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"The collusion between union and management to pressure workers into accepting concession contracts is spreading. It won't stop until it meets an unmovable object: Rank & file resistance."
-Soldiers Of Solidarity, Gregg Shotwell
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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. [As it turns out, Mark Duggan was unarmed and did not shoot first. ...bw]
By Alastair Good
August 7, 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8687058/Protest-which-sparked-Tottenham-riot.html
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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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COMMITTEE TO STOP FBI REPRESSION
Support Carlos Montes as he goes to court Friday, August 12
Call:
President Barak Obama at 202-456-1111
Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-514-2001
Sample call: "My name is ________ and I am calling from [city, state]. I'm calling about Carlos Montes of Los Angeles. He is one of the anti-war activists being targeted by the FBI. I want you to tell Attorney General Holder [or President Obama]:
1. Drop the charges against Carlos Montes!
2. Stop the FBI and the Grand Jury repression of the other 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists.
3. Return all property to Carlos Montes and the other activists raided by the FBI.
The U.S. government should not be prosecuting us when we exercise our rights to freedom of speech and dissent."
On Friday, August 12, Carlos Montes will appear in a Los Angeles court again, for a preliminary hearing. At his last court date on July 6, Carlos pled "Not guilty!" to six charges, including a felony charge each for a firearm and ammunition, and four related to the permits' paperwork. Like millions of Americans, Carlos has for many years held legal permits. So why is it that all of a sudden the government is saying there is a problem? These charges are a pretext to attack Carlos for his years of activism.
Please join us in calling U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama, demanding a stop to the prosecution of Carlos Montes. We need to stop the persecution of political activists like Carlos, like the 23 Midwest anti-war and international solidarity activists, people like you and me.
Make no mistake; the U.S. government's trial of Carlos Montes is an attack on the immigrants' rights and anti-war movements. So please call today and let Holder and Obama know we are building a movement that will not bow down to dirty tricks and political repression.
In addition, the Los Angeles Committee to Stop FBI Repression is mobilizing to
pack the courtroom on the morning of Friday, August 12, in
Department 100 at the Criminal Courts Building, 210 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles, when Carlos Montes appears.
About Carlos Montes:
Carlos Montes is a veteran Chicano activist known for his leadership of the 1968 East Los Angeles education reform movement (see film Walkout), the historic Chicano Moratorium against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and the recent immigrants' rights mega-marches of 2006. Carlos Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano youth organization that stood for justice, equality, and self-determination.
With the 2003 Bush administration war and occupation of Iraq, Montes helped form and lead L.A. Latinos Against War. In recent years, Carlos helped initiate and organize the Southern California Immigration Coalition, to fight against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and police repression.
About this case:
Now Montes himself is the target of government repression and the FBI's dirty tricks. When the FBI raided several Midwest homes and served subpoenas on September 24, 2010, Carlos Montes' name was listed on the FBI search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis--the organizing center for the 2008 Republican National Convention protests, where Carlos participated.
Then on May 17, 2011, the LA Sheriffs broke down Carlos' door, arrested him, and ransacked his home. They took political documents, a computer, cell phones and meeting notes having nothing to do with the charges. The FBI attempted to question Montes while he was handcuffed in a squad car, regarding the case of the 23 Midwest anti-war and solidarity activists.
On June 16, 2011, Carlos appeared in court and obtained the arrest documents showing the FBI initiated the raid. A reporter interviewing a Los Angeles Sheriff sergeant confirmed that the FBI was in charge. Carlos Montes is facing six felony charges with the possibility of 18 years in prison due to his political organizing. Carlos Montes case is part and parcel of the FBI raids and political repression centered in the Midwest. We need you to take action against this repression.
You can also invite Carlos Montes to speak using a live Internet video call. It is easy to do and works well. More details on the video calls coming next week.
Please sign the petition for Carlos Montes on the International Action Center website.
http://www.stopfbi.net/petition/national
Visit www.StopFBI.net or write StopFBI@gmail.com or call 612-379-3585.
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Add us to your address book
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NEXT UNAC MEETING SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 11:00 A.M.
Redstone Bldg, 3rd floor conference room, 16th Street and Capp, San Francisco (wheelchair accessible).
Please make every effort to attend. Bring your friends! Reach out to new constituencies. JOIN US on AUGUST 13!
In solidarity,
Steering Committee, Northern California UNAC
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STAND-UP FOR AFRICANS!
Rally for Justice and Healing Gathering
Saturday, 13 August 2011, 11 am
United Nations' Plaza, downtown San Francisco
Market Street b/w Seventh & Eighth (at UN Plaza/Civic Center BART and MUNI stations)
WE STILL CHARGE GENOCIDE!!!
End the U.S. and European Terrorist Wars, Torture, Murder, Robbery and (Re-) Colonization of Africans!
Life Over Capitalist Debt and Death! Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed!
Arrests, Trials and Convictions for the Criminal Political, Military and Financial Gangsters and Banksters!
Stop the Bush-Obama Imperialist "AFRICOM" (aka, U.S. African Command) Militarization of Africa!
Dismantle the so-called "security council" of the United Nations! Support One Member Nation, One Vote!
REPARATIONS NOW...
FOR LIBYA, ZIMBABWE, HAITI AND ALL AFRCAN NATIONS AND DESCENDANTS, PALESTINE, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN!!!
This action initiated by the FONAMI (Foundations for Our New Alkebulan/Afrikan Millennium), Members of N'COBRA in Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.
c/o FONAMI P.O. Box 10963 Oakland, CA 94610
support@africansdeservereparations.com 510.759.4311
We are in unity with the Millions March taking place in Harlem, New York ( www.millionsmarchharlem.com for info)
Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at
"Take your righteous steps... and, let our Divine do the rest. Walk in Faith... on each and every day!"
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Millions March In Harlem
Against the Attack on African People
END
the Bombing of Libya
the Illegal Sanctions in Zimbabwe
Bloomberg's Destruction
of Education, Housing, Health Care, Jobs and more!
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Pan Africanism Rising Against Imperialism!
Assemble at 10 AM
110th Street and Malcolm X Blvd
Harlem New York
Pan Africanism or Perish!
For more information and participation call (718) 398-1766
Forward to all your contacts and let us know how many will be attending!
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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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United National Antiwar Committee
www.UNACpeace.org
UNACpeace@gmail.com
UNAC, P.O. Box 123, Delmar, New York 12054
518-227-6947
Upcoming Actions:
August 20--Local actions or educational events on Other Wars
August 28--Organizing meeting for NATO/G-8 protests in Chicago
September 15 --Rally - Palestine is Coming to the UN!
October 6--Stop the Machine demonstration in Washington, DC
October 15--Local Afghanistan demonstrations or teach-ins
November11-13 --National UNAC Conference, Stamford, CT
May 15-22--Protest actions and educational events during NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago
REPORT ON UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE
COORDINATING COMMITTEE LEADERSHIP STRATEGY MEETING
NEW YORK CITY, 6-18-11
A lively and hugely productive all-day meeting of the national UNAC Coordinating Committee and invited observers was attended by 69 people representing 46 organizations. The first leadership gathering since UNAC's formation at the national conference held in Albany last July was organized to review the current period and UNAC's first 10 months, and to project actions for the coming period.
Joe Lombardo, UNAC Co-Coordinator, began with an overview of the unprecedented events of the past year based on the US expansion of never-ending war along with a global economic crisis and attacks on workers and the poor at home. At the same time, conditions have worsened, the popular uprisings in North Africa and fightbacks in Madison, inspire new opportunities for organizing.
He started with the launch of UNAC in July, 2010 in Albany at the largest gathering of movement activists since 9/11 and the historic actions taken there that permanently changed the nature of the movement. One was the recognition of the monstrous growth of Islamophobia. The new alliance in defense of this community inspired the formation of the Muslim Peace Coalition and a broad coalition of organizations defending civil liberties. The second was the long overdue stand in solidarity with the Palestinians by demanding "End All US Aid to Israel". This unequivocal position has ended the marginalization of Palestinian rights and brought the antiwar and the Palestine solidarity movements together for the strengthening of both.
A highlight of the past year was the success of the April 9-10 national mobilizations, the largest in many years. These demonstrations were also the most diverse with a large number of Muslim families marching with students, Palestine solidarity activists, and thousands of others in NYC and SF.
Co-Coordinator, Marilyn Levin, addressed The Way Forward and Building UNAC. She outlined the challenge we face in this difficult period as we enter an election cycle and stressed that maintaining our basic principles of independence from political parties, unity of purpose and action in a broad, inclusive movement, defense of all individuals and constituencies under attack, and a commitment to mass action as the major strategy for movement building is the way to build the movement and strengthen UNAC.
Although the majority of the American people are with us re: ending the wars and redirecting the economy to maintain social services, the antiwar movement is still fragmented and the major constituencies do not act in a unified way, weakening all. There is even a discussion of whether we need an independent antiwar movement and the efficacy of mass action as counter to small acts of civil resistance. Given the current stresses, it seems inevitable that fight backs will increase and the need for a unified opposition will grow in spite of attempts to bring the movement into quiescence in the Democratic Party juggernaut.
Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Peace Coalition pointed out the growth of hate groups and violence with many states passing Islamopohobic, anti-immigrant and anti-union laws. He stressed outreach to faith groups and labor and ensuring the peace movement reflects the diversity of America, especially groups that are solidly against the war like students, Latinos, immigrants, African American, Muslims, and Native Americans. He emphasized the importance of using personal 1:1 communication to counter the din of electronic communication, while also using social and news media effectively. He also raised the issue of reframing the 9/11 message for the 10th anniversary when we can expect to see increased Islamophobia and repression of civil liberties. We can't appear to be anti-American or anti-religious. We must identify with America's future based on growing diversity.
Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council & Black Agenda Report introduced a motion that stressed that our outreach and public statements must be broadened to include all oppressed nationalities, not only Muslims. This passed unanimously.
A discussion of upcoming UNAC actions followed.
Chris Gauvreau, CT United for Peace, addressed the fall actions marking the 10th year of war on Afghanistan. UNAC has endorsed and will build the October 6 actions in Washington, DC that will include nonviolent civil resistance actions and a plan to stay on. UNAC has also called for peaceful, legal national local demonstrations or other actions on Sat., Oct. 15 so that thousands will be visible in the streets in October.
A call for a second large, authoritative movement conference November 11-13, in Stamford, CT, was approved. Ashley Smith of the ISO outlined the plans and motivated the importance of bringing the entire movement together for education, training, bringing in new forces, and voting on action proposals for the coming period. A committee is already working on inviting prominent speakers and organizing workshops. The Coordinating Committee will formulate an Action Program to bring to the conference.
The escalation, brutality, and continuation of the UN/US war on Libya calls for vigorous action to defend the Libyan people and demand immediate withdrawal of all military forces. UNAC calls for demonstrations on Monday, June 27, the date that NATO has decided to extend hostilities for 90 more days. Regardless of different political views on the Qaddafi regime and the nature of the opposition in Libya, we all agree that foreign military forces, funding, and manipulation must cease and we support self-determination for the Libyans.
Sara Flounders from the International Action Center reported that NATO is coming to the US in the spring of 2012 for an international summit. UNAC will issue an international call for massive actions and a gathering of all sectors of the movement wherever and whenever this takes places. This will be the definitive spring action to galvanize the movement and demonstrate widespread opposition to US wars for domination and resources. (It is now known that this will be a NATO and G-8 gathering in Chicago May 15-22, 2012 and a broad call has been issued nationally.)
The gathering addressed proposals for ongoing work and actions.
There was a panel on fighting Islamophobia, attacks on civil liberties and targeting activists. Imam Latif described his experience with American Airlines not allowing he and his son to fly with no basis other than anti-Muslim/anti-Black profiling and bias, which they are legally challenging. Steve Downs from Project SALAM put the current attacks on Muslims (700,000 have been approached by the FBI) and activists in an historical perspective from the 1960's and 1970's attacks on black activists and civil rights workers and COINTELPRO tactics using agent provocateurs and frame-ups, resurrected with a vengeance. Attacks today include environmentalists and many groups of dissenters, whistle blowers, scapegoated communities. There are many political prisoners from the past that we mustn't forget. He also stressed the abuse prisoners suffer.
Jess Sundin, one of the targeted activists from the Twin Cities described the FBI targeting Latino activist Carlos Montes with trumped up criminal charges. His next court date is July 6 and actions will be organized in support. Carlos is available to speak and this is an opportunity to forge connections with the Latino community. Debra Sweet, World Can't Wait, reported on defense of Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks and the dangerous introduction of espionage charges and the death penalty. We are also approaching the ten year anniversary of opening Guantanamo prison. UNAC has played a leading role in calling for unified defense of all under attack.
