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This drawing has come to symbolize the California prison hunger strike and the solidarity it has generated. It was contributed by Rashid Johnson, a prisoner in Red Onion Prison, Virginia.
Pelican Bay 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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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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An Evening with Ali Abunimah -- with Special Guest Alice Walker
Wednesday, October 5th, 7:00 PM
First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway
Buy Your Tickets Today:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/194416?
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Alice Walker is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer, including her book Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel. She participated in the US Boat to Gaza, part of the Freedom Flotilla.
Tickets: $15, $10 students/low-income, available at through Brown Paper Tickets, or at local bookstores: (East Bay) Books, Inc.; Diesel; Moe's Books; Walden Pond; (SF) Modern Times. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Benefit for MECA's Maia Project: Clean Water for the Children of Palestine
Wheelchair accessible & ASL interpreted.
Cosponsors: KPFA, Arab Film Festival, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, US Palestinian Community Network, Arab Cultural & Community Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Bay Area Women in Black, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Global Exchange.
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Protest, March & Die-In on 10th Anniversary of Afghanistan War
Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, 4:30-6:30pm
New Federal Building, 7th & Mission Sts, SF
End All the Wars & Occupations-Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Haiti . . .
Money for Jobs, Healthcare & Schools-Not for the Pentagon
Friday, October 7, 2011 will be the exact 10th anniversary of the U.S./NATO war on the people of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani people have been killed, wounded and displaced, and thousands of U.S. and NATO forces killed and wounded. The war costs more than $126 billion per year at a time when social programs are being slashed.
The true and brutal character of the U.S. strategy to "win hearts and minds" of the Afghani population was described by a Marine officer, quoted in a recent ANSWER Coalition statement:
"You can't just convince them [Afghani people] through projects and goodwill," another Marine officer said. "You have to show up at their door with two companies of Marines and start killing people. That's how you start convincing them." (To read the entire ANSWER statement, click here)
Mark your calendar now and help organize for the October 7 march and die-in in downtown San Francisco. There are several things you can do:
1. Endorse the protest and die-in.
2. Spread the word and help organize in your community, union, workplace and campus.
3. Make a donation to help with organizing expenses.
Only the people can stop the war!
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2969 Mission St.
415-821-6545
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United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC) CALLS FOR ACTIONS IN OCTOBER
TO MARK 10 YEARS OF WAR ON AFGHANISTAN
On June 22, the White House defied the majority of Americans who want an end to the war in Afghanistan. Instead of announcing the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops, contractors, bases, and war dollars, Obama committed to removing only one twentieth of the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan over the next eight months. Another 23,000 will supposedly be withdrawn just in time to influence the 2012 elections. Even if the President follows thru on this plan, nearly 170,000 US soldiers and contractors will remain in Afghanistan. All veterans and soldiers will be raising the question, "Who will be the last U.S. combatant to die in Afghanistan?"
In truth, the President's plan is not a plan to end the war in Afghanistan. It was, instead, an announcement that the U.S. was changing strategy. As the New York Times reported, the US will be replacing the "counterinsurgency strategy" adopted 18 months ago with the kind of campaign of drone attacks, assassinations, and covert actions that the US has employed in Pakistan.
At a meeting of the United National Antiwar Committee's National Coordinating Committee, held in NYC on June 18, representatives of 47 groups voted to endorse the nonviolent civil resistance activities beginning on October 6 in Washington, D.C. and to call for nationally coordinated local actions on October 15 to protest the tenth anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan. UNAC urges activists in as many cities as possible to hold marches, picket lines, teach-ins, and other events to say:
· Withdraw ALL US/NATO Military Forces, Contractors, and Bases out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya NOW!
· End drone attacks on defenseless populations in Pakistan and Yemen!
· End US Aid to Israel! Hands Off Iran!
· Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! Money for Jobs and Education, Not for War and Incarceration!
In this message:
The Wall Street Occupation continues
October 6
October 15
NATO/G8 protests in Chicago
UNAC conference
The Wall Street Occupation continues.
The Wall Street occupation is continuing despite dozens of arrests on Friday. A number of UNAC supporters have joined the occupation. You can join the occupation virtually by joining the viewers of the livestream at: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution. Here is another video of the occupation from Stan Heller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rfuvDr2wJQ
October 6.
UNAC is supporting the October 6 "Stop the Machine" actions in Washington, DC. Please join us. We will assemble at Freedom Plaza on October 6 and many will continue to occupy the area while conducting various protest activity. For more information: http://october2011.org/.
October 15.
UNAC calls for protest in local areas on October 15 to protest the 10th anniversary of the war on Afghanistan. Click here for a partial list of action:
http://nepajac.org/oct15.htm
Click here to add you action to the national list:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12185630202
NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
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
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
Oct. 15-22, 2011 antiwar week of solidarity and in defense of civil liberties...
Marking the 10th year of the U.S. war against the people of Afghanistan...
Bring the Troops Home Now! Civil Liberties for all!
Fightback Tour!
No to FBI Repression, Government Islamophobia and War
Civil Liberties for All!
Featuring:
Stephen Downs, Albany, NY civil liberties attorney; Legal Counsel, Project Salam (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims); Leading national spokesman against government-promoted Islamophobia and repression against the Islamic-American communities
Jess Sundin, Chicago Grand Jury subpoena victim and solidarity/antiwar activist facing, along with 23 others, felony charges of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism. Twin Cities antiwar activist; Leader, Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Other tour speakers participating in some of the meetings listed below include:
• Zahra Billoo, Executive Director, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
• Hatem Bazian, Palestinian-American UC Berkeley Professor of Near Eastern Studies
• Carlos Villarreal, Exec. Dir., National Lawyers Guild
• Rep., United National Antiwar Coalition
• Michael Thurman, Bradley Manning Support Network
• Laura Herrera, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Jeff Mackler, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Rep., Immigrant rights community
October 15-22 Initial Tour Schedule
Sat., October 15, 2:30 - 4 PM, 1182 Market Street (near 8th Street) Suite 203, San Francisco, Sponsor: SF Gray Panthers, reception/meeting, donations accepted 415-552-8800, graypanthers-sf@sbcglobal.net
Sat., October 15, 7 PM, 518 Valencia St. (near 16th St.), San Francisco, Main sponsor: Northern California UNAC 510-268-9429. $10 sliding scale. No one turned away.
Sun., October 16, Oakland Reception/lunch/meeting at the home of Jeff Mackler... with KPFA friends, 1-4 PM, $20/no one turned away. RSVP: 510-268-9429
Monday, October 17, 7-9 PM, The Redwoods Auditorium, 40 Camino Alto, Mill Valley, CA, Sponsor, Mill Valley Seniors for Peace; Marin Peace and Justice Coalition warrenut@aol.com 415-389-9040 Free
Tuesday, Oct 18, 7pm, 909 12th St, Sacramento. Free/donation requested. Sponsors: Sacramento Valley Chapter, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, 916-369-5510 & Sacramento Area Peace Action,
Wednesday, October 19, Campus meeting to be announced.
Thursday, October 20, 7:30 PM Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar Street at Bonita, Berkeley, Free/donation requested.
Friday, October 21, 7:00 PM, Sonoma State University, Warren Auditorium (Tentative location) in Ives Hall (Directions to Warren Auditorium: At the Main Entrance to the University, turn left off of E. Cotati Avenue onto Sequoia Drive. Take the first right at the Information Booth onto Redwood Drive. Turn left into parking lot E. Ives Hall is the building on the North side of the parking lot.. Parking free after 5:00 pm), 707-874-2695 Sponsor: Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action and Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center
Saturday, October 22, 2- 4 PM, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, 48 S. Seventh Street (between San Fernando and Santa Clara Streets), San Jose, Sponsors: San Jose Peace and Justice Center and San Jose Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Donations accepted. 408-373-0817
Tour co-sponsors: United National Antiwar Coalition • National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area Chapter Committee to Stop FBI Repression • Project Salam • San Jose Peace and Justice Center • Mill Valley Seniors for Peace • Marin Peace and Justice Center • South Bay Committee to Stop Political Repression • Green Party of Alameda County • Oakland Education Association Peace and Justice Caucus • Peninsula Peace and Justice Center • Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists • International Action Center • International Socialist Organization • BAYAN/USA • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee • Code Pink San Francisco • Socialist Viewpoint • Solidarity • Sacramento Area Peace Action • Socialist Action • Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action • Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center • Sacramento Valley Chapter Women's International League for Peace and Freedom • Veterans for Peace Chapter 162 East Bay • Afghans for Peace • California Peace and Freedom Party • Michel Shehadeh, Case of the Los Angeles 8 • Cindy Sheehan, Peace activist • Courage to Resist • Muslim Peace Coalition/USA • Samina Sundas, Founding Executive, American Muslim Voice • Bay Area Committee To Stop Political Repression
All meetings wheelchair accessible. All meetings co-sponsored by United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC), 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
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Please share this announcement widely
MoveOn.org East Bay Council, Alameda Labor Council, San Francisco Labor Council,
New Priorities Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
1PM Rally at Laney College
2:30 PM March to Federal Building & Frank Ogawa Plaza
Urge you to Rally & March for:
Jobs not Cuts !!!
Education not Incarceration
Work not War
Clean Energy not Climate Change
Social Security not Bank Bailouts
Main St. not Wall St.
Prosperity not Austerity
Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
End the Wars! Invest in Our Communities!
BRING ALL THE TROOPS AND WAR DOLLARS HOME!
We want an economy that supports the rights of all people to jobs at decent pay in safe workplaces, affordable healthcare for all, decent affordable housing, quality education in modern schools, a secure retirement, and a clean sustainable environment. We oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs. The rich, corporations, Wall St. banks and financial speculators should pay to fix the crisis that their irresponsibility and greed created. We have made our sacrifices. Now they should make theirs.
Make your voices heard!
www.jobs-not-cuts.org
For more information and to register endorsements, write to:
MoveOnEastBay@gmail.com
NewPrioritiesCampaign@gmail.com
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The Call for the 16th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation
Saturday, October 22,2011
12:00 NOON
3rd Street and Palou
San Francisco
(Endorse this call, forward to others. Return endorsements to oct22bayarea@gmail.com or call 510 206-0742)
Across the U.S., Black, Latino, and poor neighborhoods are treated like occupied territory by increasingly militarized armies of law enforcement. People are criminalized and brutalized for their perceived status - socioeconomic, immigration, mental health, and/or racial, gender, or sexual identity. People living in our communities, especially youth, are routinely stopped, harassed, beaten, and even killed.
--In Chicago, the home of the first Black president, police have shot 44 people so far this year, mostly youth of color, including 13-year-old Jimmell Cannon, who was shot eight times.
--NYPD continues to stop hundreds of thousands of youth of color every year for the most minimal suspicion, fewer than 10 percent of which result in arrest, and far fewer in charges or conviction.
--Police nationwide continue to kill with very little consequence. Twelve Miami cops shot at 22-year-old Raymond Herisse 100 times, then threatened those who recorded the incident, destroying their cellphones. A Tucson SWAT team shot at 26-year-old Iraq War veteran Jose Guerena over 70 times, claiming that he fired at them and then leaving him to bleed to death in his home. Both their allegations of gunfire and drug-dealing were later revealed to be false. In New York and New Jersey, at least 27 people have been killed by police since October 22 of last year, while at least 35 people have been killed by law enforcement in Washington State in the last 12 months. The killing of 22-year old Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009 resulted in a rare conviction for the officer who shot him; however, he was freed after mere months in prison, while people protesting the outrageous verdict were met with police violence and mass arrests. In the weeks following that cop's release, SF cops killed Charles Hill, a 45-year-old homeless man, on a subway platform and 19-year old Kenneth Harding after he supposedly failed to pay a $2 train fare, then left him dying on the pavement in front of dozens of outraged witnesses.
--Police routinely abuse the mentally ill and disabled. Fullerton, CA cops beat to death homeless and mentally ill 27-year-old Kelly Thomas, described by many in the community as "a gentle, childlike soul." In Fresno, CA, 28-year-old Raul Rosas, Jr. died after being tasered by police. His girlfriend said "I didn't call the Fresno County Sheriff to kill him. I called because he needed help with his mental illness." Raul went into cardiac arrest and was denied access to three medical ambulances that showed up to assist.
--Recently enacted anti-immigrant laws have given police in the states of Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama sweeping powers to stop people "suspected" of being undocumented on no other basis than appearance. The hostility and racism stoked by these policies have already culminated in violence, as seen in the killing of 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereka by a border patrol agent and the beating death of 42-year-old Anastasio Hernández Rojas at the hands of La Migra. More than one million have been deported under the Obama administration.
--Racially targeted mass incarceration exacerbates the criminalization and marginalization of Black people, playing the same role as the Jim Crow laws that sprang from the Virginia slave codes of 1705. In 1954, 90,000 Black people were incarcerated. Now, over 900,000 Black people are imprisoned, a tenfold increase, while the total U.S. Black population has merely doubled in the same period. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate worldwide, with 2.4 million people in prison.
--Law enforcement continues to harass and sexually assault people, most especially women and the transgendered. According to the website InjusticeEverywhere.com, sexual misconduct was the second most common complaint (following excessive force) against police in 2010, involving 618 cops.
--Young schoolchildren are increasingly labeled and treated as criminals by school security and local police. Eight-year-old Aidan Elliot was peppersprayed and handcuffed by Colorado police, and ten-year-old Sofia Bautista was removed from her elementary school, then taken to a NYPD precinct, handcuffed, and interrogated for hours, while police nationwide continue to use tasers on students as young as six.
Meanwhile, repression against those who take action against injustices continues to escalate. Over a dozen activists with Food Not Bombs have been arrested in Orlando for feeding the homeless in public parks. The killings of Oscar Grant, Kenneth Harding, Kelly Thomas, Raymond Herisse, and John T. Williams in Seattle were all caught on video. Now, as if in retaliation against the subsequent public outrage, police in cities and towns nationwide have attacked and arrested people merely for recording their activity, while in Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts, video-recording the police is now explicitly illegal. Cops haven't stopped killing and brutalizing people--they're just making it a crime to record them while they do. Repression against progressive and antiwar activism has intensified: simultaneous FBI raids on activists from numerous antiwar and international solidarity organizations in three U.S. cities took place on September 24, 2010. Twenty-three activists now face serious jail time for refusing to participate in the ensuing grand jury witch hunts that clearly intend to discourage and intimidate would-be dissenters.
These vicious attacks are not going down without opposition. Whether standing up to police violence when it happens, as we saw in the video of Kenneth Harding's shooting, or organizing inspiring prison strikes in Georgia and California, people are uniting to fight back. Determined outcry from people nationwide against the shooting of unarmed men crossing the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has finally brought convictions of the guilty cops and exposed the sort of extensive cover-ups that are routine with police shootings. More and more crimes against the people are being revealed, as we have seen with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' Operation Fast and Furious, which intentionally provided weapons to Mexican drug cartels, and the overturning of over 4,000 convictions of youth in Pennsylvania after it was found that juvenile judge Mark Ciavarella received kickbacks from private for-profit detention centers.
Once we have seen the man behind the curtain, how can we pretend he is not there? One thing we know from years of experience is that when this system has to answer to organized people, it can't easily get away with all the things it's used to doing. Resistance matters.
THE VIOLENCE OF THE COPS, THE COURTS, THE FBI, LA MIGRA, AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS INTENSIFYING. OUR RESISTANCE MUST INTENSIFY AS WELL! Every year, thousands of people nationwide express their outrage, creativity, and resistance in response to the crimes of this system. People speak out and perform, they march in the streets, and more. The October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation embraces and encourages any and all such expressions of people's righteous outrage.
As said by the mother of Gil Barber, gunned down by a deputy in High Point, NC in 2001, "October 22nd is our day." ORGANIZE against these injustices! BREAK DOWN the barriers between communities that these crimes seek to strengthen! MOBILIZE people of all communities in the most visible way...and on October 22, 2011, WEAR BLACK! FIGHT BACK!
JOIN US if there is already an October 22nd event in your area. CREATE one if you are in an area where there is currently no group organizing. For listings of activities in your area, check the websitewww.october22.org.
