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This drawing has come to symbolize the California prison hunger strike and the solidarity it has generated. It was contributed by Rashid Johnson, a prisoner in Red Onion Prison, Virginia.
Pelican Bay SHU prisoners plan to resume hunger strike Sept. 26
by Mutope Duguma (s/n James Crawford)
September 1, 2011
http://sfbayview.com/2011/pelican-bay-shu-prisoners-plan-to-resume-hunger-strike-sept-26/
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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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San Francisco Labor Council Resolution - Save the Public Postal Service
Tuesday, September 27th National Day of Action called by the postal unions
Whereas, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as a right of the people, the public Post Office has provided universal postal service over many generations, and is continuously rated as the most highly regarded government entity by the American people. Since the 1970 postal strike, which shut down mail service nationwide for four days, postal workers have had good liveable-wage jobs supporting their families in every community, and collective bargaining through their unions; and
Whereas, Postmaster General Donahoe wants to eliminate Saturday delivery, shut 3,700 postal facilities, and fire 120,000 workers [220,000 by 2015], despite a no-layoff clause in union contracts. Rep. Issa, chair of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, wants to void the postal union contracts altogether and open the door to privatization. Their proposals would sabotage and destroy our national treasure - the public Postal Service; and
Whereas, the scheduled service cutbacks will hit seniors, and poor and rural communities the hardest. For example, post offices are being tagged for closing based on the amount of "revenue" they generate, which means that low-income and rural areas, which need their neighborhood post office the most, will no longer have one. San Francisco's Bayview Station is targeted. Also, collection boxes with fewer letters are being removed, hurting service in low-income and rural areas; and
Whereas, just as Governor Scott Walker declared war on Wisconsin workers, what's coming is a war against the 574,000 unionized postal workers and their families - the next target of the big business class and their henchmen in Congress and the media. Like Reagan's attack on PATCO, this is an attack on all of Labor, and Labor needs to close ranks with every community now to defend the postal unions and save the public Postal Service.
Therefore be it Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council will join with postal unions, other central labor bodies, state labor federations, national and local unions, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federation, and community allies, in a campaign including mass demonstrations to defend the postal workers, save Saturday delivery, stop the post office closings and layoffs, and save the public Postal Service; and
Be it finally resolved, specifically, that the council will join the campaign to stop the closing of the Bayview Post Office; that the council will support any demonstrations at local Congressional offices as part of the Tuesday, September 27th National Day of Action called by the postal unions; and that the council will urge Bay Area congress members to co-sponsor HR 137, which calls for maintaining 6-day mail delivery, and HR 1351, which seeks to prevent the Postal Service from defaulting on payments for future retiree health benefits - both measures supported by the postal unions.
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An Evening with Ali Abunimah -- with Special Guest Alice Walker
Wednesday, October 5th, 7:00 PM
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway
Buy Your Tickets Today:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/194416?
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Alice Walker is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer, including her book Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel. She participated in the US Boat to Gaza, part of the Freedom Flotilla.
Tickets: $15, $10 students/low-income, available at through Brown Paper Tickets, or at local bookstores: (East Bay) Books, Inc.; Diesel; Moe's Books; Walden Pond; (SF) Modern Times. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Benefit for MECA's Maia Project: Clean Water for the Children of Palestine
Wheelchair accessible & ASL interpreted.
Cosponsors: KPFA, Arab Film Festival, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Cultural & Community Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area Women in Black, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Global Exchange.
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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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Please share this announcement widely
MoveOn.org East Bay Council, Alameda Labor Council, San Francisco Labor Council,
New Priorities Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
1PM Rally at Laney College
2:30 PM March to Federal Building & Frank Ogawa Plaza
Urge you to Rally & March for:
Jobs not Cuts !!!
Education not Incarceration
Work not War
Clean Energy not Climate Change
Social Security not Bank Bailouts
Main St. not Wall St.
Prosperity not Austerity
Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
End the Wars! Invest in Our Communities!
BRING ALL THE TROOPS AND WAR DOLLARS HOME!
We want an economy that supports the rights of all people to jobs at decent pay in safe workplaces, affordable healthcare for all, decent affordable housing, quality education in modern schools, a secure retirement, and a clean sustainable environment. We oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs. The rich, corporations, Wall St. banks and financial speculators should pay to fix the crisis that their irresponsibility and greed created. We have made our sacrifices. Now they should make theirs.
Make your voices heard!
www.jobs-not-cuts.org
For more information and to register endorsements, write to:
MoveOnEastBay@gmail.com
NewPrioritiesCampaign@gmail.com
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MEDICARE IN THE CROSS-HAIRS
SOCIAL SECURITY NEXT?
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL TEACH-IN
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011, 7:30-9PM
Plumbers Union Hall, 1621 Market St., S.F.
(5 blocks from Civic Center BART station)
For more information call Carl, San Francisco Labor Council Education Project
415-829-3816
CUTTING MEDICARE-MEDICAID IS THE POLITICIANS CONSENSUS #1 BUDGET TARGET
• President Obama has just proposed a $248 billion cut in Medicare as a starter & another $72 billion in Medicaid cuts.
• Obama indicated September 19 he will support cutting more than $320 Billion if Republicans agree with him on taxes.
• Vice-President Joe Biden last June offered Republicans to cut $400-$500 billion in Medicare-Medicaid
• Republicans last April proposed to raise out-of-pocket costs for Medicare for seniors by $7,000 per year
• The 'Supercommittee' of 12 in Congress said last week they want to cut even more than Obama has proposed. They will report 'how much' more on November 19.
• Congress will vote on how much more in Medicare-Medicaid cuts before December 23.
How Much Will Your Medicare Be Cut?
How Much More Will You Have to Pay?
Come Hear the Facts
Open Discussion to Follow
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Here is the official statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression on the 1-year anniversary of the raids.
Build the Movement Against Political Repression
One year since the September 24 FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas
Statement of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, 9-22-2011
Please come to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression one-day Conference in Chicago on November 5, 2011.
http://www.stopfbi.net/national-conference-2011
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) is asking you to build the movement against political repression on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 24, 2010 FBI raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists. We need your continued solidarity as we build movements for peace, justice and equality.
The storm of political repression continues to expand and threaten. It is likely to intensify and churn into a destructive force with indictments, trials, and attempts to imprison anti-war activists. The last we knew, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was preparing multiple indictments as he and Attorney General Eric Holder attempt to criminalize the targeted activists and the movements to which we dedicate our lives.
It is one year since the FBI raided two homes in Chicago and five homes plus the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, eventually handing out 23 subpoenas. The anti-war activists' homes were turned upside down and notebooks, cell phones, artwork, computers, passports and personal belongings were all carted off by the FBI. Anyone who has ever been robbed knows the feelings - shock and anger.
The man responsible for this assault on activists and their families, on free speech and the right to organize, is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago. Fitzgerald has an ugly record of getting powerful Republicans like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove off the hook, while mercilessly pursuing an agenda to scare America into silence and submission with the phony 'war on terror.' Fitzgerald is attempting to criminalize anti-war activists with accusations of 'material support for terrorism,' involving groups in Palestine and Colombia.
First the U.S. government targeted Arabs and Muslims, violating their civil rights and liberties and spying on them. Then they came for the anti-war and international solidarity activists. We refuse to be criminalized. We continue to speak out and organize. We say, "Opposing U.S. war and occupation is not a crime!" We are currently building a united front with groups and movements to defeat Fitzgerald's reactionary, fear mongering assault on anti-war activism and to restore civil liberties taken away by the undemocratic USA PATRIOT Act.
Many people know the developments in the case, but for those who do not, we invite you to read a timeline at stopfbi.net. We think the repression centers on this: During the lead up to the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a federal law enforcement officer, using the phony name of "Karen Sullivan" got involved and joined the Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis. She lied to everyone she met and helped the FBI to disrupt many activities in the anti-war, international solidarity and labor movements in Minnesota - and also other states and even over in Palestine. It is outrageous.
In fact, many of those being investigated travelled to Colombia or Palestine to learn firsthand about U.S. government funding for war and oppression. There was no money given to any groups that the U.S. government lists as terrorist organizations. However, we met people who are a lot like most Americans - students, community organizers, religious leaders, trade unionists, women's group leaders and activists much like ourselves. Many of the U.S. activists wrote about their trips, did educational events, or helped organized protests against U.S. militarism and war. In a increasingly repressive period, this is enough to make one a suspect in Fitzgerald's office.
This struggle is far from one-sided however. The response to the FBI raids and the pushback from the movement is tremendous. Minneapolis and Chicago immediately organized a number of press conferences and rallies with hundreds of people. Over the first two weeks after the raids, 60 cities protested outside FBI offices, from New York to Kalamazoo, from traveled to the Bay Area. The National Lawyers Guild convention was in New Orleans the day of the FBI raids and they immediately issued a solidarity statement and got to work on the case. Solidarity poured in from anti-war, civil rights, religious and faith groups, students and unions. Groups and committees began working to obtain letters of support from members of Congress. The solidarity was overwhelming. It was great!
It is possible that U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald thought he was picking on an isolated group of activists. Instead, those raided proved to have many friends and allies from decades of work for social justice and peace. Over the months, all the targeted activists refused to appear at the grand jury dates set by U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office. In November 2010, a large crew of us travelled to New York City to found the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, after the United National Antiwar Committee meeting.
In December 2010, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office called in three of the Minnesota women and threatened them. We prepared a campaign in case they were jailed for refusing to speak. The FBI also delivered subpoenas to nine more Arab-American and Palestine solidarity activists in December. Their grand jury date was on Jan. 25, 2011, and we organized protests in over 70 American cities, plus a few overseas. The movement was building and expanding, so we organized conferences with over 800 participants in the Midwest, the South, and on the East and West Coasts. While we were organizing a pushback, the FBI was making new plans.
On May 17, 2011, at 5:00 a.m., the Los Angeles, California Sheriff, under the direction of the FBI, busted down the front door of Chicano leader Carlos Montes, storming in with automatic weapons drawn and shouting. The early morning raid was supposedly about weapons and permits, but they seized decades of notes and writings about the Chicano, immigrant rights, education rights and anti-war movements. The FBI attempted to question Carlos Montes while he was handcuffed and in the back of a L.A. sheriff squad car. Montes is going to another preliminary court date on Sept. 29, prepared to face six felony charges, carrying up to three years in prison for each, knowing he is extraordinarily targeted by the FBI. We will walk every step of the way with Carlos Montes, and more. Montes was with us at the Republican National Convention protests; his name was included on the search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, and the FBI attempted to question him about this case. We ask you to support Carlos Montes and to organize speaking events with him and local protests on his important court dates, Sept. 29 being the next one.
The same week the FBI raided Carlos Montes in May 2011, the CSFR came back with a big revelation - we released a set of documents, the FBI game plan, which the FBI mistakenly left behind in a file drawer at one of the homes. The FBI documents are on the CSFR website and are fascinating to read. Fitzgerald and company developed 102 questions that come right from a McCarthy witch-hunt trial of the 1950s. It is like turning back the clock five decades.
The whole intention of the raids is clear: They want to paint activists as 'terrorists' and shut down the organizing. They came at a time when the rich and powerful are frightened of not just the masses of people overseas, but of the people in their own country. With a failing U.S. war in Afghanistan, a U.S. occupation of Iraq predicted to last decades, a new war for oil and domination in Libya, a failing immigration policy that breaks up families and produces super-profits for big business, and now a long and deep economic crisis that is pushing large segments of working people into poverty, the highest levels of the U.S. government are turning to political repression.
The only hope for the future is in building stronger, consistent and determined movements. In a principled act of solidarity, the 23 subpoenaed activists refuse to testify before the grand jury. This sets an example for others.
In addition, the outpouring of support and mobilization into the streets from the anti-war, international solidarity, civil rights, labor and immigrant rights movements means that not one of the 24 has spent a single day in jail. That is a victory.
We ask you to stand with us, to stay vigilant and to hold steady as we proceed to organize against wars abroad and injustice at home and as we defend Carlos Montes from the FBI charade in Los Angeles.
Committee to Stop FBI Repression - www.stopfbi.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Add us to your address book
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White House Petition for Leonard Peltier
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
A petition in favor of granting clemency to Leonard Peltier is now on the We the People portion of the White House Web site. We have 30 days (until October 22) to get 5,000 signatures in order for our petition to be reviewed by the White House. This petition may only allow US signatories.
