. A melt through means the fuel has melted through some layers of the containment vessel which could ultimately lead to a “China Syndrome,” a worse case scenario, which occurs when molten reactor core components completely penetrate the containment vessel and building, causing direct contamination of the environment.)
If this isn’t bad enough for Japan, their fast-breeder reactor prototype plant, the Monju, has been in a state of shutdown because a 3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor’s inner vessel cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods at its core. The recovery of the device is dangerous because the plant uses large quantities of liquid sodium to cool the nuclear fuel, which is highly flammable.4
And if you think we in the U.S. are immune to the nuclear crisis, think again. Right now, outside of Omaha, Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun reactor is surrounded by floodwaters.5
The problem there is that the river is expected to rise as much as five to seven feet above flood stage and the river has already risen 1.5 feet higher than Fort Calhoun’s 1,004-foot elevation above sea level. And due to the extraordinary amount of snow accumulation, they expect the floodwaters to continue to rise until the middle of August! The only thing protecting the plant is an 8-foot rubber wall outside the reactor building.
And there’s a second Nebraska nuclear plant, the Cooper Power Station, which is also under threat by floodwaters.6
Cleanup know-how for nuclear vs. fossil fuels
The crisis surrounding nuclear energy and weapons production will take a special effort since safe clean-up techniques have yet to be developed.
Think of the dangers and complications of just moving nuclear material from one place to another. What kind of vehicle do you transport it in? And which communities will these vehicles travel through? Obviously these are decisions that involve and effect masses of people. They are the ones who have a right to a say in these decisions since it’s their lives that that are threatened by them.
Pollution due to nuclear energy and weapons transportation and clean-up differs from pollution as a result of fossil fuel production. For the latter, we do have the technological and scientific knowledge to transport the material safely and to clean up the resulting pollution, albeit it’s a drain on profits to do so safely.
If the fossil fuel industry were nationalized and put under the democratic control of workers, technicians and scientists, with complete access to corporate profits—i.e., workers’ control over all corporate profits—cleanup and safety measures could immediately begin to be implemented.
Capitalism fouls everything up
In each of these ongoing environmental catastrophes-in-the-making, the quest for ever-higher profits has been responsible for shortcuts, cover-ups and repeated safety violations. If nothing is done to take the profit out of energy production, these environmental crises will get worse and occur more frequently.
Even without any further catastrophes, the clean-up tasks in the nuclear industry are daunting, and already beyond our current scientific and technological ability to achieve.
It will take a monumental effort—a worldwide democratic collaboration of workers, engineers and scientists—to learn how to handle the nuclear material we are already using and storing; and to discover ways to restore the damage already done to our environment.
This will take a complete overhaul of the scientific and research communities and their dependence on these very corporations that now fund their research and development projects and educational goals.
The scientific community must be nationalized along with industry itself, and be held responsible to the democratic control of workers who work in these industries; and to the general public that relies on them; and not to the corporate profiteers who feed on these short cuts and violations!
To fund such a massive project, the corporate books have to be opened and the vast profits accumulated off the backs of the workers must be made available to correct the problems and to change the practices that led to these environmental disasters in the first place.
Nationalizing these industries and putting them under the democratic control of working people and their allies is the first step and ultimately the only way to ensure the safety and welfare of all people and the environment.
The workers, scientists and engineers at the production sites are the experts. They are the ones who can pinpoint the shortcuts; cover-ups, lies and dangers presented by these for-profit management henchmen. They are the ones who have the best chance of finding ways to make the whole industry safer. And to safely shut it down until they can be sure it is safe to operate.
With access to the vast profits created by their own labor, and through the research and discoveries they could uncover with those resources, workers can make the great leaps of knowledge necessary to solve these currently unsolvable environmental problems. And it would mean there would be no more limits to the development of new, innovative, energy alternatives and safer forms of energy production, distribution, transportation and use.
We need a democratic movement for control over our lives
This is very simple really. It’s about our right and our dire need to have democratic control over all aspects of production—including but not limited to the energy industry.
What we are talking about is turning the social structure of society on its head.
Instead of those at the top of the economic ladder, i.e., the super-rich commanders of capital, having sole control over the decision-making about health and safety issues and control over profits—all these decisions and all profits produced would be placed under the democratic control of the majority of the working people who actually do the work and operate the industries.
What would this new, topsy-turvy society look like?
Removing the profit motive by turning production for profit into democratic production for fulfilling social needs and wants, insures that safety measures can finally have first priority.
Democracy starts at the point of production, spreading to communities and the public educational system, and workers organizations must remain strictly independent of the capitalist parties, the commanders of capital and the police under their direct control.
Workers have the power and the know-how to put safety first and needs before profits
Workers on the job are the best qualified to decide on safety measures; financial compensation; working conditions; on comfort, intensity and hours of labor; on benefits; and on improvements in product, safety, efficiency and production practices.
Doctors, patients and their families and hospital staff are the best qualified to democratically decide on the best patient care; as well as all the other aspects of good working conditions that help to guarantee good patient care.
Teachers, parents and students are best qualified to democratically collaborate to improve every aspect of education.
Construction workers and architects and engineers, are the ones best qualified to collaborate on the rebuilding of our infrastructure and to focus on its energy use, safety and efficiency.
You get the picture. This is a workers democratic model that cuts across all barriers to safety, efficiency and to increased production throughout all industry that will be capable of satisfying the needs of all.
It is the only rational way out of the chaos and poison of capitalist production based upon the accumulation of private profit by a tiny minority at the expense of all else.