To start building for an event in your area, email info@october22.org
TO ENDORSE THIS CALL, SIGN BELOW AND MAIL TO: October 22, P.O. Box 2627, New York, NY 10009, along with your tax-deductible donation to the national organizing effort. Suggested donation $15.00 (paid to "IFCO/October 22")
Name: ___________________________________________
Email: ____________________________________________
Organization: __________________________________________________________* (note if for identification purposes only)
Signature: __________________________________________________________
You may also make this endorsement directly on the website www.october22.org
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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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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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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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Here is the official statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression on the 1-year anniversary of the raids.
Build the Movement Against Political Repression
One year since the September 24 FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas
Statement of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, 9-22-2011
Please come to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression one-day Conference in Chicago on November 5, 2011.
http://www.stopfbi.net/national-conference-2011
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) is asking you to build the movement against political repression on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 24, 2010 FBI raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists. We need your continued solidarity as we build movements for peace, justice and equality.
The storm of political repression continues to expand and threaten. It is likely to intensify and churn into a destructive force with indictments, trials, and attempts to imprison anti-war activists. The last we knew, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was preparing multiple indictments as he and Attorney General Eric Holder attempt to criminalize the targeted activists and the movements to which we dedicate our lives.
It is one year since the FBI raided two homes in Chicago and five homes plus the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, eventually handing out 23 subpoenas. The anti-war activists' homes were turned upside down and notebooks, cell phones, artwork, computers, passports and personal belongings were all carted off by the FBI. Anyone who has ever been robbed knows the feelings - shock and anger.
The man responsible for this assault on activists and their families, on free speech and the right to organize, is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago. Fitzgerald has an ugly record of getting powerful Republicans like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove off the hook, while mercilessly pursuing an agenda to scare America into silence and submission with the phony 'war on terror.' Fitzgerald is attempting to criminalize anti-war activists with accusations of 'material support for terrorism,' involving groups in Palestine and Colombia.
First the U.S. government targeted Arabs and Muslims, violating their civil rights and liberties and spying on them. Then they came for the anti-war and international solidarity activists. We refuse to be criminalized. We continue to speak out and organize. We say, "Opposing U.S. war and occupation is not a crime!" We are currently building a united front with groups and movements to defeat Fitzgerald's reactionary, fear mongering assault on anti-war activism and to restore civil liberties taken away by the undemocratic USA PATRIOT Act.
Many people know the developments in the case, but for those who do not, we invite you to read a timeline at stopfbi.net. We think the repression centers on this: During the lead up to the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a federal law enforcement officer, using the phony name of "Karen Sullivan" got involved and joined the Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis. She lied to everyone she met and helped the FBI to disrupt many activities in the anti-war, international solidarity and labor movements in Minnesota - and also other states and even over in Palestine. It is outrageous.
In fact, many of those being investigated travelled to Colombia or Palestine to learn firsthand about U.S. government funding for war and oppression. There was no money given to any groups that the U.S. government lists as terrorist organizations. However, we met people who are a lot like most Americans - students, community organizers, religious leaders, trade unionists, women's group leaders and activists much like ourselves. Many of the U.S. activists wrote about their trips, did educational events, or helped organized protests against U.S. militarism and war. In a increasingly repressive period, this is enough to make one a suspect in Fitzgerald's office.
This struggle is far from one-sided however. The response to the FBI raids and the pushback from the movement is tremendous. Minneapolis and Chicago immediately organized a number of press conferences and rallies with hundreds of people. Over the first two weeks after the raids, 60 cities protested outside FBI offices, from New York to Kalamazoo, from traveled to the Bay Area. The National Lawyers Guild convention was in New Orleans the day of the FBI raids and they immediately issued a solidarity statement and got to work on the case. Solidarity poured in from anti-war, civil rights, religious and faith groups, students and unions. Groups and committees began working to obtain letters of support from members of Congress. The solidarity was overwhelming. It was great!
It is possible that U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald thought he was picking on an isolated group of activists. Instead, those raided proved to have many friends and allies from decades of work for social justice and peace. Over the months, all the targeted activists refused to appear at the grand jury dates set by U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office. In November 2010, a large crew of us travelled to New York City to found the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, after the United National Antiwar Committee meeting.
In December 2010, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office called in three of the Minnesota women and threatened them. We prepared a campaign in case they were jailed for refusing to speak. The FBI also delivered subpoenas to nine more Arab-American and Palestine solidarity activists in December. Their grand jury date was on Jan. 25, 2011, and we organized protests in over 70 American cities, plus a few overseas. The movement was building and expanding, so we organized conferences with over 800 participants in the Midwest, the South, and on the East and West Coasts. While we were organizing a pushback, the FBI was making new plans.
On May 17, 2011, at 5:00 a.m., the Los Angeles, California Sheriff, under the direction of the FBI, busted down the front door of Chicano leader Carlos Montes, storming in with automatic weapons drawn and shouting. The early morning raid was supposedly about weapons and permits, but they seized decades of notes and writings about the Chicano, immigrant rights, education rights and anti-war movements. The FBI attempted to question Carlos Montes while he was handcuffed and in the back of a L.A. sheriff squad car. Montes is going to another preliminary court date on Sept. 29, prepared to face six felony charges, carrying up to three years in prison for each, knowing he is extraordinarily targeted by the FBI. We will walk every step of the way with Carlos Montes, and more. Montes was with us at the Republican National Convention protests; his name was included on the search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, and the FBI attempted to question him about this case. We ask you to support Carlos Montes and to organize speaking events with him and local protests on his important court dates, Sept. 29 being the next one.
The same week the FBI raided Carlos Montes in May 2011, the CSFR came back with a big revelation - we released a set of documents, the FBI game plan, which the FBI mistakenly left behind in a file drawer at one of the homes. The FBI documents are on the CSFR website and are fascinating to read. Fitzgerald and company developed 102 questions that come right from a McCarthy witch-hunt trial of the 1950s. It is like turning back the clock five decades.
The whole intention of the raids is clear: They want to paint activists as 'terrorists' and shut down the organizing. They came at a time when the rich and powerful are frightened of not just the masses of people overseas, but of the people in their own country. With a failing U.S. war in Afghanistan, a U.S. occupation of Iraq predicted to last decades, a new war for oil and domination in Libya, a failing immigration policy that breaks up families and produces super-profits for big business, and now a long and deep economic crisis that is pushing large segments of working people into poverty, the highest levels of the U.S. government are turning to political repression.
The only hope for the future is in building stronger, consistent and determined movements. In a principled act of solidarity, the 23 subpoenaed activists refuse to testify before the grand jury. This sets an example for others.
In addition, the outpouring of support and mobilization into the streets from the anti-war, international solidarity, civil rights, labor and immigrant rights movements means that not one of the 24 has spent a single day in jail. That is a victory.
We ask you to stand with us, to stay vigilant and to hold steady as we proceed to organize against wars abroad and injustice at home and as we defend Carlos Montes from the FBI charade in Los Angeles.
Committee to Stop FBI Repression - www.stopfbi.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Add us to your address book
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White House Petition for Leonard Peltier
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
A petition in favor of granting clemency to Leonard Peltier is now on the We the People portion of the White House Web site. We have 30 days (until October 22) to get 5,000 signatures in order for our petition to be reviewed by the White House. This petition may only allow US signatories.
Sign the petition here:
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
Due to heavy site traffic, you may have trouble accessing the petition. Keep trying until you succeed. Try during off-peak hours.
Email our petition to your friends, family and others who care about this issue.
Facebook: Post our petition to your Facebook wall to let folks know about it. Here's a sample message you can cut and paste into your Facebook status: Petition for Leonard Peltier on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Twitter: Tweet about your petition. Here's a sample tweet you can use: Leonard Peltier petition on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Let's do it!
Launched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
The Petition:
we petition the obama administration to:
grant clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier without delay.
10th Circuit Court of Appeals: "...Much of the government's behavior... and its prosecution of Leonard Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed."
While others were acquitted on grounds of self defense, Peltier was convicted in connection with the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents. Evidence shows that prosecutors knowingly presented false statements to a Canadian court to extradite Peltier and manufactured the murder weapon (the gun and shell casings entered into evidence didn't match; this fact was hidden from the jury). The number of constitutional violations in this case is simply staggering.
It's time to right this wrong. Mr. President, you can and must free Leonard Peltier.
Created: Sep 22, 2011
Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Human Rights
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/grant-clemency-native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-without-delay/LLWBZq1S
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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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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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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Children's Art from Palestine--Censored!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8mHw2-aZQ&feature=youtu.be
You can see the whole exhibit in a new space located just around the corner from MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art) at 917 Washington Street. For more information please call Middle East Children's Alliance at (510) 548-0542 or email at meca@mecaforpeace.org.
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OCCUPY-WALL-STREET-PROTESTERS-ARRESTS( Sept 20, 2011) Spread This Video Please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvbI6Eq-qA
PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
UNEDITED - COP KNEE ON THROAT 9/24/2011 #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbXfelyIoM&NR=1
9/24/2011 COPS KETTLING AT UNION SQUARE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaQvh80L-g&NR=1
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Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
[And he does a great job and he has a huge audience. ...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBdP6INHlE
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Bill Maher, Michael Moore Defend Tony Bennett for Saying That U.S. Foreign Policy Helped Cause 9/11
By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at September 24, 2011, 7:44 am
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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Troy Davis, Racism, The Death Penalty & Labor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEues_-KoZU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Empire State Rebellion: An Idea Whose Time Has Come - OpESR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIlfV1pCZY&feature=player_embedded
Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to Digg Post to StumbleUpon
The video below is dedicated to all the people currently Occupying Wall Street.
See you there again on September 24th at noon, and the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...
Video Transcript:
Mainstream media in the United States is the most efficient
weapon of mass oppression.
The propaganda system is so extensive.
People are very confused.
They don't really grasp what is happening.
On a very basic and profound level
they understand that global banks have robbed the country.
They get that, but there is so much divide and conquer rhetoric -
it goes from the mainstream media
and it filters all the way down
into independent media.
So it's a matter of finding that place
where you can overcome the divide and conquer propaganda.
And where we can find that place
is on Wall Street and breaking up the banks.
How would a million people clogging lower Manhattan's financial district
play out in the global media?
If we came down there and said:
"We're not leaving until we have commitments
to break up the banks
and end the campaign finance racket."
Let's just go over some statistics here:
· 59 Million people without health care
· 52 Million in poverty
· 44 Million on food stamps
· 30 Million in need of work
· 7 Million foreclosed on
· 5 Million homes over 60 days late on mortgage payments
· $1 Trillion in student debt
We have the highest, most severe inequality of wealth we have ever had,
unlimited campaign spending,
budget cuts for the poor,
tax breaks for the rich -
this is the ultimate recipe for revolution.
America has 239 million people living paycheck to paycheck right now.
Food prices are going up, oil is going up, everything is going up -
these people aren't going to be able to make ends meet.
It's the same everywhere, it's global policies,
whether its Ireland, United States, Egypt, Greece.
People are going to fight back because
the economic central planners have become so arrogant.
Economic central planners, who control the global economy
through the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve,
are committed to sentencing tens of millions of people
to a slow death through economic policy.
Obviously, those people, as time goes by,
they are going to fight back,
because they are fighting to survive.
This is a global rebellion.
People don't seem to get the fact that we live in a global economy
and there is a Neo-Liberal centrally planned aristocracy
which runs the global economy,
and we are in the midst of a
worldwide economic war right now.
It is a straight up economic war
with genocidal economic policies,
which of course are going to lead to mass rebellion.
Decentralized global rebellion.
Decentralized resistance.
Decentralized revolutionaries.
We had you on the show a few months ago,
and you called for a revolution.
The revolution is happening right now.
Tells us about A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion.
The revolution is happening right now.
#OccupyWallStreet
Editor's Note: This music video was created on March 16th by Anon and posted to our social network. It was also posted on Max Keiser's website. It features clips from a Max Keiser interview with David DeGraw.
DO SOMETHING: @OccupyWallStNYC | #OccupyWallStreet | #OpESR
Have Fun and Get Something Done on Wall Steet This Weekend (MAP)
YOUR STREET: @OccupyChicago | @OccupyCleveland | @OccupyDallas
@OccupyFDSF | @OccupySTL | @OccupyHouston | VIDEO: Livestream
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9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-09-16/911-explosive-evidence-experts-speak-out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw-jzCfa4eQ
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9/11: A Conspiracy Theory
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
[click on above to view the video]
Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn't handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced "missing" from the Pentagon's coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI's lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney...well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn't bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of "little practical significance". Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims' family members' questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were "a failure of imagination" because "I don't think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings " except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that's OK because it probably wasn't important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that's OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7?s collapse, but that's OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would "jeopardize public safety".
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that's OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn't recorded on video, in which he didn't resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team's members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story...you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
(c) 2011 The Corbett Report. All rights reserved.
Hosting generously provided by: EuroVPS.com
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HUNDREDS OCCUPY WALL STREET (LIVE STREAM VIDEO)
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution/share?utm_source=lsplayer&utm_medium=ui-share&utm_campaign=globalrevolution&utm_content=globalrevolution
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
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What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?
Narrated by Tony Benn. Music by Brian Eno
Mass Demonstration October 8, Noon, Trafalgar Square, London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Bkg8zgoYQ&feature=youtu.be
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LOWKEY OBAMA NATION (BANIDO DA TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFywomdJTM&feature=related
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Remember Building 7 on France 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOaJZr83RJg&feature=share
Sound Evidence for WTC 7 Explosions and NIST Cover Up
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/the-911-files/sound-evidence-for-wtc-7-explosions.html
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Architects & Engineers - Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 - AE911Truth.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw&feature=player_embedded
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Geneva Towers Controlled Demolition -- San Francisco, May 16, 1968
I lived in Geneva Towers in 1967 for about six months. I was married with a six-month-old son when we moved to the Towers. It reminded us of New York (we had just moved to San Francisco in August of 1966 so an apartment building was familiar to us.) But what a difference from New York. I didn't drive at the time and, with a baby, and elevators that often didn't work (we were on the 15th floor--I don't remember which building) I was basically trapped. Mass transit was slow and the distances were long to get downtown. The apartment had heating under the synthetic flooring tiles and the first time we turned it on, the tiles melted where the heating coils were. The electric oven caught fire the first time we used it; and the first time we took a shower the tiles started to pop off the walls. The kitchen cabinets were made of unpainted particle board. The sliding doors to the cabinets were less than a quarter-inch thick and cracked if you slid them too fast! What a pre-fab slum that was!
I was so glad to break the lease and move into the Castro--into a two bedroom, first-floor Victorian flat--in a warm and bustling community close to everything. And the rent was $125.00 a month!
I did make it a point to watch the demolition of the Towers on TV (it was broadcast live.) And I was so glad to see it go. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the collapse of the World Trade Center. ...Bonnie Weinstein
Geneva Towers Implosion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XVQ1LE2es&feature=related
The implosion [controlled demolition] of the Geneva Towers near the Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA on May 16, 1998
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Benton Harbor REPEAL RECALL.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLL-AxOnTk
A few facts from the video:
Whirlpool has been meddling in [Benton Harbor] city politics for 30 years. For every tax break and advantage it can get. As the neighborhoods crumble...
With global sales of $18 Billion Whirpool paid 0% in 2010 federal taxes.
It received a refund of $64 Million.
Whirlpool has received 500 Million in tax breaks just since 2005.
Millions more in the past 3 decades.
Whirlpool took 19 Billion in federal stimulus funds. Then closed plants in the US. Including the plant in BH.
Rep. Fred Upton receives substantial campaign contributions from Whirlpool. And the Koch brothers.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Emergency Manager Law. And a budget that taxes pensions and cuts education funding in Michigan.
Then gave corporations (like Whirlpool) a $1.8 Billion tax break."
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Labor Beat: THE PEOPLE'S PUTT PUTT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FkYBneJpds
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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London Riots. (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
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Protest which sparked Tottenham riot
Hours before the riot which swept the area demonstrators gather outside Tottenham Police Station in North London demanding "justice" for the killing of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police.
