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STOP BART CENSORSHIP!
This is San Francisco, not Egypt.
Sign the Petition:
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/bart_censorship/?r=231035&id=25860-3083065-U6EApmx
The petition reads:
"A government agency cannot shut down an entire cell phone communications network just because it is being used to express dissent. BART Police must be held accountable for their actions. Stop the heavy handed tactics that violate free speech rights in an attempt to quell dissent."
You don't lose your First Amendment rights when you decide to take public transit. But that's what happened last week when BART Police turned off for three hours the underground network that allows passengers to communicate by cell phone on trains and on underground station platforms.
The BART Police suspended cell phone service in order to silence dissent. It was the first time ever in the United States that a government agency shut down cell phone service in order to suppress a public protest.
"All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to stop them," said Michael Risher of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "It's outrageous that in San Francisco, BART is doing the same thing."1
Tell the BART Board of Directors: Stop the BART Police from suspending cell phone service and violating free speech rights.
A government agency cannot shut down an entire cell phone communications network just because it's being used to express dissent.
It's shocking that a transit agency would go rogue and shut down a cell phone network in a major U.S. city. The incident, not surprisingly has sparked outrage from local elected officials and civil liberties groups and garnered national and international attention.
In the light of pressure from elected officials and national and international news coverage, the elected board that governs the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority cannot ignore this blatant and mass violation of civil rights. We must take advantage of this moment to pressure the BART Board of Directors to step in and take action to hold the BART Police accountable and stop them from suspending our First Amendment rights.
Tell the BART Board of Directors: The BART Police must be held accountable for their actions -- stop the heavy handed tactics that violate free speech rights in an attempt to quell dissent.
BART Police have been the center of controversy in recent years and have a history of cover ups in response to public outrage over its use of deadly force. Last week's cell phone disruption was aimed at disrupting protests of a fatal July 3 shooting of a knife-wielding homeless man.
Despite local, national and international outrage, BART officials haven't gotten the message yet. BART spokesman Linton Johnson said that the agency may cut cell phone service again in the future, explaining that riders "don't have the right to free speech inside the fare gates."2 It's up to the elected BART Board of Directors, who are accountable directly to the voters, to hold BART officials accountable.
Sign our petition and we will deliver your signatures to the elected members of the BART Board of Directors. And please share this petition with your Bay Area friends and family so they can take action, too.
1 BART admits halting cell service to stop protests, San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 2011
2 Cell service stays on during BART protest in SF, San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2011
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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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Stop Illegal Evictions in East Oakland
Join the East Oakland residents who have suffered illegal removal from their homes on August 19th @ 12:00pm @ Oakland City Hall- Frank Ogawa Plaza for a press conference and rally for Housing justice.
http://www.poormagazine.org/node/4028
A former Public Housing project in East Oakland illegally evicts its remaining residents so a profit can me made on future development:
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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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please forward widely)
ENDORSEMENTS REQUESTED
National Call to Action!
Organizing Meeting!
For Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions,
Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
You are invited to attend a Chicago/National Organizing Meeting:
Sunday, August 28, 2011
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Kent College of Law, Room C50
565 West Adams Street
Chicago
At the invitation of the White House, military and civilian representatives of the 28-nation U.S.-commanded and largely U.S.-financed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and heads of state and finance ministers of the G-8 world economic powers are convening to Chicago, May 15-22, 2012.
The U.S./NATO military behemoth enforces the interests of the global great power elites. $Trillions are expended for never-ending wars and occupations while $trillions in austerity programs are extracted from working people the world over.
The G-8 nations, the richest on earth, will assemble to plan ever new draconian measures seeking to resolve the problems created by their crisis-ridden and profit-driven social order at the expense of working people and the poor everywhere.
Theirs is the agenda of the heads of state of the world's richest nations and their imperial military-industrial establishments - the agenda of the banks and corporations - the agenda for austerity, unprecedented social cutbacks, union-busting, environmental destruction, global warming/climate crisis, racism, sexism, homophobia, deepening attacks on civil liberties, democratic rights and never-ending war.
Ours is the agenda for humanity's future. We will mobilize in the tens of thousands from cities across the U.S. and around the world. On Tuesday, May 15, the opening day of the NATO/G-8 deliberations, we will announce our agenda with a press conference, rally and peaceful march. On Saturday, May 19 we will mobilize for a massive march and rally - exercising our democratic rights to peaceful assembly to demand:
• Bring All U.S./NATO Troops, Mercenaries & War Contractors Home Now! Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, the Middle East and Elsewhere.
• End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Aid to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine! End the Siege of Gaza! No to Threats of War Against Iran! End the Sanctions Now!
• Trillions for Jobs, Housing, Education, Health Care, Pensions and the Environment! No to Attacks on Unions, Cutbacks, Layoffs, Mortgage Foreclosures and Austerity! Bring the War Dollars Home!
• Tax the Rich, Not Working People! No to Corporate and Bank Bailouts!
• Civil liberties for All! End Racist Attacks on Muslim and Arab Communities! End Racist Attacks on Blacks, Latinos and Immigrants! Full Legal Rights for All! No to FBI Repression and Grand Jury Subpoenas to Antiwar and Social Justice Activists!
THE RIGHT TO PROTEST:
We will demand that our guaranteed civil liberties and democratic rights be respected - that our right to peaceful assembly and political protest be honored - that the voices of the people not be stifled!
The following organizations/individuals are among the initial Chicago-area endorsers:
Hatem Abudayyeh, *US Palestinian Community Network, Chicago • Dave Bernt, Shop Stewart, Teamsters Local 705 •_Bill Chambers, Committee Against Political Repression • _Sarah Chambers, Executive Board Member, Chicago Teachers Union • _Mark Clements, Campaign to End the Death Penalty • _Vince Emmanuelle, *Iraq Veterans Against the War_ • Randy Evans, Global Reach, Inc. • Chris Geovanis, Hammerhard Media Works • _PatHunt, Chicago Area Code Pink, Chicago Area Peace Action • _Joe Isobaker, Committee to Stop FBI Repression • Dennis Kosuth, *National Nurses United, union steward • Kait McIntyre, Students for a Democratic Society, University of Illinois - Chicago_ • Jorge Mujica, March 10th Immigrant Rights Activist_ • Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence • _Eric Ruder, Chicago Network to Send US Boat to Gaza • _Adam Shills, *Illinois Educational Association • Newland Smith, Episcopalian Peace Fellowship • _Sarah Smith, Committee to Stop FBI Repression • _Students for Justice in Palestine at School of the Art Institute of Chicago • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, *Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign • _Andy Thayer, Gay Liberation Network and Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism_ *Organization for identification purposes only.
The May 15 and 19, 2012 mobilizations were initiated by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) in partnership with antiwar and social justice groups in Chicago, across the U.S. and internationally. At the June 18, NYC National Coordinating Committee meeting of UNAC the 49 groups present unanimously adopted a resolution to protest the NATO/G8 meetings. They are listed as follows:
Action for a Progressive Pakistan • Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition - NY • BAYAN-USA • Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace • Bail Out the People Movement • Black Agenda Report • Black is Back • Boston Stop the Wars • Boston UNAC • Code Pink • Committee to Stop FBI Repression • Ct. United for Peace • Fellowship of Reconciliation • Green Party • Haiti Liberte' • Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine • Honduras Resistencia - USA • International Action Center •_International Support Haiti Network • International League of People's Struggle_• International Socialist Organization • Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan NY • Jersey City Peace Movement_• May 1st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition • Mobilization Against War and Occupation - Canada • Metro West Peace Action • Middle East Crisis Committee • Muslim Peace Coalition • New England United • Nodutdol Korean Community Development • Pakistan Solidarity Network • Philly Against War • Project Salam • Rhode Island Mobilization Committee • Rochester Against War • SI - Solidarity with Iran • Socialist Action • Socialist Party USA • Thomas Merton Center Pittsburgh • Veterans for Peace • Voices for Creative Nonviolence • West Hartford Citizens for Peace • WESPAC • Women's International League for Peace and Freedom • Workers World • World Can't Wait
A national coordinating committee and its Chicago counterpart, open to and inclusive of the direct and democratic participation of all antiwar and social justice organizations is in formation. Join us! Endorse the May 15 and May 19, 2012 Chicago mobilizations against the NATO-G-8 warmakers.
Contact: No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers: A National Network Opposing War and Austerity
email: NATOG8protest@gmail.com
Chicago: 773-301-0109 or 773-209-1187
National: 518-227-6947
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Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising
Friday, September 9th - 7pm Sharp
518 Valencia Street - San Francisco
Attica - The Restored 1974 Film
Discussion with:
Azadeh Zohrabi - Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal
Dennis Cunningham - Original Attica Attorney
Manuel Fontaine - about connecting the dots to
Georgia, Ohio and California prison strikes
Prison unrest in the United States hit a boiling point on September 9, 1971, when inmates at Attica State Prison after months of protesting inhumane living conditions rebelled, seizing part of the prison and taking 35 hostages. The uprising was met with a military attack and the murder of 43 people after NY State troopers assaulted the prisoners. Attica - released 3 years later - is an investigation of the rebellion and its aftermath, piecing together documentary footage of the occupation and ensuing assault. Especially significant today as prisoners from Georgia, Ohio, California and other states fight for their human rights in the face of increased imprisonment and the brutality and torture of long-term solitary confinement.
$10 Donation - $5 youth - No one turned away
Sponsored by the Freedom Archives & the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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Palestine Is Coming to the U.N.!
Rally, Thursday, September 15, 5 pm: Gather at Times Square
6 pm: March to Grand Central and then over to the U.N. to demand:
Palestine: Sovereignty Now!
Palestine: Enforce the Right of Return!
Palestine: Full Equality for All!
5 pm: Gather at Times Square
6 pm: March to Grand Central and then over to the U.N., as we say:
End All U.S. Aid to Israel!
End the Occupation!
Support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions!
For more information, email palestineun@gmail.com
Sponsored by the Palestine U.N. Solidarity Coalition
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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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Cracked Fukushima: Radioactive steam escapes danger zone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fimRJocH_90
Workers at Japan's Fukushima plant say the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the cracks. The cooling system at the plant failed after the devastating tsunami hit Japan in March, sparking a nuclear crisis. But new evidence suggests that Fukushima reactors were doomed to cripple even before the massive wave reached them. RT's Anissa Naouai talks to Dr. Robert Jacobs, a Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
RT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RT_com
RT on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
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London Riots. (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
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Police Beat Homeless Fullerton Man Kelly Thomas To Death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1ljYNgLnpxM
A video has surfaced that documents Fullerton police beating a homeless man near the Fullerton Bus Depot in early July, reports Gawker. The video above does not show much of the fight, but you can hear a man's screams and people talking about a Taser. The man being beaten also cries out for his father.
On July 5, Fullerton police received reports of someone breaking into cars in the area around the bus depot, according to the LA Times. Police subsequently tried to arrest 37-year-old transient Kelly Thomas on suspicion of possessing the stolen items.
When Thomas resisted, it took several minutes for him to be subdued. Sgt. Andrew Goodrich told the OC Register that it took "an upwards of five, maybe six officers to subdue him."
ABC says that Thomas was unarmed during the incident. Thomas sustained severe injuries to the head and neck, as evidenced in the photo here (WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC). He was hospitalized at UCI Medical Center, when he fell into a coma and died less than a week later.
Thomas' father Ron Thomas told the OC Register that his son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties and was homeless by choice. His sister, Christina Kinser, described him as a "quiet, gentle soul" to Fullerton Stories.
Currently, the Fullerton Police Department is performing an inquiry into the incident, and the case is being examined by the Orange County District Attorney's office, reports the LA Times. There have been several protests, and a vigil for Kelly was held in downtown Fullerton, the OC Register tells us.
In an open letter, City Council Member Bruce Whitaker has called for the police to offer a clear explanation and to release a video that apparently shows the actual beating.
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New Trailer: Battle for Brooklyn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwq78l6SPUs&feature=share
Battle for Brooklyn explores the poorly understood phenomenon of eminent domain abuse. A feature-length documentary from filmmakers Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley, and David Beilinson, this film investigates how real estate developers, local government, community activists, and the media have clashed over the largest single-source development project ever proposed in New York City. Widely known as the Atlantic Yards project, this undertaking has for the past four years been a major source of contention as local residents resist a billionaire developers attempt to use eminent domain to seize their homes and businesses. Done in the name of "development," schemes such as this one eviscerate private property rights and make a mockery of the Fifth Amendment--and yet they freely exploit lucrative taxpayer subsidies, easements, and tax abatements.
