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"If corporations are people, why can't we put them in jail?"
OCTOBER 6th, Thursday, 3:00 pm at the Federal Bldg, 7th Street
Solidarity rally in support of www.October2011....occupy Freedom Plaza
OCTOBER 7th, Friday, 4:30 pm gather at Federal Bldg. 7th Street, a rally, die-in, and march to demand an end to the wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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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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TEN YEARS OF OCCUPATION? SAN FRANCISCO AND FREMONT SAY ENOUGH!
(more details further below)
OCTOBER 6th, Thursday, 3:00 pm at the Federal Bldg, 7th Street
Solidarity rally in support of www.October2011....occupy Freedom Plaza
OCTOBER 7th, Friday, 4:30 pm gather at Federal Bldg. 7th Street, a rally,
die-in, and march to demand an end to the wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
OCTOBER 9TH, Sunday, 3:00-6:30pm, AFGHANISTAN PEACE DAY
37260 Fremont Blvd., Fremont. Join hands with the Afghanistan community
in Fremont. Together we have a stronger voice. Please wear SKY BLUE, the color chosen by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers inside Afghanistan.
www.AfghansForPeace.org
http://journeytosmile.wordpress.com/
October 29th: TAX THE RICH- Human Mural at Ocean Beach, ala Brad Newsham.....
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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
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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) 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
2) 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
3) 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
4) 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
5) 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
6) 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
7) 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
8) 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
9) 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/
10) '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
11) United Steele Workers Supports the 'Occupy Wall Street' Protest Movement
Sept. 30, 2011, 10:35 p.m. EDT
press release
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/usw-supports-the-occupy-wall-street-protest-movement-2011-09-30
12) Crossing Over, and Over
"President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants - more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower - and officials say the numbers will not decline."
By DAMIEN CAVE
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/world/americas/mexican-immigrants-repeatedly-brave-risks-to-resume-lives-in-united-states.html?ref=world
13) School Layoffs About to Fall Heaviest on the Poorest and Most Struggling
By FERNANDA SANTOS
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/nyregion/nyc-layoffs-to-hit-poorest-schools-hardest.html?ref=nyregion
14) Alabama's Shame
New York Times Editorial
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/opinion/alabamas-shame.html
15) Contraceptive Used in Africa May Double Risk of H.I.V.
[How could they have let this happen? How could they have NOT KNOWN? These questions MUST BE ANSWERED? AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!...bw]
By PAM BELLUCK
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/health/04hiv.html?hp
16) Cooling Problem Shuts Nuclear Reactor in Japan
By HIROKO TABUCHI
October 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/world/asia/cooling-problem-shuts-nuclear-reactor-in-japan.html?ref=world
17) TransCanada Pipeline Foes See U.S. Bias in E-Mails
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/earth/04pipeline.html?ref=us
18) California: Trail of 100 Giants Fall in Sequoia National Forest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/trail-of-100-giants-fall-in-sequoia-national-forest.html?ref=us
19) On Wall Street, a Protest Matures
"...the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap."
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
October 3, 2011
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/on-wall-street-a-protest-matures/?ref=business
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1) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) 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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6) 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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7) 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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8) 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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9) 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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10) '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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11) United Steele Workers Supports the 'Occupy Wall Street' Protest Movement
Sept. 30, 2011, 10:35 p.m. EDT
press release
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/usw-supports-the-occupy-wall-street-protest-movement-2011-09-30
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), North America's largest industrial union with 1.2 million active and retired members, today issued the following statement in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement:
"The United Steelworkers (USW) union stands in solidarity with and strongly supports Occupy Wall Street. The brave men and women, many of them young people without jobs, who have been demonstrating around-the-clock for nearly two weeks in New York City are speaking out for the many in our world. We are fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long.
Our union has been standing up and fighting these captains of finance who promote Wall Street over Main Street. We know firsthand the devastation caused by a global economy where workers, their families, the environment and our futures are sacrificed so that a privileged few can make more money on everyone's labor but their own.