By Alastair Good
August 7, 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8687058/Protest-which-sparked-Tottenham-riot.html
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Very reminiscent of Obama...bw
Pat Paulsen 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oiQhhdz8ys
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children's urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.
When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens' right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies "I don't know if they have that right."
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Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class [Full Film]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZS91cqpa8
Narrated by Ed Asner
Based on the book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows.
Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV's disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants -- stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.
Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television's often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people.
Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz, (City University of New York); Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich; Herman Gray (University of California-Santa Cruz); Robin Kelley (Columbia University); Pepi Leistyna (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Michael Zweig (State University of New York-Stony Brook). Also with Arlene Davila, Susan Douglas, Bambi Haggins, Lisa Henderson, and Andrea Press.
Sections: Class Matters | The American Dream Machine | From the Margins to the Middle | Women Have Class | Class Clowns | No Class | Class Action
http://www.mediaed.org
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Let's torture the truth out of suicide bombers says new CIA chief Petraeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sm02UbKNCKQ
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. ...bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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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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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) A Massive Union Just Voted To Side With The Wall Street Protesters
(Including the Ten Demands of Wall Street Protesters)
Linette Lopez
Sep. 29, 2011, 10:30 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-massive-union-just-voted-to-side-with-the-wall-street-protesters-2011-9
2) How Math Whizzes Helped Sink the Economy [Book Excerpt]
Scott Patterson's book The Quants profiles the quantitative-minded investors who helped inflate the hedge fund bubble
By Scott Patterson
Thursday, September 22, 2011 | 12
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quants-book&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110929
3) American Strike on American Target Revives Contentious Constitutional Issue
By SCOTT SHANE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/world/american-strike-on-american-target-revives-contentious-constitutional-issue.html?hp
4) U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease
"The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy." [Ya think?!?!? Like the murder of Troy Davis this is a message to all who oppose U.S. terrorism and all those who may oppose such U.S. policy in the future. No need for physical evidence; no need even for a trial. Just point and shoot or trump up some charges and "eyewitness testimony" when necessary. We are all in danger from the most murderous government in the world right now...bw]
By SCOTT SHANE
May 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html?hp
5) Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD and BEN PROTESS
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/banks-to-make-customers-pay-debit-card-fee.html?hp
6) Prisoner Protest Restarts in California
"More than 4,200 inmates at eight prisons have been refusing state-issued meals since Monday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."
By ERICA GOODE
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/california-prison-officials-move-to-contain-a-renewed-hunger-strike.html?ref=us
7) Outsize Severance Continues for Executives, Even After Failed Tenures
By ERIC DASH
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/outsize-severance-continues-for-executives-even-after-failed-tenures.html?ref=business
8) Judge Fines Longshore Union $250,000 Over Tactics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/30/business/AP-US-Union-Clash.html?src=busln
9) With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors
By JUSTIN GILLIS
October 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?hp
10) Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever
By N. R. KLEINFIELD and CARA BUCKLEY
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/wall-street-occupiers-protesting-till-whenever.html?hp
11) Question: Why Pay Bank Fees?
"Only Bank of America customers with more than $20,000 in combined checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts or a bank mortgage (of any size) will be able to avoid both the debit card fee and any other monthly fee for falling below a required minimum balance level." [This is also true for Wells Fargo, i.e., only the poorest will be forced to pay a fee to use their money. Those with property or a high monthly balance will not have to pay the debit card fee--it's unconscionable!....bw]
By RON LIEBER and ANN CARRNS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/your-money/bank-fees-on-debit-cards-have-some-customers-looking-to-switch.html
12) Anti-Qaddafi Fighters Are Accused of Torture
By KAREEM FAHIM
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/world/africa/anti-qaddafi-fighters-are-accused-of-torture.html?ref=world
13) Gains Made in Equality of Incomes in Downturn
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/us/recession-struck-inadvertent-blow-for-womens-equality.html?ref=us
14) Alabama: Many Immigrants Pull Children From Schools
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/us/alabama-many-immigrants-pull-children-from-schools.html?ref=us
15) Unleash the Robot Dogs of War
By NICK BILTON
October 1, 2011, 8:25 am
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/large-alphadog-robot-runs-like-a-horse-scares-people/?src=busln
16) Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
By AL BAKER, COLIN MOYNIHAN and SARAH MASLIN NIR
October 1, 2011, 4:29 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/police-arresting-protesters-on-brooklyn-bridge/?hp
17) The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
October 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.htm
18) Every Action Produces Overreaction
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/nyregion/for-police-another-protest-brings-another-overreaction.html?ref=nyregion
19) Tens of thousands protest in Manchester against gov’t cuts
By BNO News
October 2, 2011
http://channel6newsonline.com/2011/10/tens-of-thousands-protest-in-manchester-against-govt-cuts/
20) ‘White Shirts’ of Police Dept. Take on Enforcer Role
“There are those of us who wear white shirts, who, I won’t say are afraid of the street, but who never really put their hands on anyone, but took tests and got promoted. Then there are those of us who were good cops to begin with and then got promoted, and we are not afraid to put our hands on people when we have to.”
By AL BAKER and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/nyregion/nypds-white-shirts-take-on-enforcer-role.html?h
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1) A Massive Union Just Voted To Side With The Wall Street Protesters
(Including the Ten Demands of Wall Street Protesters)
Linette Lopez
Sep. 29, 2011, 10:30 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-massive-union-just-voted-to-side-with-the-wall-street-protesters-2011-9
According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night.
A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.
Here's more about them from their website:
The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming; Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22 states around the country.
Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days. Yesterday we reported that the Teamsters Union declared their support for protestors, and we also found out that the United Pilots Union had members at the protest demonstrating in uniform.
Today we learned the Industrial Workers of the World put a message of support on their website as well.
Click here to see the protestor's list of demands >
That's good for the protestors, sure, but the bottom line is whether or not these unions can produce bodies. Experience says that when they want to, unions can be quite good at doing that very thing.
And it seems that they're interested. In many of their statements of support, they say that their members are part of "The 99%" that Occupy Wall Street protestors keep talking about.
But what does that even mean? Naturally, we had to get to the bottom of it, so we found the We Are The 99% blog. It's made of a collection of pictures people holding up signs about how the sorry state of the economy has effected them. Here are some examples:
* A guy in a lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck (you can't see his face) holds a sign saying: "Ivy League medical student over 100,000 in debt committed to a life of helping the homeless and mentally ill. We are the 99%."
* Another girl holds a sign saying: "They say you can be anything you want if you work hard enough. The truth is you can only be what you want if you can pay enough. Only 20 and already drowning in debt because I want to follow my dreams. I am the 99%."
* Another woman holds up a sign saying: "I'm a single mom of four, college graduate 3.6 GPA, shelf stocker, I go hungry daily, I am the 99%. Occupy Wall Street.
Now for your protest update: When we checked in on the live feed around 9:30 this morning, the protestors were marching, playing drums and chanting: "All day, all week occupy Wall Street!"
A cop briefly interrupted them and told them that they were "invited" to stay on the sidewalk and the drumming continued to the sound of applause cheers of "YAY the sidewalk!"
Also, good old Michael Moore will be giving an interview from the protest tonight on MSNBC at 8 PM.
10 Demands Being Made By The Wall Street Protesters:
http://www.businessinsider.com/finally-specific-demands-from-occupy-wall-street-2011-9#dont-miss-12
Repeal the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that let corporations give more money to politics
Widespread debt forgiveness
Pay-as-you-go military intervention
Pass a Tobin tax
Universal care centers
Reinstate Glass-Steagall
Paid sick leave
Increased political transparency
Negative income tax (or social wage)
Full employment
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2) How Math Whizzes Helped Sink the Economy [Book Excerpt]
Scott Patterson's book The Quants profiles the quantitative-minded investors who helped inflate the hedge fund bubble
By Scott Patterson
Thursday, September 22, 2011 | 12
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quants-book&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110929
[Editor's note: This excerpt from The Quants, by Scott Patterson (Crown Business_, 2010), describes the 2006 Wall Street Poker Night Tournament, which featured professional poker players T. J. Cloutier and Clonie Gowen. It also featured several powerful money managers representing a new kind of Wall Streeter, the math-savvy investors known as "quants." The quants in attendance that night in 2006 included Peter Muller of Morgan Stanley_, Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group, Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, Boaz Weinstein of Deutsche Bank and Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies.]
No matter how hard they might play elsewhere, no poker game mattered more than when the gamblers around the table were their fellow quants. It was more than a battle of wits over massive pots-it was a battle of enormous egos. Every day they went head-to-head on Wall Street, facing off in a computerized game of high-stakes poker in financial markets around the globe, measuring one another's wins and losses from afar, but here was a chance to measure their mettle face-to-face. Each had his own particular strategy for beating the market. Griffin specialized in finding cheap bonds through mathematical formulas, or, via the same logic, cheap, down-on-their-luck companies ripe for the picking. Muller liked to buy and sell stocks at a superfast pace using Morgan Stanley's high-powered computers. Asness used historical tests of market trends going back decades to detect hidden patterns no one else knew about. Weinstein was a wizard with credit derivatives-securities whose value derives from some underlying asset, such as a stock or a bond. Weinstein was especially adept with a newfangled derivative known as a credit default swap, which is essentially an insurance policy on a bond.
Regardless of which signature trade each man favored, they had something far more powerful in common: an epic quest for an elusive, ethereal quality the quants sometimes referred to in hushed, reverent tones as the Truth.
The Truth was a universal secret about the way the market worked that could only be discovered through mathematics. Revealed through the study of obscure patterns in the market, the Truth was the key to unlocking billions in profits. The quants built giant machines- turbocharged computers linked to financial markets around the globe-to search for the Truth, and to deploy it in their quest to make untold fortunes. The bigger the machine, the more Truth they knew, and the more Truth they knew, the more they could bet. And from that, they reasoned, the richer they'd be. Think of white-coated scientists building ever more powerful devices to replicate conditions at the moment of the Big Bang to understand the forces at the root of creation. It was about money, of course, but it was also about proof. Each added dollar was another tiny step toward proving they had fulfilled their academic promise and uncovered the Truth.
The quants created a name for the Truth, a name that smacked of cabalistic studies of magical formulas: alpha. Alpha is a code word for an elusive skill certain individuals are endowed with that gives them the ability to consistently beat the market. It is used in contrast with another Greek term, beta, which is shorthand for plain-vanilla market returns anyone with half a brain can achieve.
To the quants, beta is bad, alpha is good. Alpha is the Truth. If you have it, you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams.
The notion of alpha, and its ephemeral promise of vast riches, was everywhere in the hedge fund world. The trade magazine of choice for hedge funds was called Alpha. A popular website frequented by the hedge fund community was called Seeking Alpha_. Several of the quants in the room had already laid claim, in some form or another, to the possession of alpha. Asness named his first hedge fund, hatched inside Goldman in the mid-1990s, Global Alpha. Before moving on to Morgan in 1992, Muller had helped construct a computerized investing system called Alphabuilder for a quant farm in Berkeley called BARRA. An old poster from a 1960s film noir by Jean-Luc Godard_ called Alphaville hung on the walls of PDT's office in Morgan's midtown Manhattan headquarters.
But there was always a worry haunting the beauty of the quants' algorithms. Perhaps their successes weren't due to skill at all. Perhaps it was all just dumb luck, fool's gold, a good run that could come to an end on any given day. What if the markets weren't predictable? What if their computer models didn't always work? What if the truth wasn't knowable? Worse, what if there wasn't any Truth?
In their day jobs, as they searched for the Truth, channeling their hidden alpha nerds, the quants were isolated in their trading rooms and hedge funds. At the poker table, they could look one another in the eye, smiling over their cards as they tossed another ten grand worth of chips on the table and called, looking for the telltale wince of the bluffer. Sure, it was a charity event. But it was also a test. Skill at poker meant skill at trading. And it potentially meant something even more: the magical presence of alpha.
As the night rolled on, the quants fared well. Muller chalked up victories against Gowen and Cloutier in the early rounds. Weinstein was knocked out early, but Muller and Asness kept dominating their opponents. Griffin made it into the final ten before running out of luck and chips, as did Einhorn. The action got more intense as the hour grew late. Around 1:30 a.m., only three players were left: Muller, Asness, and Andrei Paraschivescu, a portfolio manager who worked for Griffin at Citadel.
Asness didn't like his first two cards on the next deal and quickly folded, happy to wait for a better draw, leaving the pot to Muller and Paraschivescu. The crowd fell quiet. The incessant honking city whir of Fifth Avenue penetrated the suddenly hushed room.
Breaking the silence, Griffin shouted a warning to his underling: "Andrei, don't bother coming into work next week if you don't knock Pete out." Some in the crowd wondered if he meant it. With Griffin, you never knew.
The room went quiet again. Paraschivescu lifted a corner of the two cards facedown on the table before him. Pair of fours. Not bad. Muller bent the corner of his two cards and eyed a pair of kings. He decided to go all in, sweeping his chips into the pot. Suspecting a bluff, Paraschivescu pushed his mound of chips forward and called, flipping over his pair of fours. Muller showed his kings, his only show of emotion a winsome glint in his blue eyes. A groan went up from the crowd, the loudest from Griffin. The other cards dealt in the hand couldn't help Paraschivescu, and he was out.
It was down to Muller and Asness, quant versus quant. Asness was at a huge disadvantage. Muller outchipped him eight to one after having taken Paraschivescu to the cleaners. Asness would have to win several hands in a row to even have a chance. He was at Muller's mercy.
Griffin, still smarting from his ace trader's loss, promised to donate $10,000 to Asness's favorite charity if he beat Muller. "Aren't you a billionaire?" Asness chortled. "That's a little chintzy, Ken."
After the deal, Muller had a king and a seven. Not bad, but not great. He decided to go all in anyway. He had plenty of chips. It looked like a bad move: Asness had a better hand, an ace and a ten. As each successive card was dealt, it looked as though Asness was sure to take the pot. But on the final card, Muller drew another king. Odds were against it, but he won anyway. The real world works like that sometimes.
The crowd applauded as Griffin rained catcalls on Muller. Afterward Muller and Asness posed for photos with their silver trophies and with Clonie Gowen flashing a million-dollar smile between them. The biggest grin belonged to Muller.
As the well-heeled crowd of millionaires and billionaires fanned into the streets of Manhattan that night, they were on top of the world. The stock market was in the midst of one of the longest bull runs in history. The housing market was booming. Economists were full of talk of a Goldilocks economy-not too hot, not too cold-in which steady growth would continue as far as the eye could see.
A brilliant Princeton economist, Ben Bernanke_, had just taken over the helm of the Federal Reserve from Alan Greenspan. In February 2004, Bernanke had given a speech in Washington, D.C., that captured the buoyant mood of the times. Called "The Great Moderation," the speech told of a bold new economic era in which volatility-the jarring jolts and spasms that wreaked havoc on people's lives and their pocketbooks-was permanently eradicated. One of the primary forces behind this economic Shangri-la, he said, was an "increased depth and sophistication of financial markets."
In other words, quants, such as Griffin, Asness, Muller, Weinstein, Simons, and the rest of the math wizards who had taken over Wall Street, had helped tame the market's volatility. Out of chaos they had created order through their ever-increasing knowledge of the Truth. Every time the market lurched too far out of equilibrium, their supercomputers raced to the rescue, gobbling up the mispriced securities and restoring stability to the troubled kingdom. The financial system had become a finely tuned machine, humming blissfully along in the crystalline mathematical universe of the quants.
For providing this service to society, the quants were paid handsomely. But who could complain? Average workers were seeing their 401(k)s rise with the market, housing prices kept ticking ever upward, banks had plenty of money to lend, prognosticators imagined a Dow Jones Industrial Average that rose without fail, year after year. And much of the thanks went to the quants. It was a great time to be alive and rich and brilliant on Wall Street.
The money poured in, crazy money. Pension funds across America, burned by the dot-com collapse in 2000, rushed into hedge funds, the favored vehicle of the quants, entrusting their members' retirement savings to this group of secretive and opaque investors. Cliff Asness's hedge fund, AQR, had started with $1 billion in 1998. By mid-2007, its assets under management neared $40 billion. Citadel's kitty topped $20 billion. In 2005, Jim Simons announced that Renaissance would launch a fund that could juggle a record $100 billion in assets. Boaz Weinstein, just thirty-three, was wielding roughly $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank.