1The Fight over Coal Mining is a ‘Fight About Democracy’”
Democracy Now!, May 23, 2011
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/23/fight_over_coal_mining_is_a
2 “Coal Seam Gas—Dirtier than Coal, Worse than Shale”
By Renfrey Clarke
GreenLeft, June 4, 2011
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47808
3 “Fukushima: It’s Much Worse Than You Think”
By Dahr Jamail
Al Jazeera, June 16, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html
4 “Japan Strains to Fix a Reactor Damaged Before Quake”
By Hiroki Tabuchi
June 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/world/asia/18japan.html?ref=world
5 “Giant rubber barrier around site; reactor has been shut down since April”
By Josh Funk
The Associated Press
updated 6/17/2011
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43443913/ns/us_news-environment/#
6 “Second Nebraska Nuclear Plant Threatened By Flooding”
By Ricky Kreitner
June 17, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/second-nebraska-nuclear-plant-threatened-by-flooding-but-everything-should-be-fine-2011-6
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13) Fukushima: The End of Nuclear Power?
By Dave Walters with an Introduction by Stuart King
July/August Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_11/julaug_11_02.html
When a massive earthquake hit Japan on March 11, followed immediately by a tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear plant suffered a major accident. It took weeks for the private operating company, TEPCO, to bring the crisis under control, and it will take at least another six to nine months to achieve a cold shut down of the plants nuclear reactors.
This was a very serious accident, rated 7 on the INES scale, the same as the Chernobyl accident, although Fukushima has released so far only ten percent of the radiation of the Ukrainian disaster. Immediate casualties were much lower. Unlike Chernobyl no one died as a result of the radiation leaks at Fukushima—two workers involved in the clean up were hospitalized when radioactive water seeped into their boots. By contrast an estimated 24,000 are dead or missing as a result of the earthquake and tsunami.
This is not to belittle the accident, but to put it in perspective. The long-term effects of radiation are yet to be quantified but they will certainly be less damaging than Chernobyl, where incompetence by the Russian Soviet authorities exposed tens-of-thousands to contaminated food and milk for weeks after the event.
The Fukushima accident could have been much worse, reactor cores could have completely melted down, leading to much greater contamination and an even more difficult clean up operation.
The accompanying article by David Walters looks at the accident, its causes and consequences. Unlike many on the left he does not conclude that the accident was the “inevitable result” of an impossibly dangerous industry, rather that it was a result of a private company cutting corners on safety in the interests of short term profit.
For much of the far left Fukushima was just a confirmation of their anti-nuclear prejudices. Socialist Worker was typical. Its front-page headline declared “Nuclear Plants are never safe: shut them all down” (March 19, 2011). Inside its editorial declared “Every plan to build a nuclear plant in every country across the world should be stopped—now. And all existing plants should be shut down. That’s the message we should take from the horrific events in Japan.”
Now just a moment’s thought by any serious thinking socialist would have revealed what a ludicrous demand this was. In Britain something like 19 percent of electricity comes from our nuclear power plants. Shutting them down immediately would lead to rolling blackouts across the country. In the medium term it would lead to electricity being produced by more carbon dioxide polluting forms of electricity production—gas and coal—increasing global warming with all the dangers that entails.
And in France where almost 80 percent of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear? The economy would shut down and workers would be burning their furniture in the dark to keep warm. Now that would be a real vote winner!
The pat reply to this argument will be that nuclear can by replaced by renewables—wind, wave and solar power—and by better energy efficiency in homes, offices, etc. Well it can’t—the figures don’t add up.
Building offshore windfarms, renewing the grid to use them, developing wave power etc., will take years, if not a decade or more, even if a socialist government threw all its resources behind it. Even a massive public works program on energy conservation in homes and offices would take many years. At the same time we need to phase out all coal-fired power stations within the next decade or so, a really important demand in relation to carbon dioxide emissions—and in Britain they still produce just under a third of our electricity.
Renewables cannot fill the gap if we take out nuclear power as an option.
As socialists we cannot magic away these problems. We can bury our heads in the sand, raise demands that no one takes seriously (even ourselves) or provide some scientific based and socialist answers to the problems we face—the major one being how we put forward a program to massively reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a world scale to prevent global warming.
Nuclear power as a low carbon dioxide producing energy source, for all its drawbacks and dangers, will certainly be part of the solution. The lesson of Fukushima is not, as Socialist Worker would have it, that nuclear power is an impossibly dangerous industry, but that it is far too dangerous an industry to be in private hands and to be driven by the profit motive.
Of the ten commercially operating nuclear plants in the UK seven were built between 1962 and 1970. They are old technology, as was Fukushima, more dangerous to run than the new generation of nuclear power stations. They need to be phased out and replaced by new ones as part of an energy mix where renewables are the major source of electric power, a mix where coal and gas are phased out.
The whole of the nuclear industry (apart from decommissioning) has been privatized and is run by multinationals like EDF (Environmental Defense Fund). It needs to be nationalized with the profit motive removed. But it cannot be run by state bureaucrats who are as keen on cost cutting as any capitalist. It needs to be placed under the control of the workers who run it (and know the safety issues) alongside the communities that exist side by side with nuclear plants. Together they can monitor and control safety and management and should be given the resources by the state to employ their own experts and technicians to be able to do so.
Fukushima was a dangerous accident. Rejecting nuclear power in the context of uncontrolled global warming would be a disaster. —Stuart King, Editor of Permanent Revolution
With the recent tsunami induced accidents at the privately owned Fukushima power plants in Japan, the issue of nuclear energy has once again become a campaigning issue for anti-nuclear activists around the world. Many of the left groups that have spoken out, most notably those active in “Green” circles, have now gone on a major campaign to “Shut them all down now.” Presumably this means the immediate closing of the world’s 440 nuclear power reactors.
We see this call being made by various socialist organizations in Japan, and even some of the unions they lead. It should be noted, however, that the main union representing the workers who operate Japan’s 54 reactors, including those placing themselves at great risk, do not echo this call.
The nuclear accident in Japan, where at the same time close to 30,000 people have lost their lives due to the earthquake and tsunami, certainly raises the question of safety at nuclear plants, not just in Japan, specifically the Fukushima reactors, but throughout the world. Socialists who are pro-nuclear do not shy away from these debates and discussions at all.