Sign the petition here:
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
Due to heavy site traffic, you may have trouble accessing the petition. Keep trying until you succeed. Try during off-peak hours.
Email our petition to your friends, family and others who care about this issue.
Facebook: Post our petition to your Facebook wall to let folks know about it. Here's a sample message you can cut and paste into your Facebook status: Petition for Leonard Peltier on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Twitter: Tweet about your petition. Here's a sample tweet you can use: Leonard Peltier petition on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Let's do it!
Launched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
The Petition:
we petition the obama administration to:
grant clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier without delay.
10th Circuit Court of Appeals: "...Much of the government's behavior... and its prosecution of Leonard Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed."
While others were acquitted on grounds of self defense, Peltier was convicted in connection with the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents. Evidence shows that prosecutors knowingly presented false statements to a Canadian court to extradite Peltier and manufactured the murder weapon (the gun and shell casings entered into evidence didn't match; this fact was hidden from the jury). The number of constitutional violations in this case is simply staggering.
It's time to right this wrong. Mr. President, you can and must free Leonard Peltier.
Created: Sep 22, 2011
Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Human Rights
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/grant-clemency-native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-without-delay/LLWBZq1S
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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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Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
[And he does a great job and he has a huge audience. ...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBdP6INHlE
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Bill Maher, Michael Moore Defend Tony Bennett for Saying That U.S. Foreign Policy Helped Cause 9/11
By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at September 24, 2011, 7:44 am
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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Troy Davis, Racism, The Death Penalty & Labor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEues_-KoZU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Empire State Rebellion: An Idea Whose Time Has Come - OpESR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIlfV1pCZY&feature=player_embedded
Email This Email This - Print This Print This
Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to Digg Post to StumbleUpon
The video below is dedicated to all the people currently Occupying Wall Street.
See you there again on September 24th at noon, and the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...
Video Transcript:
Mainstream media in the United States is the most efficient
weapon of mass oppression.
The propaganda system is so extensive.
People are very confused.
They don't really grasp what is happening.
On a very basic and profound level
they understand that global banks have robbed the country.
They get that, but there is so much divide and conquer rhetoric -
it goes from the mainstream media
and it filters all the way down
into independent media.
So it's a matter of finding that place
where you can overcome the divide and conquer propaganda.
And where we can find that place
is on Wall Street and breaking up the banks.
How would a million people clogging lower Manhattan's financial district
play out in the global media?
If we came down there and said:
"We're not leaving until we have commitments
to break up the banks
and end the campaign finance racket."
Let's just go over some statistics here:
· 59 Million people without health care
· 52 Million in poverty
· 44 Million on food stamps
· 30 Million in need of work
· 7 Million foreclosed on
· 5 Million homes over 60 days late on mortgage payments
· $1 Trillion in student debt
We have the highest, most severe inequality of wealth we have ever had,
unlimited campaign spending,
budget cuts for the poor,
tax breaks for the rich -
this is the ultimate recipe for revolution.
America has 239 million people living paycheck to paycheck right now.
Food prices are going up, oil is going up, everything is going up -
these people aren't going to be able to make ends meet.
It's the same everywhere, it's global policies,
whether its Ireland, United States, Egypt, Greece.
People are going to fight back because
the economic central planners have become so arrogant.
Economic central planners, who control the global economy
through the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve,
are committed to sentencing tens of millions of people
to a slow death through economic policy.
Obviously, those people, as time goes by,
they are going to fight back,
because they are fighting to survive.
This is a global rebellion.
People don't seem to get the fact that we live in a global economy
and there is a Neo-Liberal centrally planned aristocracy
which runs the global economy,
and we are in the midst of a
worldwide economic war right now.
It is a straight up economic war
with genocidal economic policies,
which of course are going to lead to mass rebellion.
Decentralized global rebellion.
Decentralized resistance.
Decentralized revolutionaries.
We had you on the show a few months ago,
and you called for a revolution.
The revolution is happening right now.
Tells us about A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion.
The revolution is happening right now.
#OccupyWallStreet
Editor's Note: This music video was created on March 16th by Anon and posted to our social network. It was also posted on Max Keiser's website. It features clips from a Max Keiser interview with David DeGraw.
DO SOMETHING: @OccupyWallStNYC | #OccupyWallStreet | #OpESR
Have Fun and Get Something Done on Wall Steet This Weekend (MAP)
YOUR STREET: @OccupyChicago | @OccupyCleveland | @OccupyDallas
@OccupyFDSF | @OccupySTL | @OccupyHouston | VIDEO: Livestream
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9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-09-16/911-explosive-evidence-experts-speak-out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw-jzCfa4eQ
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9/11: A Conspiracy Theory
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
[click on above to view the video]
Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn't handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced "missing" from the Pentagon's coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI's lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney...well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn't bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of "little practical significance". Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims' family members' questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were "a failure of imagination" because "I don't think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings " except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that's OK because it probably wasn't important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that's OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7?s collapse, but that's OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would "jeopardize public safety".
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that's OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn't recorded on video, in which he didn't resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team's members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story...you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
(c) 2011 The Corbett Report. All rights reserved.
Hosting generously provided by: EuroVPS.com
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HUNDREDS OCCUPY WALL STREET (LIVE STREAM VIDEO)
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution/share?utm_source=lsplayer&utm_medium=ui-share&utm_campaign=globalrevolution&utm_content=globalrevolution
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
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What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?
Narrated by Tony Benn. Music by Brian Eno
Mass Demonstration October 8, Noon, Trafalgar Square, London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Bkg8zgoYQ&feature=youtu.be
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LOWKEY OBAMA NATION (BANIDO DA TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFywomdJTM&feature=related
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Remember Building 7 on France 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOaJZr83RJg&feature=share
Sound Evidence for WTC 7 Explosions and NIST Cover Up
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/the-911-files/sound-evidence-for-wtc-7-explosions.html
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Architects & Engineers - Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 - AE911Truth.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw&feature=player_embedded
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Geneva Towers Controlled Demolition -- San Francisco, May 16, 1968
I lived in Geneva Towers in 1967 for about six months. I was married with a six-month-old son when we moved to the Towers. It reminded us of New York (we had just moved to San Francisco in August of 1966 so an apartment building was familiar to us.) But what a difference from New York. I didn't drive at the time and, with a baby, and elevators that often didn't work (we were on the 15th floor--I don't remember which building) I was basically trapped. Mass transit was slow and the distances were long to get downtown. The apartment had heating under the synthetic flooring tiles and the first time we turned it on, the tiles melted where the heating coils were. The electric oven caught fire the first time we used it; and the first time we took a shower the tiles started to pop off the walls. The kitchen cabinets were made of unpainted particle board. The sliding doors to the cabinets were less than a quarter-inch thick and cracked if you slid them too fast! What a pre-fab slum that was!
I was so glad to break the lease and move into the Castro--into a two bedroom, first-floor Victorian flat--in a warm and bustling community close to everything. And the rent was $125.00 a month!
I did make it a point to watch the demolition of the Towers on TV (it was broadcast live.) And I was so glad to see it go. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the collapse of the World Trade Center. ...Bonnie Weinstein
Geneva Towers Implosion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XVQ1LE2es&feature=related
The implosion [controlled demolition] of the Geneva Towers near the Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA on May 16, 1998
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Benton Harbor REPEAL RECALL.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLL-AxOnTk
A few facts from the video:
Whirlpool has been meddling in [Benton Harbor] city politics for 30 years. For every tax break and advantage it can get. As the neighborhoods crumble...
With global sales of $18 Billion Whirpool paid 0% in 2010 federal taxes.
It received a refund of $64 Million.
Whirlpool has received 500 Million in tax breaks just since 2005.
Millions more in the past 3 decades.
Whirlpool took 19 Billion in federal stimulus funds. Then closed plants in the US. Including the plant in BH.
Rep. Fred Upton receives substantial campaign contributions from Whirlpool. And the Koch brothers.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Emergency Manager Law. And a budget that taxes pensions and cuts education funding in Michigan.
Then gave corporations (like Whirlpool) a $1.8 Billion tax break."
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Labor Beat: THE PEOPLE'S PUTT PUTT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FkYBneJpds
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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London Riots. (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
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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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Very reminiscent of Obama...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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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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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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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. ...bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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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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Your help is needed to defend free speech rights
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
We are writing to urge you to send an email letter today that can make a big difference in the outcome of a free speech fight that is vital to all grassroots movements that support social justice and peace.
It will just take a moment of your time but it will make a big difference.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=326
All across the country people and organizations engaged in producing and disseminating leaflets and posters - the classic method of grassroots outreach used by those without institutional power and corporate money - are being faced with bankrupting fines.
This has been happening with ferocity in the nation's capital ever since the ANSWER Coalition was fined over $50,000 in the span of a few weeks for posters advertising the Sept. 15, 2007, protest against the Iraq war.
Attorneys for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) filed a major lawsuit in August 2007 against the unconstitutional postering regulations in Washington, D.C.
"The District has employed an illegal system that creates a hierarchy of speech, favoring the speech of politicians and punishing grassroots outreach," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, stated in explaining a basic tenet of the lawsuit. "It's time for that system to end, and it will."
The hard-fought four-year-long lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund against Washington, D.C.'s unconstitutional postering regulations has succeeded in achieving a number of important victories, including the issuance of new regulations after the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia warned just last month of an impending declaration of unconstitutionality against the District.
In July 2011 the federal District Court issued a preliminary opinion regarding one aspect of our lawsuit and suggested that the D.C. government "revise the regulations to include a single, across-the-board durational restriction that applies equally to all viewpoints and subject matters."
But this battle is not finished. The new regulations still contain dissent-crushing "strict liability" provisions (explained below) and remain unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous. Plus the District has never withdrawn the tens of thousands of dollars of fines against ANSWER.
The District of Columbia is required by law to open the new rules to public comment, which it has done with an extremely short comment period that is now open. We need people to send a comment today to the government of Washington, D.C. It just takes a minute using our online Submit a Comment tool, which will send your comment by email.
Send a letter today in support of the right to produce and disseminate leaflets and posters in Washington, D.C. We have included a sample comment but we encourage people to use or add your own language.
An Opportunity for You to Make a Difference
In response to our lawsuit, the District of Columbia has now issued "Emergency Regulations" replacing the current system which the city now admits are a "threat to the public welfare," after the court issued a preliminary opinion that agreed with a basic argument of the lawsuit.
This is an important moment and we need you and others who believe in Free Speech to weigh in during the short 15-day public comment period in response to the proposed Emergency Regulations for postering. Submit an online Comment now that makes one or more of three vital points:
Drop the $70,000 fines that have been applied to the ANSWER Coalition for anti-war posters during the past four years.
End "Strict Liability" fines and penalities. Strict Liability constitutes something of a death penalty for Free Speech activities such as producing leaflets and posters. It means that an organization referenced on posted signs can be held "strictly liable" for any materials alleged to be improperly posted, even if the group never even posted a single sign or poster. The D.C. government is even going further than that - it just levied fines against a disabled Vietnam veteran who didn't put up a single poster but was fined $450 because three posted signs were seen referencing a Veterans for Peace demonstration last December, and the District's enforcement agents researched that his name was on the permit application for the peace demonstration at the White House. Any group or person that leaves literature at a bookstore, or distributes literature, or posts .pdf fliers on the Internet, can be fined tens of thousands of dollars simply for having done nothing more than making political literature available.
Insist that any new regulations be clear, unambiguous and fair. The District's new "Emergency" Regulations are still inadequate because they are vague and ambiguous. Vaguely worded regulations in the hands of vindictive authority can and will be used to punish, penalize and fine grassroots organizations that seek to redress grievances while allowing the powerful and moneyed interests to do as they please. The District's postering regulations must be clear and unambiguous if they are to be fair, uniform and constitutional.
Take two minutes right now, click through to our online comment submission tool.
Thank you for your continued support. After you send your comment today to the District of Columbia please send this email to your friends and encourage them to take action as well. Click here to send your comment to the District.