The growth had come rapid-fire. In 1990, hedge funds held $39 billion in assets. By 2000, the amount had leapt to $490 billion, and by 2007 it had exploded to $2 trillion. And those figures didn't capture the hundreds of billions of hedge fund dollars marshaled by banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs_, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns_, and Deutsche Bank, which were rapidly transforming from staid white-shoe bank companies into hot-rod hedge fund vehicles fixated on the fast buck-or the trillions more in leverage that juiced their returns like anabolic steroids.
The Great Hedge Fund Bubble-for it was a true bubble-was one of the most frenzied gold rushes of all time. Thousands of hedge fund jockeys became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. One of the quickest tickets to the party was a background in math and computer science. On Wall Street Poker Night in 2006, Simons, Griffin, Asness, Muller, and Weinstein sat at the top of the heap, living outsized lives of private jets, luxury yachts, and sprawling mansions.
A year later, each of the players in the room that night would find himself in the crosshairs of one of the most brutal market meltdowns ever seen, one they had helped to create. Indeed, in their search for Truth, in their quest for alpha, the quants had unwittingly primed the bomb and lit the fuse for the financial catastrophe that began to explode in spectacular fashion in August 2007.
The result was possibly the biggest, fastest, and strangest financial collapse ever seen, and the starting point for the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression_.
Amazingly, not one of the quants, despite their chart-topping IQs, their walls of degrees, their impressive Ph.D.'s, their billions of wealth earned by anticipating every bob and weave the market threw their way, their decades studying every statistical quirk of the market under the sun, saw the train wreck coming.
How could they have missed it? What went wrong?
A hint to the answer was captured centuries ago by a man whose name emblazoned the poker chips the quants wagered with that night: Isaac Newton_. After losing £20,000 on a vast Ponzi scheme known as the South Sea Bubble in 1720, Newton observed: "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people."
From The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It; (c) 2010 by Scott Patterson. Excerpt reprinted with the permission of the publisher.
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3) American Strike on American Target Revives Contentious Constitutional Issue
By SCOTT SHANE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/world/american-strike-on-american-target-revives-contentious-constitutional-issue.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The reported killing of Anwar al-Awlaki on Friday, an American citizen hit by a missile fired from a drone operated by his own government, instantly reignited a difficult debate over terrorism, civil liberties and the law.
The Obama administration had long argued that Mr. Awlaki, 40, had joined the enemy in wartime, shifting from propaganda to an operational role in plots against the United States, and last year it quietly decided that he could be targeted for capture or death like any other Al Qaeda leader. It was unclear whether the same formal determination had been made about another radicalized American who may have been killed in the same strike, Samir Khan.
Some civil libertarians questioned how the government could take an American citizen's life based on murky intelligence and without an investigation or trial, claiming that hunting and killing him would amount to summary execution without the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, a former agriculture minister and university chancellor in Yemen, had challenged the administration's decision to place his son on the kill list, but the lawsuit was thrown out of federal court in Washington.
The American-educated son of an American-educated Yemeni technocrat, Anwar al-Awlaki embodied the puzzle of radicalization: How did an American citizen come to call for mass murder, in eloquent English, deftly mastering the megaphone of the Internet?
Mr. Awlaki's eerily calm religious justifications for violence against his fellow Americans, broadcast and recycled across the Web for years, had a profound impact on a small number of young Muslims in the United States, Canada and Britain. In a score of plots since 2006, investigators discerned Mr. Awlaki as an important radicalizing influence, his written, audio and video sermons stored on hard drives, e-mailed among conspirators and treated as an authoritative clerical imprimatur for their deeds.
At least since 2009, American intelligence officials asserted, he had taken on a more significant role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the terrorism network. Notably, they said he had helped recruit and train Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young Nigerian who tried to blow up an airliner headed for Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
Whatever the details of his hands-on participation in terrorism, Mr. Awlaki left no doubts about where he stood, certainly since November 2009, when he praised Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, as a hero.
The latest issue of Inspire, the slick English-language online magazine that he and Mr. Khan contributed to and may have edited, promised that "coming soon" would be an article by Mr. Awlaki titled "Targeting the Populations of Countries That Are At War with the Muslims."
Mr. Awlaki was born in 1971 in New Mexico, where his father was a graduate student in agricultural science. He moved to Yemen with his parents at the age of 7 and attended school in the conservative Muslim country, where he later told friends he had been thrilled by tales of Yemeni men fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.
At 19, he was sent back to the United States to attend Colorado State University. He completed an engineering degree, but by then had discovered his knack for preaching in the little mosque in Fort Collins. He became the imam in mosques in Denver, San Diego and the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where he had contact with at least two of the future Sept. 11 hijackers.
Though he denounced the Sept. 11 attacks, he was angered by what he thought was anti-Muslim government investigations in the months that followed, and he moved to London and eventually to Yemen, where he was imprisoned in 2006 and 2007.
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4) U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease
"The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy." [Ya think?!?!? Like the murder of Troy Davis this is a message to all who oppose U.S. terrorism and all those who may oppose such U.S. policy in the future. No need for physical evidence; no need even for a trial. Just point and shoot or trump up some charges and "eyewitness testimony" when necessary. We are all in danger from the most murderous government in the world right now...bw]
By SCOTT SHANE
May 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.
The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.
To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council's approval, required no judicial review.
"Congress has protected Awlaki's cellphone calls," said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. "But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense."
Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki's rhetoric.
"American citizenship doesn't give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country," said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. "If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate."
President Obama, who campaigned for the presidency against George W. Bush-era interrogation and detention practices, has implicitly invited moral and legal scrutiny of his own policies.
But like the debate over torture during the Bush administration, public discussion of what officials call targeted killing has been limited by the secrecy of the C.I.A. drone program. Representative John F. Tierney, who on April 28 held the first Congressional hearing focused on the lawfulness of targeted killing, said he was determined to air the contentious questions publicly and possibly seek legislation to govern such operations.
The reported targeting of Mr. Awlaki "certainly raises the question of what rights a citizen has and what steps must be taken before he's put on the list," said Mr. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of a House subcommittee on national security.
Counterterrorism officials, with the support of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, say the drone missile strikes have proved to be an extraordinarily successful weapon against militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the location of all the known C.I.A. strikes except one in Yemen in 2002. By their count, the missiles have killed more than 500 militants since 2008, and a few dozen nearby civilians.
In the fullest administration statement to date, Harold Koh, the State Department's legal adviser, said in a March 24 speech the drone strikes against Al Qaeda and its allies were lawful as part of the military action authorized by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as under the general principle of self-defense. By those rules, he said, such targeted killing was not assassination, which is banned by executive order.
But the disclosure last month by news organizations that Mr. Awlaki, 39, had been added to the C.I.A. kill list shifted the terms of the legal debate in several ways. He is located far from hostilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the perpetrators of 9/11 are believed to be hiding.
He is alleged to be affiliated with a Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda. Intelligence analysts believe that only recently he began to help plot strikes, including the failed attempt to bomb an airliner on Dec. 25.
Most significantly, he is an American, born in New Mexico, arguably protected by the Fifth Amendment's guarantee not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a traditional war, anyone allied with the enemy, regardless of citizenship, is a legitimate target; German-Americans who fought with the Nazis in World War II were given no special treatment.
But Ms. Divoll, the former C.I.A. lawyer, said some judicial process should be required before the government kills an American away from a traditional battlefield. In addition, she offered a practical argument for a review outside the executive branch: avoiding mistakes.
She noted media reports that C.I.A. officers in 2004 seized a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, and held him in Afghanistan for months before acknowledging that they had grabbed the wrong man. "What if we had put him on the kill list?" she asked.
Another former C.I.A. lawyer, John Radsan, said prior judicial review of additions to the target list might be unconstitutional. "That sort of review goes to the core of presidential power," he said. But Mr. Radsan, who teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said every drone strike should be subject to rigorous internal checks to be "sure beyond a reasonable doubt" that the target is an enemy combatant.
As for the question of whether Mr. Awlaki is a legitimate target, Mr. Radsan said the cleric might not resemble an American fighting in a Nazi uniform. "But if you imagine him making radio speeches for the Germans in World War II, there's certainly a parallel," he said.
Beyond the legal debate is the question of whether killing Mr. Awlaki would be a good idea. Many Muslim activists and scholars say it would accord him martyr status and amplify his violent message. Mohamed Elibiary, a Muslim community advocate in Texas who advises law enforcement on countering extremism, said helping the Yemeni authorities arrest Mr. Awlaki would make more sense. "I'm not saying this guy shouldn't be treated as an enemy," Mr. Elibiary said. "But there are smarter and stupider ways of eliminating your enemy."
American officials say an arrest may not be possible. "If we need to stop dangerous terrorists who hide in remote parts of the world, inaccessible to U.S. troops, law enforcement, or any central government," said the counterterrorism official, "what do you do - cover your ears and wait for a truly devastating explosion in Times Square?"
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5) Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards
By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD and BEN PROTESS
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/banks-to-make-customers-pay-debit-card-fee.html?hp
Bank of America, the nation's biggest bank, said on Thursday that it planned to start charging customers a $5 monthly fee when they used their debit cards for purchases. It was just one of several new charges expected to hit consumers as new regulations crimp banks' profits.
Wells Fargo and Chase are testing $3 monthly debit card fees. Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month, while SunTrust, another regional powerhouse, is charging a $5 fee.
The round of new charges stems from a rule, which takes effect on Saturday, that limits the fees that banks can levy on merchants every time a consumer uses a debit card to make a purchase. The rule, known as the Durbin amendment, after its sponsor Senator Richard J. Durbin, is a crucial part of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.
Until now, the fees have been 44 cents a transaction, on average. The Federal Reserve in June agreed to cut the fees to a maximum of about 24 cents. While the fee amounts to pennies per swipe, it rapidly adds up across millions of transactions. The new limit is expected to cost the banks about $6.6 billion in revenue a year, beginning in 2012, according to Javelin Strategy and Research. That comes on top of another loss, of $5.6 billion, from new rules restricting overdraft fees, which went into effect in July 2010.
And even though retailer groups had argued that lower fees were important to keep prices in check, consumers were not likely to see substantial savings. In fact, they are simply going to end up paying from a different pot of money.
Or as Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, put it after passage last year of the Dodd-Frank Act, "If you're a restaurant and you can't charge for the soda, you're going to charge more for the burger."
Chase is now charging customers for a paper statement. It also, like many other banks, scrapped its debit card rewards program. And customers that Chase inherited from Washington Mutual no longer enjoy free checking accounts.
The bank is also exploring a number of other fee increases, including for online banking, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Bank of America's debit fee is steeper than most of its competitors', reflecting the broader challenges the bank is facing after the financial crisis. The bank has introduced an online-only account that charges customers for doing business at a local branch. It also plans to apply its new debit card fees to anyone who uses the card to make recurring payments like gym fees or cable bills.
Citibank is one of the few that said it would not introduce a charge for debit card use. "We have talked to customers and they have made it abundantly clear that 'if you charge me to use my debit card, I would find that very irritating,' " said Stephen Troutner, head of Citi's banking products. Still, the bank has made it more difficult to qualify for free checking, among other moves.
Earlier this year, Wells Fargo estimated that the Durbin rules would cost the bank $250 million in revenue every quarter. It hopes to make up half that gap with a variety of new products and customer fees, including the monthly debit card fee of $3. The change is part of a "pilot program" the bank will begin on Oct. 14 in five states across the country, including Washington and Georgia. As of Saturday, the bank will discontinue its debit card rewards program.
Meanwhile, HSBC said that it recently increased an A.T.M. fee - to $2.50 from $2 - for certain customers when they used a competitor's A.T.M. It also recently introduced a debit transaction fee of 35 cents, though the first eight transactions are free.
And at TDBank, customers will now have to pay $2 for using A.T.M.'s outside their network.
"Durbin essentially moves the cost of debit away from merchants, and now it's more focused on consumers," said Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin. "There are all sort of things happening where banks are saying, where can we put fees in place for our service to generate revenue or how can we reduce our costs?"
Over the last few years, consumers have increasingly shifted their spending to debit cards from credit cards, in large part to curb their spending. But some analysts predicted that the new fees could prompt consumers to return to credit cards - a more lucrative alternative for the banks.
Consumers have already begun to react to the changes.
Patrick Shields, 48, said he had decided to leave Citibank, where he has held a small-business account for his residential window cleaning business since 1986. He was contemplating opening a personal checking account, but realized he could do better at a credit union.
"At the credit union, they opened it free of charges, which Citi could not and would not do," said Mr. Shields, who noted that a personal checking account would have cost more than the one he uses for his New York business. "Now I have both accounts covered, and I am fee-free."
The so-called Durbin rule quickly emerged as one of the thorniest provisions of Dodd-Frank, touching off a long and furious fight in Washington. Wall Street dispatched an army of lobbyists to tame the rule, ultimately yielding mixed results.
In June, the Senate defeated a measure that would have delayed the new rule. But just three weeks later, the Federal Reserve decided to cap the fees at 21 to 24 cents for each debit card transaction, a much lighter blow than once expected.
In a statement on Thursday, Senator Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said that small businesses would benefit from the new limits. "Swipe fee regulation will still allow banks to cover the actual costs of debit transactions but will rein in the banks' excessive profit-taking."
Ann Carrns contributed reporting.
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6) Prisoner Protest Restarts in California
"More than 4,200 inmates at eight prisons have been refusing state-issued meals since Monday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."
By ERICA GOODE
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/us/california-prison-officials-move-to-contain-a-renewed-hunger-strike.html?ref=us
SAN FRANCISCO - Corrections officials in Sacramento said Thursday that they would discipline inmates who participated in a renewed hunger strike to protest conditions in the state's highest-security prisons, where some prisoners have been held in virtual isolation for decades.
More than 4,200 inmates at eight prisons have been refusing state-issued meals since Monday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The hunger strike, the second this year, is the latest problem to face state prison officials, who are under a Supreme Court order to reduce the state's prison population by more than 30,000 people.
A memo was distributed to prisoners at the state's 33 correctional institutions warning that if they took part in the hunger strike, they would be subject to disciplinary action that could include confiscation of canteen items like food they had bought.
Prisoners identified as leaders of the strike would also be removed from the general population and "placed in an administrative segregation unit," according to the memo.
A hunger strike in July, which involved 6,600 inmates at its peak, ended after the department agreed to consider adjustments in the way inmates are assigned to the state's three security housing units, where they are held in tightly controlled conditions that minimize human contact.
Scott Kernan, the under secretary of operations for the department, said that after the strike in July, the department "determined there was some validity to what the inmates' concerns were." The department is reviewing its procedures, he said.
But on Monday, inmates resumed the strike, saying that the department had not yet fully addressed their demands.
Those demands included modifying the practice of sending prisoners to security housing units for indefinite periods based on the judgment that they were involved in gang activities, and also abolishing the practice of "debriefing," in which inmates are encouraged to gain release from the unit by renouncing their gang affiliations and providing information about them.
At Pelican Bay State Prison, in a remote northern region of the state, the average length of confinement for the 1,111 inmates in the security housing unit is 6.8 years, according to the department. Most inmates in the unit are confined in windowless cells, 7.6 feet by 11.6 feet, for 22 hours or more a day.
Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which provides free legal services to prisoners, said that given the standoff between the inmates and the prison officials, "I don't really see how this can end happily or without tragedy."
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7) Outsize Severance Continues for Executives, Even After Failed Tenures
By ERIC DASH
September 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/outsize-severance-continues-for-executives-even-after-failed-tenures.html?ref=business
The golden goodbye has not gone away.
Just last week, Léo Apotheker was shown the door after a tumultuous 11-month run atop Hewlett-Packard. His reward? $13.2 million in cash and stock severance, in addition to a sign-on package worth about $10 million, according to a corporate filing on Thursday.
At the end of August, Robert P. Kelly was handed severance worth $17.2 million in cash and stock when he was ousted as chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon after clashing with board members and senior managers. A few days later, Carol A. Bartz took home nearly $10 million from Yahoo after being fired from the troubled search giant.