Wall Street and its counterparts on Bay Street (Toronto), The City (London) and across the world tanked our economy in 2008. They caused a crisis that we're still suffering from - record job losses, home foreclosures, cuts to schools, public services, police, fire and so much more. They've gambled with our pension funds and our futures for far too long.
They should have gone to jail. Instead, they got bailed out, while we got left out. And now they want us to go down the same path.
The Occupy Wall Street movement represents what most Americans believe: Enough is enough! It's time to hold those who caused our economic crisis accountable, to ensure they don't get away with it again, and to demand that everyone pay their fair share. It's time to stand and fight for the creation of real wealth by focusing on making real things and creating family- and community-supporting jobs.
The USW is proud to join with the brothers and sisters of the Occupy Wall Street movement as we continue this important fight for a more just economy and a brighter tomorrow."
The United Steelworkers is the largest industrial union in North America and has 850,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. It represents workers employed in metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining, atomic energy, airline, health care, public sector and the service sector. For more info: www.usw.org .
Contact: Connie Mabin, USW, 412-562-2616 or cmabin@usw.org
SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)
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12) Crossing Over, and Over
"President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants - more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower - and officials say the numbers will not decline."
By DAMIEN CAVE
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/world/americas/mexican-immigrants-repeatedly-brave-risks-to-resume-lives-in-united-states.html?ref=world
AGUA PRIETA, Mexico - "My wife, my son - I have to get back to them," Daniel kept telling himself, from the moment he was arrested in Seattle for driving with an expired license, all the way through the deportation proceeding that delivered him to Mexico in June.
Nothing would deter him from crossing the border again. He had left his hometown at 24, he said. Twelve years later, he spoke nearly fluent English and had an American son, a wife and three brothers in the United States. "I'll keep trying," he said, "until I'll get there."
This is increasingly the profile of illegal immigration today. Migrant shelters along the Mexican border are filled not with newcomers looking for a better life, but with seasoned crossers: older men and women, often deportees, braving ever-greater risks to get back to their families in the United States - the country they consider home.
They present an enormous challenge to American policy makers, because they continue to head north despite obstacles more severe than at any time in recent history. It is not just that the American economy has little to offer; the border itself is far more threatening. On one side, fences have grown and American agents have multiplied; on the other, criminals haunt the journey at every turn.
And yet, while these factors - and better opportunities at home - have cut illegal immigration from Mexico to its lowest level in decades, they are not enough to scare off a sizable, determined cadre.
"We have it boiled down to the hardest lot," said Christopher Sabatini, senior director for policy at the Council of the Americas.
Indeed, 56 percent of apprehensions at the Mexican border in 2010 involved people who had been caught previously, up from 44 percent in 2005. A growing percentage of deportees in recent years have also been deported before, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.
For the Obama administration, these repeat offenders have become a high priority. Prosecutions for illegal re-entry have jumped by more than two-thirds since 2008. Officials say it is now the most prosecuted federal felony.
President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants - more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower - and officials say the numbers will not decline. But at a time when the dynamics of immigration are changing, experts and advocates on all sides are increasingly asking if the approach, which has defined immigration policy since 9/11, still makes sense.
Deportation is expensive, costing the government at least $12,500 per person, and it often does not work: between October 2008 and July 22 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and come back anyway. Many more have returned and stayed hidden.
Some groups favoring reduced immigration say that making life harder for illegal immigrants in this country would be far more efficient. They argue that along with eliminating work opportunities by requiring employers to verify the reported immigration status of new hires, Congress should also prohibit illegal immigrants from opening bank accounts, or even obtaining library cards.
"You'd reduce the number of people who keep coming back again and again," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The alternative, says Doris Meissner, the country's top immigration official in the mid-1990s, is to accept that illegal immigrants like Daniel "are people with fundamental ties to the United States, not where they came from."
"Our societies are so deeply connected," Ms. Meissner said, referring primarily to the United States and Mexico, the main source of illegal immigrants. "And that is not reflected at all in policy."
The administration acknowledges that immigrants like Daniel are rooted in the United States and typically have otherwise clean criminal records. But under its new plan introduced in August - suspending deportations for pending low-priority cases, including immigrants brought to the United States as children - repeat crossers are singled out for removal alongside "serious felons," "known gang members" and "individuals who pose a clear risk to national security."