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A Classic: With great TV visuals common during the War in Vietnam--cleansed for us today.
Bruce Springsteen - War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn91L9goKfQ&feature=share
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Verizon Strike in Albany, New York
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwa0LrjUl8s
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Protest which sparked Tottenham riot
Hours before the riot which swept the area demonstrators gather outside Tottenham Police Station in North London demanding "justice" for the killing of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police.
By Alastair Good
August 7, 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8687058/Protest-which-sparked-Tottenham-riot.html
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Support the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ifepv8s3nRE#at=101
This video explains what the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike is all about, with former prisoners detailing why prisoners are protesting, how this action relates to a history of prisoner-led resistance, and what people outside prison can do to support the hunger strike.
This video was made by a coalition called Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity. For updates on the hunger strike, check out: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com
[The footage near the end of the video is of youth in Oakland organizing to stop gang injunctions, another struggle you should definitely stay informed on. Visit: stoptheinjunction.wordpress.com]
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Hayes Carll performs his new song "KMAG YOYO" (a military acronym for "Kiss My Ass Guys, You're On Your Own") from his new album also called KMAG YOYO on SiriusXM Outlaw Country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElnaO3WQkZc&feature=player_embedded
http://www.couragetoresist.org/
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Very reminiscent of Obama's address last night (July 25, 2011) ...bw
Pat Paulsen 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oiQhhdz8ys
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children's urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.
When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens' right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies "I don't know if they have that right."
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Roseanne Grills Politician About Taxes, Wages, Unions, Etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fveEKxzfXk&feature=channel_video_title
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Japanese Nuclear Reactors Still A Major Problem
http://vodpod.com/watch/13616904-japanese-nuclear-reactors-still-a-major-problem?u=ampedstatuscom&c=ampedstatus
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BART protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIw1Z-H1WIA&feature=player_embedded
Uploaded by TheBayCitizen on Jul 11, 2011
Protesters heckled deputy BART police chief Daniel Hartwig as he tries to get them to close the door on the BART train. About 50 gathered at Civic Center Station to protest the BART police shooting of Charles Hill.
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Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class [Full Film]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZS91cqpa8
Narrated by Ed Asner
Based on the book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows.
Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV's disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants -- stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.
Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television's often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people.
Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz, (City University of New York); Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich; Herman Gray (University of California-Santa Cruz); Robin Kelley (Columbia University); Pepi Leistyna (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Michael Zweig (State University of New York-Stony Brook). Also with Arlene Davila, Susan Douglas, Bambi Haggins, Lisa Henderson, and Andrea Press.
Sections: Class Matters | The American Dream Machine | From the Margins to the Middle | Women Have Class | Class Clowns | No Class | Class Action
http://www.mediaed.org
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Let's torture the truth out of suicide bombers says new CIA chief Petraeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sm02UbKNCKQ
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Since last week, more than 45,000 ColorOfChange members have demanded that Illinois State officials overturn the convictions of men who were arrested as teens and forced to confess to murders they did not commit. Recent DNA testing has proven the innocence of the 10 Black men, some of whom have been imprisoned for nearly 20 years. Despite this overwhelming evidence, which has even linked the crimes to the real killers, the state of Illinois refuses to correct these injustices.
Our goal is to reach 70,000 signers before we deliver the petitions to Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. Can you help us get there by clicking the link below? It takes just a moment. And when you do, please invite your friends and family to do the same.
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/936?akid=2118.46097.ZuOnCc&t=2
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Statement by Angela Davis regarding Troy Davis
I urgently appeal to Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and to the members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole - L. Gale Buckner , Robert E. Keller, James E. Donald, Albert Murray, and Terry Barnard - to spare the life of Troy Davis, a young African American citizen of your state.
I hope everyone within sight or sound of my words or my voice will likewise urgently call and fax Gov. Neal and the members of the Board. Under Georgia law, only they can stop the execution of Troy Davis.
First of all, there is very compelling evidence that Troy Davis may be innocent of the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in 1989 in Savannah. The case against Davis has all but collapsed: seven of nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony and said that they were pressured by police to lie; and nine other witnesses have implicated one of the remaining two as the actual killer. No weapon or physical evidence linking Davis to the murder was ever found. No jury has ever heard this new information, and four of the jurors who originally found him guilty have signed statements in support of Mr. Davis.
More importantly, the planned execution of a likely innocent young Black man in the state of Georgia has become a terrible blot on the status of the United States in the international community of nations. All modern industrial and democratic nations and 16 states within the United States have abolished capital punishment. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the men and women on death rows across the country are Black and other people of color, and are universally poor, severely undermines our country's standing in the eyes of the people of the world.
Most importantly, the execution of Troy Davis will contribute to an atmosphere of violence and racism and a devaluation of life itself within our country. If we can execute anyone, especially a man who may be innocent of any crime, it fosters disrespect for the law and life itself. This exacerbates every social problem at a time when the people of our country face some of the most difficult challenges regarding our economic security and future.
I urge everyone to join with me in urging Governor Neal and the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to stay the execution of Troy Davis and commute his death sentence. Give this young man a life, and an opportunity to prove his innocence.
Please, call or fax today. Stop the execution of Troy Davis!
Gov. Nathan Deal
Tel: (404)651-1776
Fax: (404)657-7332
Email: georgia.governor@gov.state.ga.us
Web contact form: web: http://gov.state.ga.us/contact.shtml
Georgia Board of Parsons and Parole
L. Gale Buckner
Robert E. Keller
James E. Donald
Albert Murray
Terry Barnard
Tel: (404) 656-5651
Fax: (404) 651-8502
Angela Y. Davis
July 14, 2011
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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LEONARD PELTIER NEEDS OUR HELP!
On June 27, Leonard Peltier was removed from the general population at USP-Lewisburg and thrown in the hole. Little else is known at this time. Due to his age and health status, please join us in demanding his immediate return to general population.
Thomas Kane, Acting Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
E-Mail: info@bop.gov
Web Site: www.bop.gov
Phone: (202) 307-3198
Fax: (202) 514-6620
Address: 320 1st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Launched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
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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!
Pelican Bay Prisoners Go On Hunger Strike to Protest Grave Conditions July 1, 2011
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
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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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) China Moves Swiftly to Close Chemical Plant After Protests
By KEITH BRADSHER
August 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/world/asia/15dalian.html?ref=world
2) At Vacant Homes, Foraging for Fruit
By KIM SEVERSON
August 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/us/15forage.html?ref=us
3) Britain Charges 16-Year-Old with Murder in Riots
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL
August 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/world/europe/17britain.html?hp
4) The "Accidental Rudeness" of the British
By Melanie Newton
Stabrock News
August 15, 2011
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2011/features/in-the-diaspora/08/15/the-%E2%80%9Caccidental-rudeness%E2%80%9D-of-the-british/
To see the Howe-Armstrong interview, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
5) Poverty's Boiling Point
The US is creating the same conditions that fueled the London riots
"It should come as no surprise that the British government has opted to distribute the pain downward, much as the US federal and state governments now are. The rich have influence, and the poor do not. That is why economic inequality, not moral failing, is the illness in need of remedy."
By Simon Waxman
The Boston Globe Opinion
August 16, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/08/16/povertys_boiling_point/
6) The Clear Case for the Gas Tax
[I.E., TAX THE POOR TO GIVE TO THE RICH. They would have us believe that it's in the interests of the poor that taxes on them be increased! ..BW]
New York Times Editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/opinion/the-clear-case-for-the-gas-tax.html?pagewanted=print
7)South Africa: Municipal Workers Strike
By REUTERS
August 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/africa/16briefs-strike.html?ref=world
8) Sending the Police Before There's a Crime
"The arrests were routine. Two women were taken into custody after they were discovered peering into cars in a downtown parking garage in Santa Cruz, Calif. One woman was found to have outstanding warrants; the other was carrying illegal drugs."
By ERICA GOODE
August 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16police.html?ref=us
9) State Employees' Union Accepts Wage and Benefits Concessions
By THOMAS KAPLAN
August 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/nyregion/state-employees-union-accepts-wage-and-benefits-concessions.html?ref=nyregion
10) STUDY: Mean People Earn Higher Salaries
Andrew Jones, The Raw Story
Aug. 15, 2011
http://www.businessinsider.com/study-mean-people-earn-higher-salaries-2011-8
11) NYPD riot units conduct drills
EMILY ANNE EPSTEIN/METRO
NEW YORK
August 14, 2011
http://www.metro.us/newyork/local/article/942885--nypd-riot-units-conduct-drills
12) Looting With the Lights On
"We keep hearing England's riots weren't political - but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery"
By Naomi Klein, Guardian UK
August 17, 2011
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/357-europe/7066-looting-with-the-lights-on
13) Civil rights groups file suit to shed sunlight on police surveillance operations
Submitted by Communications
ACLU of Massachusetts
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 08:05
http://aclum.org/news_8.18.11
14) "The Global Plutocracy Is Terrified of Dissent. In Some Places, The War On Dissent Is Being Fought With Bullets. In Others, The War On Dissent Targets Social Media And Mobile Communications"
Washington's Blog
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/global-plutocracy-is-terrified-of.html
15) Wrong Answers in Britain
New York Times Editorial
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/wrong-answers-in-britain.html?_r=1
16) Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant
"Ms. Ozer and other students said they were paid $8.35 an hour. After fees are deducted from her paychecks as well as $400 a month for rent, she said, she often takes home less than $200 a week. 'We are supposed to be here for cultural exchange and education, but we are just cheap laborers,' Ms. Ozer said."
By JULIA PRESTON
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/us/18immig.html?ref=world
17) Jobless Rate Holds at 8.7%, but Many Have Given Up Looking
"A rise in gas prices of nearly 40 percent over the last year has taken the biggest bite out of paychecks, but the cost of groceries also has risen more than 5 percent, according to the bureau's report."
By PATRICK MCGEEHAN
August 18, 2011, 4:04 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/jobless-rate-holds-at-8-7-but-many-have-given-up-looking/?ref=nyregion
18) No Cause for Marijuana Case, but Enough for Child Neglect
[Nothing is said here about the harm caused to the children by being ripped away from their parents by the State and taken to some stranger's home--not sure when and if they will ever see their parents again. It's disgusting. ...bw]
By MOSI SECRET
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/nyregion/parents-minor-marijuana-arrests-lead-to-child-neglect-cases.html?ref=nyregion
19) New Economic Reports Dash Hopes for Economic Revival
By REUTERS
August 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/business/economy/consumer-prices-rose-more-than-forecast-last-month.html?ref=business
20) Rabble with a Cause: Were the London Riots a Spontaneous Mass Reaction or a Rational Response?
Contrary to popular wisdom, mobs are not mindless. In fact, they act rationally-a characteristic that suggests ways to prevent riots
By Lauren F. Friedman
Friday, August 12, 2011 | 31
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rabble-with-a-cause&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110818
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1) China Moves Swiftly to Close Chemical Plant After Protests
By KEITH BRADSHER
August 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/world/asia/15dalian.html?ref=world
HONG KONG - Municipal leaders in a northeastern Chinese port city quickly announced plans to shut down a chemical plant on Sunday after thousands of protesters confronted riot police officers and demanded that it be closed because of safety concerns, state news media reported.
The decision in the port city of Dalian, in Liaoning Province, represents an uncommonly rapid response by the authorities to public anger. Local officials elsewhere in China have typically avoided announcing decisions during demonstrations out of fear that it would only encourage more protests.
The chemical factory in Dalian manufactures paraxylene, a crucial ingredient in the production of polyester. Paraxylene vapor can cause eye and nose irritation and, in high concentrations, even lead to death. The chemical is widely known in China because protesters in Xiamen succeeded four years ago in persuading the municipal government there to move a planned paraxylene factory to a less densely populated area, in an early success for activists using cellphones and the Web to mobilize a community.
The chemical factory in Dalian sits just about 50 yards behind a sea wall. A tropical storm pushed ocean waves, some of them topping 60 feet, against the wall a week ago, breaching the barrier and raising worries that chemicals might leak from the factory. Panicked residents reportedly fled the area, only to return later and begin demanding the closing of the factory.
Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said Wednesday that Mayor Li Wancai of Dalian had announced that the sea wall had been repaired and that the chemical factory had not leaked, but would be relocated anyway. But Mr. Li gave no timetable then for the relocation.
The state-run China Central Television said the municipal government had decided Sunday afternoon to shut the factory down immediately.
Two people answering telephones at the Dalian Public Security Bureau on Sunday evening refused to discuss the protest or the chemical plant. They referred questions to the municipal government, where no one was answering the telephone.
The prompt announcement in Dalian may reflect the growing influence of the Internet. It has become much easier for people to communicate and to rally opposition to government policies through the use of microblogging sites like Sina Weibo, although heavy censorship was imposed by Sunday evening, with postings disappearing and some search terms related to the Dalian protest not working within China.
Numerous photographs posted on Sina Weibo showed large, peaceful crowds outside a municipal government building on Sunday, with rows of helmeted police officers in green uniforms blocking their path. Local protests in China are frequently more violent. The official newspaper China Daily reported Saturday that residents of Qianxi County in the southern province of Guizhou had injured "more than 10 police officers and security workers" and had smashed or set on fire 15 cars during a protest against urban inspectors.
Hilda Wang contributed reporting.
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2) At Vacant Homes, Foraging for Fruit
By KIM SEVERSON
August 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/us/15forage.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - As she does every evening, Kelly Callahan walked her dogs through her East Atlanta neighborhood. As in many communities in a city with the 16th-highest foreclosure rate in the nation, there were plenty of empty, bank-owned properties for sale.
She noticed something else. Those forlorn yards were peppered with overgrown gardens and big fruit trees, all bulging with the kind of bounty that comes from the high heat and afternoon thunderstorms that have defined Atlanta's summer.
So she began picking. First, there was a load of figs, which she intends to make into jam for a cafe that feeds homeless people. Then, for herself, she got five pounds of tomatoes, two kinds of squash and - the real prize - a Sugar Baby watermelon.
"I don't think of it as stealing," she said. "These things were planted by a person who was going to harvest them. That person no longer has the ability to. It's not like the bank people who sit in their offices are going to come out here and pick figs."
Of course, a police officer who catches her might not agree with Ms. Callahan's legal assessment. And it would be a rare bank official who would sign off.
But as the world of urban fruit and vegetable harvesting grows, the boundaries around where to grow and pick produce are becoming more elastic.
Over the last few years, in cities from Oakland, Calif., to Clemson, S.C., well-intentioned foraging enthusiasts have mapped public fruit trees and organized picking parties. Volunteers descend on generous homeowners who are happy to share their bounty, sometimes getting a few jars of preserves in return.
There are government efforts to turn abandoned land into food, too. In Multnomah County, Ore., officials offer property that has been seized for back taxes to community and governmental organizations for gardens.
But with more and more properties in foreclosure and large stretches of vacant lots available in some cities, a new, guerrilla-style harvest is taking shape.
Robby Astrove works with Concrete Jungle, a fruit-foraging organization in Atlanta that in 2009 began building a database of untended fruit and nut trees on commercial and public land. The group donates most of the food to agencies that feed the hungry.
Although Mr. Astrove and his colleagues have harvested abandoned community gardens and he has planted pear and fig trees on empty commercial property, the organization cautions volunteers against trespassing and does not pick fruit on foreclosed properties.
Still, he thinks it is a great idea, especially for cities like Atlanta, where one in 50 homes is in foreclosure. Already, he said, there is an underground network among the homeless who work the gardens and trees around vacant homes, he said.
"It's a perfect storm of vacant properties and people who need a quality food source and an unused resource," Mr. Astrove said.
One of the best-known urban foragers is Anna Chan, who lives in Clayton, Calif., east of San Francisco. She is called the Lemon Lady and was recently featured in People magazine.
Three years ago, Ms. Chan began collecting fruit that was going uneaten and delivering it to food banks. She soon expanded her efforts to local farms and grocery store produce departments. Since then, she and a group of volunteers have delivered more than 250 tons of fruits and vegetables to the hungry, she said.
But she has never harvested on foreclosed or abandoned property.
"I try to promote the legal way," she said. "Without permission, it's tricky. It's trespassing."
But she, too, applauds people like Ms. Callahan.
"It's a beautiful idea," she said. "It doesn't matter if it's a neighbor's tree or a vacant lot or a foreclosure or whatever. It's you and that fruit tree right at that precise moment when the fruit is ready and you need to make something happen."
The point, she and other urban fruit foragers say, is to keep food from going to waste. Ms. Callahan, who works for the Carter Center and lived in Africa for eight years, has seen true hunger and cannot bear to watch food rot.
"If food is going bad on the vine," she said, that says something about us as a society. "It doesn't matter if the bank owns it. We should be more communal than that."
Although urban foragers see no harm in picking the produce, one would be hard-pressed to find a real estate agent or a banker who would officially encourage the practice.
Still, a ripe fig is a ripe fig.
"If I lived next to somebody who had abandoned fruit trees, I'd go get some myself," said Jim B. Miller Jr., the chairman of Fidelity Bank in Atlanta. "You shouldn't be starting a garden on somebody's property, and you can carry this too far, but if there's fruit on that tree, it ought to be eaten."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 15, 2011
An earlier version of this article included a picture that was published in error. The home shown in the photo is occupied; it is not among the vacant homes being foraged for fruit and vegetables.
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3) Britain Charges 16-Year-Old with Murder in Riots
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELL
August 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/world/europe/17britain.html?hp
LONDON - As British leaders across the political spectrum maneuvered for position after last week's devastating riots, new evidence of the ferocity of the unrest emerged Tuesday as the police charged a 16-year-old boy with murder following the death of a 68-year-old retiree attacked during the turmoil.
The boy's 31-year-old mother, arrested at the same crime scene, was charged with seeking to pervert the course of justice, according to state prosecutors. Under British judicial rules, the boy's identity was kept secret.
He was charged with murdering Richard Manning Bowes, who died Thursday after being assaulted during unrest that swept through the west London district of Ealing on Aug. 8. A post-mortem examination showed that he died of head injuries. He was the fifth person reported killed during the convulsion of arson and looting that left many Britons stunned and challenged the country's leaders to explain why it happened and what should be done to avert more violence.
With neighborhoods across a wide array of English cities and towns still resounding with the clamor of cleanup crews and with police reinforcements cautiously drawing down on Monday, politicians found a political landscape profoundly altered by last week's rioting and offered competing prescriptions that seemed to rupture an uneasy consensus that has prevailed in British politics for a generation.
Radically different speeches by Prime Minister David Cameron and Ed Miliband, the leaders of the Conservative and Labour Parties, appeared to set the stage for the kind of gloves-off, left-versus-right politics Britain has not seen since Margaret Thatcher's heyday in the 1980s. Both in their early 40s and both previously characterized by cautious efforts to command the center, the two men signaled that the riots had girded each of them for a new battle that could determine Britain's future for years.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cameron toured the north London neighborhood of Tottenham, where the four days of rioting started after a peaceful protest about the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old man of Afro-Caribbean descent who was shot and killed by a police officer under circumstances being investigated by the police regulator.
Mr. Cameron visited a leisure center used by some 200 people made homeless by fires that tore through their apartments after rioters burned the stores below. At the same time, Theresa May, the home secretary, who is responsible for the police, told a meeting in central London that the police might be given powers to impose curfews. But Ms. May again rejected demands by senior police officers for their forces to be exempted from the government's deep cuts in public spending, inspired by the country's debt crisis.
"Under existing laws, there is no power to impose a general curfew in a particular area," she said. And while the movements of individuals could be restricted by curfewlike regulations, "there are only limited powers to impose them on somebody under the age of 16."
"These are the sort of changes we need to consider," she said.
For his part, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat junior coalition partner, went some way toward meeting opposition demands for a public airing of the grievances and passions that led to the violence, but rejected demands for a formal inquiry. Mr. Clegg said an independent panel would be established.
"It won't be a public inquiry, it won't be established under the Inquiries Act, but it will serve as a way in which victims and communities can have their voice heard," he told a news conference.
On Monday, Mr. Cameron promised an uncompromising across-the-board reworking of the social policies he blamed for "the slow-motion moral collapse" across Britain in recent generations, while Mr. Miliband assailed the government's punitive approach, saying "tough action against gangs" and other steps favored by Mr. Cameron needed to be complemented by action to "show young people there's another way."
The mood was captured by a headline for a column on the left-of-center Guardian newspaper Web site, proclaiming that Mr. Cameron's effort had heralded "the return of the nasty party," meaning the Conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s. Conservative-supporting columnists responded in kind, saying Mr. Cameron had at last spoken up for a majority in Britain, addressing moral issues too long avoided by politicians.
"Social problems that have been festering for decades have exploded in our face," Mr. Cameron said in a speech in his home constituency in rural Oxfordshire on Monday. "Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort. Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged, sometimes even incentivized, by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralized."
The "responsible majority" of Britons, he said, were "crying out for their government" to confront these issues. Accordingly, he said, his government would set out over coming weeks to "review every aspect" of social policy. "On schools, welfare, families, parenting, addiction, communities, on the cultural, legal, bureaucratic problems in our society, too; from the twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility to the obsession with health and safety that has eroded people's willingness to act according to common sense."
Mr. Miliband spoke at his boyhood school in north London, a state school in a working-class neighborhood, as if to accentuate his differences with Mr. Cameron, who had attended the exclusive Eton College. He spoke derisively of the prime minister having chosen the "easy and predictable path" by blaming "criminality, pure and simple," words Mr. Cameron used at the height of the looting and pillaging, and condemning him for suggesting, in reply to those who pointed to social deprivation as the cause of the disorder, "that to explain is to excuse."
The speech took more direct aim at Mr. Cameron and his top ministers, who have announced an array of tough new measures to deal with the rioters and encouraged the courts to hand out stiff jail terms. "A new policy a day, knee-jerk gimmicks rushed out without real thought, will not solve the problem," Mr. Miliband said. "We've heard it all in the last few days. Water cannon. Supercops. A daily door knock for gangs. And today, more gimmicks."
Mr. Miliband called for a "national conversation" on the causes of the riots that would "give people a chance for their voices and views to be heard." While the government has set out plans to evict rioters and their families from state-subsidized housing and to strip convicted rioters of welfare benefits, Mr. Miliband said weaning young wrongdoers from crime was "harder when support is being taken away."
The implications for British politics were far reaching. Mr. Miliband was staking out ground that has strong support on the left wing of his party, if less among an older, traditionalist Labour bloc as incensed in many ways by the rioting as traditionalist Conservatives. Many of those who work with underprivileged youths have also spoken strongly against the kind of retributive measures Mr. Cameron and his ministers have advocated, and they have pressed for the continuation of the redemptive social policies that have prevailed for decades.
They have spoken out strongly, too, against round-the-clock courts that have been in session in London and other cities, sending 60 percent of the 2,500 people arrested in the riots to jail pending trial. The national average for those jailed while awaiting trial for criminal offenses was 10 percent before the riots. The courts have also handed down harsh jail terms even to the lesser offenders, including a five-month sentence in London to a 22-year-old single mother of two who was given a pair of shorts by a friend who had looted a local store.
But for Mr. Cameron, another political calculus was at work. He spoke of his determination to break with the conventions that have governed mainstream politics since the demise of Mrs. Thatcher's my-way-or-the-highway approach in 1990, when she resigned. "We have been unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong," he said. "We have too often avoided saying what needs to be said, about everything from marriage to welfare to common courtesy." But now, he said, "the party's over."
The prime minister's new hard-line approach is not likely to sit well with the junior partners in his coalition government, the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, who have been increasingly restive about the impact of the harsh public-spending cuts demanded by the Conservatives. If they were to quit the government, that could force a new general election.
But with opinion polls since the riots showing strong support for a law-and-order crackdown, and support for the Liberal Democrats at a nearly historic low, Mr. Clegg may calculate that they have little choice but to stay with the Conservatives, bowing at least part way to Mr. Cameron's new right-of-center impulses.
John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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4) The "Accidental Rudeness" of the British
By Melanie Newton
Stabrock News
August 15, 2011
http://www.stabroeknews.com/2011/features/in-the-diaspora/08/15/the-%E2%80%9Caccidental-rudeness%E2%80%9D-of-the-british/
To see the Howe-Armstrong interview, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
"... yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often...