Sincerely,
ANSWER Coalition
www.AnswerCoalition.org
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, René González, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing René and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow René Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of René Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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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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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
"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
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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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
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
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
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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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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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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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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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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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Bill Maher, Michael Moore Defend Tony Bennett for Saying That U.S. Foreign Policy Helped Cause 9/11
By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at September 24, 2011, 7:44 am
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
2) Radioactivity in Japan Rice Raises Worries
By HIROKO TABUCHI
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/world/asia/japan-testing-rice-for-radiation.html?hp
3) Cuban Minister Leaves a Door Open to American's Release
"The State Department, too, prefers no link between Mr. Gross and the Cuban Five. William Ostick, a spokesman, said the case of the Cuban Five and Mr. Gross 'are not comparable.'" [There's a big difference--the Cuban Five were trying to STOP terrorism against Cuba; Alan Gross, the State Department contractor serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba, was a spy who distributed satellite equipment under an American program designed to attack the Cuban government. The Cuban Five are not guilty of any wrongdoing--they stopped a terrorist attack in the making. Alan Gross was committing a U.S. sponsored international crime of espionage against another government....bw]
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/americas/cuban-minister-leaves-a-door-open-to-americans-release.html?ref=world
4) Turkey: U.S. to Supply Drones
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/europe/turkey-us-to-supply-drones.html?ref=world
5) California: Muslim Students Guilty
By JENNIFER MEDINA
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/us/california-muslim-students-guilty.html?ref=us
6) Police Memo on Marijuana Warns Against Some Arrests
"Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College who has researched the issue, said public defenders and legal aid lawyers who have defended thousands of these cases estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths of people arrested on charges of possession of small amounts of marijuana displayed it at an officer's request. 'The police stop them, search them and tell them to empty their pockets,' Professor Levine said. 'They don't know the law doesn't allow that.' According to Professor Levine, on average over the past 15 years, 54 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City were black, 33 percent were Latino and 12 percent were white. National studies tend to show that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks and Latinos."
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/nyregion/minor-marijuana-possession-charges-require-public-view.html?ref=nyregion
7) Borough President Seeks Limits on Stop-and-Frisk
By KATE TAYLOR
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/nyregion/scott-stringer-manhattan-leader-criticizes-stop-and-frisk.html?ref=nyregion
8) A Tryout Program for the Unemployed
[Work for free for eight weeks while collecting YOUR unemployment insurance money and maybe you'll get hired! That's the "tryout program!" Unbelievable! And only 18 percent of those who completed the program have been hired!!!! Who's making out with this program?????? ....bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/business/economy/georgia-jobs-program-draws-federal-attention.html?ref=business
9) Police Recordings Key Part of Calif. Beating Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/24/business/AP-US-Police-Homeless-Death.html?src=busln
10) In Arizona, Complaints That an Accent Can Hinder a Teacher's Career
By MARC LACEY
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/in-arizona-complaints-that-an-accent-can-hinder-a-teachers-career.html?ref=us
11) After Decades in Prison, Cleared of Rape but Lacking Full Exoneration
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/man-cleared-of-rapes-but-a-court-balks-at-full-exoneration.html?ref=us
12) I Ordered Death in Georgia
The state's former DOC commissioner on 'rehearsed murder.'
By Allen Ault, The Daily Beast
September 25, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/7580-focus-i-ordered-death-in-georgia
13) Euro Zone Death Trip
By PAUL KRUGMAN
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/opinion/euro-zone-death-trip.html?hp
14) An Indefensible Punishment
New York Times Editorial
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/opinion/an-indefensible-punishment.html?hp
15) Slump Alters Jobless Map in U.S., With South Hit Hard
By MICHAEL COOPER
September 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/unrelenting-downturn-is-redrawing-americas-economic-map.html?hp
16) Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors
"After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation. Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor's response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year. Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more."
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?hp
16) Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors
"After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation. Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor's response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year. Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more."
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?hp
17) Public Said to Be Misled on Use of the Patriot Act
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
September 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/us/politics/justice-dept-is-accused-of-misleading-public-on-patriot-act.html
18) WikiLeaks' Founder, in a Gilded British Cage
By DAVID CARR
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/business/media/julian-assange-in-a-gilded-british-cage.html?ref=world
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1) Bill Maher, Michael Moore Defend Tony Bennett for Saying That U.S. Foreign Policy Helped Cause 9/11
By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at September 24, 2011, 7:44 am
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
On last night's Real Time, Bill Maher brought up the controversial statements made recently by jazz singer Tony Bennett. Speaking about 9/11 and American militarism on the Howard Stern Show, Bennett (a WWII veteran and a pacifist) said, "But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don't make a right. They flew the plane in, but we caused it....Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop." Facing a backlash, Bennett quickly apologized for his remarks on his Facebook page.
When one of Maher's guests, CNN contributor John Avlon, said he was offended by Bennett's remarks, Maher and guest Michael Moore (two people who know a thing or two about being dragged through the mud for 9/11-related remarks) both disagreed. "I think it's a brave thing to say," Moore said of Bennett's comments. "If you have a pit bull in your neighbor's back yard, and you go over there and keep kicking that pit bull, and then the pit bull bites you, you don't say, 'Hey, I don't know why that pit bull bit me!' It's 'cause you've been kicking the dog!"
Watch that, plus some disagreements about whether the United States is an empire, here (via Mediaite):
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
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2) Radioactivity in Japan Rice Raises Worries
By HIROKO TABUCHI
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/world/asia/japan-testing-rice-for-radiation.html?hp
TOKYO - Government officials on Saturday ordered more tests after detecting elevated levels of radiation in rice crops near the crippled nuclear power plant at Fukushima.
Radioactive substances have already been discovered in beef, milk, spinach and tea leaves, leading to recalls and bans on shipments. But officials have been especially worried about rice, a staple that makes up a significant part of the Japanese diet. Japan grows most of the rice that it consumes.
Preliminary tests on rice from paddies in the city of Nihonmatsu, about 35 miles from the Fukushima plant, showed the crops contained 500 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, prefectural officials said. Under recently adopted Japanese regulations, rice with up to 500 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium is considered safe for consumption. (A becquerel is a frequently used measure of radiation.)
As a result of the latest findings, officials in Fukushima have ordered further checks on rice from the area, and they may ban shipments if similarly high levels of radiation are found again, prefectural officials told reporters.
Rice from more than 400 locations in Fukushima Prefecture has been tested, and the highest level of radioactive cesium previously detected was less than 150 becquerels per kilogram. Some experts have criticized the Japanese government for not doing enough to keep dangerous radioactive substances out of the food supply, threatening the health especially of children and pregnant women, who are thought to be more sensitive to radiation.
In July, agriculture officials said that beef from cattle in Fukushima tainted with radioactive cesium had reached stores, setting off a public uproar. The government temporarily banned beef shipments from the region and promised to step up safety checks. That ban was lifted the following month after more extensive testing was mandated.
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3) Cuban Minister Leaves a Door Open to American's Release
"The State Department, too, prefers no link between Mr. Gross and the Cuban Five. William Ostick, a spokesman, said the case of the Cuban Five and Mr. Gross 'are not comparable.'" [There's a big difference--the Cuban Five were trying to STOP terrorism against Cuba; Alan Gross, the State Department contractor serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba, was a spy who distributed satellite equipment under an American program designed to attack the Cuban government. The Cuban Five are not guilty of any wrongdoing--they stopped a terrorist attack in the making. Alan Gross was committing a U.S. sponsored international crime of espionage against another government....bw]
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/americas/cuban-minister-leaves-a-door-open-to-americans-release.html?ref=world
FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
September 23, 2011
A week after an effort to gain the release of an American jailed in Cuba ended in recriminations, the Cuban foreign minister said Friday that the door remained open to free him on humanitarian grounds, but only with a reciprocal effort from the United States.
In an interview with editors and reporters at The New York Times, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said his country was still seeking closer ties with the United States, suggesting that the two sides start with subjects on which they should be able to find common ground most easily - fighting drug trafficking, terrorism and threats to the environment, to name a few.
"It's in the best interest of the U.S. and Cuba to move ahead on the normalization of bilateral relations," Mr. Rodríguez said.
One of the more contentious issues roiling relations right now is the dispute over Alan Gross, a State Department contractor serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for distributing satellite equipment under an American program aimed at weakening the Cuban government.
Last week, Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico and American diplomat, questioned whether Cuba really wanted warmer relations with the United States as he bitterly left Cuba without Mr. Gross or even a chance to visit him.
But Mr. Rodríguez, without being explicit, suggested that Cuba and the United States could find mutual humanitarian gestures to end the stalemate.
"I do not see any way in which we can move on towards a solution of the Mr. Gross case but from a humanitarian point of view and on the basis of reciprocity," he said.
Mr. Rodríguez declined to say what he had discussed with Mr. Richardson, but he said that all topics between the two nations remained open to discussion, including the return of one or all of the Cuban Five, men serving prison sentences in the United States on espionage charges.
"I can tell you the agenda submitted to the U.S. government - and I reiterate here it is still on the table - included the topic of the Cuban Five, although we understand that as it is an element related to justice, it is also of a humanitarian character."
He said President Obama could pardon them "as a humanitarian act, which would be appreciated by their mothers, wives and the entire Cuban people."
Still, Mr. Rodríguez later said he was not linking the Gross case to the Cuban Five, and he took pains to keep the Gross affair separated from the five decades of hostility and diplomatic tit-for-tat that has defined Cuban and United States relations.
"I believe that establishing a link between pending bilateral issues to a humanitarian solution in the case of Mr. Gross is a mistake," he said, later adding, "it is not right to merge this with political issues or add it to the bilateral agenda, which is quite hefty already."
The State Department, too, prefers no link between Mr. Gross and the Cuban Five. William Ostick, a spokesman, said the case of the Cuban Five and Mr. Gross "are not comparable."
"We will continue to use every available diplomatic channel to press for his immediate and unconditional release," he said.
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4) Turkey: U.S. to Supply Drones
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/europe/turkey-us-to-supply-drones.html?ref=world
The United States has agreed "in principle" to deploy Predator drones on Turkish soil, the Turkish prime minister said Friday. Turkey has offered to buy or lease the drones, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. The United States currently shares drone surveillance data from northern Iraq with Turkey to aid its fight against Kurdish rebels who have bases in Iraq.
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5) California: Muslim Students Guilty
By JENNIFER MEDINA
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/us/california-muslim-students-guilty.html?ref=us
A jury in Orange County found a group of 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors for conspiring to interrupt a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at the University of California, Irvine. Prosecutors argued that the ambassador, Michael Oren, had been silenced after several students interrupted with coordinated shouts of protest. The defense lawyers for the group of Muslim students said that they had simply engaged in a typical form of protest and were being unfairly singled out by the district attorney. The judge ruled that the students would have to serve 56 hours of community service and up to three years of probation.
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6) Police Memo on Marijuana Warns Against Some Arrests
"Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College who has researched the issue, said public defenders and legal aid lawyers who have defended thousands of these cases estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths of people arrested on charges of possession of small amounts of marijuana displayed it at an officer's request. 'The police stop them, search them and tell them to empty their pockets,' Professor Levine said. 'They don't know the law doesn't allow that.' According to Professor Levine, on average over the past 15 years, 54 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City were black, 33 percent were Latino and 12 percent were white. National studies tend to show that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks and Latinos."
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/nyregion/minor-marijuana-possession-charges-require-public-view.html?ref=nyregion
Amid criticism about the way New York City police officers enforce marijuana laws, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued a memo to commanders this week reiterating that officers are not to arrest people who have small amounts of marijuana in their possession unless it is in public view.
The New York Legislature decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in the 1970s, making possession of 25 grams or less a violation of the law that in most cases would not bring a jail sentence. But possessing even small amounts of marijuana in public view remains a misdemeanor.
Just over 50,000 people were arrested on marijuana possession charges last year, a vast majority of them members of minorities and male. Critics say that as part of the Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy, officers routinely tell suspects to empty their pockets and then, if marijuana is displayed, arrest them for having the drugs in public view, thereby pushing thousands of people toward criminality and into criminal justice system.
Critics said the commissioner's memo, reported on Friday by WNYC, represented a major change of policy. "This will make a tremendous difference because tens of thousands of young people - predominately young people of color - will not be run through the system as criminals," said Steven Banks, the attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society, which has handled thousands of the cases.
Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group that has been challenging the Police Department's marijuana-arrest policies, said the order was directing a significant change in the way the police deal with people they arrest for small amounts of marijuana.
Mr. Nadelmann said that there was evidence of "gross racial disparity" in the enforcement of the marijuana laws and that "this appears to represent a major step forward."