Chris Hutchinson, from the CT Bring Our War $$ Home campaign, spoke of the exciting opportunities opening with the Bring Our War $$ Home campaign. This national effort connects the war and the economy and is a natural vehicle for outreach and involvement with all the constituencies impacted by the economic crisis, particularly with workers, the poor, and youth. Creative use of petitions, resolutions, referenda, town meetings can be effectively used for outreach, education, and publicity. This outreach campaign is exciting to young activists and also to those who are engaged. It gives people who are never asked for their opinion a sense of ownership - this is "our" money.
Kathy Kelly, Voices of Creative Nonviolence, urged that we try to impact the electoral conversation by calling candidates to be accountable for their positions on the wars and other issues and pursue getting answers and to support actions like the veterans riding from Ground Zero to the Pentagon and the October 6 actions, and raising antiwar resolutions at Democratic Party caucuses.
The Other Wars have often been neglected by the antiwar movement. Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report explained that Black is Back was formed to expose Obama and call attention to US wars at home and abroad. These include US-proxy wars in Africa where the death tolls are far higher than in the acknowledged wars, particularly in Congo and Somalia. Haiti has lost its sovereignty and has the status of a protectorate, the fate awaiting Libya.
The evidence that there is a war going on at home is the number of prisoners, particularly young men of color. Other aspects of other wars discussed included the so-called "War on Drugs" and its devastating impact on Mexico, Colombia, and minorities and the poor in the US. Black youth do not use drugs disproportionately; however, the amount of surveillance and harsh penalties are disproportionate resulting in the alarming rates of incarceration. Iran and other countries that the US demonizes and threatens were highlighted; it is important that we take a firm position of non-intervention in sovereign countries. A resolution passed to condemn the role of the International Criminal Court in subverting its legal mandate through selective indictments of Africans.
Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Union and Black Agenda Report emphasized that the issue of mass incarceration is a burning issue with 2.3 million in prison and a disproportion of prisoners are African-American and Latino young men. UNAC needs to expand its base into the Black community by recognizing the crisis and supporting a national movement to end this assault on the youth and combat the prison industry, beginning with a statement.
UNAC has endorsed the Black is Back August 20 call for actions re: the Other Wars. A resource list of books, articles and speakers will be distributed.
There were several actions generated by panelists re: Palestine solidarity. Jenna Bittar from Hampshire College represented Students for Justice in Palestine. She pointed out that antiwar groups are scarce on college campuses and that SJP's have been the most politically active, particularly in BDS campaigns. She speculated that students have felt fairly powerless but the youth involvement and leadership in Egypt has raised awareness of student power and students might be more open to actions put forth by UNAC. Kathy Kelly will be on the U.S. boat to Gaza and spoke of plans to hold a memorial service for all those who have died on the boat. Stan Heller from the Middle East Crisis Committee brought a resolution from Stan, Medea Benjamin (Code PINK), and Kathy Kelly in solidarity with the flotilla. Actions included forming committees of boat watch volunteers to spread information; rallies, vigils, and meetings during the sailing; and demos the day after any attack. This resolution passed unanimously along with a resolution to denounce the U.S. tax dollar-financed murders of demonstrators for the right of return and to hold solidarity demonstrations with the third Nakba Right of Return demonstrations.
Judy Bello, Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, spoke to the use of drones becoming the preferred weapons and surveillance tools for targeted assassinations. Demonstrators were arrested for protests at the Hancock AF drone base in Syracuse and expect trials this fall.
Bernadette Ellorin, Chair of BAYAN USA, spoke of the movement to close U.S. bases abroad. She described the Philippines as the "first Vietnam" where torture techniques and counterinsurgency tactics were developed and exported. UNAC voted to endorse a day of action to oppose military exercises on February 4, 2012, the anniversary of the Philippine-American war. She stressed the importance of recognizing the scope of U.S. military hegemony around the world. A motion was passed to oppose U.S. military bases, trainings, and funding and to support an educational campaign on U.S. counterinsurgency.
It was pointed out that Pakistan is the least understood country among the U.S. wars. Workshops were encouraged for the fall.
The following organizations were represented at the UNAC leadership meeting on June 18, 2011 in New York City
Action for a Progressive Pakistan; Al-Awda Palestine Right to ReturnCoalition - NY; Bayan-USA; Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace; Bail Out the People Movement; Black Agenda Report; Black is Back; Boston Stop the Wars; 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'sStruggle; International Socialist Organization; Islamic Leadership Council ofMetropolitan 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 MertonCenter Pittsburgh; United for Justice and Peace; 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
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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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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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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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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) Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
August 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/a-second-recession-could-be-much-worse-than-the-first.html?ref=business
2) 8 Years In Prison for a Harmless Prank? Handcuffed for Doodling? The Increasing Criminalization of Students
By Rania Khalek, AlterNet
Posted on August 8, 2011, Printed on August 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151948/8_years_in_prison_for_a_harmless_prank_handcuffed_for_doodling_the_increasing_criminalization_of_students
3) As Rioting Widens, Cameron Deploys 10,000 More Police
"The BBC and other British news organizations reported Tuesday that the police may be permitted to use rubber bullets for the first time as part of the government's strengthened response to any resumption of the mayhem. David Lammy, Britain's intellectual property minister, also called for a suspension of Blackberry's encrypted instant message service. Many rioters, exploiting that service, had been able to organize mobs and outrun the police, who were ill-equipped to monitor it. "It is unfortunate, but for the very short term, London can't have a night like the last," Mr. Lammy said in a Twitter post."
By ALAN COWELL, RAVI SOMAIYA and JOHN F. BURNS
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/europe/10britain.html?hp
4) Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril
"Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice. The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima - and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that."
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and MARTIN FACKLER
August 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?hp
5) Video Intensifies Interest in a Mississippi Killing
By KIM SEVERSON
August 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/09hate.html?ref=us
6) Mexico-Bound Immigrants Face Scrutiny at the Border
"A raft of immigration laws in Arizona and other states is designed to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they pack their bags and head home. But the reality on the border is that departing the country has become more complicated than ever - leading some people to worry that the outbound checks could not only dissuade illegal immigrants from leaving the country but also place them in a kind of no-win limbo, reviled if they stay and potentially arrested if they try to leave. ...In questioning people leaving the country about illegal contraband, agents frequently find migrants who are not engaged in smuggling but do not have permission to be in the United States. Some with clean records are let go. Others are fingerprinted and photographed for illegal entry and only then allowed to go on their way. Once they are in the government's database, they face more stringent penalties if they are caught in the United States again. Immigrants who are found to have criminal records face more aggressive treatment. They are likely to be arrested and then formally deported. "
[This puts a new spinn on the phrase, "Got you comming and going." ...bw]
By MARC LACEY
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/us/10border.html?ref=us
7) After 4th Night of Violence, Cameron Pledges Police 'Fightback'
By ALAN COWELL and JOHN F. BURNS
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/europe/11britain.html?hp
8) London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain
"Headlines here, which often describe the young people as 'feral,' have been dominated in recent years by the gangs' turn toward bullying the most vulnerable. Almost 30 percent of the victims of antisocial behavior surveyed in the government report said they had "longstanding illness, disability or infirmity."
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAVI SOMAIYA
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/europe/10youth.html?ref=world
9) Dark Clouds Gathering on British Economy, Central Banker Says
By JULIA WERDIGIER
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/business/g
10) Chile: Protest in Santiago Grows Violent
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/americas/10briefs-Santiago.html?ref=world
11) Gold Shoots Past Record $1,800 an Ounce
[A dear comrade, Joe Johnson, said the price of gold is like blood pressure for the economy. When it's very high, you may not know what is wrong with it, but you know something is very wrong. ...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/08/10/business/AP-US-Gold-Record.html?src=busln
12) Cameron, in Speech, Pledges Swift Reaction to Rioters
“Mr. Cameron repeated earlier statements that the police were authorized to use plastic-coated bullets against rioters and that plans were in place to deploy water cannons, though such action was ‘not appropriate now.’ While he agreed with objections by the police to the deployment of the army to confront any future unrest, he said the authorities would consider whether the military could fulfill any functions to allow more police officers to be deployed. ‘Nothing should be off the table. Every contingency is being looked at,’ he said. As to the causes of the outbreak, he returned to an earlier theme of social breakdown. ‘This is not about poverty, it’s about culture — a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities,’ he said.”
By JOHN F. BURNS, ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA
August 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/europe/12britain.html?hp
13) U.S. Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/africa/11somalia.html?hp
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1) Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
August 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/a-second-recession-could-be-much-worse-than-the-first.html?ref=business
If the economy falls back into recession, as many economists are now warning, the bloodletting could be a lot more painful than the last time around.
Given the tumult of the Great Recession, this may be hard to believe. But the economy is much weaker than it was at the outset of the last recession in December 2007, with most major measures of economic health - including jobs, incomes, output and industrial production - worse today than they were back then. And growth has been so weak that almost no ground has been recouped, even though a recovery technically started in June 2009.
"It would be disastrous if we entered into a recession at this stage, given that we haven't yet made up for the last recession," said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics.
When the last downturn hit, the credit bubble left Americans with lots of fat to cut, but a new one would force families to cut from the bone. Making things worse, policy makers used most of the economic tools at their disposal to combat the last recession, and have few options available.
Anxiety and uncertainty have increased in the last few days after the decision by Standard & Poor's to downgrade the country's credit rating and as Europe continues its desperate attempt to stem its debt crisis.
President Obama acknowledged the challenge in his Saturday radio and Internet address, saying the country's "urgent mission" now was to expand the economy and create jobs. And Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in an interview on CNBC on Sunday that the United States had "a lot of work to do" because of its "long-term and unsustainable fiscal position."
But he added, "I have enormous confidence in the basic regenerative capacity of the American economy and the American people."
Still, the numbers are daunting. In the four years since the recession began, the civilian working-age population has grown by about 3 percent. If the economy were healthy, the number of jobs would have grown at least the same amount.
Instead, the number of jobs has shrunk. Today the economy has 5 percent fewer jobs - or 6.8 million - than it had before the last recession began. The unemployment rate was 5 percent then, compared with 9.1 percent today.
Even those Americans who are working are generally working less; the typical private sector worker has a shorter workweek today than four years ago.
Employers shed all the extra work shifts and weak or extraneous employees that they could during the last recession. As shown by unusually strong productivity gains, companies are now squeezing as much work as they can from their newly "lean and mean" work forces. Should a recession return, it is not clear how many additional workers businesses could lay off and still manage to function.
With fewer jobs and fewer hours logged, there is less income for households to spend, creating a huge obstacle for a consumer-driven economy.
Adjusted for inflation, personal income is down 4 percent, not counting payments from the government for things like unemployment benefits. Income levels are low, and moving in the wrong direction: private wage and salary income actually fell in June, the last month for which data was available.
Consumer spending, along with housing, usually drives a recovery. But with incomes so weak, spending is only barely where it was when the recession began. If the economy were healthy, total consumer spending would be higher because of population growth.
And with construction nearly nonexistent and home prices down 24 percent since December 2007, the country does not have a buffer in housing to fall back on.
Of all the major economic indicators, industrial production - as tracked by the Federal Reserve - is by far the worst off. The Fed's index of this activity is nearly 8 percent below its level in December 2007.
Likewise, and perhaps most worrisome, is the track record for the country's overall output. According to newly revised data from the Commerce Department, the economy is smaller today than it was when the recession began, despite (or rather, because of) the feeble growth in the last couple of years.
If the economy were healthy, it would be much bigger than it was four years ago. Economists refer to the difference between where the economy is and where it could be if it met its full potential as the "output gap." Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, has estimated that the economy was about 7 percent smaller than its potential at the beginning of this year.
Unlike during the first downturn, there would be few policy remedies available if the economy were to revert back into recession.
Interest rates cannot be pushed down further - they are already at zero. The Fed has already flooded the financial markets with money by buying billions in mortgage securities and Treasury bonds, and economists do not even agree on whether those purchases substantially helped the economy. So the Fed may not see much upside to going through another politically controversial round of buying.
"There are only so many times the Fed can pull this same rabbit out of its hat," said Torsten Slok, the chief international economist at Deutsche Bank.
Congress had some room - financially and politically - to engage in fiscal stimulus during the last recession.
But at the end of 2007, the federal debt was 64.4 percent of the economy. Today, it is estimated at around 100 percent of gross domestic product, a share not seen since the aftermath of World War II, and there is little chance of lawmakers reaching consensus on additional stimulus that would increase the debt.
"There is no approachable precedent, at least in the postwar era, for what happens when an economy with 9 percent unemployment falls back into recession," said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. "The one precedent you might consider is 1937, when there was also a premature withdrawal of fiscal stimulus, and the economy fell into another recession more painful than the first."