Best to say nothing at all, my dear man." (Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince)
We may never know the name of the person who recorded and uploaded an August 9 BBC television news segment, in which anchorwoman Fiona Armstrong interviewed the Trinidadian born journalist and black British community spokesperson Darcus Howe. Thanks to this anonymous person's quick thinking, the full shame of Armstrong and the BBC is now available on Youtube for all the world to see.
Armstrong interviewed Howe - who has worked as a BBC journalist - at the height of the recent disturbances that swept the UK. Things went downhill immediately, when Armstrong introduced him as 'Marcus Dowe.' After that, more or less every word Armstrong uttered was offensive. When Howe said he was not "shocked" by the riots given what was happening to "young people in this country", she asked if he "condoned" the riots. She interrupted him when he said that the police "blew [Mark Duggan's] head off", patronizingly stating that: "we don't know what happened to Mr. Duggan." Armstrong's vehemence was remarkable, given that the police admit they shot Duggan - what is in question are the circumstances of the shooting.
When Howe said his grandson could not count how many times the police had stopped and searched him, Armstrong lectured him like he was a naughty child, saying this was "no excuse to go out rioting." A more reflective journalist might have asked Howe to comment on connections between the peaceful vigil outside Tottenham police station, allegations that police assaulted one of the women present, and the violence that followed. I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised, given the neutral way in which the BBC has reported on Duggan's arrest during a police crackdown on "black gun crime", as though such a concept were even legitimate.
Howe then called events in Britain "an insurrection of the people" and drew parallels with Syria. Rather than ask a follow up question, she accused Howe of "being no stranger to riots" and being involved in them himself in the past. Later that day, in an email to the editors of one amateur online media watchdog, Armstrong defended her statement, saying she had been briefed that: "Mr Howe has in the past organised several demonstrations, some of which got out of control, and had once assaulted a policeman." By Armstrong's capacious definition, anyone who organises a public protest that goes awry is, apparently, a 'rioter'.
Armstrong's "no stranger to riots" comment looks even worse when stacked up against the facts of Howe's life. It does appear to be true that Howe was once convicted of assaulting an officer who was trying to search him. However, in the Wikipedia age, there is no excuse for a BBC journalist not knowing that Howe was in fact acquitted of the charge of riot in the famous "Mangrove Nine" case of 1971. The judge in that case noted that: "there was 'evidence of racial hatred on both sides' - the first acknowledgement from a British judge that there was racial hatred in the Metropolitan Police Service." By the end of the interview, I was impressed with Howe's restraint. Armstrong should consider herself lucky that all Howe told her was that she sounded "idiotic" and ought to "have some respect for an old West Indian Negro."
Within 24 hours, more than 1 million people had watched the video. On August 10, the BBC issued a carefully worded apology, admitting that some of Armstrong's questions might have been "poorly phrased" and apologizing if anyone found the interview offensive. Even in the apology, however, the BBC sought to defend itself, observing that there were "technical issues" during the interview and neither Howe nor Armstrong could hear clearly what the other was saying. This may well be true but "technical" problems cannot explain Armstrong's unprofessional line of questioning.
The rapidity with which the video went viral reflects a popular sense that the Armstrong-Howe exchange is somehow a microcosm of the social and economic crises facing Britain. Every media outlet seems to have an analysis of what the disturbances mean for Britain's future. I feel neither competent nor called upon to offer an explanation. I am a historian, and my thoughts turn to the past as I observe how quickly the government has used this opportunity to adopt as right wing and punitive an agenda at it can without actually going so far as to advocate the abolition of democracy in Britain.
David Cameron doesn't want to let "phoney human rights concerns" about publishing people's pictures on the internet get in the way of restoring order. At the same time, he is considering legislation that would limit press freedom in the interest of getting information necessary to secure criminal convictions. In an example of public opinion-driven role-reversal, Labour Party leader Ed Milliband is warning the Conservatives not to go ahead with proposed budget cuts to the police force.
If the British government really wants to take this opportunity to roll back civil liberties, then British domestic and imperial history provides many fine examples of effective draconian measures. In his proposal to limit freedom of access to social networking sites, Cameron seems to be channeling William Pitt the Younger, British Prime Minister at the time of the French and Haitian Revolutions. Pitt cracked down on "correspondence societies" in order to stop radical popular organizing in Britain. But why stop there, why not go further back? If the jails are full, then reintroduce indentured servitude abroad as a punishment for crime. That certainly worked a treat during the English Civil War, and would greatly reduce youth unemployment in Britain.
Fiona Armstrong herself might be able to offer the government an instructive lesson in how to focus on lawlessness and irresponsibility and thereby avoid addressing a genuine need for democratization and social reform. Buried in Armstrong's exchange with Darcus Howe is a more secret story of the British state's relationship with poverty, racism, consumerism and social alienation. Armstrong, also known as Lady MacGregor, is the wife of Sir Malcolm MacGregor, 7th baronet and 24th Chief of the Clan Gregor. The ancestor of Armstrong's husband, Sir Evan MacGregor, was Clan Chief and Governor of Barbados, Trinidad and the rest of the British Windward Islands at the time of emancipation in August 1838. One hundred and fifty years ago and on different soil, the ancestors of the MacGregors and the Howes would have viewed each other across an equally great social chasm.
By all accounts Sir Evan was a crafty closet racist. He dismissed black West Indians' demands that emancipation should mean the end of racist inequity by saying that racial discrimination had been abolished with emancipation. He pointed out that British common law did not recognize distinctions based on race, so black West Indians were just stirring up trouble by making allegations of racism against the police force, the judiciary and the colonial government. MacGregor was fond of telling black civil rights agitators that discrimination against them had nothing to do with colour, but class, a form of exclusion that was perfectly legal in the 1830s. If black West Indians, by and large, lacked the property and education necessary to gain them access to political power, then that was the fault of an unfortunate past. Slavery was no longer the responsibility of either MacGregor or the British government, which had so generously made everyone equal.
MacGregor was not himself a slave owner, but he would not have been made governor if he had disagreed with the British government's decision to pay £20m in compensation to slave owners for the loss of their human property (no compensation was paid to slaves). Planters owed so much money to British merchants and financial institutions that the money just had to be paid, or emancipation could have spelled financial disaster. Still, in our own current age of the great state-funded corporate rescue package, I'm sure we can understand the need for such a stabilizing measure. MacGregor placed unprecedented numbers of men of colour in colonial civil service positions. All of them, to the last man, were appointees who had made it clear they would stop harping on about equality once they got a high profile position and a civil service salary - but that was hardly MacGregor's fault.
Sir Evan was a military man who came to the West Indies as a turbulent time. He met the efforts of ex-slaves to carve out independent lives with the full punitive capacities of the state- it was during his tenure that most of the modern police forces of the southeastern English Caribbean were organised. These new police forces initially existed for no other real purpose than to keep former slaves at work on the estates, or put them in jail if they had any ludicrous notions of personal independence. MacGregor and his generation of West Indian colonial governors were sent out to ensure that former slaves, as far as possible, became legally free subjects who were dependent on estate wages for their survival. Imperial officials spoke frequently of their concern about black 'laziness' - a metaphor for the fear that black West Indians would rather work for themselves than for low wages on a sugar estate.
To combat this, ex-slaves had to learn to want things that they did not need - they must be encouraged to equate civilization with owning what could only be bought from Britain, and paid for with wages earned from estate labour. Had cell phones and Burberry suits existed in 1838, any ex-slave who did not want them might have run the risk of being seen as "regressing into savagery" and resisting the "civilizing force" of consumption and the market. And yet, ex-slaves who showed a disposition to dress up in "finery" were punished for reaching "above their station".
MacGregor died in Barbados in 1841, just three years after the arrival of legal freedom in Trinidad and elsewhere. By then, it was already clear that most of the radical democratic possibilities of slave emancipation would go unrealized. This was thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of men like MacGregor, British men dedicated to making sure slave emancipation, one of the most important civil rights measures in modern human history, should not overturn the social, economic or political order. So, if Fiona Armstrong insulted Darcus Howe, she really can't be blamed, since history was really only re-enacting itself in some small way through her.
By this point, I imagine some readers are quite outraged: educated Britons tend to get upset when anyone negatively invokes Britain's imperial past as a lens for thinking about its current social issues. These days, some British historians are fond of talking nostalgically about empire as a time when the world was a much saner and safer place. The BBC often interviews such people, lending legitimacy to their views. I fear that it would be a waste of time that BBC journalists should respond to this crisis by learning something about colonial history. At the very least, the moment calls for some reflection on the Harry Potter quote at the beginning of this piece, if the BBC cares to understand why their apology rings hollow.
Yet Armstrong's rudeness is no more accidental than the rapidity with which voices have come to the fore attributing the recent criminality to the 'blackening' of British culture. These are echoes of those who, not long after emancipation, viewed abolition as a failure because of widespread social unrest across the West Indies. The Armstrong Howe exchange and the current crisis in Britain have at least something to do with Britain's failure to acknowledge how profoundly racism and empire have poisoned the country's public life. Racist language, couched as state militarism and punishment, remains a constant reservoir of possibility, always available when British elites do not want to have a real discussion about their social problems. Few British elites, in our own age or in any other, want to admit that, historically, states do tend to get the forms of criminality that they deserve.
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5) Poverty's Boiling Point
The US is creating the same conditions that fueled the London riots
"It should come as no surprise that the British government has opted to distribute the pain downward, much as the US federal and state governments now are. The rich have influence, and the poor do not. That is why economic inequality, not moral failing, is the illness in need of remedy."
By Simon Waxman
The Boston Globe Opinion
August 16, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/08/16/povertys_boiling_point/
AS DISORDER reigned in the streets of London and other British cities last week, Prime Minister David Cameron opined before Parliament, "We need to show [the world] that we will address our broken society, we will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility in every town, in every street, and in every estate.''
Addressing a broken society is, indeed, what the British government ought to do, but restoring a stronger sense of morality has little to do with it. And not just because morality could be said to be lacking as much at the top as at the bottom, as the commentator Peter Oborne pointed out in The Daily Telegraph.
Oborne directs our attention to the hypocrisy of greedy people in government demanding elevated morals in the poor. But moral decay is a red herring. The root of this uprising is in economic structures that maintain the distinctions between tony Kensington and burning Tottenham.
The bottom isn't in flames because it lacks morals. It is crying out because of persistent poverty. The explicit effects of economic inequality have struck again. Faced with a debt crisis born of the boom-bust cycle inherent in capitalism, the British government has a choice about how to distribute the pain. Should it tax the rich and restrain the greedy, the very people who produced the financial crisis whose fallout has withered government coffers? Or should it threaten and impose austerity measures that primarily affect the poor?
It should come as no surprise that the British government has opted to distribute the pain downward, much as the US federal and state governments now are. The rich have influence, and the poor do not. That is why economic inequality, not moral failing, is the illness in need of remedy.
Equally unsurprising is that this state of affairs has descended into violence. To say that the violence is predictable is not to condone it, but to suggest that its true sources are instantly recognizable. Again, there is no mystery here, nothing so vague and unconquerable as moral lassitude.
The fact is, the official channels of protest - against police abuse, which is a huge factor in generating anger among the poor; against the corrosion of social services or the threat of their corrosion; against rising costs for education and health care - are designed to be ineffectual. In the absence of massive, sustained mobilization - such as during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement - there is simply no way for an individual to complain from below and achieve results. The better off maintain their position in part by keeping the poor in an equilibrium where they persist on just enough to avoid imperiling existing class and power discrepancies yet are not so downtrodden as to revolt. At the same time, the comfortable feel righteous about providing that minimal subsistence, because the ethos of capitalism enforces the notion that we deserve what we have, and what we give to others reflects private virtue.
The rabble, in other words, should feel thankful for what they get.
But they are not always thankful, especially when the equilibrium is disturbed, and their meager slice of the pie is threatened. Without influence in government and media, the only voice left to the poor is either large-scale violent or nonviolent protest, but the latter is much harder to organize and demands committed leadership that does not just emerge overnight. One hopes that aggression gives way to a more Gandhian approach, but, as the more straightforward of two alternatives, violence was foreseeable.
As predictable as the violence is the response. When the poor lash out, the comfortable condemn their moral decay and decry their criminality. The problem is not located in the economic structures that make violence all but inevitable, but in the violent people themselves. The better off use the power of the state - whose violence, unlike that of the poor, is deemed justifiable - to force them back into alignment with the status quo ante in which they submit silently.