Administration officials say they are trying to break the "yo-yo effect" of people bouncing back, as mandated by congress when it toughened laws related to illegal re-entry in the 1990s.
But some experts argue that this commingling actually undermines security. After a decade of record deportations, critics argue, it has become even harder to separate the two groups that now define the border: professional criminals and experienced migrants motivated by family ties in the United States.
"If you think drug dealers and terrorists are much more dangerous than maids and gardeners, then we should get as many visas as possible to those people, so we can focus on the real threat," said David Shirk, director of the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego. "Widening the gates would strengthen the walls."
Crime and the Border
The border crossers pouring into Arizona a decade or two ago were more numerous, but less likely to be threatening. David Jimarez, a Border Patrol agent with years of experience south of Tucson, recalled that even when migrants outnumbered American authorities by 25 to 1, they did not resist. "They would just sit down and wait for us," he said.
Over the past few years, the mix has changed, with more drug smugglers and other criminals among the dwindling, but still substantial, ranks of migrants.
The impacts are far-reaching. In northern Mexico, less immigration means less business. Border towns like Agua Prieta, long known as a departure point, have gone from bustling to windblown. Taxis that ferried migrants to the mountains now gather dust. Restaurants and hotels, like the sunflower-themed Girasol downtown, are practically empty. On one recent afternoon, only 3 of the 50 rooms were occupied.
"In 2000, we were full every day," said Alejandro Rocha, the hotel's manager.
New research from the University of California, San Diego, shows that crime is now the top concern for Mexicans thinking of heading north. As fear keeps many migrants home, many experienced border guides, or coyotes, have given up illegal migration for other jobs.
In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, one well-known coyote is now selling tires. In Nogales, the largest Mexican city bordering Arizona, power has shifted to tattooed young men with expensive binoculars along the border fence, while here in Agua Prieta - where Mexican officials say traffic is one-thirthieth of what it once was - the only way to get across is to deal with gangs that sometimes push migrants to carry drugs.
It is even worse in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Tex. Just standing at the border fence brings out drug cartel enforcers demanding $300 for the right to pass. Migrants and the organizations that assist them say cartel lieutenants roam the shelters, looking for deportees willing to work as lookouts, earning $400 a week until they have enough to pay for passage north.
"I was thinking about doing it, too," said Daniel, looking down. "But then I thought about my family."
American law enforcement officials say the matrix of drugs, migration and violence has become more visible at the border and along the trails and roads heading north, where more of the immigrants being caught carry drugs or guns - making them more likely to flee, resist arrest or commit other crimes.
"There's less traffic, but traffic that's there is more threatening," Mr. Jimarez, the border agent, said.
Larry Dever, the sheriff of Cochise County, Ariz., which sits north of Agua Prieta, agreed: "The guys smuggling people and narcotics now are more sinister."
His county, 6,169 square miles of scrub brush, ranches and tiny towns in the state's southeast corner, has been an established crossing corridor since the mid-1990s. Since 2008, the police there have tracked every crime linked to illegal immigrants, in part because state and federal officials frequently requested data, treating the county as a bellwether of border security.
Indeed, when a Cochise rancher named Robert Krentz was killed in March 2010 after radioing to his brother that he was going to help a suspected illegal immigrant, the county quickly became a flash point for a larger debate that ultimately led to SB 1070, the polarizing Arizona bill giving the police more responsibility for cracking down on illegal immigrants.
Yet, crime involving illegal immigrants is relatively rare (5 percent of all local crime, Sheriff Dever said). Mostly it consists of burglaries involving stolen food. And, public records show, in 11 of the 18 violent crimes linked to illegal immigrants over 18 months, immigrants were both the victims and attackers.
This is not the portrait given by Republican border governors, including Rick Perry of Texas, a presidential candidate who recently said that "it is not safe on that border." But while Mexican drug cartels have increased their presence from Tucson to New York - sometimes engaging in brutal violence after entering the country illegally - Americans living near the border are generally safe.
