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President Obama is schedule to speak in S.F. at an exclusive luncheon for 200 large donors ($7500/plate) The public is not invited but many are planning to protest.
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011, 11:00 a.m.
Meet at 3rd & Howard Streets, San Francisco at 11:00 A.M.
Many groups are planning to be there rallying and protesting.....Occupy SF, Single Payer, the Anti-War/Anti-drones, Anti-torture groups, Tar Sands, etc.
We are the 99%. Let's all show up and demand: Human Needs, Not War and Greed.
Mark your calendar.....let's unify our efforts. Maybe a big direct action is in the making......
A $7,500 a plate campaign fundraiser, and Endless Wars costing trillions.......when so many basic human necessities and social services are stripped away????
NOT IN OUR NAME, NOT IN OUR CITY, NOT IN OUR COUNTRY! WE ARE THE 99%!!!
Occupy San Francisco
Friday, October 21, 2011
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Educational Circle
Justin Herman Plaza
This week - research on Monsanto
Saturday, October 22, 2011
3:00 p.m.
Weekly March
gather at Justin Herman Plaza
Monday, October 24, 2011
10:30 a.m.
Steuart and Market Streets
(Embarcadero BART)
Interfaith Clergy Solidarity
Occupy S.F. & Occupy Wall Street
To get updates, please check this Facebook event page:
Interfaith Clergy Solidarity Occupy Wall Street SF
There is a 24/hr presence/protest at the Federal Reserve, 101 Market St., S.F.
The OccupySF encampment is at Justin Herman Plaza
General Assembly (GA) @ Justin Herman Plaza
For Info contact: sf@worldcantwait.org
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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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The Banks are Made of Marble
A Song by Les Rice (Written 1948 or 1949)*
I've traveled round this country
From shore to shining shore
It really made me wonder
The things I heard and saw
I saw the weary farmer
Plowing sod and loam
l heard the auction hammer
A knocking down his home
But the banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the farmer sweated for
l saw the seaman standing
Idly by the shore
l heard the bosses saying
Got no work for you no more
But the banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the seaman sweated for
I saw the weary miner
Scrubbing coal dust from his back
I heard his children cryin
Got no coal to heat the shack
But the banks are made of marble
With a guard at every door
And the vaults are stuffed with silver
That the miner sweated for
I've seen my brothers working
Throughout this mighty land
l prayed we'd get together
And together make a stand
Final Chorus
Then we'd own those banks of marble
With a guard at every door
And we'd share those vaults of silver
That we have sweated for
-Common Dreams, October 22, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/22-0
*Notes
In the notes to this song on Pete Seeger's 1959 Folkways LP 'American Industrial Songs' Irwin Silber wrote:
Les Rice, the composer of this song, is a New York State apple farmer and one-time president of the Ulster County chapter of the Farmers Union. His songs have made him well-known to farmers throughout the northeast. Perhaps his most well-known composition is "Banks of Marble" which achieved great popularity among union members throughout the country and even in Canada, where new verses have been found.
This song, written around 1948-49. deals with the farmer's perennial problem of "parity" and how it affects the farmer's life.
'I'm sixty per cent an American, I'm sixty per cent a man. That's what parity says I am, That's the law of the land. Now, do I work sixty per cent of each day? Eat sixty per cent of my meals? And does my truck take me into town on sixty per cent of it's wheels?
Now will my chicks be content to eat just sixty per cent of their mash? And will the middleman give my throat just sixty per cent of a slash? Now all you workers in city and town, I know your budget's a mess; But when you get down to that last lousy buck, remember I've forty cents less!'
The song has gained new resonance since the 2008-2009 financial meltdown!
http://unionsong.com/u024.html
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Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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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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NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
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UNAC Conference.
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
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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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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President Obama is scheduled to speak in SF this Tuesday, at a $7,500.00 per plate lunch/fundraiser.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011, 11:00 a.m.
President Obama in San Francisco
At the "W" Hotel
Meet at 3rd & Howard Streets
Many groups are planning to be there rallying and protesting.....Occupy SF, Single Payer, the Anti-War/Anti-drones, Anti-torture groups, Tar Sands, etc.
We are the 99%. Let's all show up and demand: Human Needs, Not War and Greed.
Mark your calendar.....let's unify our efforts. Maybe a big direct action is in the making......
A $7,500 a plate campaign fundraiser, and Endless Wars costing trillions.......when so many basic human necessities and social services are stripped away????
NOT IN OUR NAME, NOT IN OUR CITY, NOT IN OUR COUNTRY! WE ARE THE 99%!!!
Occupy San Francisco
Friday, October 21, 2011
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Educational Circle
Justin Herman Plaza
This week - research on Monsanto
Saturday, October 22, 2011
3:00 p.m.
Weekly March
gather at Justin Herman Plaza
Monday, October 24, 2011
10:30 a.m.
Steuart and Market Streets
(Embarcadero BART)
Interfaith Clergy Solidarity
Occupy S.F. & Occupy Wall Street
To get updates, please check this Facebook event page:
Interfaith Clergy Solidarity Occupy Wall Street SF
There is a 24/hr presence/protest at the Federal Reserve, 101 Market St., S.F.
The OccupySF encampment is at Justin Herman Plaza
General Assembly (GA) @ Justin Herman Plaza
Sunday thru Friday at 6:00pm -- Saturday at 12 Noon
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Rally in SF: Tell Obama to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline!
Here are the details:
What: President Obama "YES YOU CAN Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline" rally
Where: 3rd St. and Howard St., across from the W Hotel
When: Tuesday, October 25th - 11:30 am
Why: Because Keystone XL isn't CHANGE!
We've been scaling up the fight to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- and now that fight is coming to the Bay Area.
Next week, President Obama is coming to town for a $7500 per plate lunch with his biggest donors at the W hotel in downtown San Francisco. It's a huge opportunity to put the anti-pipeline message right in front of the president, so we're joining our friends at CREDO Action to organize a big rally outside of the event.
RSVP HERE to sign up with our friends at CREDO Action and join the rally next Tuesday:
http://act.credoaction.com/event/events/event.html?event_id=2304&rc=350dotorg_oct25
Signs will be printed up beforehand, RSVP so that we know how many signs to make.
Here at 350.org we've been campaigning to stop the Keystone pipeline for months. From the epic, two-week long civil disobedience action in DC this summer where over 1200 people were arrested, to keeping up the pressure on the President with actions at public appearances, we've been ramping up the pressure from coast to coast.
The Keystone XL pipeline is one of the dirtiest and most dangerous projects on the planet. If built, it would be a fuse to the second-largest store of carbon in the world, the Canadian tar sands -- and potential spills along the pipeline route would threaten the largest freshwater aquifer in the United States.
But here's the good news: we have a fighting chance to stop this pipeline. The decision to build -- or cancel -- the Keystone XL lies with President Obama alone. This time, he can't hide behind a dysfunctional senate or a broken political system.
The campaign is reaching a tipping point: in the last week there was a front-page article in the Washington Post, an amazing video op-ed from Robert Redford in the New York Times, and grassroots activists are taking a stand against the pipeline just about everywhere Obama goes.
Now is our chance to turn up the heat in the Bay Area and show President Obama that this movement is fierce, determined, and getting stronger every day.
Please RSVP to join us next Tuesday and deliver the message to President Obama.
See you in the streets,
Rachel Shiozaki for the whole 350.org team
P.S. Our friends at TarSandsAction.org just released a great new video that chronicles the rise of the movement to stop Keystone XL over the past few months. I really enjoyed it, I hope you will too: www.tarsandsaction.org/rise-stop-keystone-xl
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For Immediate Release
Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years" at The Marsh-Berkeley, Oct 20-Dec 10
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
San Francisco. September 26, 2011. The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Alston Way in Berkeley, October 20 through December 10.
The story begins as Petrick (aka 'Hanoi Howie") reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
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Join Death Penalty Focus, the UC Berkeley Labor Center, and California Labor Federation for a book signing and discussion with William Adler, author of a new biography on Joe Hill, the labor leader and songwriter who was executed in 1915.
In 1914, Joe Hill was convicted of murder in Utah and sentenced to death by firing squad, igniting international controversy. Many believed Hill was innocent, condemned for his association with the Industrial Workers of the World-the radical Wobblies. Now, William M. Adler gives us the first full-scale biography of Joe Hill, and presents evidence that comes as close as one can to definitively exonerating him.
Come learn about this labor activist and the trial that condemned him to death:
WHEN: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 5:30pm
WHEN: The UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA.
This event is free and signed books will be available for purchase. Click here for more information!
We will see you there!
Ana Zamora
Program Director
Death Penalty Focus
870 Market St. Ste. 859 San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel. 415.243.0143 - Fax 415.243.0994 - www.deathpenalty.org
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
La Colmenita, the National Children's Theater of Cuba, US tour 2011
Whether you are 7 or 70, Abracadabra will move you...Come and enjoy!
ABRACADABRA is not a play. It is an act of Justice and Life, written mainly by children who share the dream of freedom. A teacher invites her students to walk the road to the essences, through five very true stories of heroism and virtue.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Wednesday October 26, 7pm
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
339 11th Street, Richmond, CA 94801-3105
Suggested donation at the door $10, Children Free
http://eastbaycenter.org/Events/EventsbyDate/tabid/261/Default.aspx
Thursday October 27, 1pm
Esperanza Elementary School, Oakland
Private Presentation
Friday October 28, 7:30pm & Saturday October 29, 2pm
Fort Mason Center, Cowell Theater
Entrance at intersection of Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St., San Francisco, CA 94123
Tickets $20, Students & Seniors $15, Children Free
www.fortmason.org/events/events-details?id=2026
Tickets on line: http://lacolmenita.eventbrite.com
For more information about performances in your area, please visit:
www.lacolmenitacuba.com
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OCCUPY HARLEM MOBILIZATION
We stand in solidarity with Occupiers of Wall Street
SAVE THE DATE
Friday, October 28, 2011
6:30 - 9:30 PM
St. Philip's Church
204 West 134th Street
(Adam Clayton Powell Blvd)
A call to Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants to occupy their communities against predatory investors, displacement, privatization and state repression. Let us assert our Dignity! WE MUST DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES! THIS IS OUR STRUGGLE, THIS IS OUR MOMENT IN HISTORY. THIS IS PEOPLE'S POWER!
We stand in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters occupying cities, towns and neighborhoods in the United States. We stand in solidarity with poor and working class people across the globe rising up against criminal predatory finance capital that has no regard for humanity, that has no regard for Mother Earth.
Wall Street, the epicenter of international finance capital, began its financial prosperity with slave profiteering firms, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia Bank and Bank of America. In fact, Wall Street and most of the city's financial district were built on the burial ground of captured Africans forced into genocidal free labor for centuries, a crime against humanity. The legacy of that crime against humanity manifested today in Jim Crow mass incarceration, a crisis of massive Black unemployment and the greatest loss of wealth for people of color from sub prime lending frauds estimated between $164 billion and $213 billion.
Finance capital plutocrats have always controlled the US political system. They threaten and received a $16 trillion bank bailout, the greatest theft of taxpayers' money in modern US history. And it's only the tip of the iceberg because the banks have an estimated $700 trillion of worthless derivatives, the BULL in the china shop that might very well bring down Wall Street.
Let us, the 99 percenters, build a united people's movement of the poor, the working class and the middle class to reign in the one percent. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!
Join us for this Occupy Harlem mobilization with guest speakers and the occupy site to be announced.
NO MORE BANK BAILOUTS! NO MORE WARS! WE WANT MONEY FOR JOBS, HOUSING, EDUCATION AND MEDICAL CARE.