Although the memo begins, "Questions have been raised about the processing of certain marihuana arrests," a spokesman for the Police Department said that the order was not in response to any particular incident and that it did not represent any change in policy. It was intended merely to remind officers of existing procedures, he said.
The memo says, "A crime will not be charged to an individual who is requested or compelled to engage in the behavior that results in the public display of marihuana." The act of displaying it, the order continues, must be "actively undertaken of the subject's own volition."
Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the number of low-level marijuana arrests has increased significantly. Mr. Bloomberg's office declined to comment on Mr. Kelly's order, but in the past, mayoral aides have said such arrests helped fight more serious crime, like the violence that tends to trail drugs.
Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College who has researched the issue, said public defenders and legal aid lawyers who have defended thousands of these cases estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths of people arrested on charges of possession of small amounts of marijuana displayed it at an officer's request.
"The police stop them, search them and tell them to empty their pockets," Professor Levine said. "They don't know the law doesn't allow that."
According to Professor Levine, on average over the past 15 years, 54 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City were black, 33 percent were Latino and 12 percent were white. National studies tend to show that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than blacks and Latinos.
In a March appearance before the City Council, Mr. Kelly reiterated the Bloomberg administration's position that arrests for having marijuana in public view have helped keep crime low.
In response to council members who were skeptical of the policy, he said, "If you think the law is not written correctly, then you should petition the State Legislature to change it."
Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn, and Mark Grisanti, a Republican senator from Buffalo, have since sponsored a bill that would downgrade open possession of small amounts of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a violation.
City Hall is opposed to changing the law.
In June, Frank Barry, a mayoral aide, said downgrading the offense would "encourage smoking in the streets and in our parks, reversing successful efforts to clean up neighborhoods and eliminate the open-air drug markets like we used to find in Washington Square Park."
William Glaberson, Rob Harris and Kate Taylor contributed reporting.
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7) Borough President Seeks Limits on Stop-and-Frisk
By KATE TAYLOR
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/nyregion/scott-stringer-manhattan-leader-criticizes-stop-and-frisk.html?ref=nyregion
The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, arguing that Police Department practices are creating a "wall of distrust" between officers and minorities, plans to call this weekend for a major re-examination of the department's stop-and-frisk policy.
Mr. Stringer plans to argue at a symposium that the spiraling use of the practice - stopping and searching people who officers believe may be armed and dangerous - is disproportionately directed at blacks and Latinos, constituting harassment and making those demographic groups less likely to assist the police in investigations. There were about 600,000 stop-and-frisk encounters in New York City last year.
"We cannot wait a minute longer to have an honest examination of stop-and-frisk and the collateral damage it inflicts on our city every day," Mr. Stringer says in his prepared remarks, a copy of which his office provided to The New York Times.
The speech will be the latest of several recent instances in which Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, has been critical of the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Mr. Stringer is a likely candidate for mayor in 2013, and he and other prospective candidates have been seeking ways to differentiate themselves from one another and from Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, as they jockey for attention and money.
In an interview, Mr. Stringer said his decision to take a stand on the stop-and-frisk issue should not be viewed through the lens of politics. But he also laid out his record of what he described as constructive criticism of the administration.
"I have not been afraid to step up and disagree when I think they were wrong," he said.
Mr. Stringer had criticized Mr. Bloomberg for appointing Cathleen P. Black as schools chancellor and for choosing not to disclose that Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith had been arrested after an altercation with his wife. Ms. Black and Mr. Goldsmith both resigned.
But Mr. Stringer also said he had supported the mayor's plan to make the city more environmentally sustainable and had collaborated with him on land use and other issues. "So I feel very comfortable positioning myself in a way that is not as a negative force, but as somebody who can offer a different view," he said.
He added, "When I'm able to put forth a substantive reform agenda, more times than not the administration eventually sees it my way."
In Mr. Stringer's prepared remarks, which he plans to deliver Saturday at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights as part of a symposium on prison issues, he calls on Mr. Bloomberg and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, to create an expert panel to explore ways to reduce the use of stop-and-frisk practices and to develop new training standards "that achieve the right balance between policing and civil rights."
Mr. Stringer proposes several changes, including establishing "clear behavioral triggers" to justify a stop-and-frisk; currently, he said, the police often cite "furtive movement" as their only justification. Mr. Stringer suggests trying alternate policing techniques, which he said have been used successfully in other cities. He cited a Boston program called Operation Ceasefire, which sought to deter gang violence.
Asked about Mr. Stringer's speech, the Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, defended the stop-and-frisk practice.
"Stops save lives, especially in communities disproportionately affected by crime, and especially among young men of color who last year represented 90 percent of murder victims and 96 percent of shooting victims in New York City," Mr. Browne said in an e-mail.
A spokesman for the mayor, Marc LaVorgna, disputed Mr. Stringer's suggestion that the practice was an "ineffective policy" that made it harder to fight crime.
"The facts tell a different story - crime has been driven down to historic lows by the N.Y.P.D., in part due to this policy," Mr. LaVorgna said by e-mail. "We'll continue to take our cues on crime-fighting from Ray Kelly, not career politicians like the Manhattan borough president."
Last year, about 85 percent of people stopped by the police were black or Latino, although those groups make up only slightly more than half of the city's population.
Criticism of the practice has grown recently. Early this month, a black city councilman and a city aide were arrested while walking in a restricted area along the route of the West Indian Labor Day parade in Brooklyn, in what the arrested men have alleged was a case of racial profiling. The episode prompted several city officials, including Mr. Stringer, to argue that the increasing use of the stop-and-frisk practice had contributed to a culture of racial bias in policing.
The practice is also the subject of a legal challenge brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Last month, a federal judge rejected the city's effort to have the case dismissed.
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8) A Tryout Program for the Unemployed
[Work for free for eight weeks while collecting YOUR unemployment insurance money and maybe you'll get hired! That's the "tryout program!" Unbelievable! And only 18 percent of those who completed the program have been hired!!!! Who's making out with this program?????? Eight free weeks of labor for the bosses! Eight free weeks of labor for the bosses! ....bw]
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/business/economy/georgia-jobs-program-draws-federal-attention.html?ref=business
ATLANTA - Desperate to find a way to get the nation's long-term unemployed back to work, President Obama and Republican leaders are supporting the expansion of a novel jobs program in Georgia to any other state that wants it.
Whether the program can be replicated on a scale big enough to make a dent in the unemployment rate, though, is far from clear.
Since the recession began, the Georgia program has been held up as a national example, and a close look shows that it has pleased employers and produced steady paychecks for workers. But economists say there is little evidence that participants find work faster. And a lack of promotion, limited oversight and budget constraints have limited the program, Georgia Works, to a tiny portion of the state's nearly half a million unemployed workers. Only about 120 people have been hired because of it this year.
That such a blip of success has been hailed as a central plank of the president's jobs plan, and one of the few with consistent bipartisan support, shows just how few viable solutions have emerged for perhaps the nation's most intractable problem - how to get 14 million unemployed people working again.
Already replicated by several other states, the Georgia initiative does not create jobs but allows workers to try out an existing position, unpaid, while continuing to receive unemployment benefits. At the end of eight weeks, the employer may take the worker on permanently. The program is voluntary, and participants may not work more than 24 hours a week.
Since the program began in 2003, only 18 percent of those who completed the training have been hired by the employer that trained them, according to data released this week by the state labor department. More recently, job placement has declined to about 10 percent. New Hampshire, North Carolina and Missouri report far better results from their programs, though they are still quite small. The Obama administration estimates that if every state opted in, the program would cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Supporters of the effort say that hirings are not the only measure of success. The program keeps the unemployed tethered to a workplace environment. It can provide training - under federal labor laws that forbid unpaid labor, it is required to, though the state labor department's literature refers to it as a "free trial" for employers.
Still, the program has given Lis Cap, 26, who lost her job as a graphic designer in August, the chance to acquire a valuable skill: writing code for smartphone apps. On a recent morning, she sat at a laptop in the dining room that serves as headquarters for a small technology company called AppedOn. From an iPad screen, an AppedOn programmer based in Asheville, N.C., coached her.
"It's a great opportunity for me to learn all I can about this area that I was interested in but had no solid experience in," said Ms. Cap, who taught herself to build Web sites but needed help when it came to apps. "Without this, this would not be a job that I could apply for."
It also might not be a job that AppedOn could fill, said Sosh Howell, the chief executive. App writers are in short supply, even at salaries of $40,000 to $50,000 a year. "It's so hard to find people," he said, "that our options come down to training someone, which is something we can't afford as a small business, or outsourcing to another country, which is not our preferred method."
At the end of eight weeks, Mr. Howell will either hire Ms. Cap, or she will walk away with what she considers valuable training that she could not have gained any other way.
At Georgia State University, however, the story is different. Georgia State has hired 37 workers through the program, out of 54 who have begun trial periods. But the overseers of the program there acknowledged that for many, the program was more valuable as a foot in the door than as a learning experience. One auditioner was so proficient at Microsoft Access that she showed her prospective bosses how to improve their system. She was hired.
Another employee, Belinda Robinson, said she had repeatedly sent her résumé to Georgia State but heard nothing until she volunteered for Georgia Works, thinking, "I just need to meet someone who's in a position of power so I can sell myself."
Unions and labor advocates like the National Employment Law Project have criticized the program as free labor for employers rather than training. The White House has tried to neutralize that complaint by ensuring that under its proposal, called Bridge to Work, the worker would receive the equivalent of minimum wage. States may apply for money to bolster unemployment benefits and to provide stipends for travel and child care, which would come out of a $4 billion federal fund meant to cover that and other re-employment programs in the jobs bill.
But Ross Eisenbrey, the vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, faulted the program for not requiring any investment from employers. "It doesn't take much to create a situation where employers' expectations about what they have to pay really diminish and employee expectations about what their employers should give them just go into the toilet," Mr. Eisenbrey said.
The White House proposal tweaks the program to focus on the long-term unemployed by restricting it to those who have been receiving benefits for more than 26 weeks, and seeks to curtail abuse by barring employers who use it repeatedly without making hires.
Timothy J. Bartik, the senior economist at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said that he saw no problem with trying out programs like Georgia Works, but that wage subsidies would have a greater impact, even if they were more expensive. "As far as I can see, there's nothing in this that creates jobs," he said. "It's mainly reshuffling jobs among the folks that are unemployed."
The Georgia Works program began in 2003 as part of a multipronged attempt to modernize an unemployment system that was still heavily geared toward jobs in manufacturing, said Michael L. Thurmond, the Democrat who was the state's labor commissioner at the time. It was meant to allow workers with outdated skills to try new fields without jeopardizing their unemployment check.
When the recession hit, the program's goals shifted. "At first it was helping job seekers who had multiple barriers to employment," Mr. Thurmond said. "Now the focus has shifted to incentivizing hiring by employers in the private sector."
In 2009, Republican leaders including John A. Boehner and Eric Cantor put the program in a "no-cost jobs plan" they submitted to President Obama.
But the program was not cost-free. Mr. Thurmond gradually expanded eligibility until, last year, it opened up to unemployed people no longer receiving benefits. At the same time, he increased the stipend from $300 over eight weeks to $600 over six weeks. The program swelled, and stipend costs rose from $500,000 a month to more than $2 million. Still, Mr. Thurmond said, the costs were offset by savings to the unemployment trust fund and to employers, whose savings he estimates at $4,600 for each trainee hired.
Mr. Thurmond ran unsuccessfully for a United States Senate seat. His successor, Mark Butler, a Republican, said the program was unaffordable and rolled back eligibility and the stipend. Enrollment fell to fewer than two dozen new participants a month.
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9) Police Recordings Key Part of Calif. Beating Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/24/business/AP-US-Police-Homeless-Death.html?src=busln
LOS ANGELES (AP) - As Fullerton police Officer Manuel Ramos approached a homeless man at a bus stop in July, he did what members of his department have been doing for a decade. He clicked on an audio recorder normally used to capture witness statements and exonerate officers accused of misconduct.
But prosecutors say the recorder captured something entirely different: the officer murdering a defenseless man suffering from schizophrenia.
Police agencies across the country are increasingly using audio and video devices to collect evidence, and they played a crucial role in prosecutors bringing murder charges this week against Ramos and an involuntary manslaughter count against a colleague, Cpl. Jay Cicinelli.