A USA Today analysis of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California in July found that crime within 100 miles of the border is below both the national average and the average for each of those states - and has been declining for years. Several other independent researchers have come to the same conclusion.
But the border is not safe for people crossing or patrolling it. The number of immigrants found dead in the Arizona desert, from all causes, has failed to decline as fast as illegal immigration has, while assaults on Border Patrol agents grew by 41 percent from 2006 to 2010, almost entirely because of an increase in attacks with rocks. The heightened risks have stimulated a debate: Has the more aggressive approach - bigger fences, more agents and deportations - contributed to, or diminished, the danger?
Sheriff Dever, lionized as an "illegal immigration warrior" by immigration opponents, says that increased enforcement has made Americans safer and should continue until his neighbors tell him they are no longer afraid.
But some immigration advocates contend that the government's approach is too broad to be effective. "We have to really separate out the guy who is coming to make a living with his family from the terrorist or the drug dealer," said Peter Siavelis, an editor of "Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know."
Home Is Where the Children Are
Deportations have muddled that delineation. In a recent line of deportees piling off a bus on the San Diego side of a metal gate leading to Tijuana, all were equal: the criminal in prison garb with the wispy goatee; the mother averting her eyes; and longtime residents like Alberto Álvarez, 36, a janitor and father of five who said he was picked up for driving without a license.
"Look, I've been in the U.S. 18 years," he said, slinging a backpack over his Izod shirt. "Right now, my children are alone, my wife is alone caring for the kids by herself - they've separated us."
During the immigration wave that peaked around a decade ago, deportations often meant something different: many deportees had not been in the United States for long; they were going home.
But now that there are fewer new arrivals, the concept of home is changing. Of the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, 48 percent arrived before 2000. For the 6.5 million Mexicans in the United States illegally, that figure is even higher - 55 percent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. There are now also 4.5 million American-born children of unauthorized immigrant parents.
Experts on both sides of the debate say this large group of rooted immigrants presents the nation with a fundamental choice: Either make life in the United States so difficult for illegal immigrants that they leave on their own, or allow immigrants who pose no threat to public safety to remain with their families legally, though not necessarily as citizens.
Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said the government should revoke automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, and seize assets from deported illegal immigrants so they have fewer incentives to return.
President Obama, having made no progress on getting his legalization plan through Congress, has instead been trying to make enforcement more surgical. Under the new guidelines, officials will use "prosecutorial discretion" to review the current docket of 300,000 deportation cases, suspending expulsions for a range of immigrants.
Several factors prompt "particular care and consideration" for a reprieve, including whether the person has been in the United States since childhood, or is pregnant, seriously ill, a member of the military or a minor, according to a June memo that initiated the change.
The issue of "whether the person has a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, child or parent" appears in the memo's secondary list of factors to consider. But it is not clear how broadly leniency will be applied. Repeat crossers are given a special black mark, and the administration has already deported hundreds of thousands of minor offenders, despite claiming to focus on "the worst of the worst."
Several Democratic governors and law enforcement officials are particularly angry about Secure Communities, a program to run the fingerprints of anyone booked by the police to check for federal immigration violations. A large proportion of those deported through this process - 79 percent, according to a recent report by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University - were low-level offenders, often arrested for traffic violations.
Administration officials dispute that, saying the ratio of serious criminals is increasing, and that ultimately they must enforce immigration law against all violators. They have mandated that the program be used nationwide by 2013.
Mexico's border cities offer a portrait of what that could mean. Nearly 950,000 Mexican immigrants have been deported since the start of fiscal 2008. And in Tijuana - a former hub for migrants heading north, which now receives more deportees than anywhere else - the pool of deportees preparing to cross again just keeps growing.
Maria García, 27, arrived here after being deported for a traffic violation. She said she had spent six years living in Fresno, Calif., with her two Mexico-born sons, 11 and 7. She was one of many who said that without a doubt, they would find their way back to the United States.
"They can't stop us," she said.
The constant flow of deportees has become a growing concern for Mexican officials, who say the new arrivals are easy recruits, and victims, for drug cartels.