Harlem Fightback Against War at Home & Abroad
Telephone: 646-812-5188
Email:harlemfightbackagainstwar@gmail.com
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OCTOBER 29 - #ROBINHOOD GLOBAL MARCH
This is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.
Eight years ago, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 15 million people in sixty countries marched together to stop President Bush from invading Iraq ... a huge chunk of humanity lived for one day without dead time and glimpsed the power of a united people's movement. Now we have an opportunity to repeat that performance on an even larger scale.
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let's the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let's send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that's sloshing around the global casino each day - enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.
Take this idea to your local general assembly and join your comrades in the streets on October 29.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
occupywallstreet.org / occupywallst.org / occupytogether.org
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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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Occupy Education -- Nov. 16, 2011 -- The 99% Say No Fee Hikes, No Cuts, No Privatization!
Meet at 7 am at UCSF Mission Bay Campus,
1555 6th Street, San Francisco
-- Occupy San Francisco
(adopted at the Oct. 19 General Assembly)
Call by Occupy San Francisco
We the 99% commit ourselves to mobilize against the privatization of public education being forced upon California and the country. The 1% -- the bankers, the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees, and the corporate politicians -- are pushing through vicious fee hikes, layoffs, and budget cuts under the pretext of the financial crisis that they created and profited off of.
They say cuts are inevitable because there are no funds -- but we know that if we really taxed the corporations, ended the wars, or took back the bailout funds, there would be no budget shortfall. They say we have to accept-- but we know that if we take mass collective action, we can defeat these attacks.
On November 16th, the UC Regents will be discussing and possibly voting on a proposal to raise fees up to 81% over the next 4 years -- raising tuition to over $22,000. This is a brutal attack against the 99% of California, particularly for communities of color and working families, and on all sectors of public education, from pre-K-12 to higher education.
We call on all the 99%, on all the Occupy general assemblies and camps throughout Northern California, on all student, labor, and community organizations, to come together in a massive display of non-violent civil disobedience to prevent the UC Regents meeting from taking place, to send the strongest message that we will not accept any fee hikes, cuts, or concessions in any level of public education.
We can win this struggle. Join us!
For more info, contact:
occupyeducation@gmail.com
www.occupyed.org
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CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Against the wars of occupation; Against the interference in the internal affairs of countries; In defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations
Algiers, Algeria -- December 3-5, 2011
Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops in 2001, under the pretext of the "War on Terror," and of Iraq in 2003, in the name of a so-called "struggle for democracy," imperialist governments, under the leadership of the U.S. government, have implemented a strategy based on international wars of occupation and plunder. This strategy has also included widespread interference in the internal affairs of nations, the astronomic growth of war budgets, the assault on democratic rights, and the massive cuts in social spending -- particularly in Europe and the United States.
Today, the governments of the imperialist powers -- specifically the U.S., French, British and Italian governments -- have opened a new front in the war; this time in the Maghreb region of Northern Africa. (*)
A new step has been taken with the further implementation of the U.S. government's Greater Middle East Plan, which was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003 at the time of the launching of the war of occupation and looting of Iraq. It's a plan that aims to dismantle nations along ethnic, religious and communitarian lines -- from Pakistan to Mauritania.
At the very moment when the Tunisian and Egyptian workers and peoples are struggling to exercise their full sovereignty by means of democracy, Libya is descending into chaos after a foreign military intervention under the aegis of NATO -- an intervention that threatens its territorial integrity.
By this means, all the countries of the Maghreb region are now facing threats to their integrity. But this is not all: The implications for the SAHEL countries (parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and, more generally, for sub-Saharan Africa are incalculable. This is because the conflict has gone way beyond the Libyan borders in terms of the movement of weapons -- including heavy weapons massively distributed among Libyan civilians and armed terrorist groups who have openly displayed them in the aftermath of the foreign military intervention.
This is not to mention the devastating effects on the economies of these countries, especially when combined with the massive return of hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been working in Libya, as well as more than one million Libyan refugees, mostly in Tunisia.
In reality, through the foreign military intervention in Libya, the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists seek to terrorize all the peoples of the region and the world.
No political party genuinely committed to the sovereignty of nations and to democracy can condone, under whatever pretext whatsoever, the imperialist war of occupation and plunder in Libya. No labor organization faithful to the traditions of the international labor movement can condone such a war. That is why we the undersigned reject another war on our African continent -- a continent that is already bloodied and torn apart by so-called ethnic conflicts, which are really nothing but the result of foreign plunder of the continent's natural resources, the repayment of foreign debt, and the various manipulations that result therewith.
We reject any foreign military presence in any form whatsoever in our region of the Maghreb, elsewhere across Northern Africa, and, more generally, on our continent of Africa.
We reject any and all attacks upon sovereign nations.
We reject the foreign looting of the riches and resources of the peoples of the Maghreb and of Africa as a whole. Taking control over these resources -- including through the installation of foreign military bases, starting with AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) -- is the real objective of the war of occupation in Libya, under the auspices of NATO. This is what's really at stake.
We denounce the imperialist designs of the governments that are racing to grab the reconstruction deals for the infrastructure of Libya, destroyed by NATO air strikes - another stake of the war.
We deny the imperialist governments, NATO and the mongers of war and chaos the right to decide the fate of the peoples of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and all peoples of the world.
We affirm that because there can be no popular sovereignty without national sovereignty, from the standpoint of democracy it is up to sovereign peoples -- and up to them alone -- to define their present and their future without external interference and foreign military intervention.
We call upon organizations and parties around the world and in our own country that oppose the imperialist wars to join us in supporting and participating in an Emergency International Conference in Algiers on December 3-5, 2011, against the wars of occupation, against the interference in the internal affairs of countries, and in defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations. (**)
signed/
A. Sidi Said
General Secretary
General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary
Workers Party of Algeria (PT)
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(*) The five countries that make up the Maghreb region are Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
(**) For more information about the conference or how you can get involved, please contact the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples in Paris at
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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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[Orignal full version] 1 Marine vs. 30 Cops (By. J. handy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WmEHcOc0Sys
United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement.
Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.
Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II).
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"A Conversation About Democracy," one of hundreds of clips the makers of a collaborative documentary about Occupy Wall Street have received.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/coming-attractions-occupy-wall-st-the-documentary/?hp
a conversation about democracy from rumur on Vimeo.
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Marine Vet at #OccupyWallStreet Tells Sean Hannity to "F**k Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaTGsGdp4c&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Chicago - War Protest March to Obama's 2012 HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkOincM93s
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
On Oct. 10, 2011, a combination of five feeder marches gathered in Chicago's Loop to protest the Futures & Options and American Mortgage Bankers Association expos. The feeders represented constituencies for jobs, housing, and public schools. They generated a combined march of 7,000, and finally ended up at the Art Institute where the banksters were having a reception dinner. Here are selected scenes and comments from a big spectrum of interests affected by the dictatorship of capital being forced upon the workers of Chicago. Includes the march for homes/housing starting from the Hyatt, the Occupy Chicago location where the teachers union gathered, and the final convergence at the Art Institute. Street interviews. Also, interview/speech by Karen Lewis, President of Chicago Teachers Union. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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'Occupy Wall Street' NYPD runs over a protester with motorcycle 14/10/2011
http://www.youtube.com/verify_controversy?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DVrzQedHM6SY%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded
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OWS_PoliceScooter
by The Local East Village
http://vimeo.com/30550909
OWS_PoliceScooter from The Local East Village on Vimeo.
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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Tom Morello (The Nightwatchman) - This Land Is Your Land @OccupyLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ImQ7Ylvdo&feature=player_embedded#!
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#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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600+ Protesters March on Bank of America - #Occupy Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1JOJ3joOA&feature=player_embedded
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Scenes From #Occupy Las Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=olatH3pSvlk
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Could Occupy Wall Street be infiltrated by political groups?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D983q4xOnZg
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Make Revolution, Not Reform: A Warning to the 'Occupy' Movement
andrewgavinmarshall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oneVFYeMHjU#!
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#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
[This truly is an amazing thing to see -- no microphones allowed by NYPD yet the crowd is completely engaged with the speakers. The speeches have to be short because the words are repeated and passed along to those furthest away since they can't hear them. Mohammed's speech is great and there's no doubt that the crowd thinks so, too...Bonnie Weinstein]
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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#Occupy Wall Street Begins To Go National!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDnFbIwZUWQ
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OCCUPY-WALL-STREET-PROTESTERS-ARRESTS( Sept 20, 2011) Spread This Video Please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvbI6Eq-qA
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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
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UNEDITED - COP KNEE ON THROAT 9/24/2011 #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbXfelyIoM&NR=1
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9/24/2011 COPS KETTLING AT UNION SQUARE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaQvh80L-g&NR=1
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Empire State Rebellion: An Idea Whose Time Has Come - OpESR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIlfV1pCZY&feature=player_embedded
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Protesters pepper sprayed at the National Air & Space Museum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc9OSFLnyUI&feature=youtu.be
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Police Raid on Occpy Boston 10 11 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G9agQjM60&noredirect=1
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Occupy Boston protesters arrested
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/occupy-boston-protesters-arrested/2011/10/11/gIQAsCzWdL_video.html
Boston police have arrested 129 people during Tuesday's Occupy Boston demonstrations. The early morning arrests were mostly for trespassing. (Oct. 11) (/The Associated Press)
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Video of Boston PD attacking veterans at OWS protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3zFca5znU&feature=relmfu
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Occupy Frankfurt Germany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmxQP2eMdMU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Rome - La manifestazione di Roma October 15th OccupyTogether
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25CWyNnJVOI&feature=player_embedded
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A Familiar Figure Begs on the Street, but Not for Himself
97-year-old "Professor Irwin Corey" collects money for medical aid for children in Cuba.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/11/nyregion/100000001099057/hes-97-and-famous-spare-some-change.html
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AlphaDog Proto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbZrQp-HOk&feature=player_embedded
The AlphaDog Proto is a lab prototype for the Legged Squad Support System, a robot being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. When fully developed the system will carry 400 lbs of payload on 20-mile missions in rough terrain. The first version of the complete robot will be completed in 2012. This video shows early results from the control development process. In this video the robot is powered remotely. AlphaDog is designed to be over 10x quieter than BigDog. For more information visit us at www.BostonDynamics.com.
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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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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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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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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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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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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Resumes
By Erin Sherbert
September 26 2011
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/pelican_bay_hunger_strike_resumes.php
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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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) Occupy-apalooza Strikes a Chord
By CHARLES M. BLOW
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/blow-occupy-apalooza-strikes-a-chord.html?hp
2) Occupy the Classroom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
October 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?hp
3) A Story of Drugs and the Police
By JIM DWYER
October 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/nyregion/witness-narrates-frame-up-in-police-corruption-trial.html?ref=nyregion
4) The Marines have had Enough
By brages07
http://occupymarines.org/
5) MILLION WORKER MARCH SUPPORTS OCCUPY WALL STREET
Email: mwmeast@yahoo.com
October 17, 2011
www.millionworkermarch.org
6) U.N. Panel Calls for Inquiry Into Qaddafi's Death
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/un-panel-calls-for-inquiry-into-qaddafis-death.html?ref=world
7) In Bid to Cut Costs at Some Texas Prisons, Lunch Will Not Be Served on Weekends
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
October 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/texas-reduces-weekend-meals-for-prisoners.html?ref=us
8) Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits
"Barbara Collins, a sales associate at the Wal-Mart in Placerville, Calif., said that the premiums for the H.M.O. plan for herself and her 5-year-old son would rise to $18 every two weeks from $10. Her big concern, she said, was that her deductible would jump to $5,000 a year, from $1,000 - a daunting amount considering she earns $19,000 a year. 'I don't know how I'll be able to afford it if I go to a doctor or to physical therapy,' she said."