A hallmark of the gilded era of just a few short years ago, the eye-popping severance package continues to thrive in spite of the measures put in place in the wake of the financial crisis to crack down on excessive pay.
Critics have long complained about outsize compensation packages that dwarf ordinary workers' paychecks, but they voice particular ire over pay-for-failure. Much of Wall Street and corporate America has shifted a bigger portion of pay into longer-term stock awards and established policies to claw back bonuses. And while fuller disclosure of exit packages several years ago has helped ratchet down the size of the biggest severance deals, efforts by shareholders and regulators to further restrict payouts have had less success.
"We repeatedly see companies' assets go out the door to reward failure," said Scott Zdrazil, the director of corporate governance for Amalgamated Bank's $11 billion Longview Fund, a labor-affiliated investment fund that sought to tighten the restrictions on severance plans at three oil companies last year. "Investors are frustrated that boards haven't prevented such windfalls."
Several years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission turned a brighter spotlight on severance deals by requiring companies to disclose the values of the contracts in regulatory filings. More recently, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms required that public companies include "say on pay" votes for shareholders to express opinions about compensation - including a separate vote for golden parachutes initiated by a merger or sale.
Yet so far, few investors have gone to battle. Only 38 of the largest 3,000 companies had their executive pay plans voted down, according to Institutional Shareholder Services. Even then, the votes are nonbinding.
Severance policies typically call for a lump-sum cash payment, the ability to cash out stock awards and options immediately instead of having to potentially wait for years, and sometimes even bonuses. And that's not counting the retirement benefits and additional company stock that executives accumulate, which can increase the total value of their exit package by millions of dollars.
Some critics believe investors have become inured to the hefty payouts. In addition, the continuing financial crises in Europe and the United States have pushed compensation into the backseat on the shareholder agenda.
"People are preoccupied with the bigger issues," said Frederick Rowe Jr., a hedge fund manager and president of Investors for Director Accountability which has sought to curb excessive pay.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, seemed to lose its bully pulpit for compensation reform after most of the nation's biggest financial companies repaid their government loans - and Kenneth R. Feinberg, its tough-talking pay overseer, moved on to tackle other issues.
Federal Reserve officials flagged golden parachutes as a concern when they began a compensation review almost two years ago, but their inquiry was limited to large banks - not all large companies. The findings of the review are expected to be made public in the next few weeks.
Over the last year, regulators have been pressing corporate boards to draft policies denying huge severance payouts to senior executives if the firm teeters on collapse. That still leaves wiggle room for managers to score big if they merely perform poorly.
Practices such as large cash payouts and having shareholders pay the tax bill for departing executives are on the decline, especially after the uproar over the $200 million-plus exit packages of Hank McKinnell of Pfizer and Robert Nardelli of Home Depot in the last decade.
Mr. Zdrazil and other shareholder advocates say that investors have made some progress by pressuring companies to reduce the cash portion of severance packages to about two times salary from three. Now boards are under pressure to tighten the rules that speed up the ability of departing executives to cash out big chunks of stock. Only a few corporations, like Exxon Mobil, have policies where executives must forfeit their unvested stock options if they are forced out.
Some C.E.O.'s do not negotiate big payouts. Oswald Grübel, the chief executive of UBS who stepped down last week after a trader concealed more than $2.3 billion of losses, will receive $1.6 million (1.5 million Swiss francs), equivalent to the standard severance package of six months' salary given to all senior executives at the Swiss bank.
Many chief executives continue to walk away with seven or eight-figure severance packages, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates, an executive compensation consulting firm.
At Burger King, John Chidsey, its chief executive, departed in April with a severance package worth almost $20 million, despite severely underperforming McDonald's. Michelle Miguelez, a Burger King spokeswoman, declined to comment.
The chief executive at Massey Energy was awarded a large severance contract despite presiding over a company barraged with accusations of reckless conduct and with legal claims stemming from one of the deadliest mining disasters in memory. In June, Baxter F. Phillips Jr. was awarded nearly $14 million in cash and stock severance after the company was sold to a competitor, Alpha Natural Resources. Ted Pile, a spokesman for Alpha Natural Resources, said his company was required to honor an employment contract "put in place before we acquired" Massey.
Another chief executive received severance payments after his company was accused of fraud. At Beazer Homes, Ian McCarthy was ousted as chief executive three months after the company settled with the S.E.C. for filing misleading financial statements. Mr. McCarthy was forced to repay about $6.5 million.
But what the government took away, Beazer's board gave back. Mr. McCarthy was awarded a severance package worth about $6.3 million - and was reimbursed for up to $10,000 of legal fees associated with his termination. Beazer did not respond to a request for comment.
Perhaps the biggest reason that golden parachutes persist is that corporate boards hire superstar chief executives, rather than groom strong managers inside the company for the top job. That gives outsiders a stronger hand to demand all kinds of upfront stock awards and lucrative severance deals when they are hired. So when things do not work out, that "golden hello" turns into a "golden goodbye."
That is what happened with Ms. Bartz, a hard-charging technology executive who was brought in to help turn around Yahoo in 2009. She was given a sign-on package worth over $47.2 million in cash and stock, and pay worth an additional $11.9 million in 2010, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm.
But after her plans to revive the beleaguered search giant failed to improve its results, Yahoo's board fired Ms. Bartz this month. She walked away with a large allotment of deeply depressed stock options as well as cash severance worth about $5.2 million. The company said some of the stock was subject to future performance goals.
At Hewlett-Packard, its revolving door for chiefs has led to tens of millions in severance payouts even as thousands of employees have lost their jobs. In 2007, Carly Fiorina walked away with more than $21 million in cash-stock severance, after she struggled to turn around the company. Her successor, Mark V. Hurd, left with severance of more than $12.2 million after he was forced to step down amid accusations of an improper relationship.
Now comes Mr. Apotheker's $13.2 million severance payout when the stock price was cut in half. That is made up of $7.2 million in cash, the ability to sell $3.6 million of restricted stock and a $2.4 million bonus. H.P., which paid $2.9 million to relocate Mr. Apotheker to California, will now pay to move him to Belgium or France and cover losses of up to $300,000 on the sale of his house.
On Thursday, H.P. released a regulatory filing showing that Meg Whitman, its new chief executive, would receive a sign-on package worth about $13.1 million, according to an analysis of the filing by Equilar. Much of the compensation comes from a stock option grant that is subject to certain performance targets. She also stands to collect severance if she leaves.
Lloyd Doggett, a Democratic representative of Texas and senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said excessive severance packages were "outrageous."
"The whole concept that the only way to get rid of bad management is to buy them off is fundamentally wrong" he said.
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8) Judge Fines Longshore Union $250,000 Over Tactics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/30/business/AP-US-Union-Clash.html?src=busln
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A federal judge fined a Longshore union $250,000 on Friday for its tactics in a Longview labor dispute, and he warned that individual protesters could face their own penalties for future violations of his orders.
U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton has already held the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in contempt for blocking a train and storming a grain terminal earlier this month. Authorities have said the protesters in the second incident overpowered security guards, damaged railroad cars and dumped grain.
"What's going on out there is awful," Leighton said. "We have to do something about it, and I'm going to do something."
The National Labor Relations Board had asked the court to fine the union more than $290,000 to cover the damages and expenses such as overtime for law enforcement agencies. Leighton said he rounded down to be cautious and ordered additional penalties for future violations, including $25,000 for the union, $5,000 for union officers and $2,500 for other individuals.
The union plans to appeal the decision, attorney Robert Remar said after the hearing. He had argued that the union has the right to assess whether the proposed damages and expenses were proper, saying that he believes some of them were excessive and inflated.
Repeatedly facing arrest, the protesters in Longview have viewed themselves as being the latest front in the struggle for American jobs and benefits during the economic downturn. The dispute has continued to escalate, with protesters resorting to aggressive tactics that have been a rarity in recent labor disputes around the country.
Union protesters believe they have the right to work at a new grain terminal at the Port of Longview that is currently being staffed by workers from a different union, Oregon-based Operating Engineers Local 701.
Leighton is scheduled to address the larger dispute, focused on different interpretations of port contracts, in a hearing later Friday.
Mike Baker can be reached at http://twitter.com/MikeBakerAP .
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9) With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors
By JUSTIN GILLIS
October 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html?hp
WISE RIVER, Mont. - The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn.
But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.
Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.
From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state's spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.
The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two "once a century" droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.
Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.
Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world's people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.
Scientists have figured out - with the precise numbers deduced only recently - that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world's cars and trucks.
Without that disposal service, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be rising faster. The gas traps heat from the sun, and human emissions are causing the planet to warm.
Yet the forests have only been able to restrain the increase, not halt it. And some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.
"At the same time that we're recognizing the potential great value of trees and forests in helping us deal with the excess carbon we're generating, we're starting to lose forests," said Thomas W. Swetnam, an expert on forest history at the University of Arizona.
While some of the forests that died recently are expected to grow back, scientists say others are not, because of climate change.
If forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air - as is already happening in some regions. That, in turn, could speed the warming of the planet, unlocking yet more carbon stored in once-cold places like the Arctic.
Scientists are not sure how likely this feedback loop is, and they are not eager to find out the hard way.
"It would be a very different world than the world we're in," said Christopher B. Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.
It is clear that the point of no return has not been reached yet - and it may never be. Despite the troubles of recent years, forests continue to take up a large amount of carbon, with some regions, including the Eastern United States, being especially important as global carbon absorbers.
"I think we have a situation where both the 'forces of growth' and the 'forces of death' are strengthening, and have been for some time," said Oliver L. Phillips, a prominent tropical forest researcher with the University of Leeds in England. "The latter are more eye-catching, but the former have in fact been more important so far."
Scientists acknowledge that their attempts to use computers to project the future of forests are still crude. Some of those forecasts warn that climate change could cause potentially widespread forest death in places like the Amazon, while others show forests remaining robust carbon sponges throughout the 21st century.
"We're not completely blind, but we're not in good shape," said William R. L. Anderegg, a researcher at Stanford University.
Many scientists say that ensuring the health of the world's forests requires slowing human emissions of greenhouse gases. Most nations committed to doing so in a global environmental treaty in 1992, yet two decades of negotiations have yielded scant progress.
In the near term, experts say, more modest steps could be taken to protect forests. One promising plan calls for wealthy countries to pay those in the tropics to halt the destruction of their immense forests for agriculture and logging.
But now even that plan is at risk, for lack of money. Other strategies, like thinning overgrown forests in the American West to make them more resistant to fire and insect damage, are also going begging in straitened times. With growing economic problems and a Congress skeptical of both climate science and new spending, chances for additional funding appear remote.
So, even as potential solutions to forest problems languish, signs of trouble build.
In the 1990s, many of the white spruce trees of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula were wiped out by beetles. For more than a decade, other beetle varieties have been destroying trees across millions of acres of western North America. Red-hued mountainsides have become a familiar sight in a half-dozen states, including Montana and Colorado, as well as British Columbia in Canada.
Researchers refer to events like these as forest die-offs, and they have begun to document what appears to be a rising pattern of them around the world. Only some have been directly linked to global warming by scientific studies; many have yet to be analyzed in detail. Yet it is clear that hotter weather, of the sort that science has long predicted as a consequence of human activity, is playing a large role.
Many scientists had hoped that serious forest damage would not set in before the middle of the 21st century, and that people would have time to get emissions of heat-trapping gases under control before then. Some of them have been shocked in recent years by what they are seeing.
"The amount of area burning now in Siberia is just startling - individual years with 30 million acres burned," Dr. Swetnam said, describing an area the size of Pennsylvania. "The big fires that are occurring in the American Southwest are extraordinary in terms of their severity, on time scales of thousands of years. If we were to continue at this rate through the century, you're looking at the loss of at least half the forest landscape of the Southwest."
The Carbon Dioxide Mystery
In the 1950s, when a scientist named Charles David Keeling first obtained accurate measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a mystery presented itself. Only about half the carbon that people were releasing into the sky seemed to be staying there. It took scientists decades to figure out where the rest was going. The most comprehensive estimates on the role of forests were published only a few weeks ago by an international team of scientists.
As best researchers can tell, the oceans are taking up about a quarter of the carbon emissions arising from human activities. That is causing the sea to become more acidic and is expected to damage marine life over the long run, perhaps catastrophically. But the chemistry is at least somewhat predictable, and scientists are reasonably confident the oceans will continue absorbing carbon for many decades.
Trees are taking up a similar amount of carbon, but whether this will continue is much less certain, as the recent forest damage illustrates.
Carbon dioxide is an essential part of the cycle of life on Earth, but geologic history suggests that too much can cause the climate to warm sharply. With enough time, the chemical cycles operating on the planet have a tendency to bury excess carbon.
In the 19th century, humans discovered the usefulness of some forms of buried carbon - coal, oil and natural gas - as a source of energy, and have been perturbing the natural order ever since. About 10 billion tons of carbon are pouring into the atmosphere every year from the combustion of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests.
The concentration of the gas in the atmosphere has jumped 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and scientists fear it could double or even triple this century, with profound consequences.
While all types of plants absorb carbon dioxide, known as CO2, most of them return it to the atmosphere quickly because their vegetation decays, burns or is eaten. Every year, during the Northern Hemisphere growing season, plants and other organisms inhale some 120 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere, then exhale nearly the same amount as they decay in the winter.
It is mainly trees that have the ability to lock carbon into long-term storage, and they do so by making wood or transferring carbon into the soil. The wood may stand for centuries inside a living tree, and it is slow to decay even when the tree dies.
But the carbon in wood is vulnerable to rapid release. If a forest burns down, for instance, much of the carbon stored in it will re-enter the atmosphere.
Destruction by fires and insects is a part of the natural history of forests, and in isolation, such events would be no cause for alarm. Indeed, despite the recent problems, the new estimate, published Aug. 19 in the journal Science, suggests that when emissions from the destruction of forests are subtracted from the carbon they absorb, they are, on balance, packing more than a billion tons of carbon into long-term storage every year.
One major reason is that forests, like other types of plants, appear to be responding to the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by growing more vigorously. The gas is, after all, the main food supply for plants. Scientists have been surprised in recent years to learn that this factor is causing a growth spurt even in mature forests, a finding that overturned decades of ecological dogma.
Climate-change contrarians tend to focus on this "fertilization effect," hailing it as a boon for forests and the food supply. "The ongoing rise of the air's CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth," one advocate of this position, Craig D. Idso, said at a contrarian meeting in Washington in July.
Dr. Idso and others assert that this effect is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, ameliorating any negative impacts on plant growth from rising temperatures. More mainstream scientists, while stating that CO2 fertilization is real, are much less certain about the long-term effects, saying that the heat and water stress associated with climate change seem to be making forests vulnerable to insect attack, fires and many other problems.
"Forests take a century to grow to maturity," said Werner A. Kurz, a Canadian scientist who is a leading expert on forest carbon. "It takes only a single extreme climate event, a single attack by insects, to interrupt that hundred-year uptake of carbon."
It is possible the recent die-backs will prove transitory - a coincidence, perhaps, that they all occurred at roughly the same time. The more troubling possibility, experts said, is that the die-offs might prove to be the leading edge of a more sweeping change.
"If this were happening in just a few places, it would be easier to deny and write off," said David A. Cleaves, senior adviser for the United States Forest Service. "But it's not. It's happening all over the place. You've got to say, gee, what is the common element?"
Tracking an Ebb and Flow
So far, humanity has been lucky. While some forests are starting to release more carbon than they take up, that effect continues to be outweighed by forests that pack carbon away. Whether those healthy forests will predominate over coming decades, or will become sick themselves, is simply unclear.
The other day, deep in a healthy New England thicket of oaks, maples and hemlocks, two young men scrambled around on their hands and knees measuring twigs and sticks that had fallen from the trees.
"What was the diameter on that?" asked Jakob Lindaas, a Harvard student holding a pencil and clipboard.
Leland K. Werden, a researcher at the university, called out a metric measurement, and they moved to the next twig. It was one of thousands they would eventually have to measure as part of an effort to tell how fast the wood, knocked off the trees in an ice storm in 2008, was decaying.