At the current time we know only a few facts about the accident at Fukushima. What we do know is that it appears the “physical plant” itself, that is the reactor housing, went mostly unscathed because of the tsunami or the earthquake. No nuclear plant in the world’s 60 year history of civilian nuclear energy has ever been wrecked, destroyed or otherwise overwhelmed directly by these natural phenomenon. That is correct: no earthquake has significantly damaged a reactor to cause a release of radiation or a meltdown. Many in the anti-nuclear movement don’t like to admit this, but it’s true.
So what did happen at Fukushima?
The earthquake did two things. It caused the operating reactors to automatically shutdown. It also knocked out the grid, that is the outside power grid the plants send power into for distribution and take power from during outages, either routine ones or emergency ones. In case of this occurring, two forms of auxiliary power come into play: battery backup that will last a few dozen hours, and auxiliary diesel generators that can last days or weeks until power is restored.
The use of water for cooling in any reactor is well known. In the old Fukushima reactors electricity was essential to provide pumping and cooling. We do not have to review that here, as it is covered in many places already. Back-up power is provided but it failed in this case. We have to ask why it failed and what solutions could have mitigated this failure?
The batteries operated as they were designed to, essentially providing power to run the cooling pumps. However, TEPCO, the privately investor-owned utility that built and operates the plants (as well as numerous others) located the fuel tanks for the diesel generators at the oceanfront. This facilitates loading of fuel supplies, once every few years from, barges. They located them here because it was cheaper to do so. These fuel tanks were smashed by the ensuing tsunami caused by the earthquake. A double whammy, one that could have been predicted given the geological and quake-prone area Japan is close to.
Instead of building these fuel tanks up the hill behind the power plant, they took the cheap way out—for profit. Secondly, while TEPCO did install a breakwater, clearly visible on any available satellite imaging service such as Google Earth, they laid down the absolute minimum sized breakwater, which was clearly not sufficient to combat the 13-meter tsunami that hit this plant. Breakwaters are easy to build. A few million dollars worth of concrete and formed components and TEPCO could have easily built a break water that would of prevented the damage and subsequent disaster from occurring.
The operating engineer in me, like engineers everywhere, sees this disaster, but we do not run from it. We do not shout “Fear! Run! Shut it down!” No, we try to address the actual issues involved and seek a solution. What could have been done to prevent this disaster (I noted some precautions that could have been taken above.)
All seaside reactors everywhere in the world now have to be seen in the light of the experience of this tsunami and proceed to design fail-safe solutions so this can never happen again. We need to demand that worst-case tsunami possibilities be addressed and solutions applied. And it can be done, because humanity’s cognitive ability to analyze and address these problems within the laws of physics and applied engineering, knows almost no bounds. But we don’t run. We address the problem and we solve it.
If Japan actually shuts down 100 percent of their low carbon energy, that is their nuclear reactors, which make up 30 percent of the installed capacity (and closer to 40 percent of their actual generation) then they will have rolling blackouts and their society will go backwards, toward an increase in use of fossil fuels (already underway with the closing of Fukushima) and away from an eventual socialist solution for everything from feeding their nation to industrial production. And of course their contribution to global warming, with all the dangerous consequences of that, will increase.
But TEPCO didn’t do any of these things, which could have prevented this accident. Like corporations all over the world, private enterprise does only that which they deem financially and politically necessary to get by. There is also a similar bureaucratic and cost-cutting compulsion even in state owned enterprises run, supposedly, for the public good.
Nuclear has been somewhat different historically from other forms of power generation, given the dangerous nature of generating energy from atomic fission. Everywhere it is highly regulated. This is true even in Japan where government and corporations are incestuously entangled with one other. In other countries, regulators have degrees more independence. Overall, there is no more regulated industry in the world than nuclear. But, as Japan shows, there are still vital safety issues that need to be addressed.
On a personal note, my own minimum experience with nuclear energy in the U.S. and having being a shop steward in a union local with 800 nuclear workers, has educated me on the importance of safety, of following regulatory guidelines, and seeing the consequences of not following those guidelines for workers involved.
I was convinced after visiting nuclear power plants and talking to my fellow union workers, that I didn’t want to work in such an environment. Because it was unsafe? No, for just the opposite reason, in fact. The tremendous amount of NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Agency) oversight, training, regulations and paperwork, that is, the “safety culture,” was simply too great for me to want to deal with. The workers there take these issues so seriously that I didn’t believe I could tolerate this work environment.
In the beginning of May of this year the New York Times ran an editorial, disguised as an “article” (one of the authors being an anti-nuclear ideologue from Greenpeace), supposedly showing the “near misses” and accidents that were missed or not noted by the NRC. There is no doubt that some of this is true, while giving a false overall picture of the issue. But it’s also true that despite these incidents, not one of these resulted in injury to the public or work force.
The fact is that, thanks to the workers involved in operating these plants, most of whom are union members, the safety record of the U.S. civilian nuclear energy industry and the sound regulatory oversight, has made even this, flawed, for-profit industry, the safest of any major industry in the U.S. for the last 50 years. Can we say the same about the refinery, pharmaceutical, chemical, coal, gas and oil industries? No, we cannot. The relative risk of these industries has to be looked at, and anti-nuclear “investigative” journalism routinely ignores this.
But it is not enough. And there are flaws in the entire system that warrant some serious revisions.
We have serious issues facing our class, our planet. From economic development of the productive forces in the oppressed neo-colonial world to raise their standard of living, to the phasing out of climate-changing fossil fuel use, we are going to require more, not, less energy, specifically electricity.