Conditions in the United States today are not so different from those in Britain; indeed, they may be worse because Britain's history of rigidly en forced class structure means that some there at least recognize the debasement of the poor. We should heed the warning of the smashed windows, looted stores, and burning buildings of London. We won't, of course.
Simon Waxman is managing editor of Boston Review.
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6) The Clear Case for the Gas Tax
[I.E., TAX THE POOR TO GIVE TO THE RICH. They would have us believe that it's in the interests of the poor that taxes on them be increased! ..BW]
New York Times Editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/opinion/the-clear-case-for-the-gas-tax.html?pagewanted=print
Unless Congress extends it, the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax will expire on Sept. 30. Allowing that to happen would be tremendously destructive. It would bankrupt the already stressed Highway Trust Fund, with devastating effects on the country's highways, bridges, mass transit systems and the economy as a whole.
Reports suggest that some House Republicans may push to let the tax lapse or use the threat of expiration as leverage in the budget wars. This is a dangerous idea. If anything, the tax should rise to maintain a system that constantly needs upkeep - the backlog of bridges needing repair is estimated at $72 billion - creates jobs and encourages drivers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
Excise taxes on motor fuels account for nearly nine-tenths of the $37 billion trust fund. The fund has lately required annual infusions from the Treasury Department to break even, and its obligations are growing. The gas tax has not increased since 1993, and its buying power, accounting for inflation, is now only 11 cents. Meanwhile, Americans are driving many more miles, placing greater stresses on the highway system.
When state taxes are added in, Americans pay, on average, about 43 cents per gallon in taxes - or about one-eighth the total price at the pump. That's still a bargain compared with other industrial countries. Across Europe, drivers pay twice what Americans do at the pump - and well over half of that is taxes. In Britain, the tax bite is more than $4 a gallon, or 10 times what Americans pay.
Though opponents will inevitably rail about taking money from the pockets of Americans in recessionary times, using gas-tax receipts on public investment puts that money right back into the economy. And ways can be found to cushion the blow for poorer and middle-class workers who depend on their cars by providing off-setting tax breaks through the earned income tax credit.
For both budgetary and environmental reasons, moderates from both parties have recommended increases in the tax. The Simpson-Bowles commission on budget reform urged an immediate 15 cent-per-gallon increase; former Senators Bill Bradley of New Jersey and John Danforth of Missouri have suggested a $1 increase to be phased in between now and 2020.
The loudest voices for ending the gas tax are coming from the right. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, said his group would ask legislators to consider ending the gas tax "cold turkey or phasing it out as soon as possible." But this is not exclusively a conservative phenomenon. There is something about the words "gas taxes" that drives otherwise sensible people to say silly things. In the 2008 campaign, when gas was around $3.60 a gallon, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain suggested a "gas tax holiday." Barack Obama derided the idea then as a gimmick that would do little for consumers and nothing to end America's dependence on foreign oil.
Before Congress starts running with another very bad idea, President Obama should press to extend the tax now. And he should start explaining why - for the sake of the economy, the environment and a functioning transportation system - this tax will need to rise.
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7)South Africa: Municipal Workers Strike
By REUTERS
August 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/africa/16briefs-strike.html?ref=world
More than 200,000 South African municipal workers walked off the job Monday, a trade union said. Disruptions are expected for garbage collection and water repairs in urban areas. Workers at the municipal union are asking formally for a wage increase of 18 percent, well above the 5 percent inflation rate, and have said they will not settle for less than a double-digit increase. Employers have offered 6 percent.
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8) Sending the Police Before There's a Crime
"The arrests were routine. Two women were taken into custody after they were discovered peering into cars in a downtown parking garage in Santa Cruz, Calif. One woman was found to have outstanding warrants; the other was carrying illegal drugs."
By ERICA GOODE
August 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16police.html?ref=us
The arrests were routine. Two women were taken into custody after they were discovered peering into cars in a downtown parking garage in Santa Cruz, Calif. One woman was found to have outstanding warrants; the other was carrying illegal drugs.
But the presence of the police officers in the garage that Friday afternoon in July was anything but ordinary: They were directed to the parking structure by a computer program that had predicted that car burglaries were especially likely there that day.
The program is part of an unusual experiment by the Santa Cruz Police Department in predictive policing - deploying officers in places where crimes are likely to occur in the future.
In July, Santa Cruz began testing the prediction method for property crimes like car and home burglaries and car thefts. So far, said Zach Friend, the police department's crime analyst, the program has helped officers pre-empt several crimes and has led to five arrests.
The notion of predictive policing is attracting increasing attention from law enforcement agencies around the country as departments struggle to fight crime at a time when budgets are being slashed.
"We're facing a situation where we have 30 percent more calls for service but 20 percent less staff than in the year 2000, and that is going to continue to be our reality," Mr. Friend said. "So we have to deploy our resources in a more effective way, and we thought this model would help."
Efforts to systematically anticipate when and where crimes will occur are being tried out in several cities. The Chicago Police Department, for example, created a predictive analytics unit last year.
But Santa Cruz's method is more sophisticated than most. Based on models for predicting aftershocks from earthquakes, it generates projections about which areas and windows of time are at highest risk for future crimes by analyzing and detecting patterns in years of past crime data. The projections are recalibrated daily, as new crimes occur and updated data is fed into the program.
On the day the women were arrested, for example, the program identified the approximately one-square-block area where the parking garage is situated as one of the highest-risk locations for car burglaries.
In contrast, CompStat and other crime-tracking systems in use in many cities are calibrated less frequently, rely more on humans to recognize patterns, and allocate resources based on past crimes rather than predicted future offenses.
The program was developed by a group of researchers - including two mathematicians, George Mohler and Martin Short; an anthropologist, Jeff Brantingham; and a criminologist, George Tita - in a project that used data provided by the Los Angeles Police Department, which is hoping to begin using the program later this year.
"We're watching closely what is going on in Santa Cruz," said Capt. Sean Malinowski of the Los Angeles department's Foothill Patrol Division, who worked with the researchers when he was head of the department's crime center under the police chief at the time, William J. Bratton.
Captain Malinowski envisions a time when the police will issue crime forecasts the same way the Weather Service issues storm alerts.
"It would certainly be safer for everyone and more effective," he said, adding that the forecast might say, "You're having a rash of shootings and the computer says it's going to continue in these places and on these days of the week."
He added, "Now, if we have a problem, we throw a lot of cops at it, and unfortunately, with the economy being the way it is, we don't have as many cops available."
The CompStat system, Captain Malinowski said, was a big advance for policing, but the use of computer programs takes prediction to the next level.
With CompStat and other, similar approaches, "we look at these maps and they're as accurate as we can get them," he said. "But I'm looking at a map from last week and the whole assumption is that next week is like last week. The computer eliminates the bias that people have."
For the Santa Cruz trial, eight years of crime data were fed into the computer program, which breaks Santa Cruz into squares of approximately 500 feet by 500 feet. New data is added each day.
Officers are given a list of the 10 highest-probability "hot spots" of the day at roll call. They check those areas during times that they are not out on service calls. Before the program started, they made such "pass through" checks based on hunches or experience of where crimes were likely to occur.
Mr. Friend said that the reaction to the prediction method among officers had been "quite positive."
"The feedback I've received is that there is appreciation that it has validated intuition or provided a new focus area that wasn't known," he said.
How accurate the program really is has yet to be demonstrated; its success will be evaluated after six months.
"The worst-case scenario is that it doesn't work and we're no worse off," said Mr. Friend, who enlisted Dr. Mohler, a professor at Santa Clara University.
Mr. Friend said the early indications were encouraging. Burglaries were down 27 percent in July compared with July 2010, suggesting that the targeted policing may have a deterrent effect, he said.
In Los Angeles, Captain Malinowski said, the police department hopes to expand the program to include some violent crimes, like gang shootings.
Predicting crime with computer programs is in some ways a natural outgrowth of the technology that companies like Wal-Mart now use routinely to predict the buying habits of customers, said Scott Dickson, a crime analyst for the police department in Killeen, Tex., who discussed the Santa Cruz experiment on his blog.
Law enforcement agencies, Mr. Dickson noted, have "great warehouses of data" that can be used to feed predictive programs. And in the end, he said, "it's cheaper to prevent a crime than to solve a crime, and that's where I think the promise lies."
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9) State Employees' Union Accepts Wage and Benefits Concessions
By THOMAS KAPLAN
August 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/nyregion/state-employees-union-accepts-wage-and-benefits-concessions.html?ref=nyregion
ALBANY - Members of New York's largest union of state employees, in a begrudging acknowledgment of the increasingly hostile mood toward public workers, have agreed to accept major wage and benefits concessions sought by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
The union, the Civil Service Employees Association, announced late Monday night that its members had voted by about 60 percent to 40 percent to approve the contract agreement that the governor and union leaders struck in June.
The ratification was a critical victory for Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat whose plan to close the state's budget gap relied in large part on a bet that state employees would be willing to stomach a freeze on wages and an increase in the cost of health benefits in return for safeguarding their jobs.
The union's president, Danny Donohue, said in a statement: "These are not ordinary times, and C.S.E.A. worked hard to reach an agreement that we believed would be in everyone's best interest. C.S.E.A. members agree that this contract is reasonable and responsible for the long term and shows that C.S.E.A. members will do what is right for the good of all New Yorkers."
Savings from the five-year contract are expected to total $73 million this fiscal year, part of the $450 million in cuts that Mr. Cuomo's budget counted on extracting from the state work force. And the governor's office projected that if other unions agreed to the same terms total savings for the state would amount to $1.6 billion over five years.
Beyond the savings, the ratification also goes a long way toward validating Mr. Cuomo's strategy for dealing with public workers, tens of thousands more of whom will vote as early as next month on whether to agree to their own concessions.
In labor negotiations, the governor took a firm stance. He demanded significant financial concessions and was not shy about threatening layoffs to gain leverage.
At the same time, he did not attack collective bargaining or speak about the unions with any kind of hostility, unlike some other governors seeking to cut work-force costs, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Chris Christie in New Jersey.
"This is a big, big win - a win for the union and a win for the people of the state," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "The union avoided layoffs, and the state is financially stronger. I'm pleased that our approach of labor and management working together is vindicated."
The announcement, made shortly before midnight, capped a day of suspense at the Capitol. Union leaders worked more than 12 hours counting paper ballots that had been mailed in over the last month by union members, who, along with aides to Mr. Cuomo and other officials, spent the day wondering what the final tally would show.
Nearly 30,000 of the union's 66,000 members voted.
The contract's approval could encourage the state's other major public-employee union, the Public Employees Federation, to approve its own, nearly identical deal with Mr. Cuomo when it is put to a vote next month. And it will bolster the governor's case as he seeks concessions from other, smaller unions in coming months.
The workers' willingness to accept the contract's cuts could also provide Mr. Cuomo with some political relief.
As he urged workers to do their part in helping the state rein in spending, Mr. Cuomo found himself increasingly at odds with organized labor, a traditional ally for a Democratic chief executive.
No organized campaign emerged among members of the Civil Service Employees Association who were dissatisfied with the contract.
But its passage remained no certainty because of the scope of the proposed cuts. The agreement calls for a freeze on base wages for three years, followed by 2 percent annual raises in the contract's last two years. The union's last contract offered 3 percent raises for three years and a 4 percent raise in the final year.
Mr. Cuomo, mindful of the failure of other recent labor deals, also stopped short of avowing complete confidence that the Civil Service Employees Association's members would sign off on the agreement.
His first labor deal, with a small union of law enforcement officers, was rejected in May, and in June public workers in Connecticut rejected their proposed contract, throwing that state's budget into turmoil.
But in New York, the prospect of layoffs - Mr. Cuomo said he would have to eliminate as many as 9,800 jobs if workers refused to make concessions - appeared to frighten union members into accepting a contract they might in other years have considered unthinkable. The contract agreement protects union members from broad-based layoffs for two years, and union leaders focused their ratification pitch largely around that promise of job security during difficult financial times.
In fact, hundreds of workers were only days away from losing their jobs when the 56,000-member Public Employees Federation agreed to its deal with Mr. Cuomo last month, averting the impending layoffs. On Thursday, the union's executive board approved the contract agreement, which will be sent to union members for consideration in September.