The debris they were cataloging would not have struck a hiker as anything to notice, much less measure, but the Harvard Forest, 3,000 acres near Petersham, Mass., is one of the world's most intensively studied patches of woods. The work the men were doing will become a small contribution toward solving one of the biggest accounting problems of modern science.
In every forest, carbon is constantly being absorbed as trees and other organisms grow, then released as they die or go dormant. These carbon fluxes, as they are called, vary through the day. They vary with seasons, with climate and weather extremes, with the health of the forests and with many other factors. Across the world, scientists are struggling to track and understand this ebb and flow.
A 100-foot tower stands in the middle of the Harvard Forest, studded with instruments. Put up in 1989, it was the first permanent tower of its kind in the world, built to help track the carbon fluxes. Now hundreds of them dot the planet.
Meticulous measurements over the decades have established that the Harvest Forest is gaining weight, roughly two tons per acre per year, on average. It is characteristic of a type of forest that is playing a big role in limiting the damage from human carbon emissions: a recovering forest.
Not so long ago, the land was not a forest at all. Close to where the men were working stood an old stone fence, a telltale sign of the land's history.
"When the European colonists came to America, they saw trees, and they wanted fields and pastures," explained J. William Munger, a Harvard research fellow who was supervising the measurements. So the colonists chopped down the original forest and built farmhouses, barns, paddocks and sturdy stone fences.
By the mid-19th century, the Erie Canal and the railroads had opened the interior of the country, and farmers plowing the thin, stony soils of New England could not compete with produce from the rich fields of the Midwest. So the old fields were abandoned, and trees have returned.
Today, the re-growing forests of the Eastern United States are among the most important carbon sponges in the world. In the Harvard Forest, the rate of carbon storage accelerated about a decade ago. As in much of the world, the temperature is warming there - by an average of 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 40 years - and that has led to longer growing seasons, benefiting this particular forest more than hurting it, at least so far.
"We're actually seeing that the leaves are falling off the trees later in the fall," Mr. Werden said.
Scientists say that something similar may be happening in other forests, particularly in cold northern regions that are warming rapidly. In some places, the higher temperatures could aid tree growth or cause forests to expand into zones previously occupied by grasslands or tundra, storing more carbon.
Forests are re-growing on abandoned agricultural land across vast reaches of Europe and Russia. China, trying to slow the advance of a desert, has planted nearly 100 million acres of trees, and those forests, too, are absorbing carbon.
But, as a strategy for managing carbon emissions, these recovering forests have one big limitation: the planet simply does not have room for many more of them. To expand them significantly would require taking more farmland out of production, an unlikely prospect in a world where food demand and prices are rising.
"We're basically running out of land," Dr. Kurz said.
Even in forests that are relatively healthy now, like those of New England, climate risks are coming into focus. For instance, invasive insects that used to be killed off by cold winters are expected to spread north more readily as the temperature warms, attacking trees.
The Harvard Forest has already been invaded by an insect called the woolly adelgid that kills hemlock trees, and managers there fear a large die-off in coming years.
Wildfires and Bugs
Stripping the bark of a tree with a hatchet, Diana L. Six, a University of Montana insect scientist, pointed out the telltale signs of infestation by pine beetles: channels drilled by the creatures as they chewed their way through the juicy part of the tree.
The tree she was pointing out was already dead. Its needles, which should have been deep green, displayed the sickly red that has become so commonplace in the mountainous West. Because the beetles had cut off the tree's nutrients, the chlorophyll that made the needles green was breaking down, leaving only reddish compounds.
Pine beetles are a natural part of the life cycle in Western forests, but this outbreak, under way for more than a decade in some areas, is by far the most extensive ever recorded. Scientists say winter temperatures used to fall to 40 degrees below zero in the mountains every few years, killing off many beetles. "It just doesn't happen anymore," said a leading climate scientist from the University of Montana, Steven W. Running, who was surveying the scene with Dr. Six one recent day.
As the climate has warmed, various beetle species have marauded across the landscape, from Arizona to Alaska. The situation is worst in British Columbia, which has lost millions of trees across an area the size of Wisconsin.
The species Dr. Six was pointing out, the mountain pine beetle, has pushed farther north into Canada than ever recorded. The beetles have jumped the Rocky Mountains into Alberta, and fears are rising that they could spread across the continent as temperatures rise in coming decades. Standing on a mountain plateau south of Missoula, Dr. Six and Dr. Running pointed to the devastation the beetles had wrought in the forest around them, consisting of a high-elevation species called whitebark pine.
"We were going to try to do like an eight-year study up here. But within three years, all this has happened," Dr. Six said sadly.
"It's game over," Dr. Running said.
Later, flying in a small plane over the Montana wilderness, Dr. Running said beetles were not the only problem confronting the forests of the West.
Warmer temperatures are causing mountain snowpack, on which so much of the life in the region depends, to melt earlier in most years, he said. That is causing more severe water deficits in the summer, just as the higher temperatures cause trees to need extra water to survive. The whole landscape dries out, creating the conditions for intense fires. Even if the landscape does not burn, the trees become so stressed they are easy prey for beetles.
From the plane, Dr. Running pointed out huge scars where fires had destroyed stands of trees in recent years. "Nothing can stop the wildfires when they get to this magnitude," he said. Some of the fire scars stood adjacent to stands of lodgepole pine destroyed by beetles.
At the moment, the most severe problems in the nation's forests are being seen in the Southwestern United States, in states like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The region has been so dry that huge, explosive fires consumed millions of acres of vegetation and thousands of homes and other buildings this summer.
This year's drought came against the background of an overall warming and drying of the Southwestern climate, which scientists say helps to explain the severe effects. But the role of climate change in causing the drought itself is unclear - the more immediate cause is an intermittent weather pattern called La Niña, and research is still under way on whether that cycle is being altered or intensified by global warming, as some researchers suspect. Because of the continuing climatic change, experts say some areas that are burning this year may never return as forest - they are more likely to grow back as heat-tolerant grass or shrub lands, storing far less carbon than the forests they replace.
"A lot of ecologists like me are starting to think all these agents, like insects and fires, are just the proximate cause, and the real culprit is water stress caused by climate change," said Robert L. Crabtree, head of a center studying the Yellowstone region. "It doesn't really matter what kills the trees - they're on their way out. The big question is, Are they going to regrow? If they don't, we could very well catastrophically lose our forests."
Stalled Efforts
Scientists are coming to a sobering realization: There may be no such thing left on Earth as a natural forest.
However wild some of them may look, experts say, forests from the deepest Amazon to the remotest reaches of Siberia are now responding to human influences, including the rising level of carbon dioxide in the air, increasing heat and changing rainfall patterns. That raises the issue of what people can do to protect forests.
Some steps have already been taken in recent years, with millions of acres of public and private forest land being designated as conservation reserves, for instance. But other ideas are essentially stymied for lack of money.
Widespread areas of pine forest in the Western United States are a prime example. A scientific consensus has emerged that people mismanaged those particular forests over the past century, in part by suppressing the mild ground fires that used to clear out underbrush and limit tree density.
As a consequence, these overgrown forests have become tinderboxes that can be destroyed by high-intensity fires sweeping through the crowns. The government stance is that many forests throughout the West need to be thinned, and some environmental groups have come to agree.
But the small trees and brush that would be removed have a low commercial value, especially in a weak economy. With little money available to subsidize the thinning, the Forest Service is reduced to treating only small sections of forest that pose the biggest threat to life and property.
On an even larger scale, experts cite a lack of money as endangering a program to slow or halt the destruction of tropical forests at human hands.
Deforestation, usually to make way for agriculture, has been under way for decades, with Brazil and Indonesia being hotspots. The burning of tropical forests not only ends their ability to absorb carbon, it also produces an immediate flow of carbon back to the atmosphere, making it one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Rich countries agreed in principle in recent years to pay poorer countries large amounts of money if they would protect their forests.
The wealthy countries have pledged nearly $5 billion, enough to get the program started, but far more money was eventually supposed to become available. The idea was that the rich countries would create ways to charge their companies for emissions of carbon dioxide, and some of this money would flow abroad for forest preservation.
Climate legislation stalled in the United States amid opposition from lawmakers worried about the economic effects, and some European countries have also balked at sending money abroad. That means it is not clear the forest program will ever get rolling in a substantial way.
"Like any other scheme to improve the human condition, it's quite precarious because it is so grand in its ambitions," said William Boyd, a University of Colorado law professor working to salvage the plan.
The best hope for the program now is that California, which is intent on battling global warming, will allow industries to comply with its rules partly by financing efforts to slow tropical deforestation. The idea is that other states or countries would eventually follow suit.
Yet, scientists emphasize that in the end, programs meant to conserve forests - or to render them more fire-resistant, as in the Western United States, or to plant new ones, as in China - are only partial measures. To ensure that forests are preserved for future generations, they say, society needs to limit the fossil-fuel burning that is altering the climate of the world.
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10) Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever
By N. R. KLEINFIELD and CARA BUCKLEY
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/wall-street-occupiers-protesting-till-whenever.html?hp
A man named Hero was here. So was Germ. There was the waitress from the dim sum restaurant in Evanston, Ill. And the liquor store worker. The Google consultant. The circus performer. The Brooklyn nanny.
The hodgepodge Lower Manhattan encampment known as Occupy Wall Street has no appointed leaders, no expiration date for its rabble-rousing stay and still-evolving goals and demands. Yet its two weeks of noisy occupation has lured a sturdily faithful and fervent constituency willing to express discontentment with what they feel is an inequitable financial system until, well, whenever.
They arrived by design and desire. Or by sheer serendipity.
Like Jillian Aydelott, 19, and Ben Mason, 20. They are a couple, both having taken an indefinite leave from school in Boston to travel across the country, very much on the cheap. Stopping in Providence, R.I., five days ago to sleep at a homeless shelter, they encountered a man who called himself Germ and said he was an activist. He was coming to the protest. They figured why not. They have yet to leave.
Ms. Aydelott's feeling was: "Nothing is happening. People on Wall Street have all the power."
The stalwarts seem to range from a relatively modest 100 to 300 people, though the ranks swelled to more than 2,000 on Friday as the protest began to attract mainstream attention from those disaffected with the weak economy and to enlist support from well-known liberals.
The actress Susan Sarandon stopped by, as did the Princeton professor Cornel West and former Gov. David A. Paterson of New York. A widely reported episode last Saturday, when four protesters were pepper-sprayed by a police commander, elevated the visibility of the demonstrators.
On Friday night, many marched to Police Headquarters to criticize what they described as the improper tactics that the police had used against their movement. (The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, has defended the actions by the police, though he has said they will be reviewed.)
Nicholas Coniaris, 35, came to the makeshift village in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street on Friday and will be gone soon. He is from San Diego, a counselor who works with homeless veterans, and was squeezing in protesting while awaiting a wedding he was attending on Saturday. A friend from Japan, a fellow wedding guest, was here as well.
Having brought a tuxedo for the wedding, Mr. Coniaris decided to get extra mileage out of it. He wore it while he stationed himself in the center of the park clutching a coffee cup that said "God Bless," and a sign that said, in part, "Support the Rich."
"Just a little something," he said mockingly to passers-by. "Half a billion dollars. I'm not asking for a trillion."
After a couple of hours, his cup contained $1.15.
It all began when a Canadian advocacy magazine, Adbusters, posted a call for action on its blog in July. A New York group naming itself the General Assembly, inspired by recent meetings in Madrid, began to hold organizing meetings in Tompkins Square and other public places, leading to a Sept. 17 march near Wall Street. Shooed away from Wall Street, the protesters wound up in Zuccotti Park, which is bounded by Broadway and Liberty Street and has become their base.
Most of the demonstrators are in their teens or 20s, but plenty are older. Many are students. Many are jobless. A few are well-worn anarchists. Others have put their normal lives on pause to try out protesting and see how it feels.
Not all of them can articulate exactly why they are here or what they want. Yet there is a conviction rippling through them that however the global economy works, it does not work for them.
"I'm angry because I don't have millions of dollars to give to my representative, so my voice is invalidated," said Amanda Clarke, 21, a student at the New School. "And the fact that I'm graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in loans and there's no job market."
Their politics zigzag wildly. An unemployed schoolteacher calls herself a fierce independent, while an employed teacher is a conservative. An anarchist photographer wants libertarianism to be reclaimed by the left.
"This is not about left versus right," said the photographer, Christopher Walsh, 25, from Bushwick, Brooklyn. "It's about hierarchy versus autonomy."
A finance worker walked around with a dollar bill duct-taped over his mouth and carrying a pizza box, on which he had written, "I could lose my job 4 having a voice." Nikita Nikitovich, 44, a New York Pilates teacher, was working as one of the protest's media contacts. A 38-year-old bicycle messenger with a head shaved except for a long braid arrived early Friday by bus from New Orleans, and had been waiting for a protest to erupt since Hurricane Katrina. "That's when we were shown the big picture," she said.
For all the bedraggled look of the mattress-and-sleeping-bag-strewn camp, it has a structure and routine. A food station occupies the center of the park, where donated meals are disbursed, especially pizza and Popeyes chicken. Sympathizers from other states have been calling local shops and pizza parlors and, using their credit cards, ordering food to be delivered to the park.
There are information stations, a recycling center, a media center where a gasoline generator powers computers. At the east end sits the library, labeled cardboard boxes brimming with donated books: nonfiction, fiction, poetry, legal. There is a lost and found.
A medical station was outfitted with bins holding a broad array of remedies: cough drops, Maalox Maximum Strength, Clorox wipes, bee pollen granules. The main issues have been blisters, including some from handcuffs, and abrasions.
There are also a few therapists. Some out-of-work protesters are depressed. They need someone's ear.
Elsewhere is a sanitation station, with designated sanitation workers who sweep the park. The park is without toilets, a problem that many of the protesters address by visiting a nearby McDonald's.
The encampment even has a post-office box, established at a U.P.S. store, and has been receiving a steady flow of supportive letters and packages. Someone from Texas sent a bunch of red bandanas, now draped on the necks of demonstrators. Others have sent camera batteries, granola bars and toothbrushes.
Two General Assembly meetings are held each day to conduct organizational business and work on objectives. "We meet every day to decide what our demands are," said Hero Vincent, 21, an artist and singer from Charlotte, N.C., who has been here from the beginning.
Not allowed to use amplified sound, the protesters have devised their own means of communication. Each speaker says a sentence, and then everyone else repeats it, so it ripples outward. Decisions must be by consensus. Hand signals convey responses. For instance, holding your palms upward and wiggling your fingers means approval, while holding them downward means disapproval. Level hands mean uncertainty.
People are divided into committees, including town planning, child care, direct action and a de-escalation group charged with keeping things orderly. There have been a few arguments.
When will all this end?
One protester thought when the temperature fell below 50. Others were less sure.
Sid Gurung, 22, a student at the New School who enlisted because he said he was "extremely disappointed and angry that I have no future," would agree to no timetable. "Our task is important," he said. "We could be here for months. Our opponents are giants."
Natasha Lennard and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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11) Question: Why Pay Bank Fees?
"Only Bank of America customers with more than $20,000 in combined checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts or a bank mortgage (of any size) will be able to avoid both the debit card fee and any other monthly fee for falling below a required minimum balance level." [This is also true for Wells Fargo, i.e., only the poorest will be forced to pay a fee to use their money. Those with property or a high monthly balance will not have to pay the debit card fee--it's unconscionable!....bw]
By RON LIEBER and ANN CARRNS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/your-money/bank-fees-on-debit-cards-have-some-customers-looking-to-switch.html
The news on Thursday that Bank of America is imposing a $5 monthly fee on people who have the nerve to use their debit card to buy things probably should not have come as much of a shock.
Wells Fargo, the other giant coast-to-coast bank, had already revealed its plans to test a $3 fee in the wake of new federal rules that made the cards less profitable for many banks.
Bank of America probably has bigger problems than any of its competitors. So it stands to reason that it would make a bolder move. After all, it is dealing with a pile of troubled mortgages, legal fallout from the sales of bonds made from those loans and questions about how it serviced its home mortgages.