There is at least one factor, though, that could make a second downturn feel milder than the first: corporate profits. Corporate profits are at record highs and, adjusted for inflation, were 22 percent greater in the first quarter of this year than they were in the last quarter of 2007.
Nervous about the future of the economy, corporations are reluctant to make big investments like hiring. As a result, they are sitting on a lot of cash.
While this may not be much comfort to the nation's 13.9 million unemployed workers, it may be to their employed counterparts.
"In the financial crisis, when markets were freezing up, the first response was, 'I've got to get some cash,' " said Neal Soss, the chief economist at Credit Suisse. "The fastest way to get cash is to not have a weekly payroll, so that's why we saw such big layoffs."
Corporate cash reserves today, he said, could act as a buffer to layoffs if demand drops.
"There are arguments that another recession would be worse, and there are arguments in the other direction," Mr. Soss said. "We just don't know at this juncture. But ultimately it's a question you don't want to know the answer to."
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2) 8 Years In Prison for a Harmless Prank? Handcuffed for Doodling? The Increasing Criminalization of Students
By Rania Khalek, AlterNet
Posted on August 8, 2011, Printed on August 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151948/8_years_in_prison_for_a_harmless_prank_handcuffed_for_doodling_the_increasing_criminalization_of_students
A few months back, 18-year-old Tyell Morton was enjoying his senior year at Rushville High in Indiana. Today, he faces the prospect of being labeled a felon for the rest of his life for a harmless senior prank.
Morton was arrested for putting a blowup doll in a bathroom stall on the last day of school. He was caught when video footage showed a man entering the high school in a hooded sweatshirt and leaving a package in the bathroom. Fearing the package might be a bomb, school officials evacuated the premises and called the Indiana State bomb squad. Although no one was injured, no property damaged and no dangerous materials found, Morton, who had not been in any trouble prior to this incident, is being charged with disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor) and institutional criminal mischief (a class C felony), carrying the potential of two to eight years in prison.
Tyell Morton's case has received nationwide media attention and there is even a website called Free Tyrell Morton. Unfortunately, his case is hardly the only one of its kind. The overzealous response to Morton's harmless, albeit immature senior prank, is just the most recent in a long string of over-the-top punishments visited upon American students.
In Pearl, Mississippi, Pearl High School's rivalry with Brandon High School dates back to 1949. Last year, when big paw prints and the letters B H S were scribbled in bright red spray paint all over Pearl High's new field house, Brandon High officials launched an investigation. Tyler Dearman and Adam Cook, both 17, were arrested at school and charged with felony malicious mischief.
Young people across America are being suspended, expelled and charged with criminal offenses for behavior as innocuous as doodling on a desk, skipping class, and in the case of Tyell Morton, participating in the well-established American tradition of "senior pranking." Suspension and expulsion are poles apart from arrests and criminal charges, but all of these disciplinary measures stem from a zero-tolerance culture that promotes harsh punishment for common childhood mistakes. Why is this happening?
'Zero-Tolerance'
In cases of violent or dangerous behavior, most everyone can agree that suspension or expulsion may be required by law or necessary for the safety of other students and school staff. But the zero-tolerance culture that spread throughout the American school system following a string of highly publicized school shootings in the '90s has had unintended consequences.
The rise of harsher discipline for student misconduct paralleled the "tough on crime" rhetoric of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was further exacerbated by hysteria among legislators about out-of-control youth, fueled in part by frequent news stories of teachers and students being shot or killed in high school classrooms, hallways and cafeterias.
Panic over stories of youth violence led to the 1994 Guns-Free Schools Act, which allocated extra funding to local schools that could demonstrate that when a student brought a weapon to campus, he would be expelled for at least one year and referred to appropriate authorities in the justice system. But policymakers went far beyond this minimum standard, calling for stricter punishment for any disruptive or dangerous actions. While specific policies differ from state to state and even school to school, by 1997 at least 79 percent of schools nationwide had adopted zero-tolerance policies toward alcohol, drugs and violence. (Zero-tolerance describes policies that automatically impose severe discipline on students without regard to individual circumstances.)
Curbing violence and drugs in school is a worthy goal, but the enforcement of zero-tolerance policies has often led to extreme punishments for benign behavior. The Advancement Project describes it well:
"While zero tolerance once required suspension or expulsion for a specified list of serious offenses, it is now an overarching approach toward discipline for potential weapons, imaginary weapons, perceived weapons, a smart mouth, headache medicine, tardiness, and spitballs."
Spitballs and LEGOs and Tantrums, Oh My!
In December 2010, 14-year-old Andrew Mikel used a plastic tube to blow plastic pellets at fellow students in Spotsylvania High School during lunch period. School officials expelled him for possession and use of a weapon, and they called a deputy sheriff to the scene who charged him with three counts of misdemeanor assault. E-mail traffic among school officials showed they ruled that Mikel's plastic tube met the definition of a projectile weapon because it was "used to intimidate, threaten or harm others." Mikel is being home-schooled while his case is under appeal.
Even elementary schools have been affected.
Last February, 9-year-old Patrick Timoney, a fourth-grader at PS 52 in Staten Island, NY, was almost suspended when he brought some of his Legos to school to show his friends during lunch. One of his toys was a Lego policeman holding a 2-inch plastic gun. Because the school has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to toy guns, Patrick barely escaped suspension.
In 2009, 6-year-old Zachary Christie faced the wrath of zero-tolerance when he took his new Cub Scout camping utensil to school. He was excited to show it off at lunch, but based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first-grader, school officials had no choice but to suspend him because, "regardless of possessor's intent," knives are banned. (The multi-use tool serves as a knife, fork and spoon.) School officials concluded he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and faced 45 days in the district's reform school.
In Palm Beach, Florida, a 14-year-old disabled student was sent to the principal's office for allegedly stealing $2 from another student. The principal referred the child to the police, where he was charged with strong-armed robbery, and held for six weeks in an adult jail. When the local media criticized the prosecutor's decision to file adult felony charges, he responded, "depicting this forcible felony, this strong-arm robbery, in terms as though it were no more than a $2 shoplifting fosters and promotes violence in our schools." Charges were dropped by the prosecution when a "60 Minutes" television crew showed up at the boy's hearing.
A 12-year-old in Louisiana who was diagnosed with a hyperactive disorder was suspended for two days after telling his friends in a food line "I'm gonna get you" if they ate all the potatoes. The police then charged the boy with making "terroristic threats" and he was incarcerated for two weeks while awaiting trial.
In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser wrote "Okay" on her desk, and police handcuffed and arrested her. She was one of four middle-school students arrested, handcuffed and paraded in front of their classmates before being taken by police van to a stationhouse, where they were shackled to a pole and interrogated for hours.
Three years later at Forest Hills Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was punished for doodling "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)" on her desk. The seventh-grader was perp-walked out of the school in front of her classmates with her hands cuffed behind her back and escorted to the police station where she was handcuffed to a pole for more than two hours.
In April 2005, a 5-year-old girl at a St. Petersburg, Florida kindergarten was arrested, handcuffed and shackled by police officers, then confined to a police cruiser for three hours. The Advancement Project explains that her "crime" was not wielding a weapon or threatening to harm other children; she threw a temper tantrum, and school officials responded by calling the police.
The Costs
While these are just a handful of outrageous examples, they represent a more general trend. Overly strict enforcement of school rules has resulted in a significant nationwide increase of suspensions and expulsions over the past three decades. Just consider the overall increase in suspensions and expulsions from 1.7 million (3.7 percent of all students) in 1974 to more than 3.3 million (6.8 percent of all students) in 2006. Fewer than one in 10 were for violent offenses.
A recent analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union revealed that in New York city suspensions of 4- to 10-year-olds have increased 76 percent since 2003. Denver public schools experienced a 71 percent rise in the number of students referred to law enforcement between 2000 and 2004, most for behavior such as bullying and using obscenities. And in 2003, more than 8,000 students were arrested in Chicago public schools alone, including four 7-year-olds. While black students constituted 50 percent of the CPS student body, they made up more than 77 percent of arrests.
Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program, told AlterNet that zero-tolerance is an "unthinking policy that doesn't measure whether or not the child is truly a threat or whether the behavior that they're being expelled for was really threatening. But because your discretion was constrained by the zero-tolerance policy you end up losing a kid that in some cases no one thinks you should lose."
These harsh school policies and practices combined with an increased role of law enforcement in schools create what's often referred to as the "school-to-prison pipeline" or "schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track," in which suspensions, expulsions and school-based arrests are increasingly used to deal with student misbehavior, especially for minor incidents. Huge numbers of children and youth are pushed out of school and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems in the process.
Parker described the cost of widespread suspension and expulsion as going far beyond the immediate punishment and severely impacting the student's future success:
"There's a strong correlation between the number of children who drop out of school and the later likelihood that they will be involved in the criminal justice system. One of the things that increases the chance of school dropout is you lose instruction time._ A kid who's expelled finds himself falling further and further behind. So those are the kids who are more likely to get in trouble or who are more likely to feel alienated about school to be involved. The kids who are most likely to be suspended and to be expelled are frequently the kids who most need both the educational time and the structure."
A study released last month by the Council of State Governments Justice Center examined nearly a million Texas children in 3,900 Texas schools and found that nearly six in 10 public school students in Texas - the largest public school system in the country - were suspended or expelled at least once between seventh and 12th grade. Based on these statistics, it would appear as though Texas youth have a severe delinquency crisis. But this is clearly not the case since the study shows that a staggering 97 percent of disciplined students got in trouble for "discretionary" offenses - meaning violations of the school's code of conduct or other relatively minor infractions like classroom disruption and insubordination.
The study revealed that a student who was suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation was nearly three times as likely to be in contact with the juvenile justice system the following year. Several studies have confirmed that the time an expelled child spends away from school increases the chance that child will drop out and wind up in the criminal justice system, as Parker described.
According to Parker, public school disciplinary policies follow a pattern of discrimination, with African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities disproportionately likely to be pushed out of the classroom for disciplinary reasons. It has been well documented that African-American youth are treated more harshly by the justice system than white youth, for the same offenses, at all stages of case processing. In 2003, African-American youth made up 16 percent of the nation's overall juvenile population, but accounted for 45 percent of juvenile arrests.
While approximately 8.6 percent of public school children have been identified as having disabilities that impact their ability to learn, a recent survey of correctional facilities found that students with disabilities are represented in jail at a rate nearly four times that.
Parker addressed the negative economic costs of these policies:
"The school-to-prison pipeline, in addition to being supremely unfair, is an inefficient and irrational approach. You pay more to keep someone in jail and you lose the contributions they can make to society, so it would be better to spend the money up front to make sure that everyone got an actual education and stayed in school than it is to push them out and have them on the street and then later in jail."
Better Alternatives
Numerous studies dating as far back as 1978 have alerted policymakers to the fact that juveniles who receive harsher penalties when tried as adults are not "scared straight." Instead, after their release, they tend to reoffend sooner and more often than those treated in the juvenile system. Similarly, research suggests that the overuse of suspensions and expulsions may actually increase the likelihood of later criminal misconduct.
The American Psychological Association reported in a 2008 journal article that research has found no evidence that zero-tolerance policies have a deterrent effect or keep schools safer. So why do schools continue to implement them?
When I posed this question to the ACLU's Dennis Parker, he answered:
"A lot of what's been done has been a knee-jerk reaction and not necessarily one that's research based or even based on any real experience. I think there's a perception that schools are these really unsafe jungles when actually there's less crime now than there was 20 years ago, and so people are responding again to that perception rather than reality."
Parker suggested that the best way to combat these policies is by "educating school boards, school administrators, parents, anyone who's involved in the schools with the fact that there are alternatives to assure safety that don't have these negative educational results."
The ACLU's Racial Justice Program has been on the forefront of this issue, advocating that schools eliminate zero-tolerance policies and instead adopt positive behavioral supports and other early interventions, which have been proven to improve the school climate.
In June, the Washington Post reported that more and more schools around the nation are beginning to reexamine their zero-tolerance policies, reflecting a changing attitude "driven by high suspension rates, community pressure, legal action and research findings."
Meanwhile, the Obama administration showed great interest in reforming the culture of zero-tolerance last month, when Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the launch of the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, a collaborative project between the Departments of Justice and Education that "will address the 'school-to-prison pipeline' and the disciplinary policies and practices that can push students out of school and into the justice system. The initiative aims to support good discipline practices to foster safe and productive learning environments in every classroom."
While it remains to be seen whether or not the initiative will help dismantle the school-to-prison-pipeline, the ACLU believes it's an important first step.
Rania Khalek is a progressive activist. Check out her blog Missing Pieces or follow her on Twitter @Rania_ak. You can contact her at raniakhalek@gmail.com.