Most on the left are at best confused by this and at worse, seek a return to some sort of pastoral green, “democratic” pre-industrial utopia. As Marxists we should reject this “we use too much” scenario that has infected the left across the world. We certainly should use energy more wisely, more efficiently and with a sense of conservation. This can happen only when the profit motive is removed and scarcity in basic necessities is a thing of the past. No one should object to this. But these things do not produce one watt of power, especially if you consider what we have to do. These include:
• Switching off from fossil fuels completely (they should be used only as chemical feedstock, i.e. as the basic material to make chemicals and lubricants);
• Increasing the development of the productive forces especially in the developing world. This means developing whole electrical grids, new, primarily non-fossil fuel forms of generation and the infrastructure to support this, for the billions without any electrical usage at all;
• Freeing up the productive forces to eliminate all forms of want as the material basis for a true socialist mode of production. Using nuclear energy is both the cheapest and safest way to do this.
George Monbiot, in his latest entry on his blog challenges the renewable energy advocates with some hard questions. No socialist by any means, Monbiot has brought attention to the issue of energy and what it will take to reduce carbon emissions. He notes, writing on Britain, among other things:
“1. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means increasing electricity production. It is hard to see a way around this. Because low-carbon electricity is the best means of replacing the fossil fuels used for heating and transport, electricity generation will rise, even if we manage to engineer a massive reduction in overall energy consumption. The Zero Carbon Britain report published by the Centre for Alternative Technology envisages a 55 percent cut in overall energy demand by 2030—and a near-doubling of electricity production.”
How is this electricity going to be produced in a sustained and regular way? We know wind generated power is erratic and variable, a problem only partially solvable by new continental wide electricity grids. We know other forms of low carbon power—tidal, coal with carbon capture and storage, large scale solar—are experimental and even if viable are likely to turn out more expensive than nuclear.
We get no answer from so-called socialist Greens on this problem, at least not yet. They simply have not considered the real issues.
Monbiot goes on:
“3. The only viable low-carbon alternative we have at the moment is nuclear power. This has the advantage of being confined to compact industrial sites, rather than sprawling over the countryside, and of requiring fewer new grid connections (especially if new plants are built next to the old ones). It has the following disadvantages:
“a. The current generation of power stations requires uranium mining, which destroys habitats and pollutes land and water. Though its global impacts are much smaller than the global impacts of coal, the damage it causes cannot be overlooked.
“b. The waste it produces must be stored for long enough to be rendered safe. It is not technically difficult to do this, with vitrification, encasement and deep burial, but governments keep delaying their decisions as a result of public opposition.
“Both these issues (as well as concerns about proliferation and security) could be addressed through the replacement of conventional nuclear power with thorium or integral fast reactors but, partly as a result of public resistance to atomic energy, neither technology has yet been developed. (I’ll explore the potential of both approaches in a later column).”
I want to address this last point. Monbiot is slowly seeing his way to something that has taken a long time: that nuclear energy is really the only way to go, even in light of the “big three” accidents: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. These new technologies he mentions, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (which doesn’t require any uranium mining, enrichment or long term disposal of spent fuel) and the Integral Fast Reactor, provide the material basis for eliminating all fossil fuels and for a future society without want, wars or exploitation; that is a socialist one.
Where Monbiot and I come together is not, obviously, the socialist requirement to get rid of capitalism. It is over the need for more energy, not less. It is over the realization that renewables cannot do it except in the most utopian of fantasies.
The real “Great Divide” is between those among the Greens who run on fear and fantasy, and those socialists who have a materialist understanding of the need to move toward a society based not just on current human needs alone, but on expanding humanity’s ability to power such a society.
Only nuclear can do this.
David Walters worked as a union power plant operator for 24 years in California. He is currently a member of Socialist Organizer, U.S. Section of the Fourth International. This article, however, reflects his own personal position on the questions and not that of his organization.
—Permanent Revolution, June 13, 2011
http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/3333
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14) Secrets of the Deep Future
How Capitalist Energy Crimes Have Screwed Up Our Planet For Longer Than You Will Ever Know... and What You Can Do About It Now
By Chris Kinder
July/August Socialist Viewpoint Vol. 11, No. 4
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/julaug_11/julaug_11_03.html
In thousands of earth shattering explosions, most of the mountain tops in West Virginia have been blown up to scrape up the coal that lies within, and along the way bury countless stream beds with tons of debris, and pollute rivers with an alphabet soup of toxic materials. In Pennsylvania, New York and several other states, water laced with toxic chemicals has been pumped deep into the earth through hundreds of wells under enormous pressure to smash up mineral deposits and release natural gas for sale on an upbeat world market, while local water systems become so polluted that, in some cases, it becomes possible to light a flame at your kitchen faucet (as shown on a viral YouTube video).
Meanwhile, an area of formerly pristine wilderness the size of England is being raked clean of life and destroyed in Canada to extract oil from tar sands, the most carbon-intensive and counter-productive oil-producing method yet devised—again to capitalize on a rising market. And now, as BP’s deep-water drilling “accident” in the Gulf of Mexico fades into media forgetfulness, we have the Fukushima nuclear meltdown disaster.
These insults and injuries—combined with the looming, devastating reality of global warming—are all outrageous crimes of a rapacious capitalist system, which puts profits ahead of both people and the planet, and devours nature as though it was “free lunch.” We can fight back if we arm ourselves with a united working-class revolutionary program, but as shown by the debate around nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima, such a unity of program may be a little hard to come by.
A few days after the huge 9.0 earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, the world was made aware that damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daichi plant in Japan were irradiating the earth and threatening to melt down. But from day one, authorities presented false assurances, premature evaluations and outright lies, hoping to cover up this developing disaster.