"There were no good choices," the union's president, Kenneth Brynien, wrote to members after the board's vote. "In the past, contract negotiations achieved significant gains for our members. Unfortunately, the state of the economy, the will of the state's political leaders and public sentiment have created an environment where the services our members provide are undervalued."
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10) STUDY: Mean People Earn Higher Salaries
Andrew Jones, The Raw Story
Aug. 15, 2011
http://www.businessinsider.com/study-mean-people-earn-higher-salaries-2011-8
The phrase "Nice guys finish last" appears to be the case in who gets paid the most.
According to a study by several researches, "agreeable" workers make significantly lower than their less agreeable counterparts, with the gap being wider among men.
The study, titled "Do Nice Guys-and Gals-Really Finish Last?", used survey data to examine "agreeableness" and found that men who disagreed far greater make 18%- or $9,772 annually- more in salary than those who agree. The salary disparity is far less among women, with disagreeable females making 5% or $1,828 than those who agree more.
Cornell professor Beth A. Livingston, who co-authored the study with Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario, told the Wall Street Journal, "Nice guys are getting the shaft."
"The problem is, many managers often don't realize they reward disagreeableness," Livingston added. "You can say this is what you value as a company, but your compensation system may not really reflect that, especially if you leave compensation decisions to individual managers."
The study contained data from over 20 years from three different surveys, and interviewed 10,000 workers from a wide range of fields. The researchers also included a separate study based on 460 business students asked to be fictional managers and review descriptions of possible employees. That separate study revealed that being nice does not bring professional success, as those viewed as more agreeable were less likely to get the job.
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11) NYPD riot units conduct drills
EMILY ANNE EPSTEIN/METRO
NEW YORK
August 14, 2011
http://www.metro.us/newyork/local/article/942885--nypd-riot-units-conduct-drills
In the wake of the London riots, the NYPD Disorder Control Unit held a "mobilization exercise" on Randall's Island on Friday to rehearse its response should out-of-control riots break out here, Metro has learned.
Approximately 180 police officers total from each borough's task force, including the horseback and aviation units, came out for the drill, according to police.
"The London response wasn't that great - they were outnumbered and taken by surprise," said Mike Codella, a retired NYPD detective. When he was on the force, riot drills happened once a year at most, he said.
The training exercise comes the same week the NYPD has stepped up its monitoring of social media, used to organize mayhem across England and also to coordinate teen mobs in Philadelphia.
Police will now troll sites like Twitter and Facebook for suspicious activity, gang feuds and house parties as part of a new juvenile justice unit.
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12) Looting With the Lights On
"We keep hearing England's riots weren't political - but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery"
By Naomi Klein, Guardian UK
August 17, 2011
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/357-europe/7066-looting-with-the-lights-on
--We keep hearing England's riots weren't political - but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery.--
keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other European cities - window-smashing in Athens or car bonfires in Paris. And there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a generation that feels forgotten.
But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor. There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion - a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.
Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam Hussein and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn't Baghdad, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.
How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighbourhoods (which had been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford - clothes, electronics, meat. The government called a "state of siege" to restore order; the people didn't like that and overthrew the government.
Argentina's mass looting was called el saqueo - the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatisation deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centres would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge. But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.
This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions - mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these "entitlements"? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.
This is the global saqueo, a time of great taking. Fuelled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94% of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets". This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.
Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered - a union job, a good affordable education - being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.
Cameron's response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.
At last year's G20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675m on summit "security" (yet they still couldn't seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired - water cannons, sound cannons, teargas and rubber bullets - wasn't just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.
This is what Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance - whether organised protests or spontaneous looting. And that's not politics. It's physics.
A version of this column was first published in The Nation.
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13) Civil rights groups file suit to shed sunlight on police surveillance operations
Submitted by Communications
ACLU of Massachusetts
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 08:05
http://aclum.org/news_8.18.11
* First Amendment
* police power
* surveillance
* surveillance centers
Monitoring of political activity has become a serious concern in light of expanded police activities and capabilities. The ACLU of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts have filed suit on behalf of eight Boston-area political groups and four individual activists.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 18, 2011
CONTACT:
Laura Rótolo, Staff Attorney, 617-482-3170 x311, lrotolo@aclum.org
Christopher Ott, Communications Director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BOSTON -- In a move to compel disclosure of information that has been withheld from the public about the Boston Police Department's expanded surveillance operations, including the scope of its monitoring of political activities, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts have filed suit on behalf of eight Boston-area political groups and four individual activists, seeking public disclosure of records detailing the BPD's practice of monitoring political organizations and activists.
The suit, filed under the Massachusetts Public Records law, seeks disclosure of BPD records regarding the Department's surveillance and recording of protest activities and assemblies, the monitoring of political groups and activists, as well as records relating to the collection and sharing of information with the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies.
"There have been significant changes in the surveillance operations of the BPD," said Laura Rótolo, ACLU of Massachusetts staff attorney. "For years, the BPD has conducted surveillance of political protests, openly recording legal rallies, marches and demonstrations in public areas. But now that information can be centrally monitored, indexed, and stored electronically, and shared through state and national surveillance networks. We brought this suit because we believe the public should know what information is being collected about political activities, how it is being used, and what policies, if any, are in place to protect privacy and individual liberty."
The plaintiffs are organizations and individuals whose previous requests for information on surveillance practices and privacy protections have been rejected by the BPD, including: the ACLU of Massachusetts, Political Research Associates, the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts, Veterans for Peace-Chapter 9 Smedley Butler Brigade, CodePink of Greater Boston, the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, the Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, and United for Justice with Peace. The four individual plaintiffs seeking information about BPD surveillance practices were detained and interrogated by the BPD in 2009 following a non-violent protest at the Israeli consulate in Boston. Although officers acknowledged during their interrogation that the activists had been under surveillance at previous political protests, the BPD subsequently asserted that it had no record of interrogating them.
"The public has a right to know the scope of surveillance of protected First Amendment activity," said David Kelston, an attorney who represents the National Lawyers Guild of Massachusetts and represented the four individual activists who were detained and questioned. "The BPD's claim that they have no record of interrogating these activists defies belief and must be challenged."
This action seeks information on the surveillance policies and practices of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), which was created by the BPD and federal Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice in 2005, ostensibly to collect and share information on terrorist threats and subversive activities in Boston. It also seeks public information on the BPD's participation in the FBI's so-called "Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative", a pilot program that directs local police officers to collect and share information on broadly defined "suspicious activities" that may include lawful political activity and protected political speech. It does not seek information on individual cases or investigations.
"Boston is using tax dollars to participate in what is billed as a 'pilot program' that authorizes local police to create dossiers on ordinary citizens, essentially criminalizing protected political activities, so why is all information about this test program hidden from the public?" said Thom Cincotta, an attorney and researcher with Political Research Associates, a Somerville-based research organization.
"Democracy dies behind closed doors," said the ACLU's Rótolo. "Shedding sunlight on police surveillance practices is the best way to guard against abuses of power and to ensure that law enforcement doesn't hide behind anti-terrorism rhetoric to justify programs and practices that chill legal dissent and quash protected political speech and assembly."
For legal documents about the case, see:
http://aclum.org/aclu_v_davis
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14) "The Global Plutocracy Is Terrified of Dissent. In Some Places, The War On Dissent Is Being Fought With Bullets. In Others, The War On Dissent Targets Social Media And Mobile Communications"
Washington's Blog
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/global-plutocracy-is-terrified-of.html
The Most Liberal Part of the Country Takes a Page from Dictator's Playbook
The most liberal part of the country - the San Francisco Bay Area - is taking a page from Egyptian dictator Mubarak's playbook.
As leading free speech organization Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home - first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest.
***
BART said today that it had instituted the following rules, including:
No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.
What does that mean? We can't talk?
One thing is clear, whether it's BART or the cell phone carriers that were responsible for the shut-off, cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year.
U.S. and Britain Attack Social Media
It's not just cell phones.
For example, the Pentagon is trying to manipulate social media for propaganda purposes. And the government is trying to censor any suggestions on the web and other media that powerful people might actually be acting in their own interests (and not necessarily in the interests of the little guy).
And in Britain, the government is blaming the protests in that country on social media (here are the two real causes).
But as professor of media psychology Dr. Pam Rutledge writes in a post entitled, "Social Media Did Not Cause the London Riots":
After four days of looting and rioting across the UK, people are looking for answers. The violence that started in London, spread rapidly across not only Greater London, but most of the country, not as single oozing mass, but more like an outbreak of the measles. Its speed and range is attributed to the rioters' use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger. Information and disinformation alike travel fast in social networks. As people try to make sense in the aftermath, an emerging theme is the culpability of social media. Focusing blame on social media is akin to killing the messenger and is both naïve and dangerous.
Social media is just a tool. It's a powerful one, but a tool nonetheless. It can be used in good ways and bad ways, just like a hammer or a baseball bat.
***
Social media is an easy target. When you're a politician, it's great to have something to blame that can't vote. Prime Minister Cameron almost immediately offloaded the blame onto social networking sites for fueling the riots and hinted at intervention. "When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them."
UK Home Secretary, Theresa May, is scheduling meetings with Facebook, Twitter and Research In Motion (RIM) to "discuss their responsibilities in this area." Suggestions have ranged from banning suspected rioters from social media networks to the wholesale shutdown of social media in times of unrest without regard to individual freedoms in order to "catch the bad guys." The key unanswered question is who gets to decide who's a 'troublemaker' or what's 'unrest.'
***
We should learn from history, as well as from current societies that we do not want to emulate. Can anyone say "China" or "McCarthyism"?
Beyond rights violations, any government that thinks they can totally suppress information flows is kidding themselves. Even if it were possible, shutting down social media will not stop anything. In countries where people do not have easy Internet access or rights like freedom of speech, resourceful, persistent, and effective citizens continue to find ways around Great Fire Walls and information blackouts. Suppressing information these days is like holding a balloon under water. It will absolutely pop up somewhere else.
***
Social media may have accelerated the pace of information travel, bringing groups together faster, but it did not put bricks and fire bombs into the hands of the looters. Social media did not create the anger or sense of powerlessness against authorities. It did not create the heightened emotions of the group, crowd leaders, the adrenalin that comes from a sense of danger and risk, the lack of empathy for others, or the sense of no consequences. Emotion may be contagious, but social media is not.
***
The real danger from these events is ... the wholesale liquidation of personal freedoms as a solution to deal with fear. When people are scared, they are willing to surrender individual rights to whomever tells them they can "fix" the problem. Whenever we give away our power so that we no longer have access or due process, we are on a slippery slope indeed.
The Use of Heavy-Handed Tactics Is Actually a Sign That We're Winning
But the use by government's worldwide of the iron fist of repression is actually a sign that we are winning.
As Truthout's Matt Renner writes today:
Recently I sat down with two of the young adults who organized and led the Egyptian resistance movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The media narrative said it took 18 days, when in fact, they had been organizing for over five years.
According to these young men, the moment they knew they had won was the day Mubarak's government shut off the Internet and blocked cellphone communications. When people could no longer get updates about what was happening in Tahrir Square, they had to come out of their homes and see for themselves, tripling the size of the protests in one fell swoop.
The global plutocracy is terrified of dissent. In some places, the war on dissent is being fought with bullets. In others, the war on dissent targets social media and mobile communications, while repressing and deceiving communities of struggle. It's already happening.
Indeed, the use of heavy-handed tactics - taking the velvet glove off of the iron fist - will backfire, as it will show the "emperor's ruthlessness" for all to see.
Our Voices Are More Important Than We've Realized
Renner is right: the plutocracy is terrified of dissent.
Indeed, the Asch Conformity Experiment showed that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves.
And a new study shows that when only 10% of a population have strongly-held beliefs, their belief will often be adopted by the majority of the society.
So our voices are more important than we've realized.
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15) Wrong Answers in Britain
New York Times Editorial
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/wrong-answers-in-britain.html?_r=1
Nothing can justify or excuse the terrifying wave of violent lawlessness that swept through London and other British cities earlier this month. Hardworking people in struggling neighborhoods were its principal victims. Public support for racial and ethnic coexistence also suffered a damaging, and we fear lasting, blow.
The perpetrators must be punished, the police must improve their riot control techniques, and Prime Minister David Cameron's government must do all it can to make such episodes less likely in the future. We are more confident about the first two happening than the third.