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3) As Rioting Widens, Cameron Deploys 10,000 More Police
"The BBC and other British news organizations reported Tuesday that the police may be permitted to use rubber bullets for the first time as part of the government's strengthened response to any resumption of the mayhem. David Lammy, Britain's intellectual property minister, also called for a suspension of Blackberry's encrypted instant message service. Many rioters, exploiting that service, had been able to organize mobs and outrun the police, who were ill-equipped to monitor it. "It is unfortunate, but for the very short term, London can't have a night like the last," Mr. Lammy said in a Twitter post."
By ALAN COWELL, RAVI SOMAIYA and JOHN F. BURNS
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/europe/10britain.html?hp
LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron pledged on Tuesday to flood the streets of London with 10,000 extra police officers, and said Parliament would be recalled in emergency session after rioting and looting spread across and beyond London for a third night in what the police called the worst unrest in memory.
At the same time, the police said they had launched a murder inquiry after a 26-year-old man, who was not identified by name, was shot and killed in a car in Croydon, south of London, late Monday as rioters torched and looted buildings - the first known fatality since the unrest began in another part of the city on Saturday.
Mr. Cameron spoke after cutting short a vacation in Tuscany to return home as violence convulsed at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area late Monday and early Tuesday and broke out for the first time in other locations including Britain's second-largest city, Birmingham.
Coming after a cascade of crises, the measures announced by Mr. Cameron seemed to represent a bid to restore some appearance of official authority after nights of chaos and near-anarchy, with rioters taunting or outmaneuvering the police, raiding stores and torching buildings.
Seeking to reinforce the message - and to counter public rage at what many perceive as an indecisive official response to the violence - Mr. Cameron toured Croydon, one of the worst-hit areas, and was shown on television accompanied by police officers outside burned-out buildings.
The BBC and other British news organizations reported Tuesday that the police may be permitted to use rubber bullets for the first time as part of the government's strengthened response to any resumption of the mayhem. David Lammy, Britain's intellectual property minister, also called for a suspension of Blackberry's encrypted instant message service. Many rioters, exploiting that service, had been able to organize mobs and outrun the police, who were ill-equipped to monitor it. "It is unfortunate, but for the very short term, London can't have a night like the last," Mr. Lammy said in a Twitter post.
Officials at Research in Motion, the corporate parent of Blackberry, declined to comment on whether it would suspend the service. But the company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, issued a statement saying: "We feel for those impacted by recent days' riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can."
Londoners have been stunned not only by the extent of the violence and the speed with which it spread, but also by the spectacle of hooded and masked youths rampaging with seeming impunity despite hundreds of arrests that have filled police cells to overflowing. Many have asked how areas of the city could have been transformed so rapidly from bustling shopping areas one day to quasi war-zones the next.
In a cautious response, some citizens took to cleaning up the debris on Tuesday, cheering police patrol vehicles passing by to demonstrate their rejection of the looters. But others remained angry. When London's mayor, Boris Johnson, visited stricken Clapham in south London on Tuesday after interrupting a vacation, people harangued him on the street, apparently unimpressed by his assurances that rioters would "face punishment they will bitterly regret."
"You talk about robust policing. What does that actually mean?" one woman in the crowd demanded to know before Mr. Johnson retreated, surrounded by a huddle of reporters and police officers.
Standing outside his office and residence at 10 Downing Street, Mr. Cameron said lawmakers would be called back from their summer recess for one day on Thursday to enable Parliament to assess the situation. All police leave had been canceled, he said, and the number of officers on the streets would be increased to 16,000 on Wednesday night from 6,000 on Tuesday.
"People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets and to make them safe for the law-abiding," he said.
"This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated," Mr. Cameron said. He added that the violence had produced "sickening scenes," and that the country needed "even more robust police action" to confront the unrest. There would be "many more arrests in the days to come," he said.
Mr. Cameron's comments came after violence also erupted overnight in several other cities, including Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol, as well as in three towns in the county of Kent, southeast of the capital. An enormous fire consumed a large warehouse of Sony electrical goods in the Enfield section of London after an equally ferocious blaze ripped through a furniture store in Croydon whose owners said it survived bombing in World War II unscathed.
In one incident, three people were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for trying to run down a police officer with a car as he tried to stop looting in Brent, north London, the police said.
"Last night was the worst the Metropolitan Police Service has seen in current memory for unacceptable levels of widespread looting, fires and disorder," Scotland Yard said in a statement tallying a further 200 arrests overnight, bringing the total from three nights of unrest to over 450.
So many people had been detained, the police said, that all the police cells in London were full and prisoners were being taken to precincts outside the capital.
Londoners awoke in some areas to the sight of fire hoses playing on rows of gutted buildings. Some civic activists in stricken areas used social networking sites to urge people to join clean-up efforts in streets where small businesses had been looted. A video posted on YouTube showed a rioter rifling through the backpack of a dazed and wounded pedestrian, then tossing aside his booty on the sidewalk.
For Mr. Cameron's government - indeed for Britain - the rapidly worsening situation presented a profound challenge on several fronts.
For a society already under severe economic strain, the rioting raised new questions about the political sustainability of the Cameron government's spending cuts, particularly the deep cutbacks in social programs. These have hit the country's poor especially hard, including large numbers of the minority youths who have been at the forefront of the unrest.
In some areas, rioters moving quickly and nimbly on foot and by bicycle seemed so emboldened that they began looting in broad daylight, while others raided small shops and large stores free of any restraint by the police. Newspapers on Tuesday showed images of hooded and masked looters swarming over shelves of cigarettes or making off with flat-screen televisions.
"Descent into hell," said a front page headline in The Sun tabloid which, like other newspapers, published a dramatic photograph of a woman leaping to safety in the arms of police from a blazing building.
"Mob Rule," said the page one headline in The Independent, showing a masked rioter in a hooded track-suit against a wall of flame.
On Tuesday, the violence seemed to be having a ripple effect beyond its immediate focal points: news reports spoke of a dramatic upsurge in household burglaries; sports authorities said at least two major soccer matches in London - including an international fixture between England and the Netherlands - had been postponed because the police could not spare officers to guarantee crowd safety. The postponements offered a dramatic reminder of the pressures on Mr. Cameron and his colleagues to guarantee a peaceful environment for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
That $15 billion extravaganza will have its centerpiece in a sprawling vista of new stadiums and an athletes' village that lie only miles from the neighborhoods where much of the violence in the last three days has taken place.
As in other areas of the city, a group of about 40 residents with brooms and trash bags, responding to an appeal on Twitter, met at Chalk Farm subway station in the north London borough of Camden on Tuesday to help clean up debris.
The group started to make its way down a main shopping road but had to stay clear of the damaged windows of a supermarket and a bicycle shop because they were still cordoned off by police. When some people stopped to clean broken glass on the road in front of some shops, other residents clapped and cheered the group from their windows.
Walking down Camden High Street with a black garbage bag over his shoulder, Tom Moriarty, a musician who lives in Camden, said the unrest had been caused by something "fundamental about how people feel. It's down to life being a bit harder and people feel they're not being heard."
Beyond such social challenges is the crisis enveloping London's Metropolitan Police. Even before the outbreak of violence, the police have been deeply demoralized by the government's plan to cut about 9,000 of about 35,000 officers and by allegations that it badly mishandled protests against the government's austerity program last winter and failed to properly investigate the phone-hacking scandal that has dominated the headlines here for much of the summer. The force now faces widespread allegations that it failed to act quickly and forcefully enough to quell the rioting at its outset over the weekend.
Nothing remotely like the latest unrest had been seen in London since 1985, when another eruption that occurred mainly among black youths led to violent running battles with the police. Known as the Broadwater Farm riots for the housing project where it began, the turmoil took place in the Tottenham district, where the current violence started on Saturday. That grew from a protest outside a police station about the shooting last week by the police of Mark Duggan, 29, who lived in the housing project.
Julia Werdigier contributed reporting from London and Rick Gladstone from New York.
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4) Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril
"Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice. The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima - and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that."
By NORIMITSU ONISHI and MARTIN FACKLER
August 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?hp
FUKUSHIMA, Japan - The day after a giant tsunami set off the continuing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, thousands of residents at the nearby town of Namie gathered to evacuate.
Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.
The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima - and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that.
But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo, operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above all, criticism. Japan's political leaders at first did not know about the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone - and acknowledge the accident's severity.
"From the 12th to the 15th we were in a location with one of the highest levels of radiation," said Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, which is about five miles from the nuclear plant. He and thousands from Namie now live in temporary housing in another town, Nihonmatsu. "We are extremely worried about internal exposure to radiation."
The withholding of information, he said, was akin to "murder."
In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster - in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation's food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.
Seiki Soramoto, a lawmaker and former nuclear engineer to whom Prime Minister Naoto Kan turned for advice during the crisis, blamed the government for withholding forecasts from the computer system, known as the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, or Speedi.
"In the end, it was the prime minister's office that hid the Speedi data," he said. "Because they didn't have the knowledge to know what the data meant, and thus they did not know what to say to the public, they thought only of their own safety, and decided it was easier just not to announce it."
In an interview, Goshi Hosono, the minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, dismissed accusations that political considerations had delayed the release of the early Speedi data. He said that they were not disclosed because they were incomplete and inaccurate, and that he was presented with the data for the first time only on March 23.
"And on that day, we made them public," said Mr. Hosono, who was one of the prime minister's closest advisers in the early days of the crisis before being named nuclear disaster minister. "As for before that, I myself am not sure. In the days before that, which were a matter of life and death for Japan as a nation, I wasn't taking part in what was happening with Speedi."
The computer forecasts were among many pieces of information the authorities initially withheld from the public.
Meltdowns at three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors went officially unacknowledged for months. In one of the most damning admissions, nuclear regulators said in early June that inspectors had found tellurium 132, which experts call telltale evidence of reactor meltdowns, a day after the tsunami - but did not tell the public for nearly three months. For months after the disaster, the government flip-flopped on the level of radiation permissible on school grounds, causing continuing confusion and anguish about the safety of schoolchildren here in Fukushima.
Too Late
The timing of many admissions - coming around late May and early June, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited Japan and before Japan was scheduled to deliver a report on the accident at an I.A.E.A. conference - suggested to critics that Japan's nuclear establishment was coming clean only because it could no longer hide the scope of the accident. On July 4, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, a group of nuclear scholars and industry executives, said, "It is extremely regrettable that this sort of important information was not released to the public until three months after the fact, and only then in materials for a conference overseas."
The group added that the authorities had yet to disclose information like the water level and temperature inside reactor pressure vessels that would yield a fuller picture of the damage. Other experts have said the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, have yet to reveal plant data that could shed light on whether the reactors' cooling systems were actually knocked out solely by the 45-foot-tall tsunami, as officials have maintained, or whether damage from the earthquake also played a role, a finding that could raise doubts about the safety of other nuclear plants in a nation as seismically active as Japan.
Government officials insist that they did not knowingly imperil the public.
"As a principle, the government has never acted in such a way as to sacrifice the public's health or safety," said Mr. Hosono, the nuclear disaster minister.
Here in the prefecture's capital and elsewhere, workers are removing the surface soil from schoolyards contaminated with radioactive particles from the nuclear plant. Tens of thousands of children are being kept inside school buildings this hot summer, where some wear masks even though the windows are kept shut. Many will soon be wearing individual dosimeters to track their exposure to radiation.
At Elementary School No. 4 here, sixth graders were recently playing shogi and go, traditional board games, inside. Nao Miyabashi, 11, whose family fled here from Namie, said she was afraid of radiation. She tried not to get caught in the rain. She gargled and washed her hands as soon as she got home.
"I want to play outside," she said.
About 45 percent of 1,080 children in three Fukushima communities surveyed in late March tested positive for thyroid exposure to radiation, according to a recent announcement by the government, which added that the levels were too low to warrant further examination. Many experts both in and outside Japan are questioning the government's assessment, pointing out that in Chernobyl, most of those who went on to suffer from thyroid cancer were children living near that plant at the time of the accident.
Critics inside and outside the Kan administration argue that some of the exposure could have been prevented if officials had released the data sooner.
On the evening of March 15, Mr. Kan called Mr. Soramoto, who used to design nuclear plants for Toshiba, to ask for his help in managing the escalating crisis. Mr. Soramoto formed an impromptu advisory group, which included his former professor at the University of Tokyo, Toshiso Kosako, a top Japanese expert on radiation measurement.
Mr. Kosako, who studied the Soviet response to the Chernobyl crisis, said he was stunned at how little the leaders in the prime minister's office knew about the resources available to them. He quickly advised the chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, to use Speedi, which used measurements of radioactive releases, as well as weather and topographical data, to predict where radioactive materials could travel after being released into the atmosphere.