At first, Japanese authorities told people NOT to evacuate, but to stay inside with the windows closed, only to order an inadequate evacuation in several hours. Later it was reported that the whole prefecture of Fukushima had in fact been evacuated by most people, despite the government’s limited 12-mile evacuation zone.1 For several days authorities squandered opportunities to control the dispersal of radiation, which some scientists say would have only been possible by immediate entombment of the nukes in concrete, as happened at Chernobyl. Now, given a worse-case scenario of the resulting situation, nuclear physicist Michio Kaku concluded that, “Huge parts of northern Japan could be off limits for centuries.”2
Go ahead, eat the bitter fruit of nuclear power
Reports of radiation contamination of water and foodstuffs produced near the plant soon came in—contamination of leafy greens in Fukushima Prefecture, and of water in Tokyo. Furthermore, irradiated water had both leaked and been dumped into the ocean, resulting in contaminations of up to 7.5 million times the “acceptable” dose of radioactive iodine.3
Despite these reports, and despite bans on Japanese food imports spreading around the world, fishers were still fishing in radioactive waters, and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan ridiculed those calling for an end to nuclear reactors, declaring that produce from the region around the Fukushima plant was safe to eat, despite farmers’ own misgivings about the radiation on their crops!4 This reminds us of George W. Bush’s admonition after 9/11 to “go shopping,” and the EPA’s assertion that the air around the fallen twin towers was safe to breathe. And so it suggests the idea that maybe the rulers of modern capitalist society ARE just as criminally insane as Ghengis Khan or Emperor Nero after all.
Eventually the realities began to be admitted by officials that Fukushima was a “7” (the maximum, as with Chernobyl, which scientists had known all along), not a “5,” on the nuclear disaster scale, as was earlier alleged. In fact, the exposed spent fuel pool at reactor No. 3 had exploded, sending pieces of plutonium-containing spent fuel rods up to two miles away.5 And in June, the Japanese government finally admitted that the radiation emitted from the plant was in fact about twice what had been earlier stated; that one reactor had experienced a fuel containment breach as early as five hours after the earthquake; and that three of the reactors had experienced fuel meltdowns.6
Capitalism can see neither forward nor back…In Japan
In fact the Fukushima-Daichi plants could be called criminally experimental from day one. Designers clearly didn’t know what they were doing by putting back-up generators at the bottom of the plant, where they could be inundated by a tsunami, with the ensuing loss of back-up electrical power; or by locating spent fuel pools high above the reactors, where they could—and did—dry out and explode in a crisis.
Perhaps most instructively, the designers overlooked the lesson of history, which was right before their eyes. Six hundred years ago, based on the experiences of earlier tsunamis no doubt, villagers had placed stone markers which were inscribed with the message, “Do not build any homes below this point.” Villages—and the Fukushima power plants—that were built below these points were wiped out by the tsunami, while hamlets built above them survived.7
…Or in the U.S.
As with the inception and entire history of nuclear energy, deceptive and dishonest pronouncements held sway in the U.S. as well. Perhaps the most brazen such assertion came from Dr. Joseph Oehmen, an MIT professor, who wrote on March 13th, “I repeat, there was and will not be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.”8 This was a denial of the obvious, which was that radiation from Fukushima was going to spread around the globe. As of April 12th, radiation levels in U.S. milk supplies (of radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer, especially in children) were reported at 300 percent of the EPA’s allowable maximum, due to the on-going plumes from Fukushima.9
None of this deterred the Obama administration however, which continues to pursue nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, despite major course changes away from new nuclear plant construction in Germany, Italy and now Japan itself.
Obama is continuing a key trajectory of U.S. imperialism, dating back to the World War II era. The United States, the only power (so far) to use atomic weapons, was also the mother of nuclear power development. This was a direct outgrowth of the military nuclear weapons program from day one. “Atoms for Peace” was put together by the Eisenhower administration to make the U.S. look good next to the Soviet Union, which had developed the A-bomb much quicker than the U.S. expected. The U.S.S.R. was looked to by the Third World as an alternative to European/U.S. imperialism in the post-war period, in which anti-colonial uprisings were sprouting around the globe. It wasn’t just about the H-bomb, you see; it was about “peaceful use” of atomic energy! And, it was about U.S. imperialism being able to corner a new international market before the Soviets could get an oar in.
Just after the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb test in 1953, Congress was getting riled up:
“It is possible that the relations of the United States with every other country in the world could be seriously damaged if Russia were to build an atomic power plant for peace time use ahead of us. The possibility that Russia might actually demonstrate her ‘peaceful’ intentions in the field of atomic energy while we are still concentrating on atomic weapons could be a major blow to our position in the world.”10
In war, hot or cold, truth is the first casualty
Right from the beginning however, the warnings were clearly made about both the dangers and problems of splitting the atom to make energy. Writing about future proliferation threats, then Under-Secretary of state Dean Acheson said in 1946 that, “The development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course interchangeable and interdependent.”11
Similar pronouncements were made by leaders of the Manhattan Project (developers of the atomic bomb) such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and others, about how the same methods and processes would be involved in both energy and bomb-making. These, and warnings over the basic safety of any industry based on nuclear reactions, were ignored. And as for the economics, no one who knew anything thought nuclear power would be cheap to produce. The propaganda about a “magical” energy source which would be “too cheap to meter” was just that, propaganda, churned out to justify an imperialist drive for a new market, and an edge against a perceived communist threat.
Nuclear capitalists are on welfare
The fact that nuclear power is not cheap is now well known, but it wouldn’t have even gotten off the ground, let alone developed as far as it has, without massive government subsidies. It’s hardly the cup of “tea” for Democratic and Republican small government deficit cutters, one would think, but nuclear power is so heavily supported that even its liabilities are covered. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957, as modified in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, set a limit on the liability of plant operators in the case of a catastrophic accident of $10.9 billion. Actual cost estimates of such an accident at a typical U.S. plant vary from somewhat over two-to over fifty-times this amount. Despite all the government support and what amounts to government insurance against damages, the big burst of nuclear power plant building in the U.S. in the 1960s turned out to be money-losers for GE and Westinghouse, because expected costs of operation were so much higher than estimates from the (since abolished) U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.12
Among the biggest crimes of the nuclear power industry is the deliberate and still-ongoing denial of the dangers of nuclear radiation, particularly long-term low-level exposures. This is first of all a crime of the capitalist class and its power-driven imperialist government, which ignored safety concerns in the drive to build and experiment with nuclear weapons. Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site caused between 11,300 and 212,000 cases of thyroid cancer, according to a study done by the National Cancer Institute. And just as the potential connection between the nuclear power fuel cycle and nuclear weapons was evident from the first days of atomic power, so were the dangerous effects of radiation. The radioactive Iodine-131 being released in the tests, which caused the cancers, was known to the U.S. government to concentrate in milk, and from there, to be taken up by the thyroid gland. Children were thus at particular risk, but this was of no concern to the government.