Still, the scale of its changes mean that most debit card shoppers who do not have Bank of America mortgages or more than $20,000 in account balances will need to pay that $5 monthly fee. It is a tax on pretty much every customer without a healthy salary or investment income, plus those who want to keep their savings elsewhere for whatever reason.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo are hardly alone here, since other big banks have toughened the rules for people who want to keep free checking, or have killed off rewards programs to save money. And we probably haven't heard the last of the new rules either. All of these moves together, however, raise a simple and rather obvious question:
Why is anyone still doing business with banks like these?
Just after noon on Friday, Elvita Dominique, who lives in Harlem, was trying to answer that question for herself. She had just left a Bank of America branch on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan having made an appointment with a bank employee who could help her review her options. "I want to know if they are going to make exceptions," she said. (Later in the day, the branch employee said no.)
She had already heard that Citibank did not plan to add monthly debit card fees, so she will investigate that possibility. She is also considering joining a credit union.
Bank of America's move is part of a broader effort to overhaul its checking account lineup. As of sometime early next year, it will have four basic accounts, only one of which will waive the $5 monthly fee for debit card users who want to use the card for purchases. A.T.M. use will not incur the monthly fee, but charging recurring bills like gym memberships or mobile phone plans to your debit card will.
Only Bank of America customers with more than $20,000 in combined checking, savings and certificate of deposit accounts or a bank mortgage (of any size) will be able to avoid both the debit card fee and any other monthly fee for falling below a required minimum balance level.
Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust customers will also get a waiver, as will unemployed people who use certain government-issued Bank of America cards that have benefit money loaded onto them.
While the bank will not say what percentage of its checking account customers it expects (or hopes) will be paying new fees, $20,000 is a much higher bar to clear than the direct deposit requirement or the $1,500 to $10,000 minimum balances that the bank currently places on many checking account customers who wish to avoid fees.
As a result, plenty of customers will be looking at their options. What would cause people who count on debit cards to help them live within their means to stick around despite the $5 a month fee?
The first factor is the perceived pain involved with switching. And it is a pain, though not as much as you may think. It shouldn't take much more than 90 minutes to reboot direct deposit of your paycheck and move all the automated payments from one account to another.
There may be a few hiccups over the next couple of months, but they shouldn't take more than a few minutes each to fix. Try to leave some money behind in the old account for a few months just in case it takes billers a few cycles to make the switch.
Much depends, then, on how much you value that 90 minutes, versus the $60 in savings you might achieve in Year 1 with your new financial institution. Then you need to weigh the value of your time against the good feeling that would come from rewarding a checking account provider that wasn't so fee-happy.
A.T.M. convenience is another factor that limits switching. Consumers who haven't looked at an online-only institution in awhile will be pleasantly surprised by the developments here. Some of them have tapped into nationwide networks of fee-free machines that are bigger than any one bank's collection of locations. Others let you use any A.T.M. you want and reimburse you for most or all of the fees you pay to withdraw money. Banks like ING Direct, Ally, Charles Schwab and USAA are all worth a look here. They may well pay better interest too, though it won't amount to very much these days.
There could be plenty of people who have no problem with an extra $5 a month. Claudia Smith, who lives in Fayetteville, Ark., said she wasn't worried about the new fee, even though she used her debit card extensively. "It's well worth $5 a month to not have to carry a checkbook," she said.
She rarely uses a branch but had visited one on Friday because the bank had notified her that her debit card information might have been compromised. It issued her a temporary replacement, and she was grateful that there was someplace she could go when the need arose.
"I guess banks have expenses like everyone else," she said. "Do we want to be able to use live tellers?" (Indeed, we sometimes do, though we don't like to hear from their bosses; our Arkansas correspondent was booted from the sidewalk of the Bank of America Joyce Avenue branch in Fayetteville for "soliciting" customers on Friday.)
Some people who live hand to mouth and collect a lot of paper checks like to be near a branch. That way, they can hand piles of them over to a teller and have the deposits clear quickly. That need may make it seem as if the community bank in the next town or a Web-only institution is a poor option.
In the last year or two, however, banks like Schwab and USAA have started letting many customers deposit a lot of their checks by snapping pictures of them with a smartphone and then sending the photos in. It's hard to beat that for speed of deposit. Chase does this, too, even though it has plenty of branches. It won't work for cash, however, so drug dealers are out of luck.
The fed-up have plenty of places to go to find a better bank these days. There is, in fact, a service operating out of findabetterbank.com that can help. The Web site of the Move Your Money project is worth a look, too. You can search for a credit union that will take you in at creditunion.coop.
Lauren Peterson, a junior at the University of Arkansas, may soon be among the money movers. She hadn't heard about the new fee until Friday and wasn't pleased to learn that she would probably be paying it soon.
Ms. Peterson opened her Bank of America account when she went to college because the bank has branches and A.T.M.'s in Fayetteville as well as in Dallas, which allows her to use them when she visits her family. But a $5 monthly fee gives her pause.
"Honestly, I might switch," she said. "I feel it's an inconvenience, especially for students. No one carries cash."
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12) Anti-Qaddafi Fighters Are Accused of Torture
By KAREEM FAHIM
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/world/africa/anti-qaddafi-fighters-are-accused-of-torture.html?ref=world
TRIPOLI, Libya - First there were the blindfold, the wrist-scarring handcuffs and the death threats. Then came beatings and electric shocks. In the fog of pain, the detainee, who said he had done nothing wrong, would have confessed to anything, he later recalled.
The techniques were familiar to Libyans, but the perpetrators were not: they were former rebels, according to the detainee, a 36-year-old man who said he had worked in military intelligence for the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The man, who requested that his name not be published because he feared retribution from his former captors, said he was arrested by armed former rebels almost two weeks ago, held in a building for four days and tortured.
His story was impossible to immediately verify, but he displayed what he said was evidence of the torture: huge bruises and welts on his legs, stripes of black and blue across the back of his thighs, and scars on his feet and ankles that he said marked the spots where his captors attached electrical wires.
He was later transferred to another building in Tripoli, across the street from the cabinet offices of the Transitional National Council, the former rebels' provisional government. There, in cells with fresh blood on the walls, he was held for another day until he was released, with apologies, by a former rebel official, he said.
Now, he is moving to Tunisia, he said. "I do not trust anyone in Libya."
His case underscores the growing concern about armed brigades of former rebel fighters in the Libyan capital who rushed to fill the power vacuum after Colonel Qaddafi's forces fled more than a month ago. In a city with weak central authority and a justice system being rebuilt almost from scratch, the fighters have become detectives, prosecutors, judges and jailers, many of whom answer only to their own commanders, or to no one.
The fighters have detained thousands of people; some are criminal suspects, former officials or Qaddafi soldiers. Others simply come from towns that opposed the revolution. Some are being held in prisons, others at makeshift, and sometimes secret, detention centers.
Some are being tortured. The ordeal of the 36-year-old detainee bore similarities to cases recorded by the group Human Rights Watch in six facilities administered by the anti-Qaddafi forces in Tripoli. In a report released Friday, the group said that detainees reported abuse including beatings and electric shocks. None of the 53 detainees interviewed, the group said, had been brought before a judge.
"What we're seeing is a symptom of a fundamental problem," said Tom Malinowski, the group's Washington director. "Civilians have good plans but lack authority over the militia groups." Mr. Malinowski credited the transitional government with allowing observers to visit detention centers, and said that some were well run. He added, "I doubt there's a civilian official who knows where all the facilities are."
Human Rights Watch reported that many of the people arrested by militias, brigades and other security groups associated with the transitional government were sub-Saharan Africans or dark-skinned Libyans. In some cases, the former rebel guards at detention facilities forced sub-Saharan African prisoners to perform manual labor.
Detainees suspected of the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, received the worst abuse, the report said.
The 36-year-old detainee said bad luck, not guilt, had led to his arrest and torture, after he tried to buy a gun to replace one confiscated by the former rebels. Soon, the man found himself accused of supplying arms to a Qaddafi cell.
From their accents, he guessed that some of his captors were from the mountain city of Zintan. One was kind, loosening his blindfold and his handcuffs. Another asked him to write his life story on a few sheets of paper.
He broke down crying, he recalled. "How can I write my whole life story? What do they want from me?"
The beatings started on the third day. Some guards cursed him as a former intelligence officer, and others chanted, "The blood of the martyrs will not be shed in vain." He was strung from the ceiling and his legs were beaten, he said.
On the fourth day, he was transferred to a former government building in Tripoli. His fellow captives, he said, included someone accused of wearing a pro-Qaddafi hat, several women and a man who had been helping the transitional government secure the former government's secret files.
A doctor treated him, and one of his captors congratulated him on being cleared of wrongdoing, adding, "This is a clean revolution."
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13) Gains Made in Equality of Incomes in Downturn
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/us/recession-struck-inadvertent-blow-for-womens-equality.html?ref=us
The recession was bad for everyone, but women experienced at least one silver lining: Their median earnings edged a bit closer to men's.
The progress was bittersweet, however. It happened not because women earned more, but because men earned less, according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data.
Median earnings for men, adjusted for inflation, fell by $2,433 - or 6 percent - from 2007 to 2010, according to the analysis, by the American Human Development Project, a social research organization. Women's earnings, meanwhile, fell by just $253 in the same period, a drop of 0.9 percent.
For men, it was another sad chapter in the painful tale of the recession, which officially ended in June 2009 and battered them more ferociously than it did women. For women, whose economic fortunes have been on a slow but steady rise relative to men's since the 1970s, it was a small, if unsatisfying, victory.
"The recession was devastating for men," said Kristen Lewis, co-director of the project, which is part of the New York-based Social Science Research Council. Women, on the other hand, "have come through it with no significant change in their buying power," she said.
Some of the recession's steepest declines were in industries that tend to be dominated by men. Earnings in construction, for example, fell by 5 percent, the analysis found. Meanwhile, median earnings in health care and technical occupations, popular among women, increased by 3 percent.
Median earnings for men were also dragged down by workers who lost jobs or had their hours cut back. (The statistic included any worker ages 25 to 64 who had been working full or part time at any point in the years measured.)
"When you have unemployment go from 5 percent to 10 percent, people are going to have lower annual earnings because they are working less," said Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
The construction industry shed a whopping 1.4 million male workers during the recession, the analysis found. On the other hand, the service sector, which includes some of the lowest-paying jobs, like waitress and housekeeper, added jobs for both men and women. Earnings in the sector declined by 6 percent for men, as they took lower-paying jobs, but stayed flat for women.
Women did not have as far to fall, said Sarah Burd-Sharps, who is co-director of the American Human Development Project with Ms. Lewis. Women are heavily represented at the bottom of the earnings ladder and have lower salaries than men across all occupations. A typical woman in the service sector earned $14,792 last year, compared with $21,104 for a typical man.
But the gap is shrinking. The high-paying fields of management, business and finance gained 376,000 women during the recession, while shedding 119,000 men, according to the study. Women's earnings in those occupations stayed flat, while men's salaries dropped 3 percent.
This year of budget cuts does not bode well for women, who are heavily represented in local government jobs, like teaching, Professor Stevenson said.
Even so, in recent months, there has been an uptick in women's earnings, she said. In early 2010, women's median weekly earnings were 79 cents for every dollar earned by men. By the second quarter of this year they were at 83 cents. That was all the more surprising because female unemployment, lower than men's through much of the recession, has now started to rise.
"What you see in these earnings is another step towards financial equality," Professor Stevenson said.
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14) Alabama: Many Immigrants Pull Children From Schools
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/us/alabama-many-immigrants-pull-children-from-schools.html?ref=us
Hispanic students are vanishing from public schools in the wake of a court ruling on Wednesday that upheld the state's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration. Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children or kept them home this week, afraid that sending them to school would draw attention from the authorities. There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials that they would leave the state to avoid trouble with the law, which requires schools to check students' immigration status. In one of the state's largest cities, Huntsville, the superintendent went on a Spanish-language television show on Thursday to try to calm worries. "Our students do not have anything to fear," the superintendent, Casey Wardynski, said in halting Spanish. He said the state was only trying to compile statistics. The police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools. In Montgomery County, more than 200 Hispanic students were absent on Thursday. In Albertville, 35 students withdrew in one day. And about 20 students in Shelby County, in suburban Birmingham, withdrew or told teachers that they were leaving. Local and state officials are pleading with immigrant families to keep their children enrolled. The law does not bar anyone from school, they say, and neither students nor parents will be arrested for trying to get an education. The Obama administration filed court documents on Friday announcing its plans to appeal the ruling that upheld the law.
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15) Unleash the Robot Dogs of War
By NICK BILTON
October 1, 2011, 8:25 am
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/large-alphadog-robot-runs-like-a-horse-scares-people/?src=busln
In 2007 Boston Dynamics, a robotics company, posted a video online of a robot called the BigDog that could run on any type of terrain like a dog. The video quickly went viral, partly because people were in awe of the robot's agility and also because it was so scary to watch.
On Thursday, Boston Dynamics showed off its latest robot: the AlphaDog. This new robot is essentially BigDog's big scary brother. It's officially called a "Legged Squad Support System," or LS3, and it is financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon, also known as Darpa, and the Marine Corps.
According to Boston Dynamics, the AlphaDog can carry up to 400 pounds of gear, while storing enough fuel for a trip that covers 20 miles over 24 hours. The AlphaDog robot also doesn't need a driver, as it can be programmed to follow a designated leader using computer vision. It can also be programmed to independently travel to specific places using sensors and GPS.
The video shows some of the tricks the AlphaDog can perform, including running over boulders and fallen trees, and galloping like a horse while being aggressively pushed to the side. The most impressive feature is its ability to stand up independently while lying on its side or back.
But don't expect to buy a AlphaDog at your local Radio Shack anytime soon. Darpa hopes to use these robots on the battlefield and in war zones.
Let's put it this way: if I saw this thing heading toward me in the middle of a battle, I wouldn't even try to run in the other direction. I'd just fall on the floor in the fetal position and pray.
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16) Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
By AL BAKER, COLIN MOYNIHAN and SARAH MASLIN NIR
October 1, 2011, 4:29 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/police-arresting-protesters-on-brooklyn-bridge/?hp
Updated, 11:59 a.m. Sunday | In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.
The police said it was the marchers' choice that led to the enforcement action.
"Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested," Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. "Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested."
But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.
"The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway," said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.
A video on the YouTube page of a group called We Are Change shows some of the arrests.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fockzr7rXys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
Around 1 a.m., the first of the protesters held at the Midtown North Precinct on West 54th Street were released. They were met with cheers from about a half-dozen supporters who said they had been waiting as a show of solidarity since 6 p.m. for around 75 people they believed were held there. Every 10 to 15 minutes, they trickled out into a night far chillier than the afternoon on the bridge, each clutching several thin slips of paper - their summonses, for violations like disorderly conduct and blocking vehicular traffic. The first words many spoke made the group laugh: all variations on "I need a cigarette."
David Gutkin, 24, a Ph.D. student in musicology at Columbia University, was among the first released. He said that after being corralled and arrested on the bridge, he was put into plastic handcuffs and moved to what appeared to be a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, along with dozens of other protesters, for over four hours. They headed first into Brooklyn and then to several locations in Manhattan before arriving at the 54th Street precinct.
Men and women had been held separately, two or three to a cell. A few said they had been zip-tied the entire time. "We sang 'This Little Light of Mine,' " said Annie Day, 34, who when asked her profession said, "I'm a revolutionary." Ms. Day was wearing laceless Converse sneakers: police had required the removal of all laces as well as her belt. She rethreaded them on the pavement while a man who identified himself as a lawyer took each newly freed person's name.
None of the protesters interviewed knew if the bridge march was planned or a spontaneous decision by the crowd. But all insisted that the police had made no mention that the roadway was off limits. Ms. Day and several others said that police officers had walked beside the crowd until the group reached about midway, then without warning began to corral the protesters behind orange nets.
The scene outside the Midtown South Precinct on West 35th Street around 2 a.m. was far more jovial. Only about 15 of the rumored 57 people had been released, but about a dozen waiting supporters danced jigs in the street to keep warm. They snacked on pizza. One even drank Coors Light beer, stashing the empty bottles under a parked police van. When a fresh protester was released, he or she ran through a gantlet formed by the waiting group, like a football player bursting onto the field during the Super Bowl. "This is so much better than prison!" one cheered.