The violent encounter with Kelly Thomas was captured on surveillance video, but prosecutors say it was only when they paired the images with police audio that they understood what they were seeing. They said Thomas was pummeled, shocked with a Taser, beaten with a stun gun and taunted by Ramos as he stood over the victim and declared: "Now see my fists? They are getting ready to F you up."
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas called that statement - and the fact it was recorded - a turning point.
"This encounter had changed from a fairly routine police detention into an impending beating at the hands of an angry police officer," Rackauckas said. "Ramos instilled in the victim a reasonable fear that his life was in danger."
Fullerton uses a device sold by Riverside-based Versatile Information Products Inc., which contracts with electronics-maker Olympus to customize standard digital voice recorders.
At the end of each shift, officers transfer files onto a server that backs them up as long as needed. The devices, used by hundreds of police agencies, do not let officers edit files, and they show if anything has been deleted.
Device salesman Stephen Gaskins said the units cost about $300 a piece, with the software to back up the files available separately.
"Expensive, but not as daunting as what lawsuits cost," Gaskins said, referring to the frequency the devices provide evidence to exonerate officers wrongly accused of misconduct.
About 700 other police departments across the country have gone a step further, equipping officers with tiny body cameras to record interactions.
In Oakland, where the department is under federal supervision following a case where four officers were caught planting drugs on suspects, police supervisors view the cameras as a useful extra check on officers.
The Los Angeles Police Department is spending $20 million to install video and audio systems in its squad cars. Officers will be wirelessly miked and a computer starts recording every time the emergency lights are activated.
Even before Fullerton police started using audio recorders, the department employed dashboard video cameras and microphones, but these proved unreliable, Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said. Recorders are now standard issue and officers are taught to switch them on every time they interact with a member of the public.
"In just about every investigation that goes to court, one of the common requests is that (prosecutors) want the (audio)," Goodrich said.
In Los Angeles, after some initial concerns private conversations between officers would be recorded, the police officer's union has embraced the technology.
"In the vast majority of cases, the public is going to see the police officers being very restrained and very professional, and that's a positive," Los Angeles Police Protective League president Paul Weber said.
Another piece of high-tech evidence came from Cicinelli's Taser. By downloading information on the weapon, investigators determined he used it three times in "drive stun" mode, pushing the device directly into Thomas. Then he used it a fourth time, firing darts from weapon and shocking Thomas for about 12 seconds.
Cicinelli then allegedly smashed Thomas about the face with the Taser. Cicinelli's attorney Bill Hadden said he had not received any discovery in the case but claimed prosecutors had gotten a lot of facts wrong. He said he would be making a fuller response in the coming weeks.
Ramos's attorney, John Barnett, has disputed prosecutors' account of the confrontation with Thomas. He says when his client made the threat about his fists, he was using a subtle type of force to get a suspect to comply. Ramos was responding to a transit hub in the suburban college town after someone reported seeing a homeless man breaking into cars.
In all, six officers were at the scene but the other four were not expected to be charged. Cicinelli's device and that of one other officer were not activated, though police say it's not unusual for an officer to forget to switch on the mechanism if they are responding to an unfolding emergency.
Thomas Watkins can be reached at http://twitter.com/thomaswatkins
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10) In Arizona, Complaints That an Accent Can Hinder a Teacher's Career
By MARC LACEY
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/in-arizona-complaints-that-an-accent-can-hinder-a-teachers-career.html?ref=us
PHOENIX - When Guadalupe V. Aguayo puts her hand to her heart, faces the American flag in the corner of her classroom and leads her second-graders in the Pledge of Allegiance, she says some of the words - like allegiance, republic and indivisible - with a noticeable accent.
When she tells her mostly Latino students to finish their breakfasts, quiet down, pull out their homework or capitalize the first letter in a sentence, the same accent can be heard.
Ms. Aguayo is a veteran teacher in the Creighton Elementary School District in central Phoenix as well an immigrant from northern Mexico who learned English as an adult and taught it as a second language. Confronted about her accent by her school principal several years ago, Ms. Aguayo took a college acting class, saw a speech pathologist and consulted with an accent reduction specialist, none of which transformed her speech.
As Ms. Aguayo has struggled, though, something else has changed. Arizona, after almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers' articulation, recently made a sharp about-face on the issue. A federal investigation of possible civil rights violations prompted the state to call off its accent police.
"To my knowledge, we have not seen policies like this in other states," Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant federal secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview. She called it "good news" that Arizona had altered its policy.
Silverio Garcia Jr., who runs a barebones organization called the Civil Rights Center out of his Phoenix-area home to challenge discrimination, was the one who pressed the accent issue. In May 2010, he filed a class-action complaint with the federal Department of Education alleging that teachers had been unfairly transferred and students denied educations with those teachers. The Justice Department joined the inquiry, but federal investigators closed Mr. Garcia's complaint in late August after the state agreed to alter its policies.
"This was one culture telling another culture that you're not speaking correctly," Mr. Garcia said.
The state says its teacher reviews were in line with the decade-old federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires that only instructors fluent in English teach students who are learning English. State education officials say that accents were never the focus of their monitoring.
"It was a repeated pattern of misuse of the language or mispronunciation of the language that we were looking for," said Andrew LeFevre, a spokesman for the State Department of Education. "It's critically important that teachers act as models when it comes to language."
But the federal review found that the state had written up teachers for pronouncing "the" as "da," "another" as "anuder" and "lives here" as "leeves here."
The teachers who were found to have strong accents were not fired, but their school districts were required to work with them to improve their speech. That was the case even when the local school officials had already assessed the teachers as fluent in English.
"It's a form of discrimination," said Araceli Martínez-Olguín, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center in San Francisco, who is representing Ms. Aguayo in a discrimination complaint. "People hear an accent and think it means something."
John Huppenthal, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction, has sent mixed signals about the state's position on accents. In a recent article in The Arizona Republic, he said he would seek authority from the Legislature to allow state monitoring of teachers' fluency in English.
But Mr. Huppenthal's spokesman, Mr. LeFevre, said last week that Mr. Huppenthal made that comment before he had all the information on the matter and that he had no plans to pursue the issue with lawmakers in the next legislative session.
In the Creighton Elementary School District, where about a dozen teachers attracted the attention of the state monitors, an accent reduction specialist, Andy Krieger, was brought in from Canada last year.
Mr. Krieger, who has taught actors, business executives and others from around the world to speak American English, said some of the teachers had what he considered heavy accents.
"I don't think there was one who didn't need the help," he said. "If 10 is really bad, some were 7 or 8, and some were probably 10s."
Of the several dozen who took his class, he said, five or six made striking progress. But only one teacher, he said, took advantage of his offer to follow up later over Skype.
"Many of these teachers are fine teachers and have other great qualities," said Susan Lugo, the director of human resources at the Creighton district, where 95 percent of the students are members of minority groups and about a third of the students speak languages other than English.
Ms. Lugo declined to comment on Ms. Aguayo's case.
It was Ms. Aguayo's principal and not the state monitors who first questioned her accent and suggested that she join Mr. Krieger's class, Ms. Aguayo said. Because she was told that state policy forbade her to teach students who were learning English, she has filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
"I have the same credentials as everyone else, and I don't think it's fair that I'm being singled out," Ms. Aguayo said, adding that her school has teachers with a variety of regional American accents. "I know I have an accent. It's been hard to get rid of it. I think I'll always have it."
Arizonans approved a ballot measure in 2000 limiting classroom instruction to English. Before that, the state had hired hundreds of teachers from Latin America to teach Spanish-speaking children in their native language.
When it comes to the question of accents, there is no unanimity.
"Kids should be focusing on the material, not on trying to translate what the professor is saying," said Bryan Miller, an Arizona State student who went to high school in Tucson.
"If a child is learning, they're productive and they're getting a good grasp with a teacher with a heavy accent, then why would it matter?" countered Kimberly Lujan, an accountant from Peoria, a Phoenix suburb.
With Arizona's population of Spanish-speaking students surging, state education officials have pushed a variety of policies that have attracted the attention of federal civil rights officials.
The state's method for deciding which students qualify for special English instruction, its separating of students learning English from other students and its test for determining whether students have reached competency have all been investigated over the past year by the federal Department of Education.
As it did with the accent issue, the state agreed to alter its procedures for deciding who needs specialized English instruction. The change could entitle more than 10,000 additional children to specialized English instruction, federal officials say.
The state's system for teaching limited-English students is also being scrutinized, with federal investigators reviewing how the state separates those who are new to English for four hours each day. Critics like Mr. Garcia argue that such students will never catch up with their peers and are being denied the opportunity to learn the language from English-speaking classmates.
"We are really in the middle of investigating that," said Ms. Ali, of the federal Education Department.
Salvador Rodriguez contributed reporting.
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11) After Decades in Prison, Cleared of Rape but Lacking Full Exoneration
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
September 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/man-cleared-of-rapes-but-a-court-balks-at-full-exoneration.html?ref=us
RICHMOND, Va. - One Sunday morning in February 1984, Thomas Haynesworth's mother sent him to the Trio supermarket to pick up some bread and sweet potatoes.
He never got there. Instead, he was stopped and questioned in connection with a recent rape. That began a 27-year odyssey through false accusation, arrest, prison and pain.
Mr. Haynesworth, then 18 and never in trouble with the law, had been mistakenly identified by the victim as her assailant. He was arrested on suspicion of having committed five rapes and assaults in his neighborhood, and was tried for four of them. He was convicted in three and sentenced to 84 years in prison.
DNA has since proved that he did not commit two of the rapes he was tried for. The DNA from those two cases pointed to another man, in prison for having committed multiple rapes in the same neighborhood that occurred after Mr. Haynesworth's arrest. That man, Leon Davis, who identified himself to victims as "the Black Ninja," is serving multiple life terms plus 100 years.
Now Mr. Haynesworth, 46, is asking for full exoneration on all of the rape convictions, although DNA from the other two cases is not available. But the circumstantial evidence supporting Mr. Haynesworth's claims of innocence is so powerful that along with his own lawyers, the prosecutors from both jurisdictions where the rapes occurred support his efforts, as well as the attorney general for the commonwealth, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli.
With no one arguing against exoneration, most judges would be expected to congratulate Mr. Haynesworth on his new life, perhaps with an apology as well, and send him into daylight and freedom. But in July, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Virginia said, in essence, "Not so fast." The court called for additional briefs in the case, which will be heard again on Tuesday by all of the judges of the court.
It is a move that has left legal experts astonished. "It's very rare for a court to set a case for argument when all the parties are agreed," said Stephen J. Schulhofer, an expert in criminal justice at New York University law school, adding that "it's essentially unheard of" for a court to take matters into its own hands, instead of appointing a special advocate to argue on behalf of the interests that they believe are unrepresented.
It is a case, then, that might seem quirky, even unique. But experts like Professor Schulhofer say the case raises broader questions about the lengths that defendants must sometimes go to clear their names, and even raises fundamental questions about the administration of justice. "What I worry about is, if Haynesworth is having trouble getting his conviction set aside, what kind of judicial relief is available to your run-of-the-mill case where your arguments are not quite so slam dunk?"
Mr. Haynesworth's fight for freedom began in 2009, when the state's department of forensic evidence tested the DNA from the first rape as part of a broad review of old case files. The results cleared Mr. Haynesworth of that rape, and he received an exoneration on that charge later that year. Mr. Haynesworth's lawyers at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and the Innocence Project in New York, along with private lawyers, filed legal papers for Mr. Haynesworth with the Court of Appeals of Virginia to get a writ of actual innocence on the remaining convictions. Subsequent testing of the DNA from the trial in which Mr. Haynesworth was acquitted eliminated him - and again implicated Mr. Davis.
Virginia's parole board released Mr. Haynesworth from prison in March, on his 46th birthday. But he is still pressing for exoneration - "to clear my name, you know what I'm saying?" He is classified as a paroled sex offender, and has to appear on public registries of rapists and other sexual miscreants. He has to inform the authorities in order to move from one home to another, and even had to request permission to visit his nieces.
"I'm out, but still not totally free," he said. "It puts a cloud over your life."
Mr. Cuccinelli said in an interview that he and his staff reviewed the evidence in the Haynesworth case in great detail. "It was a complex decision," he said, "but it wasn't a hard decision." The thought of the wrongful conviction haunted him. "It's hard to describe how painful it is to me that somebody would suffer what he has."