“Companies like Eastman-Kodak were warned of fallout patterns so that they could protect their film stocks, but no such warnings were given to farmers or families so that they could protect their children.”13
No comparable study of the effects on Canada or Mexico, which were known to have also received fallout, were done by the National Cancer Institute or any U.S. government agency. The atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the lies and deceptions that went along with it, were, like the bombs themselves that were dropped on an already-defeated Japan in 1945, all about the mad drive of the U.S. to ensure its dominance, and destroy the Soviet Union.
Low-level radiation, high-level lies
The main dangers of radiation, particularly high-level bursts as in a bomb, or in the fallout from a nuclear weapons test, were known in the late 1940s and 50s. And while other aspects of the radiation issue had to be learned, there is absolutely no excuse today for the on-going lies about low-level exposures. We are bombarded with messages of “nothing to worry about” from Fukushima in the U.S., and the government doesn’t even issue reports on radiation levels. Yet it has been conclusively shown by scientists such as physicist Ernest Sternglass and many others, that not only is there no safe dose of radiation, but low level doses, including levels only slightly above “normal” background radiation, “do not extrapolate into lower rates of cancer and other diseases.” Moreover, Sternglass reports in “Nuclear Radiation and the Destruction of the Immune System,”
“Doses delivered slowly and continuously over extended periods of time, such as from the ingestion or inhalation of fission products, are hundreds of times as damaging as short, high intensity exposures at the same small total dose produced by a brief X-ray.”14
Sternglass has confirmed this through numerous studies of the raw data, starting with the effects of fallout from atmospheric testing, and from extensive review of the data from the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986, in which he found that low-level radiation spreading from the site caused a measurable increase in mortality almost immediately.
“Infant and fetal mortality rates as far from Chernobyl as Germany and the U.S. increased significantly in the period immediately following the arrival of the fallout, just as they had done during the period of atmospheric weapons testing.”
In the above-mentioned paper, Sternglass reports specific results that show this from around the country and world. The reason for these results dates back to research as early as 1972 which showed that the dominant biological damage from low doses at very low rates is produced by toxic, short-lived excited molecules, called “free radicals,” a single one of which can destroy a cell by rupturing the cell membrane.
“The action of free radicals is a far more efficient process” than direct hits to the DNA, which is what happens in short-term high doses. “As a result, radioactive releases from nuclear bomb testing and normal as well as accidental releases from nuclear plants, turn out to be hundreds- to thousands-of-times more serious than is presently maintained by the nuclear industry.” On-going, low-level releases from normally-operating nuclear power plants are also documented to have shown increases in cancer, premature under-weight births, high levels of Strontium-90 in baby teeth and autism in people living near power plants.15 So, for every nuclear power plant in the world, and there are hundreds, there is now an uninhabitable (or not safely habitable) zone, which will be there for uncountable thousands-of-years.
The long-term threat: spent nuclear fuel
Which brings us to the topic of the spent nuclear fuel pools (and occasional dry cask storage units), which surround all of these plants. No one has come up with a solution to the problem of spent fuel rods, so they sit in these pools, which are mostly not inside containment structures like the reactors are, and which, in the wisdom of the designers, were not supposed to be there very long at all. The pools need to be kept filled with water to keep them from over heating, exploding, and releasing radiation (as happened at Fukushima-Daichi No.3).
No nation, in fact no one, knows what to do with this stuff. Secure burial has always been considered the best solution, but the U.S. was at the head of the pack with Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada, and that has now been cancelled. Other countries’ plans are less further along and equally dubious. The problem with Yucca Mountain, aside from local opposition including from native peoples whose land would be compromised, is similar to what is happening beneath the Nevada Test Site (NTS), as a result of underground nuclear testing.
Nevada test site: radioactive rubble seeps poison
The original Department of Energy (DOE) plan assumed that the heat from nuclear warhead explosions underground (921 of them) would fix the plutonium in the rock (which is now in an area of radioactive rubble the size of Rhode Island). But this analysis failed to take into consideration the action of small amounts of plutonium suspended in water, which would then gradually move downhill, which in this case, is toward Las Vegas. Of course, reaching Las Vegas could take this polluted water a few thousand years, but since the half-life of Plutonium-129 is 24,000 years... you do the math.
The Nevada legislature has taken the first step in demanding compensation from the federal government for radioactivity in the water table beneath the Nevada Test Site, (Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2011). Will there even be a Nevada legislature by the time the polluted water reaches Las Vegas?
The same problem has cropped up in numerous cases, such as Hanford, Washington, for instance, the location of one of the early weapons facilities. The Department Of Energy’s early estimates were wrong again, and fission products and other radionuclides from leaking high-level waste tanks have been found to have reached the water table below Hanford, in some cases after just 60 years. Similarly, with Yucca Mountain, original estimates of the possibility of water penetration into the storage facility topped out at 20,000 years, leading the DOE to conclude that “there would be no release of radionuclides from Yucca Mountain into the biosphere within the first 10,000 years...” But subsequent findings in the 1990s showed that, “what was supposed to be a dry repository was now found to be potentially far wetter than expected.”16
Yucca mountain can’t contain it
Even if Yucca Mountain had been a suitable site, it would not have been enough. The projected amount of spent fuel that would need storage by 2012—the earliest projected date for the opening of the Yucca Mountain facility—was 67,500 metric tons. Yucca’s maximum was 63,000 metric tons.17
Has mankind opened a Pandora’s box here? No, capitalism opened this box, and mankind will suffer from that for longer than any of us will ever know. Consider that spent nuclear fuel contains: Strontium-90, with a half-life of 28 years; Cesium-137, half-life 30 years; and Plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,000 years. (These are combined with some Technetium-99, half/life 212,000 years; Cesium-135, half/life 2.3 million years; and Iodine-129, half/life 15.7 million years.) Add into this frightening brew the depleted uranium which has been spread all over Iraq and Yugoslavia in the form of weapons remains—depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.468 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) years—and you begin to have an idea that capitalism, with its total disregard for the future beyond this year’s bottom line, has compromised the rest of humanity’s existence.