One former deportee was arrested this year for playing a major role in the deaths of around 200 people found in mass graves. In Tijuana, a homeless camp at the border has swollen from a cluster to a neighborhood, as deportees flow in, many carrying stories of being robbed or kidnapped by gangs who saw their American connections as a source for ransom.
Minutes after he arrived, Mr. Álvarez, the janitor, said he was worried about surviving - "you're playing with your life being here," he said. But his twin sons would turn 2 in a few weeks, and like many others, he said that no matter how he was treated in the United States, he would find his way back.
"I feel bad being here, I feel bad," he said. "I've got my kids over there, my family, my whole life. Here" - he shook his head at the end of his first day in Tijuana - "no."
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13) School Layoffs About to Fall Heaviest on the Poorest and Most Struggling
By FERNANDA SANTOS
October 2, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/nyregion/nyc-layoffs-to-hit-poorest-schools-hardest.html?ref=nyregion
The pink slips have gone out, and if no deal is reached by Friday, 716 of New York City's lowest-paid workers - school aides, parent coordinators and other members of school support staffs - will lose their jobs, the latest victims of budget cuts to the public schools.
Nearly 350 schools will be affected, in a scattered pattern, according to a list of layoffs by school, which was obtained and analyzed by The New York Times. Entire school districts and one borough, Staten Island, are untouched, but schools that serve large numbers of poor or struggling students are disproportionately affected, as are schools receiving federal money to improve results after years of weak performance.
Public School 153 in Harlem, where 85 percent of students qualify for free lunch, the measure used by the city to define children who live in poverty, will lose the most workers, seven. At Intermediate School 195, also in Harlem, where 53 percent of students performed well below average in last year's state standardized tests, six school aides would be let go.
In Brooklyn, three elementary schools would each lose four workers: P.S. 270 in Clinton Hill, P.S. 135 in East Flatbush and P.S. 73 in Brownsville. Combined, they enroll 1,490 students; according to city statistics, 82 percent live in poverty.
Of the 44 low-performing middle and high schools receiving federal money, 19 would experience cuts of one to four workers, the list of layoffs shows.
The layoffs would affect one in four school aides, parent coordinators, health workers and paraprofessionals in District 5 in Harlem, and roughly one in five in District 23 in Brownsville, where 51 percent of residents receive public assistance, city statistics show.
Meanwhile, District 14 in Brooklyn Heights, as well as District 26 in Queens, which has the city's highest-performing elementary and middle schools, based on the latest progress reports, each face only one layoff.
The union representing the workers, District Council 37, has not had much leverage in the negotiations. The layoffs were announced in August, after the city had defined its budget, principals had decided how to spend their schools' money and the City Council had allocated its discretionary grants to other projects and causes.
The city's Department of Education has maintained that it was the schools' principals, while figuring out how to make ends meet, who chose to let the employees go. Their thinking was that losing a school aide, whose job includes supervising students' attendance, or a parent coordinator, who serves as a link between school and families, would be less painful than losing a teacher or an after-school program.
"Schools had to absorb a budget cut, and our principals made the best staffing decisions they could for their students," the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, said in a statement. "I'm going to adhere to those decisions."
In an interview, the president of the principals' union, Ernest A. Logan, took issue with Mr. Walcott's characterization. "I'm just disturbed and somewhat annoyed that it has become the principals' decision, when it was central's decision to impose the budget cuts on the schools," Mr. Logan said.
School budgets have been cut by 13.7 percent on average since 2007, forcing principals to make tough choices over time. In 2009, 500 school aides lost their jobs when they were let go from the schools where they worked and could find no other placement. Pink slips went out again last year, but the jobs were saved by an infusion of federal aid. The money, however, is no longer there.
To avert layoffs this year, District Council 37 offered to limit to four the number of daily hours school aides on the layoffs list could work, and to impose furloughs for 10,000 aides, parent coordinators and paraprofessionals, who would give up pay on two holidays and on teachers' development days, when school is not in session but the workers were still required to show up.
Mr. Logan said principals were never made aware of the proposals or told that the workers they let go would be laid off.