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and REED ABELSON
October 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/business/wal-mart-cuts-some-health-care-benefits.html?ref=business
9) Seeing Limits to 'New' Kind of War in Libya
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/africa/nato-war-in-libya-shows-united-states-was-vital-to-toppling-qaddafi.html?ref=world
10) Brazil: Doctors Convicted of Killing Four Patients for Their Kidneys
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/americas/brazil-doctors-convicted-of-killing-patients-for-their-kidneys.html?ref=world
11) BP's Plan for Drilling in the Gulf Is Approved
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/business/energy-environment/bp-plan-for-gulf-drilling-is-approved.html?ref=business
12) U.S. to Keep Strong Presence in Pacific, Panetta Says
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/world/asia/panetta-tells-pacific-countries-that-us-will-keep-strong-presence.html?ref=world
13) Cornel West, Others Arrested as 'Stop Stop-and-Frisk' Movement Against Police Abuse Kicks Off with Occupy Wall Street Support
By Anna Lekas Miller, AlterNet
Posted on October 23, 2011, Printed on October 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152838/cornel_west%2C_others_arrested_as_%27stop_stop-and-frisk%27_movement_against_police_abuse_kicks_off_with_occupy_wall_street_support?akid=7764.229473.eOxapx&rd=1&t=5
14) Police Brutality Charges Sweep Across the US
From Naomi Wolf's arrest in New York to shootings in Tucson and Florida, forces face allegations of abuse of power
By Paul Harris, Guardian UK
22 October 11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/police-brutality-charges-us
15) Nurses Condemn Chicago Mayor Emanuel for Arrest Of Nurses, Medical Volunteers at Occupy Chicago
For Immediate Release
October 23, 2011
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-condemn-chicago-mayor-emanuel-for-arrest-of-nurses-medical-voluntee/
16) The Hole in Europe's Bucket
By PAUL KRUGMAN
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/the-hole-in-europes-bucket.html?hp
17) Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
October 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25nautilus.html?hp
18) 'What Kind of Government?'
New York Times Editorial
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/the-stain-of-the-bulger-case.html?hp
19) Assange: Financial Woes May Close WikiLeaks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/24/business/AP-EU-Britain-WikiLeaks.html?hp
20) Revealed—The Capitalist Network that Runs the World
“'In effect, less than one percent of the companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network,' says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group."
By Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
New Scientist, October 24, 2011
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html?full=true&print=true
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1) Occupy-apalooza Strikes a Chord
By CHARLES M. BLOW
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/blow-occupy-apalooza-strikes-a-chord.html?hp
Thursday night I spoke to a young woman in Brooklyn who was having dinner and planning the next day. Between a morning boot camp workout at the local Y.M.C.A. and an evening meeting with friends for drinks, she was planning her first trek to Zuccotti Park to take part in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
"Why?" I asked. "What specifically are you protesting?" I was curious. I hoped that she'd respond with some variation of the umbrella arguments about income inequality, the evils of corporate greed and corruption or removing corporate money from politics.
She didn't. "I don't know. It's just cool," she said. She went on to tell me about how she felt that this was a movement of people with whom she felt some kinship, banding together and making history, and that she wanted to be a part of that in the same way that people from previous generations were part of the civil rights, women's liberation and antiwar movements.
She hinted at inequality but never quite got there. Yet she was passionately convinced that she must get involved. That is part of the magic and mystery of these protests: a near magnetic attraction drawing in both the hard core and the hangers-on alike.
While there are some people with very specific goals taking part in the protests and supporting them, there are many others who come with no particular, refined mission or message other than a desire to show solidarity, to rise up and be seen and heard and to display their disaffection for the status quo.
And that may well be message enough for many.
If the Occupy Wall Street protests were a band, I'd say the closest corollary would probably be the legendary '90s grunge band Nirvana - both meaningful and murky, tapping into a national angst and hopelessness, providing a much-needed catharsis and gaining a broad and devoted following while quickly becoming the voice of a generation.
Needless to say, that doesn't cover everyone. The protests have a Lollapalooza-like eccentricity and diversity to the crowds. Some come to revel in the moment. Others come to rage against the machine. But they are all drawn together by the excitement of animating a muscle that many thought had atrophied: demonstration and disobedience in the name of equality.
This has energized two groups who are notoriously apathetic and lacking in civic engagement - the young and the poor - and has done so outside the existing architectures of power and politics.
This excitement has attracted the attention of progressive politicians, pundits and celebrities, many of whom are making pilgrimages to the protests to lend support while reinforcing their own street cred and pondering how to best harness the energy on display.
After all, civic energy is a precious commodity in an election season. You can almost see some leaders and luminaries drooling at the thought of using the protests to their political advantage.
But there has been an even stronger reaction by some on the right, who, out of fear, are seeking to pre-emptively stain and marginalize the protesters.
Herman Cain has called them "jealous." Bill O'Reilly has suggested that they are "crackheads." Glenn Beck - I guess in an attempt to be king of the hill of hysteria - has gone so far as to call them killers: "Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you're wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you."
The irony is that all these people are at the top of the food chain in an economic ecosystem that many protesters seem to view as fundamentally flawed and in need of radical realignment if not wholesale deconstruction.
So the protesters have defied efforts to be led or labeled by either side. This independent positioning may be serving them well.
Early national polls taken about the movement have found that although many Americans aren't clear about the protesters' goals, they support them.
A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted last weekend found that nearly two-thirds of people who were asked didn't know enough about the goals of the Occupy Wall Street protests to say if they approved of them or not.
Yet a United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, also conducted last weekend, asked if people agreed with the goals of the protests from what they "know about the demonstrations." Fifty-nine percent said that they agreed.
That may well be because even if there isn't a single, clear message of the protests that people identify with, it seems as if they do agree with many of the disparate ideas being put forward. A Time Magazine/Abt SRBI poll conducted last week found that among those familiar with the protests, 86 percent of respondents believed that "Wall Street and lobbyists have too much influence in Washington"; 79 percent believed that "the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is too large"; 71 percent believed that "executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 should be prosecuted"; and 68 percent believed that "the rich should pay more in taxes."
Closer to the epicenter, the mission is clearer and public support even stronger. A Quinnipiac poll of New York City voters released this week found that nearly three-quarters said that they understood the protesters' views at least fairly well, two-thirds said that they agreed with those views, nearly 9 in 10 said that it was O.K. "that they are protesting" and nearly three-quarters said that as long as the protesters obey the laws that they should be able to remain as long as they wish.
The Occupy Wall Street protests may or may not grow into a political force pursuing a specific legislative agenda through normal systems, but there can be little doubt at this point that the protests have struck a chord with a large swath of Americans.
If nothing else, the movement has established itself as a cultural phenomenon with surprising staying power, and as someone who wasn't sure that it would catch hold, I must echo the young woman in the restaurant: that's just cool.
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
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2) Occupy the Classroom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
October 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?hp
Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America's central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It's an expansion of early childhood education.
Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They're just left behind.
"This is where inequality starts," said Kathleen McCartney, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as she showed me a chart demonstrating that even before kindergarten there are significant performance gaps between rich and poor students. Those gaps then widen further in school.
"The reason early education is important is that you build a foundation for school success," she added. "And success breeds success."
One common thread, whether I'm reporting on poverty in New York City or in Sierra Leone, is that a good education tends to be the most reliable escalator out of poverty. Another common thread: whether in America or Africa, disadvantaged kids often don't get a chance to board that escalator.
Maybe it seems absurd to propose expansion of early childhood education at a time when budgets are being slashed. Yet James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, has shown that investments in early childhood education pay for themselves. Indeed, he argues that they pay a return of 7 percent or more - better than many investments on Wall Street.
"Schooling after the second grade plays only a minor role in creating or reducing gaps," Heckman argues in an important article this year in American Educator. "It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5."
One of the most studied initiatives in this area was the Perry Preschool program, which worked with disadvantaged black children in Michigan in the 1960s. Compared with a control group, children who went through the Perry program were 22 percent more likely to finish high school and were arrested less than half as often for felonies. They were half as likely to receive public assistance and three times as likely to own their own homes.
We don't want to get too excited with these statistics, or those of the equally studied Abecedarian Project in North Carolina. The program was tiny, and many antipoverty initiatives work wonderfully when they're experiments but founder when scaled up. Still, new research suggests that early childhood education can work even in the real world at scale.
Take Head Start, which serves more than 900,000 low-income children a year. There are flaws in Head Start, and researchers have found that while it improved test results, those gains were fleeting. As a result, Head Start seemed to confer no lasting benefits, and it has been widely criticized as a failure.
Not so fast.
One of the Harvard scholars I interviewed, David Deming, compared the outcomes of children who were in Head Start with their siblings who did not participate. Professor Deming found that critics were right that the Head Start advantage in test scores faded quickly. But, in other areas, perhaps more important ones, he found that Head Start had a significant long-term impact: the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty. Head Start alumni were more likely than their siblings to graduate from high school and attend college.
Professor Deming found that in these life outcomes, Head Start had about 80 percent of the impact of the Perry program - a stunning achievement.
Something similar seems to be true of the large-scale prekindergarten program in Boston. Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Christina Weiland, both of Harvard, found that it erased the Latino-white testing gap in kindergarten and sharply reduced the black-white gap.
President Obama often talked in his campaign about early childhood education, and he probably agrees with everything I've said. But the issue has slipped away and off the agenda.
That's sad because the question isn't whether we can afford early childhood education, but whether we can afford not to provide it. We can pay for prisons or we can pay, less, for early childhood education to help build a fairer and more equitable nation.
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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3) A Story of Drugs and the Police
By JIM DWYER
October 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/nyregion/witness-narrates-frame-up-in-police-corruption-trial.html?ref=nyregion
Because Yvelisse DeLeon of Coney Island was due at an interview for a bartending job on the evening of Jan. 25, 2007, she spent part of the afternoon getting herself ready. That process included a trip to Downtown Brooklyn.
"I went down here to get color for my hair," Ms. DeLeon, 35, testified this month in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. "Jay and Fulton."
Her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa, drove her to that hair appointment and to a few other errands, and around 4 p.m., they were nearly back home. Just as they pulled in front of their building on Neptune Avenue, she said, a car drew up next to them. Two men, one with a gun, ordered them to get out of their car, she testified. They were police officers in civilian clothes.
One of them tore through the car, she said. He was wearing jeans with "little pockets," she said.
"He brought out his pocket," Ms. DeLeon said. "He said, 'Look what I find.' It looked like little powder in a little bag."
"What did he say about that little powder, Ms. DeLeon?" asked the prosecutor, Charles Guria.
"He said it was crack cocaine," she said.
"What happened then?" the prosecutor asked.
Using emphatic language, she pronounced his claim untrue, and called out that "he put it in the car."
Neither Ms. DeLeon, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, nor Mr. Figueroa, a native New Yorker who drives 18-wheel trucks, had ever been arrested before. They spent much of the day and night going through the court system, and then endured a year of follow-up before the charges against them were dismissed. The Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau investigated their claims but found them unsubstantiated. Brooklyn prosecutors took a different view. And the city has paid them each $75,000.