Mr. Cameron, a product of Britain's upper classes and schools, has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.
Would he find similar blame - this time in the culture of the well housed and well off - for Britain's recent tabloid phone hacking scandals or the egregious abuse of expense accounts by members of Parliament?
Crimes are crimes whoever commits them. And the duty of government is to protect the law-abiding, not to engage in simplistic and divisive moralizing that fails to distinguish between criminals, victims and helpless relatives and bystanders.
The thousands who were arrested last week for looting and for more violent crimes should face the penalties that are prescribed by law. But Mr. Cameron is not content to stop there. He talks about cutting off government benefits even to minor offenders and evicting them - and, in a repellent form of collective punishment, perhaps their families, too - from the publicly supported housing in which one of every six Britons lives.
He has also called for blocking access to social networks like Twitter during future outbreaks. And he has cheered on the excessive sentences some judges have been handing out for even minor offenses.
Such draconian proposals often win public applause in the traumatized aftermath of riots. But Mr. Cameron, and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, should know better. They risk long-term damage to Britain's already fraying social compact.
Making poor people poorer will not make them less likely to steal. Making them, or their families, homeless will not promote respect for the law. Trying to shut down the Internet in neighborhoods would be an appalling violation of civil liberties and a threat to public safety, denying vital real-time information to frightened residents.
Britain's urban wastelands need constructive attention from the Cameron government, not just punishment. His government's wrongheaded austerity policies have meant fewer public sector jobs and social services. Even police strength is scheduled to be cut. The poor are generally more dependent on government than the affluent, so they have been hit the hardest.
What Britain's sputtering economy really needs is short-term stimulus, not more budget cutting. Unfortunately, there is no sign that Mr. Cameron has figured that out. But, at a minimum, burdens need to be more fairly shared between rich and poor - not as a reward to anyone, but because it is right.
Fair play is one traditional British value we have always admired. And one we fear is increasingly at risk.
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16) Foreign Students in Work Visa Program Stage Walkout at Plant
"Ms. Ozer and other students said they were paid $8.35 an hour. After fees are deducted from her paychecks as well as $400 a month for rent, she said, she often takes home less than $200 a week. 'We are supposed to be here for cultural exchange and education, but we are just cheap laborers,' Ms. Ozer said."
By JULIA PRESTON
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/us/18immig.html?ref=world
PALMYRA, Pa. - Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey's chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.
The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.
In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese's candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.
Their experience of American society has been very different from what they expected.
"There is no cultural exchange, none, none," said Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalian, China. "It is just work, work faster, work."
Each summer, the State Department brings many thousands of foreign students to the United States on the international work-travel program, with visas that are known as J-1. Over the years, the program has successfully given university students from distant countries a chance to be immersed in everyday America and to make lasting friends.
But in recent years, the program has drawn complaints from students about low wages and unexpectedly difficult work conditions. It appears, however, that the walkout at the Palmyra plant is the first time that foreign students have engaged in a strike to protest their employment.
John Fleming, a State Department spokesman, said officials were aware of the students' protest and had sent staff members to Hershey, Pa., where the candy company is based, to investigate. "It is our job to ensure that all J-1 visa holders are accorded their rights under all provisions of the Summer Work Travel program," Mr. Fleming said.
The arrangements that brought the foreign students to work at the Eastern Distribution Center III, a vast warehouse in a trim industrial park near Hershey, the American chocolate capital, involved layers of contractors.
The students said they mainly placed blame on the organization that manages the J-1 visa program for the State Department, the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A., which is based in California.
Rick Anaya, chief executive of the council, said he had brought about 6,000 J-1 visa students to the United States this summer. Mr. Anaya said he had tried to respond to the Palmyra workers' complaints. "We are not getting any cooperation," he said. "We are trying to work with these kids. All this negativity is hurting an excellent program. We would go out of our way to help them, but it seems like someone is stirring them up out there."
A spokesman for Hershey's, Kirk Saville, said the chocolate company did not directly operate the Palmyra packing plant, which is managed by a company called Exel. A spokeswoman for Exel said it had found the student workers through another staffing company.
The spokeswoman, Lynn Anderson, said: "We contract with a staffing agency to provide temporary employees, some from the local work force and some J-1 visa holders. We don't have a lot of influence over some of those issues that they've raised."
A labor organization, the National Guestworker Alliance, which has been working with the students, presented a complaint on Wednesday to the State Department asking for the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A. to be removed from its list of sponsoring organizations.
In the protest on Wednesday, about 200 students who were scheduled to start work on an evening shift at 3 p.m. walked into the plant and presented a petition with several hundred signatures to a management representative. Then, together with some students coming off the daytime shift, they marched out.
They came down the driveway to the plant, with semi-trailer trucks wheeling by, chanting, "We are the students, the mighty, mighty students!" and labor slogans in English as well as their own languages. The students said they believed that so many of them walking off their jobs would stop some production on their shifts.
"We want to own our rights," Ms. Zhao said, speaking in English. She and three other Chinese students held out their arms, pointing to bruises they said they had from moving large boxes.
Representatives from two American labor unions participated in the rally at an intersection outside the plant. Three labor officials, including Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Neal Bisno, president of a Pennsylvania branch of the Service Employees International Union, staged a brief sit-in at the plant entrance and were arrested.
Harika Duygu Ozer, 19, a second-year medical student from a university in Istanbul, said she had heard from friends that the summer exchange program would be fun and that she would earn enough money to pay for her medical school tuition.
"I said, 'Why not?' This is America," Ms. Ozer said.
When she was offered a contract for a job at a plant with Hershey's chocolates, she said, she was excited. "We have all seen Charlie's chocolate factory," she said. "We thought, 'This is good.' "
Like many other students, Ms. Ozer said she invested about $3,500, which included the program costs, to obtain the J-1 visa and travel to the United States.
Several Chinese students, including Ms. Zhao, said they had paid more than $6,000 in the process of securing visas.
Ms. Ozer said she worked an eight-hour shift that began at 11 p.m.
"You stand for the entire eight hours," she said. "It is the worst thing for your fingers and hands and your back; you are standing at an angle."
At one of the sites where she worked, she said, cameras were trained on her, and supervisors told her that if she did not want to maintain the pace of work, she should leave.
Godwin Efobi, 26, a third-year medical student from Nigeria who is studying at a university in Ukraine, said his job was moving boxes. "Since I came here, I have a permanent ache in my back," Mr. Efobi said. "Holding a pen is now a big task for me; my muscles ache."
The students said they decided to protest when they learned that neighbors in the apartments and houses where they were staying were paying significantly less rent.
"The tipping point was when we found out about the rent," Mr. Efobi said.
Ms. Ozer and other students said they were paid $8.35 an hour. After fees are deducted from her paychecks as well as $400 a month for rent, she said, she often takes home less than $200 a week. "We are supposed to be here for cultural exchange and education, but we are just cheap laborers," Ms. Ozer said.
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17) Jobless Rate Holds at 8.7%, but Many Have Given Up Looking
"A rise in gas prices of nearly 40 percent over the last year has taken the biggest bite out of paychecks, but the cost of groceries also has risen more than 5 percent, according to the bureau's report."
By PATRICK MCGEEHAN
August 18, 2011, 4:04 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/jobless-rate-holds-at-8-7-but-many-have-given-up-looking/?ref=nyregion
New York City's job market continued to putter along in July, as thousands of residents gave up looking for work and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.7 percent, the state's Labor Department reported on Thursday.
The city's unemployment rate is lower than it was a year ago, but essentially has not changed since March, when the relatively strong rebound in hiring stalled. The number of unemployed people in the city has been stuck above 340,000 for several months, after dropping from a high of more than 400,000 during the worst of the recession in late 2009, according to the state.
"It's been three or four months of going sideways," said James Brown, principal economist for the department.
It's still an uneven job market, he said, adding, "It's very strong if you are in some of the office industries, but construction remains with significant losses and it's really not a good picture in social services."
A separate report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that even those New Yorkers with jobs were losing ground financially. The bureau reported that the price of consumer goods in the metropolitan region rose more than twice as fast as wages did in the last 12 months.
The main gauge of inflation, the consumer price index, last month had increased 3.3 percent from a year before. That was the highest annualized inflation rate in the region since just after the Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed in 2008 and the recession took hold.
Over the same period, wages rose just 1.5 percent, according to the state's Labor Department. It reported that the average hourly wage for private-sector workers in the city was $30.78 in July, up from $30.32 in July 2010 and essentially the same level - $30.33 - as three years ago.
A rise in gas prices of nearly 40 percent over the last year has taken the biggest bite out of paychecks, but the cost of groceries also has risen more than 5 percent, according to the bureau's report.
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18) No Cause for Marijuana Case, but Enough for Child Neglect
[Nothing is said here about the harm caused to the children by being ripped away from their parents by the State and taken to some stranger's home--not sure when and if they will ever see their parents again. It's disgusting. ...bw]
By MOSI SECRET
August 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/nyregion/parents-minor-marijuana-arrests-lead-to-child-neglect-cases.html?ref=nyregion
The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris's apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.
The police had reported her arrest to the state's child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.
Her son, then 10, spent more than a week in foster care. Her niece, who was 8 and living with her as a foster child, was placed in another home and not returned by the foster care agency for more than a year. Ms. Harris, 31, had to weather a lengthy child neglect inquiry, though she had no criminal record and had never before been investigated by the child welfare authorities, Ms. Harris and her lawyer said.
"I felt like less of a parent, like I had failed my children," Ms. Harris said. "It tore me up."
Hundreds of New Yorkers who have been caught with small amounts of marijuana, or who have simply admitted to using it, have become ensnared in civil child neglect cases in recent years, though they did not face even the least of criminal charges, according to city records and defense lawyers. A small number of parents in these cases have even lost custody of their children.
New York City's child welfare agency said that it was pursuing these cases for appropriate reasons, and that marijuana use by parents could often hint at other serious problems in the way they cared for their children.
As states and localities around the country loosen penalties for marijuana, for both recreational and medical uses, they are increasingly grappling with how to handle its presence in homes with children. California, where the medical marijuana movement has flourished, now requires that child welfare officials demonstrate actual harm to a child from marijuana use in order to bring neglect cases, and defense lawyers there say the authorities are now bringing fewer of them.
But in New York, the child welfare agency has not shied from these cases. For these parents, the child welfare system has become an alternate system of justice, with legal standards on marijuana that appear to be tougher than those of criminal courts or, to some extent, of society at large. In interviews, lawyers from the three legal services groups that the city hires to defend parents said they saw hundreds of marijuana cases each year, most involving recreational users.
The lawyers said they currently had more than a dozen cases on their dockets involving parents who had never faced neglect allegations and whose children were placed in foster care because of marijuana allegations.
Lauren Shapiro, director of the Brooklyn Family Defense Project, which defends most parents facing neglect charges in Family Court in Brooklyn, said more than 90 percent of the cases alleging drug use that her lawyers handle involve marijuana, as opposed to other drugs.
"There is not the same use of crack cocaine as there used to be, so they are filing these cases instead," Ms. Shapiro said.
Marijuana is the most common illicit drug in New York City: 730,000 people, or 12 percent of people age 12 and older, use the drug at least once annually, according to city health data.
Over all, the rate of marijuana use among whites is twice as high as among blacks and Hispanics in the city, the data show, but defense lawyers said these cases were rarely if ever filed against white parents.
Michael Fagan, a spokesman for the Administration for Children's Services, said the defense lawyers were offering a simplistic portrayal of these cases.
"Drug use itself is not child abuse or neglect, but it can put children in danger of neglect or abuse," Mr. Fagan said. "We think the argument that use of cocaine, heroin or marijuana by a parent of young children should not be looked into or should simply be ignored is just plain wrong."
Mr. Fagan said most of the cases involved additional forms of neglect, like a child who is not going to school or who has been left unattended.
"In other times, we find that admitted marijuana use masks other substance abuse," Mr. Fagan said.
But lawyers for parents countered that the agency often brought neglect charges based solely on recreational marijuana use, then searched later for other grounds to bolster cases.
"In some cases, there are other allegations, but we think they are add-ons," said Susan Jacobs, executive director of the Center for Family Representation, which works in Manhattan and Queens. "The reason the person is being brought into Family Court is the marijuana use."