160,000 years and still glowing death
Let’s run that by again, using only one example. Plutonium-239 is perhaps the most poisonous substance known to humanity. Any sizable dose kills instantly, and one microscopic particle lodged in the lung can cause cancer. Its half-life is 24,000 years. But “half-life” means that only half of it degrades to another form, giving off radiation in the process, while the other half remains waiting to degrade at any moment. Bottom line: of the amount of plutonium ready to go to Yucca Mountain in 2012, after 160,000 years there would still be more than four-and-a-half metric tons of radioactive Plutonium-239, enough to make nearly 570 nuclear bombs if recovered.18 In other words, this waste could still be spread around the planet in hundreds of no-go zones near dead nuclear plant sites in... 160,000 years or more! Think about it. The modern human species (homo sapiens) has only existed for at most 130,000 years!
As for depleted uranium, its half/life (nearly four-and-one-half billion years) equals the life span of the earth itself! As with other substances, a very long half/life means an extremely slow and weak rate of decay. Depleted uranium (which is essentially U-235, the naturally found uranium) is so weak that a piece of paper, or human skin, stops its radioactive penetration. But the inhalation or ingestion of the smallest particle presents a different story. All manner of diseases can be caused by a small particle lodged in the body, because the slow, low-level radiation repeatedly impacts the surrounding organs. Used in armor and munitions, this stuff gets pulverized and dispersed around the area in which it is used, and the medical record, particularly among Iraqis, is mounting.
Capitalism: destroying nature, destroying the future
Thus capitalism has succeeded in compromising our human future for longer than we’ve existed on the planet, and in some ways, for longer than the life of the planet itself. Yet some still would say, “someone will come up with a solution eventually.” And even if some partial solutions do arise, needless to say, this is the height of arrogant hubris. This isn’t the only problem with which capitalism has saddled humanity’s future. Global warming now looms over us as a certain prospect, as capitalist governments around the world, particularly the U.S., dig in their heals to protect their bottom line and ignore the future.
Since the dire after effects of human atom-splitting (read capitalist nuclear criminality) will last for hundreds-of-thousands, or millions- or billions-of-years, conscious humans of today, lacking the answers that the capitalists should have had, must at least examine the consequences. One of the controversies around Fukushima involves the question of what was the real cause. This boils down to natural disaster, versus bad planning and unpreparedness on the part of the industry. Thus the “real” problem at Fukushima was the failure of the electrical back-up system for the cooling apparatus, not the tsunami. Back-up electrical systems can be knocked out in many ways, it is said: blizzards, tornados, etc. Of course this was human failure both in bad design and in getting into nuclear power in the first place. But now that we’re in this mess, we must consider the future nuclear “legacy” to humankind in its entirety. And in this view, natural disasters offer a greatly expanded menu of possibilities.
A long, dark shadow is cast
Humanity’s future—never considered by those that started down the nuclear road—depends in a big way on a stable, capable society in place to deal with the leftover nuclear plants and waste dumps, to make sure people are protected from them, and they are kept from exploding or otherwise getting worse. But what is human society going to look like over the next 160,000 years, and will it even be around to deal with all the leftover problems of the 20th and 21st centuries?
The first problem is global warming, which is also caused by the capitalist system, and “natural” only in its many manifestations. Oceans will rise perhaps as much as 25 feet in a couple centuries, water sources will be depleted, human migrations will be massive, agriculture will have to be reinvented, and weather patterns and even ocean currents will be dramatically altered. At worst, the human species could be on the brink of extinction, the surviving few barely making do with a subsistence agricultural society. Through all this instability, those nuclear waste dumps are still going to be there, and dozens of them are going to have to be moved up away from the rising oceans.
“The development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course interchangeable and interdependent.”
Let’s assume that humanity survives the next two- or three-hundred years; the rest of our 160,000 years or more of waste dumps containing radioactive plutonium stretch out before us. On that time scale, based on the geological record, vast earthquakes, tsunamis and mega-volcanoes are possible. Tsunamis caused by volcanic landslides are the worst; Japan had one reaching a 330-foot wave amplitude that killed 15,000 people in 1792. And mega-volcanoes have threatened humanity in the past. One in particular, the Toba explosive eruption of 74,000 BCE, sent an estimated 1,000 cubic kilometers of material skyward in a plume that reached 25 kilometers high. It is thought to have devastated world climate, and brought the nascent human species almost to its knees. Perhaps 10,000 individuals survived through this. A similar event could occur within 160,000 years into the future, as there are many candidates for new mega eruptions on a long time scale. Will humanity be ready to deal with that and with the disruption, flooding or exposure of the still remaining nuclear waste dumps that could ensue from such an event?
Look at the big picture
All of this is not meant to focus our minds on a distant and possibly out-of-control future, but rather to see the big picture, starting with an understanding of the depth of depravity that the capitalist system represents. This system has rendered the future more and more dubious with its rapacious pursuit of profits, over both humanity and nature. The fossil fuel based and nuclear energy industries of capitalism are the leading edge of a mindless destructiveness that must be stopped. We must focus our energies around an anti-capitalist program that envisions how the working class can remake society to eliminate fossil fuel and nuclear power industries and replace them with clean, renewable energy sources on a world scale. To do this, we must not pick and choose between the alternatives presented to us by the system, but instead fight for a program built around the real needs of working people and all of humanity.