Both have testified in the trial of a police officer, Jason Arbeeny, who conducted the search of the car and is accused of conspiring with other police officers to pass illegal drugs to informers and to lie about arrests. Apart from Ms. DeLeon, no witness has implicated him in wrongdoing.
For anyone interested in watching the spasms of history repeating themselves, the current round of corruption cases involving police officers and drugs could serve as a down payment on the 21st century's contributions. You have to wonder when society will get tired of sending police officers to use all their wiles in the hunt for dealers, and then be shocked when some of them wind up pumping their informers with drugs - confiscated, of course, from other dealers - or craving arrests so much that they frame innocent people.
When such frame-ups are uncovered, they are prosecuted as matters of dishonest paperwork. But they amount to nothing less than a kidnapping at gunpoint for the victims.
In recent trials, officers have testified that when they make buys on the street, they place the drugs in evidence envelopes that remain unsealed until they get back to the precinct station house. In the smallest of details, an envelope that does not get licked shut, the opportunities for trouble are endless.
Mr. Arbeeny has not yet had a chance to tell his story. Asked on Tuesday about Ms. DeLeon's account, his lawyer, Michael Elbaz, said: "Clearly, her allegations are false. The DeLeon allegations were previously unsubstantiated by Internal Affairs."
Under cross-examination, Ms. DeLeon said that, during the search, "I'm watching him, just like a hawk."
But, Mr. Elbaz challenged her: Hadn't she told an Internal Affairs investigator something else? "You actually told him, you could not see his hand, what he was doing, right?" he asked.
"Never," she said, had she told anyone that.
Mr. Elbaz said on Tuesday that he intended to present a tape that would contradict her, and has suggested that she made the allegations against Mr. Arbeeny because she feared deportation.
That issue was addressed when she was questioned by the prosecutors.
"What did they tell you about taking community service?" Mr. Guria asked.
"If I don't take community service, they are going to deport me back home," she said.
"Did you take it?" Mr. Guria asked.
"No," she said.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I know I don't do," she began, pausing to edit her own translation.
"I know I didn't do what they say I did it."
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Twitter: @jimdwyernyt
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4) The Marines have had Enough
By brages07
http://occupymarines.org/
The Occupy Wall Street movement has a new hero after this past weekend. When New York City police once again used excessive force after the march to Times Square on Saturday, Marine Corps Sergeant Shamar Thomas let them know what he thought. In a video currently making the rounds on the Internet, Sergeant Thomas told several police officers that their actions made them cowards. He repeatedly asked them why they attacked unarmed people and if they felt tough doing so. Sergeant Thomas is not alone among Marines in supporting the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Recently, a new group has emerged called Occupy Marines. The group offers the Occupy Wall Street protesters organization, direction, logistics and leadership. Everything they can offer is needed and appreciated.
According to Sergeant Thomas, he served 14 months in Iraq and his and both of his parents served in Afghanistan. He repeatedly asked the police why they were treating American citizens so violently. He told them that if they wanted to fight, they should go to Iraq and that there was no honor in what they are doing. He repeatedly told the police that no one was armed and asked why the police were in riot gear. All the while, the police just stood there, looking visibly ashamed. Below the Youtube video of his confrontation with the police, Sergeant Thomas said that he was part of riot control in Rutbah, Iraq in 2004. His problem with the NYPD is that they use tactics that he could not use during that riot because the mission in Iraq is about winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Reasonably enough, he expects the same from his own country. Though his comments likely did little to change the minds of the police, they certainly illustrated the broad base of support that Occupy Wall Street has.
Occupy Marines is comprised mostly of non-active duty Marines, due to the military's ban on soldiers protesting while in uniform. Of everything they offer the protesters, the logistical support will prove particularly invaluable. From the very beginning of the protests one month ago, protesters voiced a need for various necessities via Twitter on an almost daily basis. They needs of the protesters range from fresh water to food to toiletries. Generators and fuel were also needed in the beginning. Many protesters do not leave Liberty Plaza for fear of not being able to get back in. Given the high level of organization the Marines are known for, it is likely they will be a great help in organizing the protesters. Considering the fact that one of the main criticisms of the protesters is that they are unorganized, the organizing skills of the Marines will only increase their credibility. Furthermore, the support of the Marines lends mainstream credibility to the protests. Another major criticism of the protesters is that they represent the fringe of the American political spectrum. Gaining support from Marines defuses this criticism, as no one would ever call a Marine a left-wing radical.
It is truly encouraging to hear people like Sergeant Thomas speaking out on the abuses of Wall Street and the police department that protects them. Hopefully, his stand will give others the courage to do the same. It is also wonderful that former Marines are joining the protests. With their help in establishing leadership of the movement it will surely grow and gain even more legitimacy. It says something when such a broad cross-section of America comes together in common cause to stand up for what they know is right. All too often, we think that we are intractably divided as a people. Moments like this make it clear that that is not the case. Maybe we do not always agree, we might not even completely agree now. We do agree that corporations hold undue influence over our political process and have spent the last thirty years taking more for themselves at the expense of the long-term health of the economy. They outsource jobs, cut the pay and benefits of the jobs that stay here then say that people should just take care of themselves. More and more people each day see that for greedy garbage that it is.
By brages07
OccupyMARINES Thank You All For Your Support Keep Pushing Forward
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5) MILLION WORKER MARCH SUPPORTS OCCUPY WALL STREET
Email: mwmeast@yahoo.com
October 17, 2011
www.millionworkermarch.org
The Million Worker March (MWM) organizers and activists call upon all workers organized and unorganized and the unemployed to join and defend the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We extend the call to anti-war, immigration rights, environmental and social justice activists to join this movement which could replicate the "Arab Spring" here at home.
The MWM, initiated by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 on October 17, 2004 at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., advanced the slogan "mobilizing in our own name" independent of the two Wall Street controlled political parties to address the economic crisis of working people in which the vast majority are under siege financially.
All important social movements, which occurred in this country, were started from the bottom up (rank and file/grass roots) and not from the top down. The MWM's mission statement speaks to how ". . . a handful of the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office to wage class war on working people. They have captured the State in their own interests." They represent what the OWS activists call the 1%, otherwise known as the ruling class.
Like the MWM, the OWS has emerged at a time when the two corporate controlled political parties are preparing for the presidential election; a smokescreen where billions are spent to promote a top down and false ceremony of democracy.
Like the MWM, the OWS will be criticized for having demands that are too broad. We have endured more than 50 years of corporate assault on working people, social services, jobs, wages, pensions, health care, public education, and housing. The pursuit of endless wars, the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy and the erosion of the environment in pursuit of corporate greed, makes it impossible to address all of these issues in a sound bite. Yet one thing is crystal clear, OWS conveys a definite anti-capitalist message. It is being expressed to the entire world at the "temple" of American Capitalism, Wall Street. The OWS, while now a major protest movement against the capitalist elites, must continue to deepen, expand and become a direct challenge to corporate power. Class warfare demands fighting on multiple fronts and it all leads back to Wall Street. While the officialdom of labor has given verbal support to OWS, the rank and file possesses the real power of the labor movement. It is only through rank and file unity that labor's true power can be realized in this OWS movement. Workers can take action at the point of production and service as well as put people in the streets.
We must be mindful of attempts to co-opt this movement. Let us not forget the action of the Democratic Party and its surrogates within AFL-CIO to pressure Wisconsin unions not to initiate any General Strike actions in opposition to Governor Scott Walker's plans to eliminate collective bargaining for State workers. Wisconsin workers were limited to circulating petitions to recall targeted State republican elected officials. This took away labor's only real power, the ability to withhold its labor in defense of collective bargaining.
ILWU Local 10's Executive Board has adopted a Resolution to join and defend the OWS and called for other longshore locals to do the same. More importantly, Local 10 is connecting the OWS movement with the Pacific Northwest dockers struggle with EGT in Longview, Washington. (EGT is an international grain exporter which is attempting to rupture longshore jurisdiction.) The driving force behind EGT is Bunge LTD., a leading agribusiness and food company, which reported $2.4 billion in profits in 2010. This company has strong ties to Wall Street. This is but one example of Wall Street's corporate attack on union workers.
On October 12th, the vice-president and secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, WA, who are engaged in battle with EGT, were allowed to speak by the organizers of "Foreclosure on Wall Street West". They explained their struggle to several hundred people attending the rally that took place in the San Francisco financial district. This is an important and strategic show of solidarity between labor and OWS.
It was Black trade unionists that conceived and launched the MWM. Black workers and other workers of color should play an integral role in expanding the power and influence of OWS. The Black unemployment rate is 24% and growing. This needs to be a part of the discussion of the peoples' assemblies as it concerns empowering this peoples' movement.
Working people need to have a political expression of our own which is an alternative to the U.S. corporate sector that both the Democrats and the Republicans represent. The timing of the MWM in Washington was to prepare the beginning of a fight-back precisely because the agendas of two political parties, acting as one, the corporate agenda of permanent war, destruction of all social services, Jim Crow and a relentless assault upon working people.
This is an opportune moment for rank and file working people to forge a mass movement for fundamental change. Rarely has the importance of unity in struggle been more compelling along an axis of class independence.
Only by our own independent mobilization of working people (99%) across America, can we open the way to addressing a peoples' agenda. The MWM and OWS are both about building grass roots and rank and file anti-racist unity "forging the fight-back" on all governmental and corporate policies influenced and or directed by Wall Street.
Let's take it to the corporate state, Let the 1% take the weight
Leo Robinson, ILWU Local 10, Retired, National Convener; Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10, Executive Board, Co-Chair MWM; Chris Silvera, Teamsters Local 808, Sec-Treasurer, Co-Convener MWM East Coast; Saladin Muhammad, Black Workers for Justice, Convener MWM Southern Region; Jerry Lawrence, ILWU Local 8, Co-Convener MWM Pacific Northwest; Debby Stringfellow, ILWU Local 8, Co-Convener MWM Pacific Northwest; Gabriel Prawl, ILWU Local 52, Co-Convener MWM Pacific Northwest; Trent Willis, ILWU Local 10, Executive Board, Conceiver, MWM.
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6) U.N. Panel Calls for Inquiry Into Qaddafi's Death
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/un-panel-calls-for-inquiry-into-qaddafis-death.html?ref=world
GENEVA - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Friday for an inquiry into the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi amid conflicting accounts of how the Libyan dictator met his end and video that appeared to show him alive after his capture.
"We believe there is a need for investigation to see whether he was killed in fighting or some form of execution," Rupert Colville, the spokesman for Navi Pillay, the human rights commissioner, told reporters in Geneva.
Libya's interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, said that Colonel Qaddafi was wounded but still alive when he was captured and put on a truck in the town of Surt on Thursday. The vehicle was caught in cross-fire between Qaddafi loyalists and the attacking forces, Mr. Jibril said, and Colonel Qaddafi was struck in the head by a bullet, dying shortly before reaching a hospital.
But video and photographs that appeared on the Internet soon after Colonel Qaddafi was captured show him alive and propped between his captors, while others showed the body of the deposed leader being dragged by a crowd, covered in blood and apparently dead.
The existence of videos showing Colonel Qaddafi first alive and then dead was "very disturbing," Mr. Colville said. "We really do need some clarity."
Mr. Colville said the thousands of victims of Colonel Qaddafi's tyrannical rule also deserved to see proper judicial procedures that bring to the light the truth of what occurred under the dictator's 42-year rule, end the culture of impunity that existed and provide reparations for victims. It is "imperative," he said, that Libya's new rulers do everything possible to calm the situation.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Colville said that the independent Commission of Inquiry for Libya, set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, would likely look into Colonel Qaddafi's death. "This obviously falls squarely within their mandate," he said. The commission is led by Judge Philippe Kirsch, the former president of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
"In the laws of war there is an obvious difference between someone killed in combat or crossfire, or a captive being executed or summarily shot down," he said.