Ms. Jacobs cited the case of a former client, Jose Gunnell, 23, of Harlem, who lost custody of his 1-year-old daughter in March after an employee at a homeless shelter where he was staying found a $5 bag of marijuana in his room during an inspection.
Mr. Gunnell said in an interview that he stopped smoking marijuana in 2010 but that he used it again in March after having an infected tooth pulled. "The wound wouldn't close," he said. "I was getting hungry, but I couldn't eat. I bought weed."
The neglect petition that the Administration for Children's Services filed against Mr. Gunnell shows that he admitted to smoking marijuana to develop an appetite.
The agency's petition also said that his daughter did not always have adequate clothing, that shelter workers once smelled alcohol on Mr. Gunnell's breath and that his room was dirty and had an odor.
The agency would not comment on Mr. Gunnell's case or on others described by defense lawyers, citing confidentiality rules.
Ms. Jacobs acknowledged that the Administration for Children's Services might at times correctly determine that marijuana use was one of many serious problems in a family, but she contended that those were only a minority of the cases.
State law makes possession of as much as 25 grams of marijuana - enough for 20 or 30 marijuana cigarettes - a violation similar to a traffic offense, punishable by a fine of up to $100. The Administration for Children's Services does not track the number of parents facing marijuana allegations. It compiles statistics only on the total number of neglect cases for drugs and alcohol, rather than for individual drugs. There were 4,891 such cases in 2010.
State law considers a child neglected if his or her well-being is threatened by a parent who "repeatedly misuses" a drug. But the law does not distinguish marijuana from heroin or other drugs. The law says that if parents have "substantial impairment of judgment," then there is a presumption of neglect, but it does not refer to quantities of drugs.
Furthermore, the law does not require child welfare authorities to catch parents while they are high or with drugs in their possession. Simply admitting past use to a caseworker is grounds for a neglect case.
In marijuana cases, as in all others, caseworkers have the obligation to remove children who they believe are in imminent danger, but they can recommend that the agency file neglect charges against the parents without removing the children. They can also close cases for unsubstantiated allegations.
Neglect findings, while sometimes allowing parents to keep their children, can have serious repercussions. They prohibit parents from taking jobs around children, like driving a school bus or working in day care, or from being foster care parents or adopting. And they make it easier for Family Court judges to later remove children from their homes.
The findings stay on parents' records with the Statewide Central Register until their youngest child turns 28.
The policy of the Administration for Children's Services to pursue marijuana cases is not widely known. But when told of it, some lawmakers said the agency was overstepping its authority.
"I would hope that A.C.S., knowing what a wide-net strategy the N.Y.P.D. is using, would treat marijuana arrests with a grain of salt," said Brad Lander, a Democratic city councilman from Brooklyn. "A neglect charge should not be leveled."
Ms. Harris, the woman briefly held in custody in the Bronx, said the police had searched her apartment because they believed drugs were being sold there, an allegation that she denied. She said the small bags of marijuana the police found belonged to her boyfriend and were for his personal use. She tested negative for drugs after she was released.
The Administration for Children's Services filed neglect charges about a week after Bronx prosecutors declined to press charges. Ms. Harris was represented by the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit organization that provides legal assistance to Bronx residents.
In a hearing the next day, the agency agreed to return Ms. Harris's son on the condition that her boyfriend not return to the home, that she enroll in therapy and submit to random drug screenings, and that caseworkers could make announced and unannounced visits to her home. Ms. Harris's case was closed in April without a finding of neglect.
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19) New Economic Reports Dash Hopes for Economic Revival
By REUTERS
August 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/business/economy/consumer-prices-rose-more-than-forecast-last-month.html?ref=business
Factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region slumped to a nearly 2-1/2 year low in August and home resales unexpectedly dropped in July, dashing hopes for a quick revival in economic growth.
Other data on Thursday also pointed to a darker outlook for the economy, with consumer inflation rising at its fastest rate in four months in July and more Americans than expected claiming new jobless benefits last week.
Stock markets worldwide tumbled on the weak economic data, which stoked concerns that recovery is on the rocks.
Still, economists did not believe that the sharp drop in manufacturing activity signaled that the nation's economy was sliding back into recession.
"Without a strong rebound in the coming months this will be taken as a very worrying development for policy makers charting the outlook for the second half of the year," said Peter Newland, a senior economist at Barclays Capital in New York.
"That said, 'hard' data so far available for the third quarter have taken a clearly stronger tone and timely jobless claims data are not indicative of a dramatic weakening in the economy," he added.
So far, data ranging from retail sales to industrial production suggest the economy found some momentum early in the third quarter after barely growing in the first half of the year.
The New York Federal Reserve president, William Dudley, said on Thursday that the risk of a double-dip recession was "quite low."
"The risks have risen a little bit, but I think we very much still expect the economy to recover." The agency expects growth to be significantly firmer than it was during the first half of the year, he told New Jersey business leaders.
In one positive report, the Conference Board said its index of leading economic indicators rose 0.5 percent in July. The increase, which followed a gain of 0.3 percent in June, was lifted by the money supply and interest rate components, the board said.
Ken Goldstein, an economist at the board, said noted that growth was modest, especially in nonfinancial indicators.
Despite the risks, he said, "the economy should continue to expand at a modest pace through the fall."
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's business activity index plummeted to minus 30.7 in August, the lowest level since March 2009 when the economy was in recession, from 3.2 in July.
That was much worse than economists' expectations for a reading of plus 3.7. Any reading below zero indicates a contraction in the region's manufacturing.
"This report clearly reflects the fact that businesses cut their outlook as a result of the debt limit crises and the resulting downgrade of the U.S. credit rating," said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities in New York.
"I would not read too much into this in terms of the outlook on the economy since manufacturing had been on the rebound in autos and exports and the economy was stuck in first gear for two years."
A second report showed sales of previously owned homes fell 3.5 percent to an annual rate of 4.67 million units, the lowest in eight months. Economists had expected home resales to rise to a 4.90 million-unit pace.
Separate data from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 9,000 to 408,000. Another report from the department showed the Consumer Price Index increased 0.5 percent in July, the largest gain since March, after falling 0.2 percent in June.
Gasoline, which rose 4.7 percent after falling 6.8 percent the prior month, accounted for about half of the rise in C.P.I. last month.
But core C.P.I. - excluding food and energy - rose 0.2 percent after rising 0.3 percent in June.
Morgan Stanley cut its global growth forecast and said that the United States and its major export partner the euro zone were "dangerously close to recession." In a research note that spooked investors, it lowered its United States estimate to 1.8 percent GDP growth for 2011 from 2.6 percent and for next year to 2.1 percent from 3.0 percent.
The jobless claims data covers the survey week for August nonfarm payrolls. Claims dropped by 14,000 between the July and August survey periods, but there are fears that financial markets turbulence could have slowed hiring this month.
"Initial claims were a bit higher than expected, indicating a generally sluggish trend for hiring although still better than where we stood during the second quarter," said Avery Shenfeld, an economist at CIBC World Markets in Toronto.
Despite the spike in consumer inflation last month, which also reflected a 0.4 percent rise in food prices, inflation generally remains contained.
New motor vehicle costs were unchanged after five straight months of hefty gains. This probably reflects an improvement in supplies as disruptions caused by the March earthquake in Japan fade. Motor vehicle production rebounded sharply in July.
In the 12 months to July, core C.P.I. increased 1.8 percent - the largest increase since December 2009. This measure has rebounded from a record low of 0.6 percent in October and Fed would like to see that closer to 2 percent.
Overall consumer prices rose 3.6 percent year-on-year, rising by the same amount for a third straight month.
Within the core C.P.I. basket, shelter costs rose 0.3 percent, the largest gain since June 2008, after advancing 0.2 percent in June. Shelter has increased since October as a persistently weak housing market drives Americans into renting.
The increase in apparel prices slowed to 1.2 percent from June's 1.4 percent increase.
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20) Rabble with a Cause: Were the London Riots a Spontaneous Mass Reaction or a Rational Response?
Contrary to popular wisdom, mobs are not mindless. In fact, they act rationally-a characteristic that suggests ways to prevent riots
By Lauren F. Friedman
Friday, August 12, 2011 | 31
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rabble-with-a-cause&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110818
The deadly mob violence that wracked England this past week has abated, as police came out in force and used surveillance images to track down and arrest some 1,900 alleged rioters. As London and other cities in the nation recover, officials and the public may be left wondering how to prevent such rioting in the first place. A key misunderstanding, however, seems to pervade popular thinking: that mobs are irrational and are driven to violence by a few bad apples. In fact, the scientific evidence shows that individuals in mobs do behave rationally, although not always wisely. The findings suggest that understanding the logic behind mob behavior may offer ways to short-circuit riots before they start.
The recent riots broke out across England after the shooting of north Londoner Mark Duggan by police last weekend. Many official and media accounts place the blame on "a violent few" who swept thousands of others into a destructive frenzy. These analyses echo the 1896 work of
Gustave Le Bon , who published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. "Crowds, after a period of excitement, enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in which they are guided by suggestion," he wrote.
That idea, however, is a myth; social psychologists debunked it in the 1980s. "When people form a psychological group, what happens isn't that they lose a sense of identity but that they think of themselves in terms of group membership," explains social psychologist Stephen Reicher of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
Individuals cannot act with group goals in mind until they see themselves as members of that group. In situations such as the recent London riots, this group identity seems to form spontaneously, but studies of the riots in England 30 years ago suggest a more complex buildup.
"Riots are the endpoint of a very long and entrenched process of social sense-making," Reicher says. "When an event comes along that clicks in perfectly to this broader social understanding, then suddenly it's much more likely to make you see yourself as a group member."
If the residents of Tottenham, where the first riot broke out, had the general feeling that they were being mistreated by the police, then the Mark Duggan incident provided an egregious and highly public example to confirm that. (Other social and economic factors, of course, were also at play as the rioting spread in the days that followed to other neighborhoods and cities.) When people gathered in the streets to protest, the physical group began to take the form of a psychological group, with shared values and a clearly defined out-group-the police.
The Londoners eventually turned to violence, but not necessarily because of mob madness or because the group was made up of individuals with a tendency toward unfettered aggression. ("While the trouble has been largely blamed on feral teenagers," The Daily Mail reported, "many of those paraded before the courts yesterday led apparently respectable lives.")
"One thing science does tell us is that we can't understand it if we treat it as irrational [or] if we think of these people as a gathering of people with individual predispositions to violence," says Clifford Stott, a social psychologist at the University of Liverpool.
Stott's previous research with John Drury of the University of Sussex (pdf) and others (pdf) has demonstrated that a crowd of nonviolent individuals can become a violent, and not-as previously thought-because a few violent protestors take control of an impressionable mob. Instead, the unilateral force that is sometimes used against a mostly nonviolent crowd can backfire, cementing the unity of the group against the now-violent authorities. This newly combative dynamic can change what's considered acceptable group behavior for everyone and leave group members with an intoxicating feeling of empowerment.
Reicher explains: "Crowd events tend to be mixed events with some people who do intend to be violent and some who don't. The response of authorities is to see the group as a whole as dangerous. At that point, precisely those people not originally violent have the experience of being treated with hostility and often physical force. Under those circumstances, they see the police as illegitimate and violence escalates."
Within this context, a violent crowd is not necessarily out of control but may be acting meaningfully and deliberately, with the "us versus them" values of the group in mind. This behavior is not irrational, Stott says, and "is consistent with how the social identity of the group is defined."
Even what appears to be a clear case of crowd violence can be misleading. A recent review of crowd behavior theories (pdf) pointed to the old idea of a mob, where "individuals lose all sense of self-responsibility... and primitive behavior results." But in reality, any riot includes both collective action and individual acts of opportunism, and these are hard to tease apart. Some individuals, Reicher explains, will use a crowd as a "cover," to do things they would not normally do. These single-minded actions do not necessarily represent the behavior of the group as a whole, even though it can appear so.
In the end, group identity is a precondition for a riot: people will only riot when they think their actions are aligned with the worldview of the group as a whole. Reicher suggests then that the key to preventing riots may be for authorities to regularly engage community members who will publicly oppose violence and looting, shifting the perception of group's needs and desires in advance. This early intervention-similar to approaches used to combat gang violence-could intercept the possibility of a violent group identity before it can begin to form.
"You can only take part in these events to the extent that you believe you have collective support from others," Reicher says. "Nobody riots on their own."
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