He explained that the law that allowed writs of actual innocence was crafted with a very high standard of proof in mind. It places a premium on preserving the finality of the judicial process and attempts to avoid endless appeals. "I would say it's cultural to the state," he said. "You get your shot, you take your shot, and we're not going to muck around with it anymore."
Mr. Cuccinelli has built a reputation as a conservative firebrand and was among the first attorneys general to challenge the Obama administration's health care law in the courts. His libertarian sensibility, he said, leaves him "healthily suspicious of government in all circumstances, including when criminal charges are considered and then levied."
He voted for an earlier version of the law creating the writ of actual innocence when he was a member of the State Senate. So he knows the law well, and said, "This is intended to be a rare award, but not impossible."
The court, however, seems to be trying to interpret the statute more strictly than the legislature intended, and asked in its demand for additional briefs for discussion of whether the exonerating evidence should be "conclusive," a standard suggested in a concurring opinion to an earlier case on the law.
Mr. Cuccinelli argued that raises the standard of proof too high. "If you want conclusive, that's DNA," he said; conclusive proof is virtually impossible with other forms of evidence.
In his brief to the appeals court, Mr. Cuccinelli argued that requiring conclusive evidence was not the standard set by the legislature. The language of the statute calls for the evidence to be sufficiently strong that "no rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." The brief stated, "It is important to resist unconsciously raising well-established evidentiary standards just because sometimes, in some cases, spectacularly accurate and reliable evidence exists."
In a particularly arch footnote, Mr. Cuccinelli's team added that since the state had disposed of the DNA evidence in the other cases, "it seems paradoxical to demand 'conclusive' evidence from Haynesworth when the commonwealth has deprived him of the opportunity to produce such evidence."
Whatever might happen in court on Tuesday, Mr. Haynesworth is out in the world again and said he found it sweet. He has not gone back to that supermarket because "the store burned down." A lot can change in a quarter-century.
And while many of those released from prison have trouble finding work, Mr. Haynesworth quickly found employment in Richmond.
He is working in Mr. Cuccinelli's office.
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12) I Ordered Death in Georgia
The state's former DOC commissioner on 'rehearsed murder.'
By Allen Ault, The Daily Beast
September 25, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/7580-focus-i-ordered-death-in-georgia
I can't always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: they admitted it to me. But now it was 1993 and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.
On execution days, I always drove from Atlanta to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. I knew death row well: 20 years earlier, I had built it. The state had hired me as the warden of Georgia Diagnostic in 1971, where I renovated a special cell block for especially violent offenders. After I left Georgia in 1977, the state reinstated the death penalty and turned the cell block I had developed into death row.
The state executed Stevens first, in June 1993, and then Burger in December. In both instances, I visited them in a cell next to the electric-chair chamber, where they counted down the hours until they died. They were calm, mature, and remorseful. When the time came, I went to a small room directly behind the death chamber where the attorney general worked the phones, checking with the courts to make sure that the executions were not stayed. Then we asked the prisoners for their final words. Stevens said nothing, and Burger apologized, saying, "Please forgive me." I looked to the prison electrician and ordered him to pull the switch. Last Wednesday, as the state of Georgia prepared to execute Troy Davis despite concerns about his guilt, I wrote a letter with five former death-row wardens and directors urging Georgia prison officials to commute his sentence. I feared not only the risk of Georgia killing an innocent man, but also the psychological toll it would exact on the prison workers who performed his execution. "No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt," we wrote in our letter.
The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren't sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.
I didn't grow up saying, "I want to work in prisons." I had never even been in a prison or a jail before I became warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. The commissioner at the time hired me to revamp the system, to implement case management, and work with inmates to make them safer. I had always worked in helping professions, and my main goal in corrections was always to reduce recidivism, so that inmates would leave prison better than they arrived. Over this course of time, the death penalty figured larger and larger into my work. I never supported it, but I also did not want to let it distract me from improving overall prison conditions. Death-row inmates are, after all, only a tiny fraction of the prison population.
When I was required to supervise an execution, I tried to rationalize my work by thinking, if I just save one future victim, maybe it is worth it. But I was very aware of the research showing that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent. I left my job as corrections commissioner in Georgia in 1995 partially because I had had enough: I didn't want to supervise the executions anymore. My focus changed to national crime policy and then to academia, where I could work to improve the criminal-justice system without participating in its worst parts. Today, I am the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.
Having witnessed executions firsthand, I have no doubts: capital punishment is a very scripted and rehearsed murder. It's the most premeditated murder possible. As Troy Davis's execution approached - and then passed its set hour, as the Supreme Court considered a stay - I thought of the terrible tension we all experienced as executions dragged into the late hours of the night. No one wanted to go ahead with the execution, but then a court stay offered little relief: you knew you were going to repeat the whole process and execute him sometime in the future.
I will always live with these images - with "nagging doubt," even though I do not believe that any of the executions carried out under my watch were mistaken. I hope that, in the future, men and women will not die for their crimes, and other men and women will not have to kill them. The United States should be like every other civilized country in the Western world and abolish the death penalty.
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13) Euro Zone Death Trip
By PAUL KRUGMAN
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/opinion/euro-zone-death-trip.html?hp
Is it possible to be both terrified and bored? That's how I feel about the negotiations now under way over how to respond to Europe's economic crisis, and I suspect other observers share the sentiment.
On one side, Europe's situation is really, really scary: with countries that account for a third of the euro area's economy now under speculative attack, the single currency's very existence is being threatened - and a euro collapse could inflict vast damage on the world.
On the other side, European policy makers seem set to deliver more of the same. They'll probably find a way to provide more credit to countries in trouble, which may or may not stave off imminent disaster. But they don't seem at all ready to acknowledge a crucial fact - namely, that without more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in Europe's stronger economies, all of their rescue attempts will fail.
The story so far: The introduction of the euro in 1999 led to a vast boom in lending to Europe's peripheral economies, because investors believed (wrongly) that the shared currency made Greek or Spanish debt just as safe as German debt. Contrary to what you often hear, this lending boom wasn't mostly financing profligate government spending - Spain and Ireland actually ran budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis, and had low levels of debt. Instead, the inflows of money mainly fueled huge booms in private spending, especially on housing.
But when the lending boom abruptly ended, the result was both an economic and a fiscal crisis. Savage recessions drove down tax receipts, pushing budgets deep into the red; meanwhile, the cost of bank bailouts led to a sudden increase in public debt. And one result was a collapse of investor confidence in the peripheral nations' bonds.
So now what? Europe's answer has been to demand harsh fiscal austerity, especially sharp cuts in public spending, from troubled debtors, meanwhile providing stopgap financing until private-investor confidence returns. Can this strategy work?
Not for Greece, which actually was fiscally profligate during the good years, and owes more than it can plausibly repay. Probably not for Ireland and Portugal, which for different reasons also have heavy debt burdens. But given a favorable external environment - specifically, a strong overall European economy with moderate inflation - Spain, which even now has relatively low debt, and Italy, which has a high level of debt but surprisingly small deficits, could possibly pull it off.
Unfortunately, European policy makers seem determined to deny those debtors the environment they need.
Think of it this way: private demand in the debtor countries has plunged with the end of the debt-financed boom. Meanwhile, public-sector spending is also being sharply reduced by austerity programs. So where are jobs and growth supposed to come from? The answer has to be exports, mainly to other European countries.
But exports can't boom if creditor countries are also implementing austerity policies, quite possibly pushing Europe as a whole back into recession.
Also, the debtor nations need to cut prices and costs relative to creditor countries like Germany, which wouldn't be too hard if Germany had 3 or 4 percent inflation, allowing the debtors to gain ground simply by having low or zero inflation. But the European Central Bank has a deflationary bias - it made a terrible mistake by raising interest rates in 2008 just as the financial crisis was gathering strength, and showed that it has learned nothing by repeating that mistake this year.
As a result, the market now expects very low inflation in Germany - around 1 percent over the next five years - which implies significant deflation in the debtor nations. This will both deepen their slumps and increase the real burden of their debts, more or less ensuring that all rescue efforts will fail.
And I see no sign at all that European policy elites are ready to rethink their hard-money-and-austerity dogma.
Part of the problem may be that those policy elites have a selective historical memory. They love to talk about the German inflation of the early 1920s - a story that, as it happens, has no bearing on our current situation. Yet they almost never talk about a much more relevant example: the policies of Heinrich Brüning, Germany's chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose insistence on balancing budgets and preserving the gold standard made the Great Depression even worse in Germany than in the rest of Europe - setting the stage for you-know-what.
Now, I don't expect anything that bad to happen in 21st-century Europe. But there is a very wide gap between what the euro needs to survive and what European leaders are willing to do, or even talk about doing. And given that gap, it's hard to find reasons for optimism.
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14) An Indefensible Punishment
New York Times Editorial
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/opinion/an-indefensible-punishment.html?hp
When the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty 35 years ago, it did so provisionally. Since then, it has sought to articulate legal standards for states to follow that would ensure the fair administration of capital punishment and avoid the arbitrariness and discrimination that had led it to strike down all state death penalty statutes in 1972.
As the unconscionable execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last week underscores, the court has failed because it is impossible to succeed at this task. The death penalty is grotesque and immoral and should be repealed.
The court's 1976 framework for administering the death penalty, balancing aggravating factors like the cruelty of the crime against mitigating ones like the defendant's lack of a prior criminal record, came from the American Law Institute, the nonpartisan group of judges, lawyers and law professors. In 2009, after a review of decades of executions, the group concluded that the system could not be fixed and abandoned trying.
Sentencing people to death without taking account of aggravating and mitigating circumstances leads to arbitrary results. Yet, the review found, so does considering such circumstances because it requires jurors to weigh competing factors and makes sentencing vulnerable to their biases.
Those biases are driven by race, class and politics, which influence all aspects of American life. As a result, they have made discrimination and arbitrariness the hallmarks of the death penalty in this country.
For example, two-thirds of all those sentenced to death since 1976 have been in five Southern states where "vigilante values" persist, according to the legal scholar Franklin Zimring. Racism continues to infect the system, as study after study has found in the past three decades.
The problems go on: Many defendants in capital cases are too poor to afford legal counsel. Many of the lawyers assigned to represent them are poorly equipped for the job. A major study done for the Senate Judiciary Committee found that "egregiously incompetent defense lawyering" accounted for about two-fifths of the errors in capital cases. Apart from the issue of counsel, these cases are more expensive at every stage of the criminal process than noncapital cases.
Politics also permeates the death penalty, adding to chances of arbitrary administration. Most prosecutors in jurisdictions with the penalty are elected and control the decision to seek the punishment. Within the same state, differing politics from county to county have led to huge disparities in use of the penalty, when the crime rates and demographics were similar. This has been true in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and many other states.
So far, under this horrifying system, 17 innocent people sentenced to death have been exonerated and released based on DNA evidence, and 112 other people based on other evidence. All but a few developed nations have abolished the death penalty. It is time Americans acknowledged that the death penalty cannot be made to comply with the Constitution and is in every way indefensible.
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15) Slump Alters Jobless Map in U.S., With South Hit Hard
By MICHAEL COOPER
September 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/unrelenting-downturn-is-redrawing-americas-economic-map.html?hp
When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation's economic map.
The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
Several Southern states - including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation - have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.
For decades, the nation's economic landscape consisted of a prospering Sun Belt and a struggling Rust Belt. Since the recession hit, though, that is no longer the case. Unemployment remains high across much of the country - the national rate is 9.1 percent - but the regions have recovered at different speeds.
Now, with the concentration of the highest unemployment rates in the South and the West, some economists and researchers wonder if it is an anomaly of the uneven recovery or a harbinger of things to come.
"Because the recovery is so painfully slow, people may begin to think of the trends established during the recovery as normal," said Howard Wial, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program who recently co-wrote an economic analysis of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas. "Will people think of Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona as more or less permanently depressed? Think of the Great Lakes as being a renaissance region? I don't know. It's possible."
The West has the highest unemployment in the nation. The collapse of the housing bubble left Nevada with the highest jobless rate, 13.4 percent, followed by California with 12.1 percent. Michigan has the third-highest rate, 11.2 percent, as a result of the longstanding woes of the American auto industry.
Now, though, of the states with the 10 highest unemployment rates, six are in the South. The region, which relied heavily on manufacturing and construction, was hit hard by the downturn.
Economists offer a variety of explanations for the South's performance. "For a long time we tended to outpace the national average with regard to economic performance, and a lot of that was driven by, for lack of a better word, development and in-migration," said Michael Chriszt, an assistant vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's research department. "That came to an abrupt halt, and it has not picked up."