Speedi had been designed in the 1980s to make forecasts of radiation dispersal that, according to the prime minister's office's own nuclear disaster manuals, were supposed to be made available at least to local officials and rescue workers in order to guide evacuees away from radioactive plumes.
And indeed, Speedi had been churning out maps and other data hourly since the first hours after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. But the Education Ministry had not provided the data to the prime minister's office because, it said, the information was incomplete. The tsunami had knocked out sensors at the plant: without measurements of how much radiation was actually being released by the plant, they said, it was impossible to measure how far the radioactive plume was stretching.
"Without knowing the strength of the releases, there was no way we could take responsibility if evacuations were ordered," said Keiji Miyamoto of the Education Ministry's nuclear safety division, which administers Speedi.
The government had initially resorted to drawing rings around the plant, evacuating everyone within a radius of first 1.9 miles, then 6.2 miles and then 12.4 miles, widening the rings as the scale of the disaster became clearer.
But even with incomplete data, Mr. Kosako said he urged the government to use Speedi by making educated guesses as to the levels of radiation release, which would have still yielded usable maps to guide evacuation plans. In fact, the ministry had done precisely that, running simulations on Speedi's computers of radiation releases. Some of the maps clearly showed a plume of nuclear contamination extending to the northwest of the plant, beyond the areas that were initially evacuated.
However, Mr. Kosako said, the prime minister's office refused to release the results even after it was made aware of Speedi, because officials there did not want to take responsibility for costly evacuations if their estimates were later called into question.
A wider evacuation zone would have meant uprooting hundreds of thousands of people and finding places for them to live in an already crowded country. Particularly in the early days after the earthquake, roads were blocked and trains were not running. These considerations made the government desperate to limit evacuations beyond the 80,000 people already moved from areas around the plant, as well as to avoid compensation payments to still more evacuees, according to current and former officials interviewed.
Mr. Kosako said the top advisers to the prime minister repeatedly ignored his frantic requests to make the Speedi maps public, and he resigned in April over fears that children were being exposed to dangerous radiation levels.
Some advisers to the prime minister argue that the system was not that useful in predicting the radiation plume's direction. Shunsuke Kondo, who heads the Atomic Energy Commission, an advisory body in the Cabinet Office, said that the maps Speedi produced in the first days were inconsistent, and changed several times a day depending on wind direction.
"Why release something if it was not useful?" said Mr. Kondo, also a retired professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Tokyo. "Someone on the ground in Fukushima, looking at which way the wind was blowing, would have known just as much."
Mr. Kosako and others, however, say the Speedi maps would have been extremely useful in the hands of someone who knew how to sort through the system's reams of data. He said the Speedi readings were so complex, and some of the predictions of the spread of radiation contamination so alarming, that three separate government agencies - the Education Ministry and the two nuclear regulators, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and Nuclear Safety Commission - passed the data to one another like a hot potato, with none of them wanting to accept responsibility for its results.
In interviews, officials at the ministry and the agency each pointed fingers, saying that the other agency was responsible for Speedi. The head of the commission declined to be interviewed.
Mr. Baba, the mayor of Namie, said that if the Speedi data had been made available sooner, townspeople would have naturally chosen to flee to safer areas. "But we didn't have the information," he said. "That's frustrating."
Evacuees now staying in temporary prefabricated homes in Nihonmatsu said that, believing they were safe in Tsushima, they took few precautions. Yoko Nozawa, 70, said that because of the lack of toilets, they resorted to pits in the ground, where doses of radiation were most likely higher.
"We were in the worst place, but didn't know it," Ms. Nozawa said. "Children were playing outside."
A neighbor, Hiroyuki Oto, 31, said he was working at the plant for a Tepco subcontractor at the time of the earthquake and was now in temporary lodging with his wife and three young children, after also staying in Tsushima. "The effects might emerge only years from now," he said of the exposure to radiation. "I'm worried about my kids."
Seeds of Mistrust
Mr. Hosono, the minister charged with dealing with the nuclear crisis, has said that certain information, including the Speedi data, had been withheld for fear of "creating a panic." In an interview, Mr. Hosono - who now holds nearly daily news conferences with Tepco officials and nuclear regulators - said that the government had "changed its thinking" and was trying to release information as fast as possible.
Critics, as well as the increasingly skeptical public, seem unconvinced. They compare the response to the Minamata case in the 1950s, a national scandal in which bureaucrats and industry officials colluded to protect economic growth by hiding the fact that a chemical factory was releasing mercury into Minamata Bay in western Japan. The mercury led to neurological illnesses in thousands of people living in the region and was captured in wrenching photographs of stricken victims.
"If they wanted to protect people, they had to release information immediately," said Reiko Seki, a sociologist at Rikkyo University in Tokyo and an expert on the cover-up of the Minamata case. "Despite the experience with Minamata, they didn't release Speedi."
In Koriyama, a city about 40 miles west of the nuclear plant, a group of parents said they had stopped believing in government reassurances and recently did something unthinkable in a conservative, rural area: they sued. Though their suit seeks to force Koriyama to relocate their children to a safer area, their real aim is to challenge the nation's handling of evacuations and the public health crisis.
After the nuclear disaster, the government raised the legal exposure limit to radiation from one to 20 millisieverts a year for people, including children - effectively allowing them to continue living in communities from which they would have been barred under the old standard. The limit was later scaled back to one millisievert per year, but applied only to children while they were inside school buildings.
The plaintiffs' lawyer, Toshio Yanagihara, said the authorities were withholding information to deflect attention from the nuclear accident's health consequences, which will become clear only years later.
"Because the effects don't emerge immediately, they can claim later on that cigarettes or coffee caused the cancer," he said.
The Japanese government is considering monitoring the long-term health of Fukushima residents and taking appropriate measures in the future, said Yasuhiro Sonoda, a lawmaker and parliamentary secretary of the Cabinet Office. The mayor of Koriyama, Masao Hara, said he did not believe that the government's radiation standards were unsafe. He said it was "unrealistic" to evacuate the city's 33,000 elementary and junior high school students.
But Koriyama went further than the government's mandates, removing the surface soil from its schools before national directives and imposing tougher inspection standards than those set by the country's education officials.
"The Japanese people, after all, have a high level of knowledge," the mayor said, "so I think information should be disclosed correctly and quickly so that the people can make judgments, especially the people here in Fukushima."
Norimitsu Onishi reported from Fukushima, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo. Ken Belson and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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5) Video Intensifies Interest in a Mississippi Killing
By KIM SEVERSON
August 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/09hate.html?ref=us
ATLANTA - At first, the early-morning death of James C. Anderson, 49, appeared to be a hit-and-run accident.
Mr. Anderson, an African-American who worked at a local automobile plant, was near his car in a motel parking lot in Jackson, Miss., on an early June morning when he was hit by a pickup truck.
But Robert Shuler Smith, the Hinds County district attorney, believes he was beaten and killed by a group of white teenagers from a predominantly white town who had been at an all-night party and drove 16 miles to Jackson looking for African-Americans to, in the words of one witness, "mess with."
A motel worker who saw the assault said one of the teenagers yelled "white power" after beating Mr. Anderson. Other witnesses told the police that one of the suspects laughed and bragged about the beating and running down Mr. Anderson.
A grainy video of the incident, recorded by a motel security camera, is being used as evidence. It was posted on CNN Sunday, opening new interest in a case that has had many residents in Jackson and the towns that surround it questioning just how far race relations have come.
"This does not happen very often, and I am not saying it reflects the overall feelings in the different communities here," Mr. Smith said. Still, parts of the area "are very polarized, he said. "It's still highly segregated in most ways."
And racial tension remains high among some groups, he said.
"There's no way to get around it," Mr. Smith said. "It is what it is."
The district attorney said Mr. Anderson was standing near his car at a Jackson motel about 5 a.m. Sunday, June 26, when two carloads of teenagers pulled off the Interstate and into the motel parking lot. Several jumped from the vehicles and beat Mr. Anderson. A white sport utility vehicle drove away. As Mr. Anderson stumbled along the edge of the parking lot, the police said, the driver of a green Ford F250 pickup truck, Deryl Dedmon, accelerated and drove over him. Mr. Anderson was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
"This is the first business that you get to coming off the highway, and so that was the first person that was out here and vulnerable," Mr. Smith, the district attorney, told CNN.
Mr. Dedmon, a slight, blond 18-year-old, was charged with murder and remains in jail on $800,000 bond. Two teenage girls who were in the truck were not charged, the police said.
John A. Rice, 18, was originally charged with murder, but a judge in Hinds County, William Barnett, dropped the charges to simple assault.
The case is headed this month for a grand jury, where prosecutors will argue that it was both a hate crime and a murder and that both men should be indicted.
"These teenagers have a history of harassing white teens who had black friends or gay teens," Mr. Smith said.
Neither man has entered a plea. Their lawyers did not respond to requests for an interview. But Mr. Dedmon's lawyer, Lee Agnew, had said in an early hearing that he had not seen evidence to support the accusations that the episode was racially motivated.
Mr. Dedmon's uncle, Ray Dedmon, said in a telephone interview that he frequently went fishing with his nephew, and described him as "a good boy" who comes from a "happy and go-lucky" family.
"He probably got with the wrong crowd," he said.
On a Facebook page set up by Mr. Rice's supporters, friends argued his innocence, maintaining he was not driving the truck or even in it.
"He is not a racist or a murderer," Lisa Smith Seale Erwin, his great-aunt, posted on the page. "If anything, he is being tried by the media, suffering from reverse racism and placed in jail without bond. I am sick of the race card."
Mr. Rice has since been released on bail.
That such a crime might have happened in a state whose history is laced with racially motivated crimes does not surprise Winston Thompson III, a lawyer who is working with Mr. Anderson's family. Both Mr. Thompson and prosecutors are interviewing other teenagers and studying Facebook and other social media sites, trying to determine if the case is an isolated incident or part of a more deliberate effort to single out African-Americans for violence.
"This is almost like a culture with these teens," he said. "It's evidently a little network. To see it manifest in the way it did it was shocking."
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6) Mexico-Bound Immigrants Face Scrutiny at the Border
"A raft of immigration laws in Arizona and other states is designed to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they pack their bags and head home. But the reality on the border is that departing the country has become more complicated than ever - leading some people to worry that the outbound checks could not only dissuade illegal immigrants from leaving the country but also place them in a kind of no-win limbo, reviled if they stay and potentially arrested if they try to leave. ...In questioning people leaving the country about illegal contraband, agents frequently find migrants who are not engaged in smuggling but do not have permission to be in the United States. Some with clean records are let go. Others are fingerprinted and photographed for illegal entry and only then allowed to go on their way. Once they are in the government's database, they face more stringent penalties if they are caught in the United States again. Immigrants who are found to have criminal records face more aggressive treatment. They are likely to be arrested and then formally deported. "
[This puts a new spinn on the phrase, "Got you comming and going." ...bw]
By MARC LACEY
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/us/10border.html?ref=us
NOGALES, Ariz. - An American immigration agent bounded up the steps of a bus about to cross the United States-Mexico border recently and demanded to see the papers of all those aboard. "Papers!" he shouted, eyeing passengers warily as he walked up and down the aisle.
Such checks are not surprising given all the attention focused on illegal immigration these days. But this bus full of migrants was leaving the United States, not entering it.
A raft of immigration laws in Arizona and other states is designed to make life so difficult for illegal immigrants that they pack their bags and head home. But the reality on the border is that departing the country has become more complicated than ever - leading some people to worry that the outbound checks could not only dissuade illegal immigrants from leaving the country but also place them in a kind of no-win limbo, reviled if they stay and potentially arrested if they try to leave.
It used to be that entering Mexico, whether it was from San Diego or El Paso or here in Nogales, was a cakewalk, with no scrutiny on the United States side of the border and next to none on the Mexico side. But efforts by the Obama administration to reduce the flow of guns and drug money heading from the United States to Mexico have changed that in recent years.
Agents now regularly hop aboard southbound buses, a common way for migrants to return to their towns and villages. At permanent checkpoints set up at border crossings, they also stop southbound vehicles and confront pedestrians going south on foot.
In questioning people leaving the country about illegal contraband, agents frequently find migrants who are not engaged in smuggling but do not have permission to be in the United States. Some with clean records are let go. Others are fingerprinted and photographed for illegal entry and only then allowed to go on their way. Once they are in the government's database, they face more stringent penalties if they are caught in the United States again.
Immigrants who are found to have criminal records face more aggressive treatment. They are likely to be arrested and then formally deported.