Marlise Simons contributed reporting from Paris.
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7) In Bid to Cut Costs at Some Texas Prisons, Lunch Will Not Be Served on Weekends
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
October 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/texas-reduces-weekend-meals-for-prisoners.html?ref=us
HOUSTON - Texas prison officials last month ended the decades-old practice of serving last meals to inmates about to be executed after one man ordered an elaborate feast of hamburgers, pizza and chicken-fried steaks that he did not eat.
But the 300 inmates on death row are not the only ones coping with food restrictions.
Thousands of other inmates in the Texas prison system have been eating fewer meals since April after officials stopped serving lunch on the weekends in some prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three. A meal the system calls brunch is usually served between 5 and 7 a.m., followed by dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m.
The meal reductions are part of an effort to trim $2.8 million in food-related expenses from the 2011 fiscal year budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the state prison agency. Other cuts the agency has made to its food service include replacing carton milk with powdered milk and using sliced bread instead of hamburger and hot dog buns.
Prison administrators said that the cuts were made in response to the state's multibillion-dollar budget shortfall in 2011, and that the weekend lunches were eliminated in consultation with the agency's health officials and dietitians. Michelle Lyons, an agency spokeswoman, said that inmates with health problems who have been prescribed a therapeutic diet continue to receive three meals per day.
By reducing its weekend meals, Texas has set itself apart from most other state prison systems. State inmates in New York, California, Nevada, Florida and several other states are fed three times a day, seven days a week. Federal prisoners receive three meals daily, as do inmates in the county jails throughout Texas. Most states serve their inmates milk in cartons, but Texas prison officials said switching to powdered milk would save them an estimated $3.5 million annually.
Ohio and Arizona serve two meals per day on the weekends to reduce food-service costs. Georgia serves two meals per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, though inmates on work details receive a third meal.
Inmates' relatives and legal advocates in Texas said the elimination of milk in cartons and weekend lunches was an unnecessarily harsh cutback that had a negative effect on prison life. In August, 19 inmates at the Hutchins State Jail near Dallas, one of the 36 prisons that reduced weekend meals, signed a petition and sent it to the Texas affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the food cutbacks a violation of the federal Constitution.
"I think it's really easy to take things away from inmates," said Susan Fenner, executive director of the Texas Inmate Families Association. "One inmate told me, for some of them, that's all they have to look forward to is a meal."
Inmates are allowed to purchase chips and other snacks from prison commissaries. In prisons that have cut back on weekend meals, food from the commissaries has taken on a new significance. Prisoners' relatives said the meal reductions affect low-income inmates the most, because their families cannot afford to send money to keep them supplied with commissary snacks.
The weekend meal reduction appears to be out of step with the standards adopted by the American Correctional Association. In adult prisons, the association recommends serving three meals per day. Variations are allowed based on weekend and holiday food-service demands as long as the meals meet basic nutritional goals, but the standards do not state that the variations can be done every weekend or as a cost-cutting measure.
Daron Hall, the sheriff of Davidson County in Tennessee and the president of the American Correctional Association, said Texas prison officials had adopted a loose interpretation of the food-service standards and needed to monitor the impact of the reductions on inmates. "I've never read the standard to mean you can do it every weekend," Sheriff Hall said. "In the economic climate we're in, you're asked to do some creative and inventive things. You have to balance that with the safety and welfare of inmates in the facilities."
Prisoners' rights advocates said that serving inmates fewer than three meals a day falls into a legal gray zone based on various cases around the country. In Texas, a state law requires inmates to be fed "three times in any 24-hour period," but the law applies only to county inmates and not to state prisoners.
"We're beginning to see this more frequently, as states and counties begin to cut back on food in a short-sighted attempt to cut costs," said David C. Fathi, director of the A.C.L.U.'s National Prison Project in Washington. "This is not something the Supreme Court has addressed."
Texas prison officials said they have no legal concerns about the food cutbacks, believe that they are in compliance with the correctional association standards and stress that inmates have not reported health problems stemming from the meal reductions. "Extensive consultation with T.D.C.J.'s health services department and system dieticians prior to implementation of this plan have allowed us to avoid any medical issues," Ms. Lyons said in a statement.
State Senator John Whitmire, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee whose outrage over last meals on death row led to the end of the practice last month, said the reductions were not a major concern to him. "If they don't like the menu," he said, "don't come there in the first place."
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8) Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits
"Barbara Collins, a sales associate at the Wal-Mart in Placerville, Calif., said that the premiums for the H.M.O. plan for herself and her 5-year-old son would rise to $18 every two weeks from $10. Her big concern, she said, was that her deductible would jump to $5,000 a year, from $1,000 - a daunting amount considering she earns $19,000 a year. 'I don't know how I'll be able to afford it if I go to a doctor or to physical therapy,' she said."
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and REED ABELSON
October 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/business/wal-mart-cuts-some-health-care-benefits.html?ref=business
After trying to mollify its critics in recent years by offering better health care benefits to its employees, Wal-Mart is substantially rolling back coverage for part-time workers and significantly raising premiums for many full-time staff.
Citing rising costs, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, told its employees this week that all future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week on average will no longer qualify for any of the company's health insurance plans.
In addition, any new employees who average 24 hours to 33 hours a week will no longer be able to include a spouse as part of their health care plan, although children can still be covered.
This is a big shift from just a few years ago when Wal-Mart expanded coverage for employees and their families after facing criticism because so many of its 1.4 million workers could not afford or did not qualify for coverage - rendering many of them eligible for Medicaid.
Under pressure from states saddled with rising Medicaid costs and from labor unions and community groups, Wal-Mart had agreed to offer part-time employees, even those averaging less than 24 hours a week, health care insurance after a year on the job, shaving a year off the eligibility requirement. Wal-Mart also said that it was offering health plans that cost its employees about $250 a year for family coverage.
At the time, the moves were considered a departure from some of its major rivals and large employers, more than half of whom offer no company-sponsored health plan for part-time workers.
On Thursday, the company would not say what percentage of its work force was part time or worked fewer than 24 hours a week. Greg Rossiter, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the decision to deny coverage to new part-time employees resulted from the company's revamping of its health care offerings in light of rising costs.
"Over the last few years, we've all seen our health care rates increase and it's probably not a surprise that this year will be no different," Mr. Rossiter said. "We made the difficult decision to raise rates that will affect our associates' medical costs. The decisions made were not easy, but they strike a balance between managing costs and providing quality care and coverage."
The company said the changes were not a result of the new federal health care law. But the higher rates along with steep spikes in premiums for other plans this year are likely to stoke the national debate over the year-old legislation that has pitted President Obama and Democrats against Republicans opposed to the changes. Challenges to the law by several states are now before the Supreme Court.
These moves are also occurring in a postrecession period when Wal-Mart has been struggling to regain its footing after months of disappointing or flat sales. And with unemployment still hovering around 9 percent, employers may feel less compelled to offer expansive benefits to people desperate for work.
Nationwide, employer-sponsored health premiums are up 9 percent, and increases of 5 percent or more are predicted for next year, with workers shouldering higher burdens on premiums and deductibles.
In 2009, Wal-Mart said 52 percent of its employees obtained health coverage through it, but on Thursday it declined to give the percentage.
Documents on Wal-Mart's health and other benefit offerings were obtained by The New York Times from the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, a union-backed group of Wal-Mart employees that is seeking to pressure the company to improve wages and benefits.
In Wal-Mart's 2012 health offerings, premiums will increase for some plans by more than 40 percent, although many of their workers pay relatively low premiums in comparison to more generous plans offered by other employers. But many Wal-Mart employees complain that their low premiums are accompanied by high deductibles that sometimes exceed 20 percent of their annual pay.
Wal-Mart's new health offerings will require many employees who smoke to pay a significant penalty. They will be required to pay an extra $10 to $90 each pay period - $260 to $2,340 a year - if they want health coverage.
Several other large employers have begun charging higher premiums to employees who smoke, according to Mercer, a benefits consulting firm. Among the largest employers, about 28 percent vary their premiums based on tobacco use.
Mr. Rossiter defended the penalty for smokers, saying, "Tobacco users generally consume about 25 percent more health care services than nontobacco users."
In its health care brochures, Wal-Mart told its employees that diseases caused by tobacco result in $96 billion in extra health care costs nationwide. And it noted that some other prominent companies, including Home Depot, Macy's and PepsiCo, charge smokers more as part of their health plans.
Tammy Yancey, a $9.50-an-hour gas attendant at a Sam's Club in Pinellas Park , Fla., complained that she would no longer be able to afford health insurance from the company. Ms. Yancey, a smoker, said her premiums would jump to $127.90 every two weeks - or $3,325 a year - up from $53.80 at present, when she earns $12,000 a year from her job.
"I won't be able to afford the insurance," she said. "And I really can't go without insurance because I have a heart problem."
Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart, a union-backed campaign, condemned the changes.
"No wonder people are protesting in the streets," he said. "This is another example of corporations putting profits ahead of what's good for everyday Americans. It's outrageous and damaging to many hard-working families that the biggest corporation in America is increasing health care costs for many employees by 40 percent."
Wal-Mart says that its health care plans are affordable and competitive compared with those of its competitors. "We are proud to be among a few companies that continue to offer an affordable associate-only medical option for about a dollar per day or $15 per pay period," Mr. Rossiter said. He noted that many companies offer health plans that start at $75 a week or more for each two-week pay period.
Companies frequently do not offer coverage to part-time workers. About 42 percent of large employers offer benefits to part-time employers, according to the 2011 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks changes in benefits. And some of Wal-Mart's competitors, like Home Depot, do not offer their part-time workers the same health plans they offer full-time workers. Instead, those employees can enroll in plans that sharply limit the amount of coverage.
Wal-Mart also significantly reduced the amount of money it contributes to the savings accounts workers can use to pay for medical bills that are not covered under their plan. Last year, the company put $1,000 into accounts for families but it will cut the amount by half for next year to just $500. Companies typically put more money into these accounts as a way of encouraging employees to choose these plans, which cost employers less than traditional policies.
While Wal-Mart defends its decision to reduce these contributions, few companies have made similar cuts, according to Mercer. Companies are continuing to try to do what they can to encourage employees to enroll in these plans, said Beth Umland, who oversees the company's benefits research.
Barbara Collins, a sales associate at the Wal-Mart in Placerville, Calif., said that the premiums for the H.M.O. plan for herself and her 5-year-old son would rise to $18 every two weeks from $10. Her big concern, she said, was that her deductible would jump to $5,000 a year, from $1,000 - a daunting amount considering she earns $19,000 a year. "I don't know how I'll be able to afford it if I go to a doctor or to physical therapy," she said.
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9) Seeing Limits to 'New' Kind of War in Libya
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/africa/nato-war-in-libya-shows-united-states-was-vital-to-toppling-qaddafi.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - For all its success, NATO's intervention in Libya had several significant flaws that highlight why future offensives, against a stronger adversary, could be far more difficult.
Even as Washington put a European mask of command on the operation - an effort described as "leading from behind" - shortages in allied intelligence-gathering aircraft, aerial refueling tankers and precision-guidance kits for bombs proved the United States remained the backbone of any NATO offensive.
To be fair, while the fighting has dragged on longer than anticipated, the death on Thursday of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, gave senior Obama administration officials an opportunity to trumpet the new American way of war to a nation weary of ground combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The United States military has spent just $1.1 billion in Libya, and in the words of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., "didn't lose a single life." He added that "this is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past."