"Our members would rather have a school aide for less hours than not have a school aide at all," he said.
Most school aides - 460 are being laid off, a majority of all the employees getting pink slips - work part time for the schools, earning $14 an hour, or $18 if benefits are included, for four to eight hours a day, a union official said. The job requires only a high school diploma. Parent coordinators, who work full time, make $32,300 a year. Eighty-two of them are to be laid off.
Seniority protections mean that workers let go from one school can take the job from a junior counterpart at another, a cascading process known as bumping.
Ericka Ramirez, an aide at Intermediate School 162 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, would be the only one at her school to lose her job, according to the layoff list. She has worked there for almost six years and got her first pink slip in 2008 but managed to stay after her hours were cut from six to five a day, and then to four-and-a-half, she said.
"This time I just got a letter home, explaining, you know, that I'm no longer needed," said Ms. Ramirez, 30, who is five months pregnant with her first child. Her husband is a truck driver, and though the company he works for offers health insurance, the premium is "way too expensive for us," she said, so she has provided the insurance for both of them.
City officials say the layoffs would save $38 million; the union says the amount is closer to $25 million.
In a statement, Lillian Roberts, president of District Council 37, characterized the layoffs as "outrageous," saying the Bloomberg administration's refusal to accept the union's offer shows "a reckless disregard for the well-being of New York's 1.1 million schoolchildren and their families."
In private, several union officials have speculated that the administration might be using the layoffs as a way to retaliate against the union, which was one of the largest labor groups to oppose a deal in June that would have allowed the city to close its budget gap by tapping into a union health care fund.
At the time, thousands of teachers' jobs were on the line. Layoffs were averted only after their union agreed to some concessions, like giving up one year's worth of sabbaticals, in exchange for job security for its members - teachers, school secretaries, guidance counselors and paraprofessionals.
Ms. Roberts pointed out listings on the Education Department's Web site seeking workers to fill jobs from which workers would be laid off. "These layoffs," she said, "are unnecessary."
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14) Alabama's Shame
New York Times Editorial
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/opinion/alabamas-shame.html
Only about 3.5 percent of Alabama's population is foreign-born, according to the Census Bureau. Undocumented immigrants made up roughly 4.2 percent of its work force in 2010, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. But the drafters of Alabama's harsh immigration law wanted to turn their state into the country's most hostile territory for illegal immigrants. They are succeeding, as many of Alabama's most vulnerable residents can attest.
The law went into effect over the weekend, after being largely upheld by a federal district judge. Volunteers on an immigrant-rights group's hot line said that since then they have received more than 1,000 calls from pregnant women afraid to go to the hospital, crime victims afraid to go the police, parents afraid to send their children to school.
School superintendents and principals across the state confirm that attendance of Hispanic children has dropped noticeably since the word went out that school officials are now required to check the immigration status of newly enrolled students and their parents.
That rule is part of the law's sweeping attempt to curtail the rights and complicate the lives of people without papers, making them unable to enter contracts, find jobs, rent homes or access government services. In other words, to be isolated, unemployable, poor, defenseless and uneducated.
The education crackdown is particularly senseless and unconstitutional. In 1982, the Supreme Court found that all children living in the United States have the right to a public education, whatever their immigration status. The justices' reasoning was shaped not by compassion but practicality: it does the country no good to perpetuate an uneducated underclass.
Officials in Alabama - some well meaning, others less so - insisted that nothing in the new law is intended to deny children an education. School districts, they noted, are supposed to collect only numbers of children without papers, not names.
"I don't know where the misinformation's coming from," Alabama's interim state school superintendent, Larry Craven, told NPR. "If you have difficulty understanding the language anyway, then who knows what they're being told?" With comments like that, it's not surprising that any of "them" would be frightened.
The Obama administration was right to sue to try to stop the Alabama law. It needs to press ahead with its appeal of the ruling and challenge similar laws in Utah, Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina.
President Obama needs to show stronger leadership in defending core American values in the face of the hostility that has overtaken Alabama and so many other states. He can start by scrapping the Secure Communities program, which encourages local immigration dragnets and reinforces the false notion that most undocumented immigrants pose a threat to this country's security.