The intent, officials say, is not to discourage illegal immigrants from leaving. Rather, it is to stem the flow of contraband. In a recent weekly report from Arizona, Customs and Border Protection said it had seized $22,102 in cash being smuggled out of the state from July 18 to July 24. During the same period, six weapons and 5,943 rounds of ammunition were recovered. Agents detained 1,606 illegal immigrants, although that included those who were both coming and going.
In interviews, departing immigrants offered a variety of reasons for leaving Arizona. Tough laws and law enforcement sweeps made life less livable. The economic downturn made it tougher to make ends meet. Then there was also a host of personal concerns. For Analleli Rios Ramirez, 24, it was the death of her brother-in-law in Cuernavaca that prompted her and her husband to decide to live closer to relatives.
"We just decided we wanted to live in our own country," said Ms. Rios, who was the assistant manager of a pretzel shop in a mall near Phoenix.
Some question the sense of checking the papers of migrants who are leaving anyway. The criticism comes from those who consider illegal immigrants to be outlaws and those who sympathize with their struggle to improve their lives.
"Why do we want to spend resources apprehending people who are removing themselves anyway?" asked Jennifer Allen of the Border Action Network, a human rights group based in Tucson that aids immigrants in southern Arizona. "I've heard of people wanting to leave the country and wondering if they should risk it. It's in the forefront of people's minds when they're deciding to leave."
The possibility that a government policy might be discouraging illegal immigrants from leaving has led even some groups who favor tighter immigration controls to think twice about the southbound scrutiny.
"This is about the only situation we would ever advocate that our immigration laws be waived," William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said last year in a statement calling for the Obama administration to ease its southbound immigration checks. "We want to encourage the illegals to leave America on their own, and thus we ask Obama to provide them safe passage out of America."
Making it difficult to leave the country, Mr. Gheen said, might prompt some migrants instead to leave Arizona or other states with tough immigration laws for more hospitable parts of the United States.
Despite the second guessing, the administration said the policy made sense.
"We're not trying to discourage anyone from leaving, but we do want to send the message that there are consequences for breaking immigration laws," said an administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Although thousands of migrants have been detained heading south, officials said they could not break down how many were stopped because they were in the country illegally versus those stopped for smuggling violations.
Some immigrants said they were confused by the policy.
As she prepared to cross the border recently and join her husband who had crossed months before, Ms. Rios grew anxious, knowing that she did not have her papers in order and that she might be detained. She had entered the country illegally more than a decade ago, as an 11-year-old child clutching her mother's hand. Now she was returning to a country she barely knew.
"I thought this is what Arizona wanted, for me to leave," she said as she packed her things in Chandler, Ariz., before heading south. "And I have to worry about them catching me on the way out."
It turns out that she and her overstuffed pickup truck crossed from Nogales, Ariz., into Nogales, Mexico, without a hitch.
Immigration officials say they cannot check everyone and use discretion as they survey the documents of departing migrants. Ms. Rios's mother, Teodora Martinez, had left months earlier and did not have papers when an agent hopped aboard her bus. She presented an identification card issued by the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, which did not prove legal residency. Her husband, Cesar Valle Martinez, had shown a fake ID.
The agent raised his eyebrows as he surveyed their papers and then huddled with a colleague who had also entered the bus. The couple was traveling with several young children, though, and they had American passports. "Go on," the agent said finally, handing back the documents, exiting the bus and letting the family return to Mexico.
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7) After 4th Night of Violence, Cameron Pledges Police 'Fightback'
By ALAN COWELL and JOHN F. BURNS
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/europe/11britain.html?hp
LONDON - With 10,000 additional police officers deployed across London, and trouble flaring in other cities, Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday threatened sustained police measures including the possible use of water cannons to curb the looting and arson that have shaken many parts of Britain for four consecutive days.
He was speaking after a night of relative calm in London offset by an apparent surge of violence in regions stretching from the northwest through the English Midlands to new areas farther south.
Mr. Cameron told reporters outside 10 Downing Street that a police "fightback" was proving effective to prevent a repetition of the worst of the violence, which began on Saturday.
He had earlier presided over a second meeting of the so-called Cobra committee, an ad hoc group that deals with national security crises, as the authorities said hundreds of people had been arrested overnight, many of them in major cities outside London.
In an ominous development, the Birmingham police opened a murder inquiry into the deaths of three men killed when a car drove at them while they were protecting homes and businesses from looters. If the fatalities are related to the spasms of violence gripping English cities, it will bring the death toll in the unrest to four.
Sudden flare-ups continued in parts of London overnight, with minor attacks reaching even into the upscale Knightsbridge shopping district, a major tourist draw. Scotland Yard said the number of arrests in the capital since the rioting broke out stood at 768 after a further 81 people were detained.
Mr. Cameron ascribed the violence to a broad lack of social responsibility. "It's as much a moral problem as a political problem," he said. "This is a problem for our society and something we have to deal with."
"There are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but are frankly sick," said Mr. Cameron, who has previously used the term broken Britain to describe social malaise.
He said the police faced a "huge challenge" from what he depicted as a new kind of unrest, with "lots of different people doing the same thing in different places."
Asked how long the current crackdown on violence could be sustained, he said: "I don't want London to be in a permanent state of lockdown or shutdown."
"We needed a fightback, and a fightback is under way," he said. "Whatever resources the police need they will get. Whatever tactics the police feel they need to employ, they will have legal backing to do so."
Mr. Cameron said British police already had legal authority to use rubber bullets known as baton rounds, but might now extend their arsenal to the deployment of water cannons.
"While they are not currently needed, we now have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours' notice," Mr. Cameron said. Water cannons are common in many parts of continental Europe. They have not previously been used in mainland Britain, but they have been regularly deployed against crowds in Northern Ireland.
The prime minister was asked to comment on remarks by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and a high-profile figure from Mr. Cameron's dominant Conservatives, who broke with the party line on Wednesday to oppose proposed cutbacks in police budgets.
Mr. Johnson told a BBC radio interviewer: "If you ask me whether I think there is a case for cutting police budgets in the light of these events, then my answer to that would be a no."
"This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers," he added.
But Mr. Cameron insisted that the police had assured him they had the resources to handle the crisis.
"We will not do anything that will reduce the amount of visible policing on our streets," he said.
Hopes that the worst unrest in Britain in a generation had crested and begun to fall continued to weigh uneasily against fears that more robust police action might fail to put more than a temporary curb on the disorder.
With a decision not to call in the army, a step the government considered and dismissed on Tuesday, the police force appeared to be stretched near its limit by what amounted to a risky shell game, with forces outside London sending their crack antiriot units into the capital as reinforcements.
One redeployed unit traveled from Manchester only hours before scores of youths stormed into that city's center, setting fire to cars and buildings and looting shops in what local officials described as the worst mayhem to hit the city in modern memory.
Garry Shewan, assistant chief constable of the Manchester police, said criminals had "brought shame" onto the city's streets. "Shops have been targeted, looted and set on fire," he said, in what he called "extraordinary levels of violence."
The police said they arrested 108 people in Manchester and neighboring Salford, 44 in Liverpool, 109 in and around Birmingham more than 90 in Nottingham and scores more in southwestern locations including Bristol and Gloucester.
The scenes of rampaging youths, wearing hoods and masks, smashing store-front windows and skipping away from the riot police came on the fourth consecutive night of unrest, suggesting that while the pervasive police presence in London had held violence at lower levels, rioters elsewhere had seized an opportunity to take to the streets.
The situation posed a daunting challenge for Mr. Cameron, who returned overnight on Monday from a vacation in Italy to take charge of what appeared to have been a faltering government reaction to the mayhem. He flew into a storm of criticism, from residents of the neighborhoods hit by the rioting and from others across a wide political spectrum who said that he should have acted sooner to crack down on the unrest.
In some areas of the country, residents began patrolling their own areas to forestall looting, accusing the police of inaction. But Scotland Yard complained that their presence was hampering the police.
"What I don't need is these so-called vigilantes, who appeared to have been drinking too much and taking policing resources away from what they should have been doing - which is preventing the looting," Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh of London's Metropolitan Police told Sky News.
Mr. Cameron had hesitated for two days to abandon his summer break at a villa in Tuscany as the looting and arson spread across London, and then to other cities, from its start in the Tottenham area in northeast London after Mark Duggan, 29, who was said by the police to have been a local gang member, was shot and killed by an officer last week.
On Tuesday, a police oversight body said that forensic tests had shown that both shots fired at the scene had come from a police officer's Heckler and Koch submachine gun, and that the tests had so far shown no evidence that the loaded Italian-made BBM pistol carried by Mr. Duggan had been fired in the confrontation.
That account, by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, conflicted with the initial police account, which asserted that the police firearms unit had opened fire only after shots had been fired at the officers. But the commission's spokeswoman, Rachel Cerfontyne, whose cautious statement appeared to reflect the commission's concern that it say nothing to inflame the violence, said reports circulating in Tottenham and elsewhere that Mr. Duggan had been "executed" with shots to the head were false. He died, she said, from "a single gunshot wound to the chest," and another to his arm.
For the moment, though, the circumstances of Mr. Duggan's death appeared to be remote from the forces driving the riots, at least in the assessment of many of those who are most familiar with the neighborhoods affected. Community organizers, neighborhood residents and members of Parliament who represent the districts, including several who, like Mr. Duggan, were of Afro-Caribbean descent, have said, overwhelmingly, that his death, while providing the original trigger for the violence, has had little or nothing to do with the looting and arson.
Relatives of Mr. Duggan have also spoken out, sending a message through Ms. Cerfontyne, saying that the violence was "deeply deplorable" and calling for it to end. Angry residents of neighborhoods where homes, businesses, buses and cars have been trashed and set on fire have said repeatedly to reporters that the rioters are a small, unrepresentative minority of miscreants and thieves.
The theme was picked up on Tuesday by Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader, who visited Peckham, one of the districts heavily damaged on Monday night. "These people who have committed this violence do not speak for the people of Peckham," he said. "And I don't think they speak for the vast majority of people across this country."
Some senior government officials encountered popular discontent as they toured heavily damaged parts of the capital. On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, the mayor, who also rushed home from his own vacation abroad, strode down the main street in Clapham hoisting a broom to manifest his support for a large crowd of residents who had formed themselves into a volunteer cleanup brigade.
But when he called the rioters "a bunch of criminals" and said they would "face punishment they will bitterly regret," some in the crowd confronted him, saying that the rioters had a free run of the area for hours, with no sign of police intervention.
"Where were they when we needed them to protect us?" asked Onelia Giarratano, the owner of a wrecked hairdressing salon. She said the crowd that destroyed her business included boys as young as 12, and said they had turned Clapham High Street into "a war zone".
The government is expected to face similar criticisms in an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday. Members were summoned from their summer recess, in Mr. Cameron's words, "so we are all able to stand together in condemnation of these crimes and stand together in determination to rebuild these communities."
Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.
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8) London Riots Put Spotlight on Troubled, Unemployed Youths in Britain
"Headlines here, which often describe the young people as 'feral,' have been dominated in recent years by the gangs' turn toward bullying the most vulnerable. Almost 30 percent of the victims of antisocial behavior surveyed in the government report said they had "longstanding illness, disability or infirmity."
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and RAVI SOMAIYA
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/europe/10youth.html?ref=world
LONDON - "I came here to get my penny's worth," said a man who gave his name as Louis James, 19, a slightly built participant in the widening riots that have shaken London to its core. With a touch of guilt on Tuesday, Mr. James showed off what he described as a $195 designer sweater that he said he took during looting in Camden Town, a gentrified area of north London.
In recent days, young rioters and looters like Mr. James have dominated front pages and television reports around the world, prompted a recall of Parliament to a special session and forced the deployment of thousands of police officers.
Widespread antisocial and criminal behavior by young and usually unemployed people has long troubled Britain. Attacks and vandalism by gangs of young people are "a blight on the lives of millions," said a 2010 government report commissioned in the aftermath of several deaths related to such gangs. They signal, it said, "the decline of whole towns and city areas."
The government investigation revealed that though only a quarter of such incidents were reported, 3.5 million complaints were nonetheless made to the police. An iPhone app is available to track attacks, and one enterprising inventor marketed a device, called the mosquito, that emits a high-pitched noise that can be heard only by young people as a means for store owners to keep gangs away.
Politicians from both the right and the left, the police and most residents of the areas hit by violence nearly unanimously describe the most recent riots as criminal and anarchic, lacking even a hint of the antigovernment, anti-austerity message that has driven many of the violent protests in other European countries.
But the riots also reflect the alienation and resentment of many young people in Britain, where one million people from the ages of 16 to 24 are officially unemployed, the most since the deep recession of the mid-1980s.