Libya proved that the leaders of some medium-size powers can be overthrown from a distance, without putting American boots on the ground, by using weapons fired from sea and air with the heaviest load carried by partner nations - in the case of Libya, European allies and even some Arab states.
Now, that mission is winding down. NATO said Friday that it would cease operations in Libya on Oct. 31, exactly seven months after the alliance assumed full control of the campaign.
An axiom of the new warfare is that speed kills: Attacks must be carried out rapidly to recapture an old-fashioned element of surprise, with intelligence identifying targets even before an enemy has recoiled from previous ones.
Senior military officials noted that in Libya, NATO missions were under way just 10 days after the alliance decided to move forward - compared to the 11 months it took to move from a United Nations resolution to the first airplane enforcing a no-fly zone over Kosovo in the 1990s.
"NATO works, and it can work at speed," said Adm. James G. Stavridis, the alliance's senior military commander. "The difference is that 10 years of integrated operations in Afghanistan have created an alliance that can move quickly, can move with alacrity - not without controversy, not without some nations moving faster and some moving slower and some saying we are not going to participate in this operation."
But American and alliance officials acknowledged that a stinging critique, issued this summer by Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary at the time, still echoed. He warned of a two-tiered alliance in which some allies could fight, and some really could not.
"It takes every nation to bring what they can to the operation and then it's up to the nations to figure out how best to use what they bring," said Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Jodice II, a United States Air Force officer who commands the allied campaign from his headquarters in Italy.
The shortages in the proper equipment, military skills and political commitment that Mr. Gates underscored are, indeed, considered a warning to the alliance. NATO does not have a roster of experienced officers to do its own targeting - the essence of successful air warfare. Only the United States, Britain and France have targeteers up to modern standards.
With no troops on the ground to help spot targets, NATO planners and pilots had to improvise with other reconnaissance equipment and informants on the ground. Still, commanders acknowledged that they often could not pinpoint the shifting battle lines in hotly contested cities.
Shortages in intelligence-gathering aircraft - both manned and remotely piloted - also revealed a near United States monopoly on these technologies, although NATO is considering purchasing drones for itself.
For command bunkers in Tripoli as well as Colonel Qaddafi's final hide-out in Surt, NATO increasingly relied on American Predator drones that fly high overhead for hundreds of hours, chronicling the "pattern of life" below until allied commanders feel confident the site is a legitimate target. On Thursday, for instance, a Predator helped to guide a French warplane to attack Colonel Qaddafi's convoy as it tried to flee Surt. (NATO said Thursday it did not know Colonel Qaddafi was in the convoy then.)
Ditto with refueling tankers: The United States had to provide most refueling aircraft.
Likewise with the GPS packages, which turn gravity bombs into precision-guided weapons to hit their targets while minimizing civilian casualties. While alliance officers say no missions were delayed or canceled due to shortages of precision-guided munitions, there was a scramble to borrow from American and other stockpiles for NATO aircraft.
For the record, non-American alliance and partner aircraft flew 75 percent of all sorties of the war. And non-American alliance warships carried out 100 percent of the missions to enforce the arms embargo at sea.
But NATO will be able to add muscle to its military only by increasing its defense spending, now averaging 1.7 percent of gross domestic product across the 28-nation alliance. And that may be a difficult push as the United States, still the essential alliance member, cuts the Pentagon budget as part of a deficit-reduction deal with Congress.
For all the talk that no American combat troops were deployed in Libya, ground forces were required to topple the government. But they were Libyan rebel forces, and they required ample assistance and advising from outside powers.
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10) Brazil: Doctors Convicted of Killing Four Patients for Their Kidneys
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/americas/brazil-doctors-convicted-of-killing-patients-for-their-kidneys.html?ref=world
A jury convicted three Brazilian doctors of killing four patients by removing their organs, which prosecutors said were used for transplants at an expensive private clinic. A judge in São Paulo State, Marco Montemor, sentenced the doctors to 17 years and 6 months each in prison. Two doctors were charged with murder after removing both kidneys from the patients and preparing the organs for transport, while a neurosurgeon was charged as an accomplice for incorrectly declaring the patients brain-dead and authorizing the harvest of their organs. The scheme was discovered in 1986. The defense lawyer, who said that the donors were already dead, said he would appeal.
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11) BP's Plan for Drilling in the Gulf Is Approved
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
October 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/business/energy-environment/bp-plan-for-gulf-drilling-is-approved.html?ref=business
HOUSTON - The Obama administration on Friday took another step toward allowing BP to return to the Gulf of Mexico, approving the first oil drilling plan for the company there since the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig more than a year ago.
It was another sign that oil exploration in the gulf was coming back to normal, although energy companies continued to complain that the permitting process for drilling new wells remained far slower than before the accident.
The federal government's approval of the BP plan to drill up to four exploratory wells nearly 200 miles from the Louisiana coast was positive news for BP, which has struggled to recover from the April 2010 accident that left 11 workers dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.
"Our review of BP's plan included verification of BP's compliance with the heightened standards that all deepwater activities must meet," said Tommy P. Beaudreau, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a statement announcing the decision.
The statement said that BP had voluntarily carried out "additional safety enhancements and performance standards" for exploring for oil and gas in the gulf.
A week earlier, the administration announced that the company would be allowed to bid on new oil leases in the gulf in a December lease auction, the first scheduled since the disaster. Michael R. Bromwich, the head of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, told a Congressional committee that the decision came after a comprehensive internal debate.
Mr. Bromwich's agency will still need to grant BP permits before the company can drill the new wells, which are expected to be at a water depth of just over 6,000 feet. That process could take several weeks or more.
BP spokesmen declined to discuss the latest decision, although the company issued a brief statement saying that, "We are working through the regulatory process" and that the company's voluntary standards "exceed current government requirements."
The gulf accident remains a burden for the company. BP, along with Transocean, the rig operator, and Halliburton, the cement contractor, recently received citations from the Interior Department saying that they had failed to protect safety and the environment. The 15 separate violations could force the companies to pay as much as $45.7 million. They face potential criminal charges as well.
Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, was sharply critical of the drilling approval.
"Comprehensive safety legislation hasn't passed Congress, and BP hasn't paid the fines they owe for their spill, yet BP is being given back the keys to drill in the gulf," Mr. Markey said in a statement.
BP continues to pump oil and gas in the gulf from production platforms, and it has a minority stake in another well being drilled by Noble Energy that was approved after the Deepwater Horizon accident.
While the company's operations may be returning to normal in the United States, its business in Russia continues to be plagued by turmoil.
Tensions at its TNK-BP joint venture led to the departure Friday of Maxim Barsky, the Russian deputy chief executive and heir apparent to the chief executive, Mikhail Fridman. It was the latest episode in a continuing corporate shake-up resulting in part from a dispute over a BP move to partner with a second Russian company, Rosneft, earlier this year.
TNK-BP blocked the Rosneft venture in court, and minority shareholders of TNK-BP have sued BP seeking billions of dollars in damages.
Mr. Fridman, who has a history of conflict with senior BP executives, will remain as chief executive of TNK-BP until the end of 2013, the companies said Friday.
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12) U.S. to Keep Strong Presence in Pacific, Panetta Says
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/world/asia/panetta-tells-pacific-countries-that-us-will-keep-strong-presence.html?ref=world
BALI, Indonesia - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Sunday that despite hundreds of billions of dollars in expected cuts to the Pentagon budget, the United States would remain a Pacific power even as China expanded its military presence in the region.
Mr. Panetta, who is on his first trip to Asia as defense secretary, made the comments at a meeting of Southeast Asian nations on this Indonesian resort island. He sought to reassure Pacific nations that are concerned about China's assertiveness that the United States, as he put it, would be "a force for peace and prosperity" here.
He acknowledged that nations in the region were worried about the impact of at least $450 billion in Pentagon budget cuts over the next decade and whether the United States could afford to maintain a strong military presence in the Pacific.
"There's no question that those concerns have been expressed," Mr. Panetta told reporters before meeting with the defense ministers of the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But, Mr. Panetta said, "I've made clear that even with the budget constraints that we are facing in the United States, there is no question that in discussions within the Pentagon, and discussions in the White House, that the Pacific will be a priority for the United States of America."
Mr. Panetta offered no specifics, although he said that the United States would maintain its "force projection" in the region - some 85,000 troops in all, largely in South Korea and Japan.
Although he did not mention it, the United States is also stepping up investments in a range of weapons, jet fighters and technology in response to China's military prowess.
In the past year, China has tested its first radar-evading fighter jet, the J-20, and is developing an antiship ballistic missile that has the potential of hitting American aircraft carriers. China is also in sea trials with its first aircraft carrier, a refitted Soviet-era carrier from Ukraine. And the People's Liberation Army - with some 1.25 million ground troops, the largest in the world - is on track to achieve its goal of building a modern, regionally focused force by 2020.
The Chinese military remains focused on Taiwan, which it claims as part of its sovereign territory, and has deployed as many as 1,200 short-range missiles aimed in its direction.
At the same time, China has become involved in a number of maritime disputes with countries in the region over its claims to the South China Sea. On some Chinese maps, China's territorial claims extend south nearly to the coast of Indonesia - a source of aggravation to top Obama administration officials.
Earlier this month, Mr. Panetta was blunt about his worries. "We're concerned about China," he told American service members in Naples, Italy. "The most important thing we can do is to project our force into the Pacific - to have our carriers there, to have our fleet there, to be able to make very clear to China that we are going to protect international rights to be able to move across the oceans freely."
Mr. Panetta will also visit Japan and South Korea this week.
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13) Cornel West, Others Arrested as 'Stop Stop-and-Frisk' Movement Against Police Abuse Kicks Off with Occupy Wall Street Support
By Anna Lekas Miller, AlterNet
Posted on October 23, 2011, Printed on October 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152838/cornel_west%2C_others_arrested_as_%27stop_stop-and-frisk%27_movement_against_police_abuse_kicks_off_with_occupy_wall_street_support
On Friday, October 21, a historic movement to combat the New York Police Department policy of "stop and frisk" began in the heart of Harlem.
"I'm a former military officer," a young man named Marvin told the crowd assembled at the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. "One night, me and some of my friends were minding our own business-just going out to pick up some Chinese food. We got stopped by a police officer. He demanded that we show him identification and handcuffed us to the sidewalk while he searched our car for a warrant. After searching our car-and finding nothing-the officer turned to us and said, 'Can you do the chicken noodle soup dance?' Even though he had found nothing, he told us that the only way he would let us go without a record was if we sang and danced for him."
"I hate that people see me on the street and automatically think that I am a criminal. I don't have any police record-but I will after today," he finished.
The New York Police Department is on track to "stop and frisk" over 700,000 people in 2011 alone. That is over 1,900 people stopped and searched without a warrant per day; 85 percent of them are black or Latino and more than 90 percent were doing nothing wrong.
In July, a few weeks before Adbusters released the call to Occupy Wall Street, professor and civil rights activist Dr. Cornel West and Carl Dix, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Communist Party, held a strategy session to discuss how to take action against the New York Police Department's policies of racial profiling, police brutality, and mass incarceration of young blacks and Latinos. At the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Attica Riots, they announced the day-October 21-as the beginning of the "Stop Stop-and-Frisk" movement, beginning with a march and action of nonviolent civil disobedience at the 28th Precinct in Harlem, and hopefully gathering momentum and spreading throughout New York City and communities of color around the United States.