The long cycle of "lose jobs, gain jobs, lose jobs" that kept Georgia's unemployment rate at 10.2 percent in August - the same as it was a year earlier - is illustrated by Union City, a small city on the outskirts of Atlanta.
It suffered a blow when the last store in its darkened mall, Sears, announced that it would soon close. But the city had other irons in the fire: a few big companies were hiring, and earlier this year Dendreon, a biotech company that makes a cancer drug, opened a plant there, lured in part by state and local subsidies.
Then, Dendreon announced this month that it would lay off more than 100 workers at the new plant as part of a national "restructuring."
Union City, with a population of 20,000, now calls itself the place "Where Business Meets the World" and has been trying to lure companies by pointing out its low business taxes, various incentive programs and proximity to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Steve Rapson, the city manager, said that the challenge there, as in much of America, has been to get employers to hire again. "It's hard to get your mind around what can you do as a city to encourage future jobs and jobs growth," he said.
The reordering of the nation's economic fortunes can be seen in the Brookings analysis, which found that many auto-producing metropolitan areas in the Great Lakes states are seeing modest gains in manufacturing that are helping them recover from their deep slump, while Sun Belt and Western states with sharp drops in home values are still suffering. The areas that have been hurt the least since the recession, the study said, rely on government, education or energy production. Places that were less buoyed by the housing bubble were less harmed when it burst.
In Pennsylvania, the analysis found, the Pittsburgh area - which is heavily reliant on education and health care - is weathering the downturn better than the Philadelphia area. In New York, areas around long-struggling upstate cities like Buffalo and Rochester are recovering faster by some measures than the New York City metropolitan area. And the rate of recovery in Rust Belt areas around Youngstown and Akron, two Ohio cities that were hit hard, has outpaced that of former boomtowns like Colorado Springs and Tucson.
In a sign of how severe the downturn has been, the Brookings analysis found that only 16 of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas have regained more than half of the jobs they lost during the recession.
The toll on the nation's millions of unemployed people has been harsh, with the Census Bureau reporting that the United States had more people living in poverty last year than in any year since it began keeping records half a century ago.
Joblessness is taking a toll on states, too. This month, 27 states will have to pay $1.2 billion to the federal government in interest on the $37.5 billion that they borrowed in recent years to keep paying unemployment benefits.
What is most striking about the high unemployment rates, several economists said in interviews, is how they continue to afflict wide parts of the country.
"It just seems to be so pervasive across the country - except for the breadbasket area - that it's hard to pick out anybody who is bouncing back," said Randall W. Eberts, the president of the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan.
Dr. Eberts pointed to another feature of the downturn: people are much less likely to leave their jobs voluntarily.
Before the recession, he said, about three million people voluntarily left their jobs each month. Now, around two million people do - leaving fewer openings for job seekers.
So what happened in South Carolina? Richard Kaglic, a regional economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., said the state's lingering troubles reflect what happened when its once-thriving construction and manufacturing industries were hit hard by the recession. Mr. Kaglic, who is also a pilot, used an aviation metaphor to explain what he meant.
"If your nose is high, if you're climbing faster and your engine cuts out, you fall farther and it takes you a longer time to recover," he said. "The conditions we experienced in late 2008, 2009, are as close as you come to an engine-out situation in the economy."
But Mr. Kaglic said that the recent return of manufacturing jobs was giving him hope, and that one reason for the high unemployment rate was that more people were now seeking work.
"I would look at it as our dreams are delayed," he said, "rather than our dreams being denied."
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16) Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors
"After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation. Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor's response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year. Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more."
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?hp
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.
Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court.
"We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors," said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that "in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage."
One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.
Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts.
Cases like Florida v. Shane Guthrie help explain why. After Mr. Guthrie, 24, was arrested here last year, accused of beating his girlfriend and threatening her with a knife, the prosecutor offered him a deal for two years in prison plus probation.
Mr. Guthrie rejected that, and a later offer of five years, because he believed that he was not guilty, his lawyer said. But the prosecutor's response was severe: he filed a more serious charge that would mean life imprisonment if Mr. Guthrie is convicted later this year.
Because of a state law that increased punishments for people who had recently been in prison, like Mr. Guthrie, the sentence would be mandatory. So what he could have resolved for a two-year term could keep him locked up for 50 years or more.
The decrease in trials has also been a consequence of underfinanced public defense lawyers who can try only a handful of their cases, as well as, prosecutors say, the rise of drug courts and other alternative resolutions.
The overloaded court system has also seen comparatively little expansion in many places, making a huge increase in plea bargains a cheap and easy way to handle a near-tripling in felony cases over the past generation.
But many researchers say the most important force in driving down the trial rate has been state and federal legislative overhauls that imposed mandatory sentences and other harsher and more certain penalties for many felonies, especially those involving guns, drugs, violent crimes and repeat offenders.
Stiffer punishments were also put in place for specific crimes, like peddling drugs near a school or wearing a mask in certain circumstances. And legislators added reams of new felony statutes, vastly expanding the range of actions considered illegal.
These tougher penalties, by many accounts, have contributed to the nation's steep drop in crime the past two decades. They have also swelled the prison population to levels that lawmakers in some states say they can no longer afford, and a few have rolled back some laws.
The 'Trial Penalty'
In the courtroom and during plea negotiations, the impact of these stricter laws is exerted through what academics call the "trial penalty." The phrase refers to the fact that the sentences for people who go to trial have grown harsher relative to sentences for those who agree to a plea.
In some jurisdictions, this gap has widened so much it has become coercive and is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial, some legal experts say.
"Legislators want to make it easy for prosecutors to get the conviction without having to go to trial," said Rachel Barkow, a professor of law at New York University who studies how prosecutors use their power. "And prosecutors who are starved for resources want to use that leverage. And so now everyone acts with the assumption that the case should end with a plea."
"When you have that attitude," she said, "you penalize people who have the nerve to go to trial."
Prosecutors say they are giving defendants options and are merely charging them based on what is allowed under the law for those who turn down pleas.
While legal experts say the effect is clear in persuading more defendants to forgo trials, the trial penalty is hard to quantify without examining individual cases and negotiations between prosecutors and defense lawyers.
That is because threats of harsher charges against defendants who reject plea deals often are the most influential factor in the outcome of a case, but this interplay is never reflected in official data.
"How many times is a mandatory sentence used as a chip in order to coerce a plea? They don't keep records," said Senior Judge John L. Kane Jr. of United States District Court in Denver, who believes that prosecutors have grown more powerful than judges. But it is very common, he added. "That's what the public doesn't see, and where the statistics become meaningless."
But one result is obvious, he said: "We hardly have trials anymore."
In 1977, the year Judge Kane was appointed to the bench, the ratio of guilty pleas to criminal trial verdicts in federal district courts was a little more than four to one; by last year, it was almost 32 to one.
Here in Florida, which has greatly toughened sentencing since the 1990s, felony defendants who opt for trial now routinely face the prospect of higher charges that mean prison terms 2, 5, or even 20 times as long as if they had pleaded guilty. In many cases, the process is reversed, and stiffer charges are dismissed in return for a plea.
Before new sentencing laws, the gap was narrower, and trials less risky, veteran lawyers here say. The first thing Denis deVlaming, a prominent Florida criminal defense lawyer, does with a new client is pull out a calculator to tally all the additional punishments the prosecutor can add to figure the likely sentence if the client is convicted at trial.
"They think I'm ready to charge them a fee, but I'm not," he said. "I tell them in Florida, it's justice by mathematics."
No matter how strongly defendants believe they are innocent, he said, they could be taking dangerous risks by, for example, turning down a one-year plea bargain when the prosecutor threatens additional charges that carry a mandatory sentence 10 times as long.
A Power Shift
The transfer of power to prosecutors from judges has been so profound that an important trial ritual has become in some measure a lie, Mr. deVlaming said - the instructions judges read stating that the jury determines guilt or innocence, and the judge a proper sentence. The latter part is no longer true when mandatory minimums and, in many cases, sentencing guidelines apply, but jurors often do not know that.
Legal scholars like Paul Cassell, a conservative former federal judge and prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Utah, describe the power shift as a zero-sum game.
"Judges have lost discretion, and that discretion has accumulated in the hands of prosecutors, who now have the ultimate ability to shape the outcome," Mr. Cassell said. "With mandatory minimums and other sentencing enhancements out there, prosecutors can often dictate the sentence that will be imposed."
Without question, plea bargains benefit many defendants who have committed crimes and receive lighter sentences than they might after trial. It also limits cases that require considerable time and expense in court.
But many defendants who opt for trial effectively face more prison time for rejecting a plea than for committing the alleged crime.
In Mr. Guthrie's case, he was initially charged with aggravated battery on a pregnant woman and false imprisonment. But after he rejected the plea bargains, the prosecutor, more than a year later, filed the more serious charge of first-degree felony kidnapping, based on the girlfriend's accusation that he pulled her by the arm inside her home and, once outside, grabbed her hair and pulled her on her feet the distance of several parking spaces.
Nobody is suggesting that Mr. Guthrie, previously incarcerated for 18 months on gun, assault and drug charges, is a sympathetic figure. According to a police report, he punched and kicked his girlfriend, left her with a bruised and bloody nose and a face that "appeared to be swollen," and threatened to cut her stomach with a knife.
The assistant state attorney handling the case, Frank Slavichak, did not return calls. The chief investigator for the office, Spencer Mann, said Mr. Guthrie's choices dictated the course of the case.
But his lawyer, Craig DeThomasis, hired after the plea rejections, said he was "plainly being punished for exercising his right to trial." According to Mr. Guthrie's mother, Claudia Guthrie, the prosecutor told her son at a hearing this spring that if he did not plead guilty and take a five-year sentence, higher charges would be filed that mean "you're going to get life." Mr. Mann did not dispute that some sort of warning of new charges was presented.
Mr. DeThomasis said that there was no evidence the girlfriend was pregnant, and that she started the altercation by hitting him in the forehead with a pipe, landing him in the jail infirmary for a week. He pointed out that she was arrested in 2009 for attacking Mr. Guthrie after telling the police he had struck her, leading police to say in a report that she had "changed her story several times and could not explain her actions." He also said she had a history of involuntary hospitalizations, which she declined to address in a 110-page sworn deposition in February.
Mr. Mann declined to comment on the girlfriend's background but said none of it affected the credibility of the case.
Judges in many cases can set aside verdicts that they believe are unsupported by the evidence, but they generally have no power in mandatory-minimum cases to reduce punishments below levels established through legislation.
While the Guthrie case may be a particularly stark example of how much power one prosecutor can have over a defendant's fate, many places have given district attorneys similar influence.
"There have been so many laws passed in the various states that just about always there is some enhancement available to the prosecutor that can be used as leverage in negotiations," said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.
Mr. Burns, a former Utah prosecutor, did not dispute that sentencing-law changes had made trial riskier for defendants and helped drive down the percentage of cases taken to a verdict. He also acknowledged that the plea-bargain process "clearly is coercive" when defendants face harsher or more numerous charges for rejecting deals.
But he said plea bargains were also "extremely lenient in many instances because prosecutors are taking several criminal acts off the table." He emphasized that lawmakers time and again have given prosecutors more leverage and said it was "grossly unrealistic" to criticize district attorneys for enforcing laws that they are duty-bound to uphold - even those that are ill-advised.
"There are a lot of criminal laws that are passed that we all kind of roll our eyes at," he said. "Sometimes they are just repetitive; sometimes they are knee-jerk responses to some high-profile case, and therefore politically motivated."
Though national statistics are not readily available, the trend toward lower trial rates is evident in a number of places.
The National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., found that the percentage of felonies taken to trial in nine states with available data fell to 2.3 percent in 2009, from 8 percent in 1976.
The number of jury trials rose slightly, while nonjury trials, where a judge decides guilt or innocence, fell sharply - all while caseloads nearly tripled. The states account for more than a third of the American population, and most have mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines or have passed toughened sentencing laws.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics, after studying partial data on state-court felony prosecutions nationwide, found that from 1986 to 2006 the ratio of pleas to trials nearly doubled.
The shift has been clearer in federal district courts. After tougher sentencing laws were enacted in the 1980s, the percentage of criminal cases taken to trial fell to less than 3 percent last year, from almost 15 percent, according to data from the State University at Albany's Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. The explosion of immigration prosecutions, where trials are rare, skews the numbers, but the trend is evident even when those cases are not included.