The riots in London began when protesters gathered outside a north London police station after the shooting of a local man by officers. The police have long had troubled relations with racial and ethnic minorities in Britain and have sought to repair these relations, although the protesters have come from all backgrounds. Days later, in Hackney, where some of the fiercest riots took place, a young man in a gray hooded sweatshirt shouted directly into the faces of riot police officers: "You know you all racist! You know it."
The combination of economic despair, racial tension and thuggery has "a devastating effect on communities," said Graham Beech, an official at the crime-prevention charity Nacro. "It's something that ordinary people see on their walks to work - street drunkenness, vandalism, intimidation - and that affects the general fear of crime." As the British government's austerity measures begin to take effect, young people will also see their chances of employment dwindling and their financial and community support cut, Mr. Beech said. "Boredom, alienation and isolation are going to be factors," he said.
In many ways, Mr. James's circumstances are typical. He lives in a government-subsidized apartment in northern London and receives $125 in jobless benefits every two weeks, even though he says he has largely given up looking for work. He says he has never had a proper job and learned to read only three years ago. His mother can barely support herself and his stepbrothers and sisters. His father, who was a heroin addict, is dead.
He says he has been in and out of too many schools to count and left the educational system for good when he was 15.
"No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works," Mr. James said. He would like to get a job at a retail store, but admits that he spends most days watching television and just trying to get by. "That is the way they want it," he said, without specifying exactly who "they" were. "They give me just enough money so that I can eat and watch TV all day. I don't even pay my bills anymore."
Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London, says that Mr. James's plight reflects a broader trend here. More challenging students, Mr. Portes says, have not been receiving the attention they should as teachers, under pressure to meet educational goals, focus on children from more stable homes and those with greater abilities and social skills. Disillusioned, those who cannot keep up just drop out.
Headlines here, which often describe the young people as "feral," have been dominated in recent years by the gangs' turn toward bullying the most vulnerable. Almost 30 percent of the victims of antisocial behavior surveyed in the government report said they had "longstanding illness, disability or infirmity."
In one incident typical of those described in the report, in 2007 Fiona Pilkington, 38, pulled her car to the side of a secluded highway. Inside, her learning-disabled daughter, Francesca, 18, watched as Ms. Pilkington doused a pile of old clothes in the back seat with gasoline and set them on fire. The two burned to death.
She was driven by a campaign of intimidation that stretched back over a decade. A gang, with some members as young as 10, pushed dog excrement through the letterbox of their modest home, beat her son and threatened to kill Francesca, who had the learning ability of a 3-year-old. The mother said she made 33 requests for help to the police, to no effect.
It was this culture of impunity that forms one context for the current riots. The most vulnerable people feel trapped, said Margo Milne, 49, who uses a wheelchair part time because she has multiple sclerosis. A disabled friend of hers reported looting in a neighborhood convulsed by rioting. "But she is worried that if she reports them to the police they will come for her," Ms. Milne said. "And what would she do?"
In a low-income housing complex in Hackney on Monday, an elderly woman was hospitalized after a riot in which as many as 300 people rampaged, setting fire to cars and looting stores. Two priests, one in full robes, were brought in by the police to persuade rioters to allow an ambulance to take her to safety. "We need to get these people out," one of the priests was heard telling a police officer. But as soon as the ambulance left, officers abandoned the neighborhood and looters struck up in earnest once more.
Later, when one young man, kicking a trash can into the street nearby, was asked why he was rioting, he just shrugged.
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9) Dark Clouds Gathering on British Economy, Central Banker Says
By JULIA WERDIGIER
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/business/global/dark-clouds-gathering-on-british-economy-central-banker-says.html?ref=world
LONDON - The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn A. King, gave a gloomy outlook for the British economy on Wednesday, but said he would not make a vow like the one by the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep short-term interest rates near zero for some time.
Mr. King said higher inflation and a deterioration of the British economy had squeezed households' finances more than expected. The central bank cut its economic growth forecast for this year to 1.4 percent from 1.8 percent previously. Britain's economy barely grew in the second quarter, and interest rates have remained at a record low of 0.5 percent since March 2009.
"The mood in markets has taken a sharp turn for the worse," Mr. King said in a speech after the publication of the bank's inflation report.
"Headwinds are becoming stronger by the day," he said. "The weakness in underlying activity is likely to be somewhat more persistent than previously expected."
Mr. King attributed the deterioration of the economy to problems faced by some countries that share the euro to repay their debt and to the outlook for growth and fiscal policy in the United States. Some economists said the central bank's new growth forecast was still too optimistic, arguing that an austerity program that freezes public-sector pay and pensions and cuts some social benefits would slow down a recovery even more.
Teodor Todorov, an economist at the Center for Economics and Business Research in London, said the worsening economic situation could soon lead the central bank to consider resuming its bond purchasing program, so-called quantitative easing meant to increase the supply of money in circulation.
He said that the central bank would be pushed to act as the government began public-spending cuts in earnest, consumer demand remained weak and worries circulated about Britain's two largest trading partners, the United States and Europe.
"It is likely that pressure will build on the Bank of England to resume its quantitative easing program in order to stimulate a recovery that is quickly losing its legs," Mr. Todorov said.
A deteriorating labor market and a slow economic recovery in the United States prompted the Fed on Tuesday to make a rare promise to hold short-term interest rates near zero through at least the middle of 2013. The step helped to temporarily lift U.S. and Asian stock markets but also showed that the Fed, too, saw little prospect of rapid economic improvement.
Mr. King said Wednesday that he saw no reason for a similar step by the Bank of England because it was "dangerous to make a commitment" on interest rates. It was "not very sensible" because the economic and market circumstances could change very quickly, he said. Emphasizing just how unpredictable global markets and economies were at this moment, he said, "Who knows how the conditions would be next month, let alone in one or two years?"
But the governor hinted that the central bank was unlikely to increase interest rates anytime soon. Mr. King said there was little the Bank of England could do to bring down inflation, which had reached 4.2 percent in June, because the increase was mainly due to higher oil and commodity prices. He reiterated an earlier forecast that inflation was expected to reach 5 percent in the short term before falling "quite sharply next year."
The European Central Bank was criticized by some economists last week for raising interest rates too early in July in an attempt to stem inflation. The move in part led the bank to later buy Spanish and Italian sovereign debt to prevent the European debt crisis from deepening.
Mr. King emphasized that the challenges facing the British economy were "global challenges."
"The outlook for growth in the world economy has deteriorated," he said, "and, largely as a consequence, near-term growth prospects at home are somewhat weaker."
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10) Chile: Protest in Santiago Grows Violent
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/americas/10briefs-Santiago.html?ref=world
Violence erupted on the streets of Chile's capital, Santiago, on Tuesday as tens of thousands of students staged another protest demanding increased financing for public education. Masked protesters burned cars and barricades, looted stores and threw furniture at the police, and some attacked an apartment building. Groups of masked protesters tried to break through barricades blocking the way to the presidential palace. Riot police officers drove them back, but the violence spread. At least 273 demonstrators were detained in protests around the country, including 73 in Santiago, the Interior Ministry said.
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11) Gold Shoots Past Record $1,800 an Ounce
[A dear comrade, Joe Johnson, said the price of gold is like blood pressure for the economy. When it's very high, you may not know what is wrong with it, but you know something is very wrong. ...bw]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/08/10/business/AP-US-Gold-Record.html?src=busln
The price of gold surpassed $1,800 an ounce Wednesday for the first time as investors pulled their money out of stocks and snapped up precious metals contracts.
Gold is fast becoming a favorite port in a storm of uncertainty. Investors are clinging to what they see as a hedge against volatile stock and currency markets.
December gold contracts backed off their highs, and traded around $1,785 an ounce during midday trading after reaching a record $1,801 an ounce earlier in the day on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gold prices have shot past a series of milestones over the past two years on an uninterrupted climb. Gold was trading at about $900 in the summer of 2008, before the financial crisis unfolded that year.
Resulting turmoil in currency and stock markets has burnished gold's luster.
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12) Cameron, in Speech, Pledges Swift Reaction to Rioters
“Mr. Cameron repeated earlier statements that the police were authorized to use plastic-coated bullets against rioters and that plans were in place to deploy water cannons, though such action was ‘not appropriate now.’ While he agreed with objections by the police to the deployment of the army to confront any future unrest, he said the authorities would consider whether the military could fulfill any functions to allow more police officers to be deployed. ‘Nothing should be off the table. Every contingency is being looked at,’ he said. As to the causes of the outbreak, he returned to an earlier theme of social breakdown. ‘This is not about poverty, it’s about culture — a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities,’ he said.”
By JOHN F. BURNS, ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA
August 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/europe/12britain.html?hp
LONDON — Seeking to stamp his authority after the worst rioting in decades, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday that the authorities would study a wide range of measures, including deployment of the army, to curb future violence and took the unusual step of saying he would consult an American law enforcement veteran on ways to counter criminal gangs.
Mr. Cameron was speaking as Britain turned to a tough reckoning with the perpetrators of the violence, with courts sitting through the night and the police saying Thursday that over 1,200 people had been arrested, the bulk of them in London, since a frenzy of arson and looting broke out on Saturday and eased only after thousands of police reinforcements flooded the streets of London and major cities.
The convulsion of violence prompted widespread criticism of what many people saw as a initially ineffective police response and of tardy actions by political leaders, many of whom, including Mr. Cameron, seemed too slow to break off summer vacations to confront events that escalated rapidly into his most serious political challenge since taking office in May 2010.
“We will not let a violent few beat us,” Mr. Cameron said at an extraordinary session of Parliament to which lawmakers had been summoned from their vacations. “We will not put up with this in our country. We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets and we will do whatever it takes to restore law and order and to rebuild our communities.”
He promised “swift justice” for those who had carried out the violence, which started in the gritty north London neighborhood of Tottenham, and he said there was “some evidence” that criminal gangs had been behind the wave of arson and looting.
Mr. Cameron said he would discuss the question of gangs with William J. Bratton, a former police commissioner in Boston, Los Angeles and New York, and now chairman of a New York security company, Kroll Associates. It was the second time in weeks that Mr. Cameron had publicly mentioned Mr. Bratton’s name after saying earlier that he should be considered as potential new head of Scotland Yard following the resignation of two top officers in the scandal over phone hacking.
That suggestion, however, met with strong resistance from British police authorities and others who said the head of the Scotland Yard, as London’s Metropolitan Police is known, was by tradition a Briton.
Only on Wednesday, Mr. Cameron had referred to the inner-city gangs that the police say have played a leading role in the riots, saying, “They are in no way representative of the vast majority of young people in our country who despise them, frankly, just as much as the rest of us do.” And on Thursday in Parliament, he said: “The problem is not just gangs.”
For the first time, Mr. Cameron acknowledged criticism of the initial police response to the violence, saying police commanders had accepted that they deployed too few officers when the looting and arson began.
“Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue, rather than essentially one of crime,” he said.
Mr. Cameron repeated earlier statements that the police were authorized to use plastic-coated bullets against rioters and that plans were in place to deploy water cannons, though such action was “not appropriate now.” While he agreed with objections by the police to the deployment of the army to confront any future unrest, he said the authorities would consider whether the military could fulfill any functions to allow more police officers to be deployed.
“Nothing should be off the table. Every contingency is being looked at,” he said. As to the causes of the outbreak, he returned to an earlier theme of social breakdown. “This is not about poverty, it’s about culture — a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities,” he said.
“We need to show the world, which has looked on frankly appalled, that the perpetrators of the violence we have seen on our streets are not in any way representative of our country — nor of our young people,” he said. “We need to show them 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.”
On specific new measures, he said “no phony human rights issues” would prevent the authorities from publishing photographs of suspected perpetrators for identification and said new rules would allow the police to tell people to remove face-coverings like masks. Many of those seen looting stores and carrying off booty that ranged from high-end sneakers to flat-screen televisions were wearing masks and hoods.
Mr. Cameron also said the authorities would consider a broad range of other measures, including the imposition of curfews and action to limit communication between rioters using smartphones and social-networking sites.
On Thursday, the London police said 922 people had been arrested and 401 charged with offenses since the violence took root on Saturday, while the Manchester police in the northwest put the total of arrests there at 145, with similar numbers detained in Birmingham in the English Midlands. Courts in London and Birmingham sat through the night. With thousands of police reinforcement on the streets, heavy rain in some areas and residents in some places patrolling their own residential areas, there were no new reports of major violence overnight.
Despite the apparent lull, concern was growing about many of the ethnically segregated districts battered by the rampages, particularly Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, where the police and political leaders worried about a potentially explosive new pattern of interracial violence that could be set off by the past days and nights of mayhem.
Three young men of Pakistani descent were killed in Birmingham on Tuesday night when a car crashed into a group of residents who had gathered to protect local businesses from attack. Witnesses said that the driver appeared to be of Afro-Caribbean descent, and the police arrested a 32-year-old man and charged him with murder.