Coincidentally, October 21 in New York City happened to fall at the height of Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street has experienced its own bitter taste of police brutality. Almost 1,000 protesters have been arrested in New York City. They are often thrown to the ground, belittled and arrested on charges such as "resisting arrest" when their only crime is exercising their First Amendment right. Protesters have often been penned in, surrounded by orange nets, unaware that they are under arrest until it is too late. NYPD officer Anthony Bologna is being penalized 10 vacation days and may face charges of assault for pepper-spraying five women, inadvertently turning public attention toward the New York Police Department's policing practices.
What many of the predominantly white protesters in Liberty Plaza didn't realize until recently is that their experiences are only a small taste of the police brutality that communities of color experience on a daily basis.
"My first thoughts after seeing five white women get pepper-sprayed in the face was, what would they have done to a black man?" mused one man at the Harlem rally.
If a black or Latino man is arrested at a demonstration of civil disobedience, it will affect his life far more than if he were white. Many young blacks and Latinos-due to racial profiling in common police practices such as stop-and-frisk-already have a police record, and can't afford to risk being put through the system again. As it is, one in 15 black adults is behind bars, and the statistic climbs to one in nine for black males between the ages of 20 and 34. To many communities of color, the New York Police Department is not a force that maintains order, but one that institutionalizes racial inequalities, segregating blacks and Latinos into a pipeline toward mass incarceration and criminalization.
"I don't fault people for not knowing that this happens," Carl Dix told me. "That's a conspicuous policy on the part of the people who run this country-blacks are the problem and we have to devise a solution, while keeping the white middle-class unaware. I want to bring Occupy Wall Street to what is actually happening. I want to challenge them: now that you know, are you going to act?"
Earlier in the week, activists at Occupy Wall Street began to pass around "Stop Stop and Frisk" flyers during the General Assembly. Dix made several guest appearances at Liberty Plaza to mobilize solidarity to harness Occupy Wall Street's energy to combat all police brutality. The People of Color Occupy Wall Street Working Group pushed to endorse the movement, discussing the urgency of the issue. Thursday night, Occupy Wall Street endorsed the movement, claiming, "How can we truly stand as the 99 percent, if we don't stand with the people of Harlem?"
On Friday, several protesters-a healthy mix of black, brown and white-from Occupy Wall Street assembled, joining the Stop Stop-and-Frisk rally in both solidarity and civil disobedience. Though they were met with curious stares while marching through Zuccotti Park, upon reaching the streets of Harlem they were greeted with cheers and messages of support and gratitude from street vendors, shopkeepers and passersby.
Dr. Cornel West addressed the crowd at the Harlem State Office Building on the corner of 125th St. and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. "This corner has been consecrated by giants like Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Marcus Garvey, Martin King, and Fannie Lou Hamer," began Dr. West. "We are here today because we have come to terms with arbitrary police power to ensure that the rights of poor young people, disproportionately black and brown, are acknowledged and affirmed."
After marching to the precinct, those who were willing to get arrested-many of them young black and Latino men who have spent their lives trying to avoid a police record-linked arms in front of the precinct, chanting until they were inevitably hauled away in plastic cuffs. Cornel West, who was arrested only a few days in Washington DC, Carl Dix, Reverend Stephen Phelps, and several other organizers and activists were among the 33 arrested outside of the 28th Precinct.
This is only the beginning of Stop Stop-and-Frisk. Next week it will hold actions in Brooklyn, and after that, East Harlem and the South Bronx. Strategy meetings are being planned, both separate from and in conjunction with Occupy Wall Street. Though the movements were originally organized separately, they occurred at a progressive nexus in history that is too coincidental to be ignored. Both movements have demonstrated that this is only the beginning of a continuous and persistent battle. Creating a permanent alliance between the two movements could mean diversifying and expanding Occupy Wall Street and spreading the call to stop stop-and-frisk beyond communities of color as a collective force against police brutality of all kinds, and in all communities.
In the words of Carl Dix, "We are not going to stop-and maybe the NYPD will give us a little extra time in jail to further figure out our movement."
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14) Police Brutality Charges Sweep Across the US
From Naomi Wolf's arrest in New York to shootings in Tucson and Florida, forces face allegations of abuse of power
By Paul Harris, Guardian UK
22 October 11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/police-brutality-charges-us
Officer Michael Daragjati had no idea that the FBI was listening to his phone calls. Otherwise he would probably not have described his arrest and detention of an innocent black New Yorker in the manner he did.
Daragjati boasted to a woman friend that, while on patrol in Staten Island, he had "fried another nigger". It was "no big deal", he added. The FBI, which had been investigating another matter, then tried to work out what had happened.
According to court documents released in New York, Daragjati and his partner had randomly stopped and frisked a black man who had become angry and asked for Daragjati's name and badge number. Daragjati, 32, and with eight years on the force, had no reason to stop the man, and had found nothing illegal. But he arrested him and fabricated an account of him resisting arrest. The man, now referred to in papers only as John Doe because of fears for his safety, spent two nights in jail. He had merely been walking alone through the neighbourhood.
The shocking story has added to a growing sense that there are serious problems of indiscipline and law-breaking in US police forces. Last week the feminist author Naomi Wolf was arrested outside an awards ceremony in Manhattan. She had been advising Occupy Wall Street protesters of their rights to continue demonstrating outside the event. Instead, as she joined the protest, she was carted off to jail in her evening gown. That incident is only the most high-profile of many apparently illegal police actions around the protests. One senior officer, deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, created headlines worldwide when he pepper-sprayed young women behind a police barricade.
A report from the New York Civil Liberties Union recently looked at police use of Taser stun guns in the state, and revealed that in 60% of incidents where they were used, the incident did not meet the recommended criteria for such a weapon. Some cases involved people already handcuffed and 40% involved "at risk" subjects such as children, the elderly or mentally ill. "This disturbing pattern of misuse and abuse endangers lives," said the NYCLU's executive director, Donna Lieberman.
In Los Angeles, officers in the sheriff's department are accused of physically abusing some prison inmates and having sex with others. An internal report, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, revealed allegations that included beating people visiting relatives in jail. In Pittsburgh, there is the case of Jordan Miles, a high-flying high-school student stopped by three plainclothes policemen. Miles, 18 at the time, was walking to his grandmother's house and had no idea who the men were, as they did not identify themselves. He ran, but the officers caught him and beat him so badly that he ended up in hospital. He is undergoing neurological treatment for memory problems and has had to drop out of college.
Yet it was Miles who was charged with aggravated assault - a case that a judge later threw out. His mother, Terez Miles, said: "We are no strangers to police brutality in the city of Pittsburgh, but what they did was terrible and then they lied about it."
In Chicago, Jimmel Cannon, 13, was shot eight times by police who claimed that he had a BB gun in his hand. His family said that he had his hands in the air. In Tucson, Arizona, former marine Jose Guerena was killed by a Swat team on a drugs raid. They found nothing illegal, but Guerena was shot 23 times.
The list goes on. Miami is still dealing with the fallout of the fatal shooting of Raymond Herisse. He had been driving a car out of which police claimed gunshots came. However, it took three days before they produced a weapon. They also confiscated and destroyed the phones of people trying to record the incident.
"There is a widespread, continuing pattern of officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply," said Chris Calabrese, of the American Civil Liberties Union. Campaigners say the spread of camera phones is why so many incidents of brutality are appearing.
In another recorded call, Daragjati complained to a friend: "I could throw somebody a beating, they catch me on camera, and I'm fired." Some activists have taken that to heart. Diop Kamau, a former officer, runs the Florida-based Police Complaint Centre, which investigates allegations of police abuse nationwide. "Police are now facing an onslaught of scrutiny because everyone has a cellphone," he said.
Kamau said that many police departments still had a culture of secrecy and many officers believed that there was little likelihood of punishment even if caught. "The police fill in the blanks. They say what happened and they will be believed," he said.
One weakness is that there is no central organisation for the police, and local departments do not release data on complaints or allegations of abuse. "The problem is that there is an absence of research," said Professor John Liederbach, an expert in American policing at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. As the list of complaints and incidents grows, that might be about to change.
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15) Nurses Condemn Chicago Mayor Emanuel for Arrest Of Nurses, Medical Volunteers at Occupy Chicago
For Immediate Release
October 23, 2011
http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-condemn-chicago-mayor-emanuel-for-arrest-of-nurses-medical-voluntee/
RNs to Picket Mayor's Office Monday Morning at 10 am
Registered nurses from across the U.S. today condemned Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his decision to arrest nurse volunteers, as well as peaceful protesters, in a late night crackdown Saturday night at the Occupy Chicago protest.
NNU is asking supporters to call Mayor Emanuel's office at 312-744-5000 and demand they immediately drop all charges against the nurses and other protesters, and stop the harassment and arrests of the nurses and others peacefully exercising their free speech rights. Nurses will also picket the mayor's office at 10 a.m. Monday morning, at City Hall at the LaSalle entrance.
Nurse leaders of National Nurses United who set up a nurses' station to provide basic first aid to Chicago protesters - as NNU has done peacefully in five other cities across the U.S. - were among the some 130 people arrested by Chicago police. The police also tore down the first aid station, and arrested scores of others who had peacefully assembled to support the station.
"Even in wartime, combatants respect the work of nurses and other first responders. Yet Mayor Emanuel and Chicago seem to care as little about that tradition as they do in protecting the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly." said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro. "These arrests are disgraceful and unconscionable, and will not deter our nurses from continuing this mission, setting up the station again, and continuing to support the protests."
Emanuel has been perhaps the most aggressive mayor in the nation in repression of the occupy Wall Street movement with mass arrests on at least two occasions now. The Chicago Tribune Saturday reported that city officials are trying to send a message to world leaders of being "tough" on demonstrators in advance of upcoming meetings of G-8 and NATO leaders in May.
"Instead of showing off for world leaders, and paying allegiance to protecting the economic interests of the top 1 percent, Mayor Emanuel should stop, and start representing the 99 percent, the people for whom the occupy movement has become a clear voice," DeMoro said.
NNU also has first aid stations now established at occupy protests in New York's Zuccotti Park, site of the first Occupy Wall Street protests, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, and Detroit, and will be opening up others in coming days.
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16) The Hole in Europe's Bucket
By PAUL KRUGMAN
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/the-hole-in-europes-bucket.html?hp
If it weren't so tragic, the current European crisis would be funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way. For as one rescue plan after another falls flat, Europe's Very Serious People - who are, if such a thing is possible, even more pompous and self-regarding than their American counterparts - just keep looking more and more ridiculous.
I'll get to the tragedy in a minute. First, let's talk about the pratfalls, which have lately had me humming the old children's song "There's a Hole in My Bucket."
For those not familiar with the song, it concerns a lazy farmer who complains about said hole and is told by his wife to fix it. Each action she suggests, however, turns out to require a prior action, and, eventually, she tells him to draw some water from the well. "But there's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza."
What does this have to do with Europe? Well, at this point, Greece, where the crisis began, is no more than a grim sideshow. The clear and present danger comes instead from a sort of bank run on Italy, the euro area's third-largest economy. Investors, fearing a possible default, are demanding high interest rates on Italian debt. And these high interest rates, by raising the burden of debt service, make default more likely.
It's a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To save the euro, this threat must be contained. But how? The answer has to involve creating a fund that can, if necessary, lend Italy (and Spain, which is also under threat) enough money that it doesn't need to borrow at those high rates. Such a fund probably wouldn't have to be used, since its mere existence should put an end to the cycle of fear. But the potential for really large-scale lending, certainly more than a trillion euros' worth, has to be there.