"It's cold," said Rebecca Solow, 27, rubbing her arms as she waited on the sidewalk, "but every time one is released, it warms you up."
The march on the bridge had come to a head shortly after 4 p.m., as the 1,500 or so marchers reached the foot of the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the bridge, just east of City Hall.
In their march north from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan - headquarters for the last two weeks of a protest movement against what demonstrators call inequities in the economic system - they had stayed on the sidewalks, forming a long column of humanity penned in by officers on scooters.
Where the entrance to the bridge narrowed their path, some marchers, including organizers, stuck to the generally agreed-upon route and headed up onto the wooden walkway that runs between and about 15 feet above the bridge's traffic lanes.
But about 20 others headed for the Brooklyn-bound roadway, said Christopher T. Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who accompanied the march. Some of them chanted "take the bridge." They were met by a handful of high-level police supervisors, who blocked the way and announced repeatedly through bullhorns that the marchers were blocking the roadway and that if they continued to do so, they would be subject to arrest.
There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them - seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way. The Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito, and a horde of other white-shirted commanders, were among them.
After allowing the protesters to walk about a third of the way to Brooklyn, the police then cut the marchers off and surrounded them with orange nets on both sides, trapping hundreds of people, said Mr. Dunn. As protesters at times chanted "white shirts, white shirts," officers began making arrests, at one point plunging briefly into the crowd to grab a man.
The police said that those arrested were taken to several police stations and were being charged with disorderly conduct, at a minimum. A police spokesman said some protesters - mostly those without identification - were still "going through the system" late Sunday morning.
A freelance reporter for The New York Times, Natasha Lennard, was among those arrested. She was later released.
Mr. Dunn said he was concerned that those in the back of the column who might not have heard the warnings "would have had no idea that it was not O.K. to walk on the roadway of the bridge." Mr. Browne said that people who were in the rear of the crowd that may not have heard the warnings were not arrested and were free to leave.
Earlier in the afternoon, as many as 10 Department of Correction buses, big enough to hold 20 prisoners apiece, had been dispatched from Rikers Island in what one law enforcement official said was "a planned move on the protesters."
Etan Ben-Ami, 56, a psychotherapist from Brooklyn who was up on the walkway, said that the police seemed to make a conscious decision to allow the protesters to claim the road. "They weren't pushed back," he said. "It seemed that they moved at the same time."
Mr. Ben-Ami said he left the walkway and joined the crowd on the road. "It seemed completely permitted," he said. "There wasn't a single policeman saying 'don't do this'."
He added: "We thought they were escorting us because they wanted us to be safe." He left the bridge when he saw officers unrolling the nets as they prepared to make arrests. Many others who had been on the roadway were allowed to walk back down to Manhattan.
Mr. Browne said that the police did not trick the protesters into going onto the bridge.
"This was not a trap," he said. "They were warned not to proceed."
In related protests elsewhere in the country, 25 people were arrested in Boston for trespassing while protesting Bank of America's foreclosure practices, according to Eddy Chrispin, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department. The protesters were on the grounds and blocking the entrance to the building, Mr. Chrispin said.
As the morning wore on, Zuccotti Park had the hallmarks of Sundays the world over. There was brunch: someone had donated bagels and lox. There was the morning paper: protesters who had camped for the night read the self-published newspaper "The Occupied Wall Street Journal," some snuggled the metallic blankets usually worn by marathon runners. One man brushed his teeth without water, standing up.
The scene was largely quiet, save a man in a fedora freestyle rapping with drummers in the east corner of the park. Many of those who had been arrested returned at about 3 a.m. to a heroes reception, said Rick DeVoe, 54, from East Hampton, Mass. They were sleeping in.
"It's not always at a fever pitch," Mr. DeVoe said. "It's not easy sleeping out, it's not easy going to jail."
Quiet political discussions continued around the sleepers. One woman gave a pep talk to what looked like a new recruit. "It's about taking down systems, it doesn't matter what you're protesting," she said. "Just protest."
Some tourists wandered in between the makeshift beds and volunteers sweeping up cigarette butts. A man visiting from Virginia and his 4-year-old son snapped photos, as did an elderly couple passing through.
Natasha Lennard, William K. Rashbaum and Elizabeth A. Harris contributed reporting.
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17) The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
October 1, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.html
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest "uprising" was easier: I took the subway.
The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has taken over a park in Manhattan's financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against "banksters" or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
"Occupy Wall Street" was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it's gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards - mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches - but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won't unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there's a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.
"This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement," said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. "Enough is enough!"
The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters' Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.
In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the "OccuPie special."
Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn't really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic - like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.
I don't share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it's also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.
In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.
We've seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it - and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It's infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it's important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?
So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:
¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax, but the Obama administration is resisting - a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.
¶Close the "carried interest" and "founders' stock" loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.
¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks' ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution's size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups - the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.
Much of the sloganeering at "Occupy Wall Street" is pretty silly - but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.
I invite you to comment on this column on 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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18) Every Action Produces Overreaction
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
September 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/nyregion/for-police-another-protest-brings-another-overreaction.html?ref=nyregion
During their first week, members of Occupy Wall Street, the ideologically vague and strategically baffling effort to redress social inequities, put together a library on the north end of Zuccotti Park whose disparate offerings included "Last Exit to Brooklyn"; Gay Talese's article in The New Yorker on the collaboration of Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga; and Abbott's Digest of New York Statutes and Reports, Volumes 4, 9, 33 and 34. By the middle of last week, as the numbers entrenched in the park grew, copies of "Animal Farm," Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" and "Meltdown," a book outlining the 2008 financial crisis, were well placed. Specific ambitions still had not emerged, but a new intensity had begun to replace the limp theatrics.
The New York Police Department could not have intended to operate as a public relations arm for Occupy Wall Street, but its invidious treatment of the demonstrators last weekend went a tremendous way toward galvanizing sympathy for the group's good but porous intentions. Video widely seen on the Internet of a high-ranking officer, later identified as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, attacking what appeared to be docile protesters with pepper spray prompted public outrage and investigations by the Internal Affairs Bureau of the Police Department and Manhattan prosecutors.
Early Monday evening, helicopters flew over Wall Street, in anticipation of what - excessively boisterous readings of Orwell? - was hardly clear. The group's march on the financial district's Luxury Night Out was still a day away. The Broad Street outpost of Hermès was in no imminent jeopardy.
Like a toddler who throws his food on the floor, gets in trouble and then just does it again, the Police Department overreacts to peaceful protests, invites ire and then reprises its actions the next time it encounters agitation. Inspector Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits claiming wrongful arrests at protests during the Republican National Convention in 2004.
Among the approximately 600 arrests made since the protest began, on Sept. 17, were about 500 on Saturday night as 1,500 or so protesters walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. On Wednesday, three had been arrested for that decidedly questionable menace: loitering while wearing a mask. While the police would do well to avoid criminalizing costumes, the department would do even better to remember that when people are carted away by law enforcement merely for carrying cameras - as one seemed to be in another well-circulated image - more cameras are sure to come.
On Wednesday, Michael Moore asked that his interview with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC be filmed among the protesters at the park. In the preceding 48 hours, the endorsement of the left's ruling class had been secured: encouraging words from Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein had been sent to the group; visits were paid by Susan Sarandon and Cornel West.
In the matter of demonstrations, the Police Department has, in fact, had a long and dramatic history of assuring the outcome it seemingly would most like to avoid. During the student uprisings at Columbia in 1968, aimed at the university's affiliation with a research group linked to the Defense Department and at the construction of a university gym in Morningside Park, police brutality resulted in a powerful escalation of the movement.
"In the beginning, it did not have broad support on campus," Alex S. Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociologist specializing in police response to protest, told me. "But when the cops started beating people up, things really changed."
On April 30 that year, a police raid injured more than 100 students, students called a strike, and the campus shut down for the remainder of the semester. Footage of the events documents radicalization in progress. "I was a nonviolent student," one young man witnessing the aggression says. "I couldn't care what happened. I was completely neutral. I am not neutral anymore. I'm going to occupy a building tomorrow."
The events in Tompkins Square Park in 1988 left the department with another black mark in its history of responding to civic unrest - 114 years after thousands of laborers, many unemployed as the result of an economic depression that began in 1873, were greeted by patrolmen flailing clubs on the same ground. Twenty-three years ago, demonstrators were responding to the imposition of a park curfew. Officers battled with protesters for hours in the middle of a summer night - and then, too, a videographer, Clayton Patterson, caught the mayhem, filming police officers, some of whom had removed their name tags, beating protesters and onlookers.
The actions prompted consternation on the part of the police commissioner at the time, Benjamin Ward, and provided an important catalyst for a renewed effort to create a civilian review board to oversee police conduct. In 1992, off-duty police officers rallied at City Hall against civilian review, but they were so unruly that they contributed to its eventual passing. "The image of drunken police officers behaving badly did not sit well with the public," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told me.
In his academic work, Professor Vitale has argued that civilian review is in itself insufficient because it deals only with individual complaints, when the problem is systemic. Over the past decade, the Police Department has responded to protesters with a style that emphasizes micromanagement and obsessive pre-emption.
During the Iraq war protest on the East Side in February 2003, when more than 350 people were arrested, the movements of demonstrators were so narrowly circumscribed, and access to the event so curtailed, that matters became more chaotic than they might otherwise have been. Police officers on horseback rammed into trapped crowds.
The encampment in Zuccotti Park is likely to remain indefinitely. At this point, any attempt on the part of the police to close things down could only result in the resurrection of Emma Goldman. Brookfield Properties, the developer that owns the land and offers it for public use, is presumably sending few notes of gratitude to the police. In a statement, a spokesman said the company was "extremely concerned with the conditions that have been created by those currently occupying the park," and was "actively working with the City of New York to address these conditions and restore the park to its intended purpose."
Good luck with that.
E-mail: bigcity@nytimes.com
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19) Tens of thousands protest in Manchester against gov’t cuts
By BNO News
October 2, 2011
http://channel6newsonline.com/2011/10/tens-of-thousands-protest-in-manchester-against-govt-cuts/
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND (BNO NEWS) -- Tens of thousands of people on Sunday afternoon took to the streets in northwest England to protest against government cuts. No arrests were made, but one person was injured.
The protest in the city of Manchester began on late Sunday morning and continued until the late afternoon, although a small group of protesters were still protesting during the early evening. Police estimated that about 35,000 protesters took part in a march which took them through large parts of the city center.
The event was organized by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to show opposition against pay freezes and cuts which they say are producing rising unemployment, cuts in living standards and stagnation. "We need jobs, growth and justice for a sustainable future and this event will send that message loud and clear," TUC said before the protest.
The protest was planned to coincide with the annual conference of the Conservative Party, which is led by Prime Minister David Cameron. On the eve of the conference, Cameron dismissed calls for extra spending and said there would be no U-turns on cuts.
Despite the massive turnout, there were no major incidents and not a single arrest was made, police said. One woman who fell during the march was treated for head injuries but her condition was not believed to be serious.
"Organizers of the demonstration made it clear that it was their intention to demonstrate peacefully, as is their democratic right, and this is exactly what happened," said Assistant Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of Greater Manchester Police. "We are grateful to those protesters who co-operated fully with the police."
Police were out in large numbers throughout the day to ensure safety and a number of roads across the city center were closed. "As we estimate that 35,000 people attended, and that their march covered significant parts of the city center, we did require a significant police presence, in the interests of public safety and protecting the city," Hopkins said. "A policing presence, albeit scaled down, will remain into the evening."
He added: "We are now focused on delivering the highest standards of security for all involved and affected by the conference, which continues this week. Manchester is privileged to host the conference and the event is good for the city."
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20) ‘White Shirts’ of Police Dept. Take on Enforcer Role
“There are those of us who wear white shirts, who, I won’t say are afraid of the street, but who never really put their hands on anyone, but took tests and got promoted. Then there are those of us who were good cops to begin with and then got promoted, and we are not afraid to put our hands on people when we have to.”
By AL BAKER and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/nyregion/nypds-white-shirts-take-on-enforcer-role.html?hp
There are endless tasks the New York Police Department puts on the shoulders of its so-called white shirts — those commanders atop an army of lesser-ranking officers in dark blue.
But the portfolio of the white shirt has now unexpectedly grown to include the role of enforcer.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on Sept. 17, lurches into its third week, it is often the white shirts laying hands on protesters or initiating arrests. Video recordings of recent clashes have shown white shirts — lieutenants, captains or inspectors — leading underlings into the fray.
It was white shirts who led the face-off with protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday afternoon. The incident provided no viral YouTube moments, as the senior officers avoided confrontations with the demonstrators. Yet as hundreds of arrests were made, chants of “white shirts, white shirts” could be heard.
And a white shirt is the antagonist in the event’s defining image: Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s dousing of some penned-in women with pepper spray last Saturday, which seemed to surprise at least one of the blue shirts standing near him on East 12th Street, near University Place. The department is investigating the spraying.
Martin R. Stolar, a member of the National Lawyers Guild who is representing protesters, said, “It appears that it is white shirts that are directing the rough arrests.” To him, their actions constitute a policy, from on high. Even the chief of department, Joseph J. Esposito, its highest-ranking officer, was mixing with marchers last Saturday, briefly holding two people by the arm and directing their arrests.
Paul J. Browne, the department’s top spokesman, did not return a call to discuss the department’s strategy, but in an e-mail, he said most of the roughly 80 arrests made last week Saturday “were made by police officers directed by supervisors.”
In everyday policing situations in the city, the one-two punch of uniformed response usually goes like this: Blue shirts form the first wave, with white shirts following.
But those roles seem reversed in the police response to the Wall Street protests.
Police officers, law enforcement analysts and others cited a number of reasons for it. The prevalence of white shirts around Zuccotti Park signals how closely the department monitors high-profile events. Strategies are carefully laid out; guidelines for crowd-dispersal are rehearsed; arrest teams are assembled. It is all in an effort to choreograph a predictable level of control.
Yet, in last Saturday’s pepper-spray episode, critics say, judgment was lacking.
“Unlike much street policing, large marches and protests involve lots of advance planning and the assignment of many supervisors to the scene,” said Christopher T. Dunn, of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It’s therefore not surprising that supervisors would be personally involved in arrests. What is surprising and alarming is the sight of them using excessive force against protesters. Beyond the injuries that causes, it sends a terrible message.”
For blue shirts, training dictates they act as a team, not as individuals, said Thomas Graham, a retired deputy chief who until last year commanded the department’s Disorder Control Unit.
“We don’t want the officer initiating an action,” Mr. Graham said. He said the goal was for commanders to effectively steer subordinates into action.
Some observers have credited the police with nimbly tolerating the Wall Street protests, a demonstration that has received no official permits. Outside 1 Police Plaza on Friday evening, the seasoned agitator known as Reverend Billy tried to curry sympathy from the more than 60 officers standing across a police barricade. His sentiment was summed up in a protest sign that read, “The Working Class Must Unite (Hey, Cops, That Includes You).”
At the same time, the unscripted nature of Occupy Wall Street can prompt concerns among the police about chaos; marchers make on-the-spot alterations in their routes, and Saturday was a prime example: the march across the Brooklyn Bridge seemed as though it would be confined to the pedestrian walkway until a smaller group of protesters decided to march across the roadway, leading to hundreds of arrests.
Deputy Inspector Roy T. Richter, the head of the Captains Endowment Association, said he would prefer his commanders use their delegating skills.
“Similar to a precinct station house, you don’t want your precinct commanders making arrests and issuing summonses,” he said. “Instead, they direct their resources, which include lieutenants, sergeants and police officers, to effectively address crime and quality of life conditions.”
But one commander who has spent time at the protests said there were moments when commanders must act: “Any lieutenant or above can say, ‘Officer arrest those three right there,’ but in the meantime, if you are standing near someone and they should be arrested, grab them. You still have the same powers.”
He added: “There are those of us who wear white shirts, who, I won’t say are afraid of the street, but who never really put their hands on anyone, but took tests and got promoted. Then there are those of us who were good cops to begin with and then got promoted, and we are not afraid to put our hands on people when we have to.”
Rob Harris and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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