Nearly nine of every 10 cases ended in pleas last year, the federal data show, while one in 12 were dismissed (the percentage of dismissed cases was substantially higher a generation ago).
The number of acquittals dropped even further. Last year, there was only one acquittal for every 212 guilty pleas or trial convictions in federal district courts. Thirty years ago, the ratio was one for every 22.
More Plea Bargaining
Experts like Ronald Wright, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor of law at Wake Forest University, say they fear that the steep decline in acquittals stems partly from more defendants, who might have winnable cases, deciding not to risk trials and reluctantly accepting plea bargains instead.
Some federal prosecutors worried that their power would be weakened by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that made sentencing guidelines advisory only. But academics say the ruling had much less effect than what some predicted as many judges still largely follow the guidelines, and the ruling did not affect other laws that have given prosecutors more power.
While sentencing changes allowed legislators in this state to take credit for being tough on crime, they have also worked against their goal of trimming prison costs, leaving prosecutors caught in the middle.
"There is a big disconnect," said Bill Cervone, the state attorney in Gainesville and the chief prosecutor in six counties that make up Florida's Eighth Judicial Circuit. "There is subtle and not so subtle pressure" to reduce the numbers sent to prison.
Mr. Cervone, who was head of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, added, "Our position is, 'Please don't pass any new crime laws while you are also cutting our budgets.' " His budget has been cut 20 percent in four years.
The fiscal strains extend to judges, who face pressure to keep dockets moving. Some do not appreciate defendants who refuse pleas and then lose a time-consuming trial, he and other lawyers say.
"There are some judges who will punish you for going to trial," Mr. Cervone said. "Legally, you cannot impose a longer sentence on someone because they exercised their right to trial," he said, speaking of judges. "Factually, there are ways to do it."
In some cases, he added, he wished judges had more discretion, instead of having to automatically impose an inflexible punishment.
So, too, do many judges faced with cases where legislatively mandated penalties do not square with their idea of justice.
Like the one in Polk County, Fla. that began when Orville Wollard said he fired his registered handgun into his living room wall to scare his daughter's boyfriend out of the house after he repeatedly threatened his family.
In Mr. Wollard's view, he was protecting his family and did not try to hurt the boyfriend, who was not hit, though the judge said the bullet missed him by inches. But after Mr. Wollard turned down a plea offer of five years of felony probation, prosecutors won a conviction two years ago for aggravated assault with a firearm. Because the gun was fired, a mandatory-minimum law required a 20-year term.
At his sentencing, Mr. Wollard said he felt as if he were in "some banana republic" and described the boyfriend as a violent drug dealer. But prosecutors said the judge had "no discretion" because of the state law.
Reluctantly, the judge agreed. "If it weren't for the mandatory minimum aspect of this, I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence," he told Mr. Wollard, adding that he was "duty bound" to impose 20 years.
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17) Public Said to Be Misled on Use of the Patriot Act
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
September 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/us/politics/justice-dept-is-accused-of-misleading-public-on-patriot-act.html
WASHINGTON - Two United States senators on Wednesday accused the Justice Department of making misleading statements about the legal justification of secret domestic surveillance activities that the government is apparently carrying out under the Patriot Act.
The lawmakers - Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both of whom are Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee - sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. calling for him to "correct the public record" and to ensure that future department statements about the authority the government believes is conveyed by the surveillance law would not be misleading.
"We believe that the best way to avoid a negative public reaction and an erosion of confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies is to initiate an informed public debate about these authorities today," the two wrote. "However, if the executive branch is unwilling to do that, then it is particularly important for government officials to avoid compounding that problem by making misleading statements."
The Justice Department denied being misleading about the Patriot Act, saying it has acknowledged that a secret, sensitive intelligence program is based on the law and that its statements about the matter have been accurate.
Mr. Wyden and Mr. Udall have for months been raising concerns that the government has secretly interpreted a part of the Patriot Act in a way that they portray as twisted, allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct some kind of unspecified domestic surveillance that they say does not dovetail with a plain reading of the statute.
The dispute has focused on Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It allows a secret national security court to issue an order allowing the F.B.I. to obtain "any tangible things" in connection with a national security investigation. It is sometimes referred to as the "business records" section because public discussion around it has centered on using it to obtain customer information like hotel or credit card records.
But in addition to that kind of collection, the senators contend that the government has also interpreted the provision, based on rulings by the secret national security court, as allowing some other kind of activity that allows the government to obtain private information about people who have no link to a terrorism or espionage case.
Justice Department officials have sought to play down such concerns, saying that both the court and the intelligence committees know about the program. But the two lawmakers contended in their letter that officials have been misleading in their descriptions of the issue to the public.
First, the senators noted that Justice Department officials, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, had described Section 215 orders as allowing the F.B.I. to obtain the same types of records for national security investigations that they could get using a grand jury subpoena for an ordinary criminal investigation. But the two senators said that analogy does not fit with the secret interpretation.
The senators also criticized a recent statement by a department spokesman that "Section 215 is not a secret law, nor has it been implemented under secret legal opinions by the Justice Department." This was "extremely misleading," they said, because there are secret legal opinions controlling how Patriot Act is being interpreted - it's just that they were issued by the national security court.
"In our judgment, when the legal interpretations of public statutes that are kept secret from the American public, the government is effectively relying on secret law," they wrote.
That part of the dispute appeared to turn on semantics. The department said that while the national security court's opinions interpreting the Patriot Act are classified, the law itself is public.
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18) WikiLeaks' Founder, in a Gilded British Cage
By DAVID CARR
September 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/business/media/julian-assange-in-a-gilded-british-cage.html?ref=world
ELLINGHAM, England
The man in the rubber boots and a thick coat to protect against the evening chill walked purposefully about a farm here, scattering pheasants as he went. He could have been an English gentleman out for a bit of hunting, except he carried no gun.
In his current circumstance, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is more hunted than hunter, fighting extradition to Sweden on accusations of sexual misconduct while struggling to maintain the influence of WikiLeaks even as he remains here at Ellingham Hall, the country manor house of Vaughan Smith, a former soldier and journalist who runs a restaurant and club for journalists in London.
Mr. Assange and a few WikiLeaks staff members who are staying at the farm joined some friends of Mr. Smith on Saturday for an outdoor lunch. I took the train up from London to get a first-hand look at Mr. Assange's gilded, remote sanctuary.
In December, Mr. Assange was unable to meet the terms of bail because he had no permanent address - he is an itinerant who leads a stateless organization that operates in an online world without borders. Mr. Smith, after consulting his wife, Pranvera Shema, decided they would provide Mr. Assange with an address, a roof over his head and a place to manage his legal case.
"None of us knew it would go on this long," Mr. Smith said, "but I think that Julian deserves justice in the same way as anyone else, so we have found a way to make it work."
It has not all been rural bliss. There have been times when as many as 20 people from WikiLeaks stayed at the house. "I'd open a cupboard and another one would fall out," Mr. Smith said. And then there is the matter of the farm animals. "Julian messed with my pigs," Mr. Smith said, smiling.
Ellingham Hall, 130 miles north of London, is a working farm, and Mr. Assange decided to use the pigs to make a film about the credit card companies that have denied him the means to raise donations. Mr. Smith said Mr. Assange induced the pigs to break through an electric fence and make themselves at home in a nearby berry patch, a bit of porcine anarchy that did not amuse the farm manager.
Standing near the pig pen at dusk, Mr. Assange said it was not his fault, pointing to two young males. "They hacked the fence," he said, deploying the terminology that has made WikiLeaks and its founder household names.
Mr. Assange, who has become "Uncle Julian" to Mr. Smith's young children, seems less international man of mystery than a person frozen in the odd circumstance of the moment. He wears an electronic bracelet, reports to the local police every day and, to the extent he can, continues to push the WikiLeaks agenda.
Even here he sees enemies everywhere, suggesting helicopters have swooped in for occasional reconnaissance, and at one point backing me out of a kind of war room near the kitchen. "You can't be in here," he said, closing the door with a wan smile.
But if Mr. Assange is in compliance with the conditions of his bail, he remains at the margins of the law. Federal authorities in the United States and Australia continue to investigate whether the release of classified information by WikiLeaks constitutes criminal behavior that has endangered various operatives. And Swedish prosecutors are seeking his extradition for questioning - he has yet to be charged - on accusations of sexual misconduct with two women.
As the controversy has grown, some WikiLeaks staff members have left, saying Mr. Assange runs the organization less transparently than he should. In his view, he is guilty of nothing more than challenging powerful elites, but his current isolation, in acute relief in the English countryside, is a consequence of his choices.
After a week in which his autobiography was published against his wishes, he was not much in the mood for another media moment, but he was friendly in an argumentative way as long as I did not take out a notebook.
Mr. Assange was willing to say on the record that he was "very grateful" for the refuge provided by Mr. Smith, and then spent time after lunch chatting about his long list of enemies: The New York Times, The Guardian, the governments of Britain, Sweden and the United States. He sees his tendency to end up at cross-purposes with almost everyone who does business with him as a measure of the threat he presents to the status quo, and not, as some have said, as a byproduct of his habit of acting unilaterally according to rules only he knows.
He has, however, not worn out the patience of Mr. Smith. Now 48, Mr. Smith has done a fair amount of brave - and perhaps foolhardy - things in his life. He was an officer in the British Army's Grenadier Guards, serving in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Germany.
In the 1990s, he worked as a freelance video journalist, covering conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo and elsewhere. He was shot twice, and in one instance was saved by a cellphone and a wad of cash tucked into his waist. The wad is on display in the Frontline Club, a hangout for journalists that Mr. Smith runs in the London neighborhood of Paddington. It is financed in part by a restaurant of the same name that sits beneath the club and serves some of the food grown at Ellingham.
His decision to house Mr. Assange, who is not especially popular in the British press circles of which Mr. Smith is very much a part, carries its own kind of risks. A member of the Frontline Club, who asked not to be identified because he and Mr. Smith are friendly, said he thought Mr. Smith meant well, but was leaving himself exposed. "He has been a very visible supporter of Julian and has no control over what he does while he is free on bail. It's worrisome at the very least," the man said.
While no one, including Mr. Smith, thought Mr. Assange would still be at Ellingham 10 months later, Mr. Smith says he "made a commitment and I plan on keeping it. People support WikiLeaks, but they don't seem to have much in the way of support for Julian."
"Look," he added, "you can see Julian as a kind of Bond villain, stroking a white cat and contemplating his next evil act, or you can see him as a complicated and interesting person who has really altered journalism in a historic way. I think many people in our business took an immediate dislike to him, and there has been a lot of lazy and unfair coverage."
Mr. Smith is something of a libertarian in his political beliefs, and a bit of a renegade. As a freelance videographer, he obtained unauthorized footage of the Persian Gulf war by impersonating a British officer and bluffing his way into an active duty unit. He organized Frontline News TV as a press agency during the 1990s because he felt that video freelancers were not being credited for their work, much of it obtained at great personal risk.
"We have 1,500 dues paying members of the Frontline Club and there has been a fair amount of debate about it, but at this point, he is staying at my home, not the club," Mr. Smith said. "I wouldn't say that having anybody stay at your house for almost a year is a prescription for domestic tranquility, but I'm proud of the fact that we've worked our way through a difficult situation."
I suggested that it was an odd move for someone who was literally "to the manor born." Ellingham Hall has been in Mr. Smith's family for hundreds of years.
"I was taught from a very young age that you need to stand up for the weaker party," Mr. Smith said. "If Julian had ended up at a flat in London, it would have just been another sort of prison because of the press coverage of the case."
The distance keeps Mr. Assange safe from the prying eyes of the press, give or take my visit, but it also means that someone who has remained in motion for many years is now fixed in place, left to operate a shadowy global enterprise from a country farm north of London.
Mr. Smith is proud of the place, but sees work to be done everywhere he looks. Mr. Assange sees Ellingham Hall through a different lens. When we step into a walled garden that would thwart any directional microphones, he looks around and suggests, "This the only place you can have a really secure conversation."
For the time being, it will have to do.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter.com/carr2n
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1 comment:
This is a long list of controversial issues. When it comes down to it, if you can get a good enough criminal defense lawyer, utah will come to terms. Other states are not so lucky.
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