Viewed from this standpoint, it is disappointing to see that a left wing muck-raking journalist such as George Monbiot, has succumbed to the siren song of “clean” nuclear energy, and to do so explicitly in the wake of Fukushima, in order to ward off the specter of coal power. Monbiot, who once looked favorably on the prospects for renewable energy, now derides them as being based on a return to a primitive pre-industrialism that has its own environmental problems and cannot replace modern industry. But renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, working in a coordinated overall plan with wave energy, geothermal and other sources, are hardly pre-industrial. An increasing number of observers are coming to the conclusion that such a program could be workable. See for instance a recent piece in Scientific American, based around a 2009 Stanford University study.19
The problem for both Monbiot and the Scientific American authors and others in the environmental movement is that they frame their arguments within the possibilities of capitalism. While Monbiot and other “green” pro-nukes (James Lovelock, author of Gaia, preceded Monbiot in this) endorse one of the most dangerous and destructive industries in the capitalist arsenal, environmentalists such as the Scientific American authors naively assume that capitalism can be persuaded to change its ways. Environmentalists such as the Scientific American authors cite the economic transformation in the U.S. in World War II, forgetting that this top-down transformation was in the service of imperialist war, not in serving the true needs of people.
Only one way forward: revolution
A transformation of the economy and industry such as the Scientific American authors suggest is technically feasible, but could only be brought about by overthrowing capitalism and revolutionizing society from top to bottom. Seizing the assets of the capitalist ruling class, and putting them to use rebuilding old industries and setting up new ones will be necessary in order to make a renewable future come into being soon. Time is of the essence, because the longer we wait, the worse the effects of global warming/nuclear accidents will be.
Many socialists, especially at times such as the present, in the wake of a major disaster, tend to focus on one target demand, such as “abolish nuclear,” without tying that into an anti-capitalist whole. Simply abolishing nuclear, while necessary, is not enough. Stopping offshore oil drilling, the ravaging of rainforests and other natural landscapes by big oil, mountain top removal by the coal industry, and fracking for natural gas are all equally urgent demands. Getting rid of all of these industries, including nuclear is vital, but only within a plan of developing new jobs and new industries in the renewable sector to replace them.
The Trotskyist Transitional Program, based on the entire programmatic history of the Marxist communist movement, offers a framework for formulating programmatic demands, which address the immediate needs of the working people in a revolutionary way. Though forgotten or turned into a set of reform demands by many avowed revolutionaries, (many of whom support the nuclear industry out of mistaken belief that the workers can simply take over existing capitalist industry and run it for peoples’ needs) the Transitional Program shows concretely how the real needs of working people and all humanity can only be achieved through revolutionary means. In the critical case of addressing global warming and nuclear atrocities while raising, not lowering the living standards of workers and poor, a transitional approach would begin by calling for the expropriation under workers control of all the big extractive and energy corporations, as well as the major manufacturers in the transportation sector, and organize a complete retooling and conversion of these industries into building a new, renewable infrastructure under a national/international plan that coordinates local efforts with general needs. Such a program would require workers to come to power with their own revolutionary party, counterposed to all capitalist parties, and capable of forming a workers’ government.
1 Eileen Miyko Smith of Green Action Japan, on Flashpoints, KPFA Radio (www.kpfa.org), May 4th 2011.
2 Michio Kaku, Physics Professor at the City University of New York, on Flashpoints KPFA, April 12, 2011; and on Democracy Now!, WBAI NY, April 13, 2011.
3 KPFA Evening News, April 5, 2011.
4“Japanese nuclear plant hit by fire and third explosion,” The Guardian, March 15, 2011, quoted in Mitchel Cohen, Is it too late to save this planet? www.mitchelcohen.com
5 Arney Gundeerson, “Fair Winds”, on Flashpoints, KPFA, April 27, 2011.
6“Radiation Understated After Quake, Japan Says,” New York Times, June 6, 2011.
7 Jay Alabaster, Associated Press, “Tsunami-hit towns forgot warnings from ancestors,” April 6, 2011; quoted in Mitchel Cohen, Is it too late to save this planet? http://www.mitchelcohen.com
8 Quoted in Keith Harmon Snow, “Nuclear Apocalypse In Japan,” March 18, 2011, www.consciousbeingalliance.com
9“Radiation levels in U.S. milk now 300% of EPA maximum,” Natural News, April 12, 2011, www.naturalnews.com
10 Sterling Cole, chairman of the Joint Committee On Atomic Energy in the U.S. Congress, 1953, quoted in Brice Smith, Insurmountable Risks, RDR Books/IEER Press, 2006, p.iv. Brice Smith is a physicist and senior scientist at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, www.ieer.org
11 Dean Acheson et al, “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” March 16, 1946, in Brice Smith, op cit, p. 100
12 Brice Smith, op cit, pp 7 & 194-95.
13 Brice Smith, op cit, p 101. Smith refers the reader to Ortmeyer and Makhejani, “Worse Than We Knew,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov/Dec, 1997 for more on this history.
14Ernest J Sternglass, “Nuclear Radiation and the Destruction of the Immune System,” in No Nukes, a Red Balloon Collective and Brooklyn Greens Pamphlet. See www.mitchelcohen.com. Sternglass is a former research director at Westinghouse, and chief technical officer of Radiation and Public Health Project, RPHP. www.radiation.org
15 Sternglass, on “Your Own Health and Fitness,” KPFA radio, March 29, 2011.
16 Brice Smith, op cit, p. 243-44, and 255
17 Brice Smith, op cit, p. 238
18 Brice Smith, op cit, P. 238
19 Mark Z Jacobson and Mark A Delucchi, “A plan to power 100 percent of the planet with renewables; wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here’s how,” Scientific American, October 26, 2009. Find a more detailed discussion of the same general idea in Arjun Makhijani, “The Technical and Economic Feasibility of a Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free Energy System in the United States,” March 4, 2009, www.ieer.org
11 Dean Acheson et al, “A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” March 16, 1946, in Brice Smith, op cit, p. 100
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