And here's the problem: All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can't achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area's second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
You see what I mean about the situation being funny in a gallows-humor fashion? What makes the story really painful is the fact that none of this had to happen.
Think about countries like Britain, Japan and the United States, which have large debts and deficits yet remain able to borrow at low interest rates. What's their secret? The answer, in large part, is that they retain their own currencies, and investors know that in a pinch they could finance their deficits by printing more of those currencies. If the European Central Bank were to similarly stand behind European debts, the crisis would ease dramatically.
Wouldn't that cause inflation? Probably not: whatever the likes of Ron Paul may believe, money creation isn't inflationary in a depressed economy. Furthermore, Europe actually needs modestly higher overall inflation: too low an overall inflation rate would condemn southern Europe to years of grinding deflation, virtually guaranteeing both continued high unemployment and a string of defaults.
But such action, we keep being told, is off the table. The statutes under which the central bank was established supposedly prohibit this kind of thing, although one suspects that clever lawyers could find a way to make it happen. The broader problem, however, is that the whole euro system was designed to fight the last economic war. It's a Maginot Line built to prevent a replay of the 1970s, which is worse than useless when the real danger is a replay of the 1930s.
And this turn of events is, as I said, tragic.
The story of postwar Europe is deeply inspiring. Out of the ruins of war, Europeans built a system of peace and democracy, constructing along the way societies that, while imperfect - what society isn't? - are arguably the most decent in human history.
Yet that achievement is under threat because the European elite, in its arrogance, locked the Continent into a monetary system that recreated the rigidities of the gold standard, and - like the gold standard in the 1930s - has turned into a deadly trap.
Now maybe European leaders will come up with a truly credible rescue plan. I hope so, but I don't expect it.
The bitter truth is that it's looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed. And the even more bitter truth is that given the way that system has been performing, Europe might be better off if it collapses sooner rather than later.
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17) Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
October 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25nautilus.html?hp
It is a living fossil, its ancestors going back a half billion years - to the early days of complex life on the planet, when the land was barren and the seas were warm.
Naturalists have long marveled at its shell. The logarithmic spiral echoes the curved arms of hurricanes and distant galaxies. In Florence, the Medicis turned the pearly shells into ornate cups and pitchers adorned with gold and rubies.
Now, scientists say, humans are loving the chambered nautilus to death, throwing its very existence into danger.
"A horrendous slaughter is going on out here," said Peter D. Ward, a biologist from the University of Washington, during a recent census of the marine creature in the Philippines. "They're nearly wiped out."
The culprit? Growing sales of jewelry and ornaments derived from the lustrous shell. To satisfy the worldwide demand, fishermen have been killing the nautilus by the millions, scientists fear. Now marine biologists have begun to assess the status of its populations and to consider whether it should be listed as an endangered species to curb the shell trade.
On eBay and elsewhere, small nautilus shells sell as earrings for $19.95, and as pendants for $24.95. Big ones - up to the size of plates - can be found for $56, often bisected to display the elegant chambers.
As jewelry, the opalescent material from the shell's inner surface - marketed as a cheaper alternative to real pearl - can fetch $80 for earrings, $225 for bracelets and $489 for necklaces.
Catching the nautilus is a largely unregulated free-for-all in which fishermen from poor South Pacific countries gladly accept $1 per shell.
Scientists worry that rising demand may end up eradicating an animal that grows slowly and needs 15 years or more to reach sexual maturity - an unusually long time for a cephalopod. (Its cousins include the squid and the octopus.)
"In certain areas, it's threatened with extermination," said Neil H. Landman, a biologist and paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History and the co-editor of "Nautilus: The Biology and Paleobiology of a Living Fossil," a compendium of scientific reports.
The nautilus lives on the slopes of deep coral reefs in the warm southwestern Pacific. While it is easy to catch with baited traps on long lines, the depths - as much as 2,000 feet, below the range of sunlight and scuba divers - make it hard to study.
So to find out just how endangered the nautilus is, biologists began a formal census last summer in at least six regions known to harbor the shy creatures.
Dr. Landman said the relatively few scientists who study the nautilus must overcome "a tremendous lack of knowledge" about its overall numbers and geographic range.
By contrast, modern consumers know far too much, he said: "You can see the shells polished and sold all over the place."
The fossil record dates the ancestors of the nautilus to the late Cambrian period, 500 million years ago. Some grew to be true sea monsters, with gargantuan shells and big tentacles. Over eons, the thousands of species have dwindled to a handful.
The word "nautilus" comes from the Greek for boat. When the first shells arrived in Renaissance Europe, collectors were stunned: They saw the perfect spirals as reflecting the larger order of the universe.
Later on, Victorian homes displayed them as curios. In his famous 1858 poem "The Chambered Nautilus," Oliver Wendell Holmes admired "the silent toil" that produced the "lustrous coil." And in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," Jules Verne created a watertight submarine of many compartments and christened it the Nautilus.
About those chambers: The creature periodically erects barriers inside its shell as it grows, leaving a series of unoccupied spaces behind. Like a submarine, the nautilus changes the amount of gas in the empty chambers to adjust its buoyancy. And it uses jet propulsion to swim.
To feed on fish and shrimp, it has as many as 90 small tentacles - and, like all cephalopods, a relatively large brain and eyes. The coiled shell can exhibit a nacreous luster or bands of bright color. The creature cannot go too deep lest its shell implode - like the hull of a submarine.
While the dwindling stocks of a beloved species can sometimes serve as a call to action - think of whales, pandas and polar bears - the threat to the chambered nautilus has gone largely unnoticed by the public. Specimens are for sale at relatively low prices and in seeming abundance. The situation is quite unlike that of rhinoceros horns or elephant tusks, which are considered contraband.
Deceptive marketing may help. The iridescent material inside nautilus shells is sometimes machined into pleasing shapes and sold as "Osmeña pearl." (In the Philippines - home to much nautilus fishing - the Osmeña family is a political dynasty, and its name lends cachet.)
A recent Internet ad offers to sell an "Osmeña Pearl Sterling Silver Necklace" for $495, calling the dozen pearls "gorgeous, large, silver-hued, pale slate-blue." The colorful ad says nothing about their origin.
Worse, collectors talk of obtaining rare "Nautilus pearls" that sell for thousands of dollars each. Scientists dismiss the pearls as fraudulent.
Over the decades, scientific alarms have rung periodically. Biologists have slowly complied anecdotal reports of population declines near the Philippines, Indonesia and New Caledonia (whose official emblem features a nautilus shell).
But the alarms sounded with new intensity last year at a conference in Dijon, France. Patricia S. De Angelis of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service reported that the United States had imported 579,000 specimens from 2005 to 2008.
When Dr. Ward, of the University of Washington, heard that, "the figure shocked the hell out of me," he recalled.
Suddenly, a species thought to be fairly plentiful became the object of serious concern.
This summer, the Fish and Wildlife Service paid for Dr. Ward and his colleagues to begin a global census off the Philippine island of Bohol, which has long figured prominently in the shell trade.
In an e-mail in August, he said the team was working with local fishermen to set 40 traps a day but was catching two creatures at most - a tenth to a hundredth the rate of a decade ago. "A horror show," he called it, adding that he suspected that one particular kind of nautilus "is already extinct in the Philippines" or nearly so.
"A very old species is being killed off quickly out here," he wrote.
The captive nautiluses were X-rayed and returned to the sea.
The team plans to go to Australia in December to expand the census to its Great Barrier Reef. The hope is that data from six sites will allow the scientists to estimate the world's remaining nautilus population, and what might constitute a sustainable catch.
Scientific worry over the fate of the nautilus parallels the growing apprehension over the effects of deep-sea fishing on a variety of creatures. Last month, the United Nations General Assembly held an open debate on the subject, with the aim of developing safeguards.
Marine biologists are lobbying for protection of the nautilus under the same United Nations rules that protect the American black bear, the African gray parrot, the green iguana and thousands of other creatures. The rules, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (or Cites, pronounced SIGH-tees), allow commercial trade if it is legal and sustainable.
In an interview, Dr. De Angelis of the Fish and Wildlife Service called the nautilus census team "the best of the best" and described its goals as getting to the bottom of the population question and coming up with a credible estimate for the dimensions of the global trade.
"Ultimately," she said, "we're looking at whether this is sustainable."
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18) 'What Kind of Government?'
New York Times Editorial
October 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/the-stain-of-the-bulger-case.html?hp
The F.B.I.'s reputation has been seriously stained by the James (Whitey) Bulger case and its disclosures that the agency protected murderers to use them as informants against the Mafia.
The damage has been compounded by a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, dismissing lawsuits brought by the families of two murder victims who had won a total of $8.4 million in judgments against the federal government. The court ruled, incredibly, that they had filed their claims too late.
The suits were brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which is supposed to provide a remedy for people the government harmed. The law says claims must be filed within two years of when they arise. But that limit cannot be imposed if someone harmed does not know, or has been stopped from knowing he has a claim, as in this case.
In 1982, Edward Halloran was a low-level criminal in Boston. Whitey Bulger and his crime partner Stephen Flemmi offered him a contract to kill someone. Mr. Halloran told the F.B.I. about the offer. Word got back to Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi and they had Mr. Halloran killed. An innocent bystander, Michael Donahue, was also killed.
The First Circuit ruled that, because there were extensive news reports on court testimony in 1998 by the leader of the F.B.I.'s Boston organized crime unit saying he "believed that Bulger and Flemmi may have killed Halloran," the families should have known to file their claims against the government by Sept. 2, 2000. In response, Michael Donahue's widow, Patricia, asked The Boston Globe: "What kind of government tells me I should have read the newspaper and we lose because of that?" For 17 years, the F.B.I. told her another man was the murderer.
It was not until September 1999, when a federal district judge issued a major opinion, did the families learn that the F.B.I. protected Mr. Bulger and Mr. Flemmi while they committed murders, including possibly those of Mr. Halloran and Mr. Donahue. The Halloran suit was filed about a year later and the Donahue suit seven months after that - both within the two-year limit for filing claims.
Throwing out the two suits rewards "official uncontrolled wickedness," wrote a judge dissenting from the appeals ruling. Another dissent said it lets the F.B.I.'s Boston office get "away with murder." The ruling violates basic principles of justice and the logic of the law.
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19) Assange: Financial Woes May Close WikiLeaks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/24/business/AP-EU-Britain-WikiLeaks.html?hp
LONDON (AP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday that financial problems may lead to the closure of the notorious secret-spilling site at the end of this year.
"If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year," he said. "If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue."
WikiLeaks said in a statement Monday that it would stop publishing for the moment in order to focus on making money - explaining that the blockade imposed by financial companies including Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and PayPal left it with no choice.
The statement says that in order to ensure survival, WikiLeaks must "aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents."
U.S.-based financial companies pulled the plug on WikiLeaks shortly after it began publishing some 250,000 U.S. State Department cables last year. The group says the restrictions starved it of nearly all its revenue.
The group has long shown signs of financial distress. In a recent statement about Assange's contested book deal, the group said it did not have enough money to hire a lawyer.
Assange remains under legal pressure in Europe and the United States. A decision on whether to extradite him to Sweden to face sex crime allegations is expected in the next few weeks. He also may face possible legal action in the United States.
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20) Revealed—The Capitalist Network that Runs the World
By Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie
New Scientist, October 24, 2011
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html?full=true&print=true
AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.
The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).
"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."
Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.
The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.
The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.
When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.
Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."
"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.
Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.
Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.
One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.
Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."
So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.
When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…" was misattributed.
The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company
* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used
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