In Parliament on Thursday, Mr. Cameron faced pressure from the opposition Labour Party — and from his fellow Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson — to reverse cuts in police budgets ordered as part of broad austerity measures designed to reduce the government deficit. In response, though, Mr. Cameron told lawmakers that his government’s proposed 6 percent cut in police spending should be possible “while keeping police visibility up” through greater efficiencies.
While many Britons had initially blamed the violence on unemployed youth, one surprise was the presence in courts of young men and women with regular jobs among the riot suspects lined up in police wagons outside courthouses in London and other cities. That raised questions about why they had been caught up in the kind of mayhem that has traditionally drawn on an underclass of alienated young people, with no jobs and few prospects.
Many of those who were remanded for trial appeared to come from just those kinds of backgrounds — evidence, as some commentators saw it, that the root causes of the disorders lay in social deprivation and despair. But those who stood before the courts for bail hearings in London, many of them still in their jeans and hooded sweatshirts, included a graphic designer, a postal employee, a dental assistant, a teaching aide, a forklift driver and a youth worker.
One 19-year-old woman was listed on court documents as living in a converted farmhouse in a leafy, upmarket area of rural Kent that is part of what Londoners call the stockbroker belt. A 22-year-old woman gave her address as an upscale block of flats in a gentrified neighborhood of Hackney, one of the worst-hit riot areas in London. Local residents said that many of the residents of the apartments, which are valued at about $500,000, belonged to a community of affluent, middle-class people with jobs in London’s news media and art world.
“There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but, frankly, sick,” Mr. Cameron said on Wednesday. “The sight of those young people running down streets, smashing windows, taking property, looting, laughing as they go, the problem of that is a complete lack of responsibility, a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals,” he continued. “That is what we need to change. There is no one trigger that can change these things. It’s about parenting, it’s about discipline in schools, it’s about making sure we have a welfare system that does not reward idleness. It is all of those things.”
For now, the political sparring has taken a back seat to more immediate concerns, especially the signs of rising tensions between ethnic groups in neighborhoods under siege. Earlier in the week, Turkish groups in Hackney and other London neighborhoods began arming themselves with aluminum baseball bats and other weapons to protect their homes and businesses. In the neighborhood of Southall, a crowd of Sikhs gathered at a temple where their spiritual leader vowed to fight back against any groups that threatened the temple or Sikh neighborhoods.
Similar vows were made by Muslim groups in a wide array of mixed-race communities in London and in at least two other cities with large Muslim populations — Birmingham and Manchester.
In Birmingham, a large police contingent moved into the district of Winson Green, where the three young men were killed by the driver. A police spokesman said an investigation had indicated that the car had been driven “deliberately” at a group of about 80 young men who were protecting a gas station from looters.
Tariq Jahan, the father of the youngest of the three victims, described bloodying his hands in a failed bid to restore his son’s breathing, then turned to an appeal for all in the community to renounce violence. “Why? Why?” he said.
John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya reported from London and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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13) U.S. Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
August 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/world/africa/11somalia.html?hp
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Richard Rouget, a gun for hire over two decades of bloody African conflict, is the unlikely face of the American campaign against militants in Somalia.
A husky former French Army officer, Mr. Rouget, 51, commanded a group of foreign fighters during Ivory Coast’s civil war in 2003, was convicted by a South African court of selling his military services and did a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands, an archipelago plagued by political tumult and coup attempts.
Now Mr. Rouget works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops who have fought a pitched urban battle in the ruins of this city against the Shabab, the Somali militant group allied with Al Qaeda.
The company plays a vital part in the conflict now raging inside Somalia, a country that has been effectively ungoverned and mired in chaos for years. The fight against the Shabab, a group that United States officials fear could someday carry out strikes against the West, has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies out of reluctance to send American troops back into a country they hastily exited nearly two decades ago.
“We do not want an American footprint or boot on the ground,” said Johnnie Carson, the Obama administration’s top State Department official for Africa.
A visible United States military presence would be provocative, he said, partly because of Somalia’s history as a graveyard for American missions — including the “Black Hawk Down” episode in 1993, when Somali militiamen killed 18 American service members.
Still, over the past year, the United States has quietly stepped up operations inside Somalia, American officials acknowledge. The Central Intelligence Agency, which largely finances the country’s spy agency, has covertly trained Somali intelligence operatives, helped build a large base at Mogadishu’s airport — Somalis call it “the Pink House” for the reddish hue of its buildings or “Guantánamo” for its ties to the United States — and carried out joint interrogations of suspected terrorists with their counterparts in a ramshackle Somali prison.
The Pentagon has turned to strikes by armed drone aircraft to kill Shabab militants and recently approved $45 million in arms shipments to African troops fighting in Somalia.
But this is a piecemeal approach that many American officials believe will not be enough to suppress the Shabab over the long run. In interviews, more than a dozen current and former United States officials and experts described an overall American strategy in Somalia that has been troubled by a lack of focus and internal battles over the past decade. While the United States has significantly stepped up clandestine operations in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials are deeply worried about Somalia but cannot agree on the risks versus the rewards of escalating military strikes here.
“I think that neither the international community in general nor the U.S. government in particular really knows what to do with the failure of the political process in Somalia,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa program at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institution.
For months, officials said, the State Department has been at odds with some military and intelligence officials about whether striking sites suspected of being militant camps in Somalia’s southern territories or carrying out American commando raids to kill militant leaders would significantly weaken the Shabab — or instead bolster its ranks by allowing the group to present itself as the underdog against a foreign power.
Lauren Ploch, an East Africa expert at the Congressional Research Service, said that the Obama administration was confronted with many of the same problems that had vexed its predecessors — “balancing the risks of an on-the-ground presence” against the risks of using “third parties” to carry out the American strategy in Somalia.
Teaching Fighting Skills
The Shabab has already shown its ability to strike beyond Somalia, killing dozens of Ugandans last summer in a suicide attack that many believe was a reprisal for the Ugandan government’s decision to send troops to Somalia. Now, though, thanks in part to Bancroft, the private security company, the militants have been forced into retreat. Several United Nations and African Union officials credit the work of Bancroft with improving the fighting skills of the African troops in Somalia, who this past weekend forced Shabab militants to withdraw from Mogadishu, the capital, for the first time in years.
Like other security companies in Somalia, Bancroft has thrived as a proxy of sorts for the American government. Based in a mansion along Embassy Row in Washington, Bancroft is a nonprofit enterprise run by Michael Stock, a 34-year-old Virginia native who founded the company not long after graduating from Princeton in 1999. He used some of his family’s banking fortune to set up Bancroft as a small land-mine clearing operation.
In recent years, the company has expanded its mission in Somalia and now runs one of the only fortified camps in Mogadishu — a warren of prefabricated buildings rimmed with sand bags a stone’s throw from the city’s decrepit, seaside airport.
The Bancroft camp operates as a spartan hotel for visiting aid workers, diplomats and journalists. But the company’s real income has come from the United States government, albeit circuitously. The governments of Uganda and Burundi pay Bancroft millions of dollars to train their soldiers for counterinsurgency missions in Somalia under an African Union banner, money that the State Department then reimburses to the two African nations. Since 2010, Bancroft has collected about $7 million through this arrangement.
Both American and United Nations officials said that Bancroft’s team in Mogadishu — a mixture of about 40 former South African, French and Scandinavian soldiers who call themselves “mentors” — has steadily improved the skills of the African troops and cut down on civilian casualties by persuading the troops to stop lobbing artillery shells into crowded parts of Mogadishu. One Western consultant who works with the African Union credits Bancroft with helping “turn a bush army into an urban fighting force.”
The advisers typically work from the front lines — showing the troops how to build sniper pits or smash holes in walls to move between houses.
“Urban fighting is a war of attrition, you nibble, nibble, nibble,” said Mr. Rouget, the Bancroft contractor. Last year, he was wounded in Mogadishu when a piece of shrapnel from a Shabab rocket explosion sliced through his thigh.
Still, he seems to thoroughly enjoy his work. “Give me some technicals” — a term for heavily armed pickup trucks — “and some savages and I’m happy,” he joked.
Privatizing War
Some critics view the role played by Mr. Rouget and other contractors as a troubling trend: relying on private companies to fight the battles that nations have no stomach for. Some American Congressional officials investigating the money being spent for operations in Somalia said that opaque arrangements like those for Bancroft — where money is passed through foreign governments — made it difficult to properly track how the funds were spent.
It also makes it harder for American officials to monitor who is being hired for the Somalia mission. In Bancroft’s case, some trainers are veterans of Africa’s bush wars who sometimes use aliases in the countries where they fought. Mr. Rouget, for example, used the name Colonel Sanders.
He denies that he is a mercenary, and said that his conviction in a South African court was “political,” more a “regulatory infraction” than a crime. He added that the French government, which sent peacekeeping troops to Ivory Coast, was well aware of his activities there.
Mr. Stock, Bancroft’s president, also flatly rejects the idea that his employees are mercenaries, insisting that the trainers do not participate in direct combat with Shabab fighters and are supported by legitimate governments.
“Mercenary activity is antithetical to the fundamental purposes for which Bancroft exists,” he said, adding that the company “does not engage in covert, clandestine or otherwise secret activities.”
He did say, though, that there is only a small pool of people Bancroft can hire who have experience fighting in African wars.
In recent years, according to a United Nations report, many companies have waded into Somalia’s chaos with contracts to protect Somali politicians, train African troops and build a combat force to battle armed Somali pirates.
The report provides new details about an operation by the South African firm Saracen International to train a 1,000-member antipiracy militia for the government of Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia, effectively creating “the best-equipped indigenous military force anywhere in Somalia.” Using shell companies, some of which the United Nations report links to Erik Prince, who founded the Blackwater Worldwide security company, Saracen secretly shipped military equipment — which the report says violated an arms embargo — into northern Somalia on cargo planes leaving from Uganda and the United Arab Emirates. Several American officials have said that the Emirates, concerned about the piracy epidemic, have been secretly financing the Saracen operation.
Aid From the Pentagon
The Pentagon has recently told Congress that it plans to send nearly $45 million worth of military equipment to bolster the Ugandan and Burundian troops. The arms package includes transport trucks, body armor, night vision goggles and even four small drone aircraft that the African troops can use to spy on Shabab positions.
Unlike regular Somali government troops, the C.I.A.-trained Somali commandos are outfitted with new weapons and flak jackets, and are given sunglasses and ski masks to conceal their identities. They are part of the Somali National Security Agency — an intelligence organization financed largely by the C.I.A. — which answers to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Many in Mogadishu, though, believe that the Somali intelligence service is building a power base independent of the weak government.
One Somali official, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, said that the spy service was becoming a “government within a government.”
“No one, not even the president, knows what the N.S.A. is doing,” he said. “The Americans are creating a monster.”
The C.I.A. Plays a Role
The C.I.A. has also occasionally joined Somali operatives in interrogating prisoners, including Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan, a Kenyan arrested in Nairobi in 2009 on an American intelligence tip and handed over to Somalia by the Kenyans. The C.I.A. operations in Somalia were first reported last month by the magazine The Nation.
An American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of restrictions against discussing relationships with foreign intelligence services, said that agency officers had questioned Mr. Hassan in a Somali prison under strict interrogation rules.
“The host country must give credible assurances that suspects will be treated humanely,” the official said, and intelligence officials “must be convinced that the individual in custody has time-sensitive information about terrorist operations targeting U.S. interests.”
A C.I.A. spokeswoman said that the spy agency was not holding suspects in secret American prisons, as it did in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“The C.I.A. does not run prisons in Somalia or anywhere else, period,” said the spokeswoman, Marie Harf. “The C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program ended over two and a half years ago.”
In Washington, American officials said debates were under way about just how much the United States should rely on clandestine militia training and armed drone strikes to fight the Shabab. Over the past year, the American Embassy in Nairobi, according to one American official, has become a hive of military and intelligence operatives who are “chomping at the bit” to escalate operations in Somalia. But Mr. Carson, the State Department official, has opposed the drone strikes because of the risk of turning more Somalis toward the Shabab, according to several officials.
In a telephone interview, he played down any bureaucratic disagreements and rejected criticism that America’s approach toward Somalia had been ad hoc. It is a country with historically difficult problems, he said, and the American support to the African peacekeepers has helped beat back the Shabab’s forces.
And as for the rest of southern Somalia, still firmly in the Shabab’s hands?
“One step at a time, he said. “One step at a time.”
Mr. Stock, Bancroft’s president, said that bickering in Washington about how to contain the Shabab threat had made the American government even more dependent on companies like his.
As he put it, “We’re the only game in town.”
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Mogadishu, and Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
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