As for Alabama, one has to wonder at such counterproductive cruelty. Do Alabamans want children too frightened to go to school? Or pregnant women too frightened to seek care? Whom could that possibly benefit?
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15) Contraceptive Used in Africa May Double Risk of H.I.V.
[How could they have let this happen? How could they have NOT KNOWN? These questions MUST BE ANSWERED? AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!...bw]
By PAM BELLUCK
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/health/04hiv.html?hp
The most popular contraceptive for women in eastern and southern Africa, a hormone shot given every three months, appears to double the risk the women will become infected with H.I.V., according to a large study published Monday. And when it is used by H.I.V.-positive women, their male partners are twice as likely to become infected than if the women had used no contraception.
The findings potentially present an alarming quandary for women in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of them suffer injuries, bleeding, infections and even death in childbirth from unintended pregnancies. Finding affordable and convenient contraceptives is a pressing goal for international health authorities.
But many countries where pregnancy rates are highest are also ravaged by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. So the evidence suggesting that the injectable contraceptive has biological properties that may make women and men more vulnerable to H.I.V. infection is particularly troubling.
Injectable hormones are very popular. About 12 million women between the ages of 15 and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 6 percent of all women in that age group, use them. In the United States, it is 1.2 million, or 3 percent of women using contraception. While the study involved only African women, scientists said biological effects would probably be the same for all women. But they emphasized that concern was greatest in Africa because the risk of H.I.V. transmission from heterosexual sex was so much higher there than elsewhere.
"The best contraception today is injectable hormonal contraception because you don't need a doctor, it's long-lasting, it enables women to control timing and spacing of birth without a lot of fuss and travel," said Isobel Coleman, director of the women and foreign policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If it is now proven that these contraceptions are helping spread the AIDS epidemic, we have a major health crisis on our hands."
The study, which several experts said added significant heft to previous research while still having some limitations, has prompted the World Health Organization to convene a meeting in January to consider if evidence is now strong enough to advise women that the method may increase their risk of getting or transmitting H.I.V.
"We are going to be re-evaluating W.H.O.'s clinical recommendations on contraceptive use," said Mary Lyn Gaffield, an epidemiologist in the World Health Organization's department of reproductive health and research. Before the meeting, scientists will review research concerning hormonal contraceptives and women's risk of acquiring H.I.V., transmitting it to men, and the possibility (not examined in the new study) that hormonal contraceptives accelerate H.I.V.'s severity in infected women.
"We want to make sure that we warn when there is a real need to warn, but at the same time we don't want to come up with a hasty judgment that would have far-reaching severe consequences for the sexual and reproductive health of women," she said. "This is a very difficult dilemma."
The study, led by researchers at the University of Washington and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, involved 3,800 couples in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In each couple, either the man or the woman was already infected with H.I.V. Researchers followed most couples for two years, had them report their contraception methods, and tracked whether the uninfected partner contracted H.I.V. from the infected partner, said Dr. Jared Baeten, an author and an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist.
The research was presented at an international AIDS conference this summer, but has now gained traction, scientists said, with publication in a major peer-reviewed journal.
The manufacturer of the branded version of the injectable, Depo-Provera, is Pfizer, which declined to comment on the study, saying officials had not yet read it. The study's authors said the injectables used by the African women were probably generic versions.
The study found that women using hormonal contraception became infected at a rate of 6.61 per 100 person-years, compared with 3.78 for those not using that method. Transmission of H.I.V. to men occurred at a rate of 2.61 per 100 person-years for women using hormonal contraception compared with 1.51 for those who did not.
While at least two other rigorous studies have found that injectable contraceptives increase the risk of women's acquiring H.I.V., the new research has some strengths over previous work, said Charles Morrison, senior director of clinical sciences at FHI 360, a nonprofit organization whose work includes researching the intersection of family planning and H.I.V.
Those strengths include the fact that researchers followed couples and were therefore able to track transmission of H.I.V. to both men and women. Dr. Morrison said only one other less rigorous study had looked at whether hormonal contraception increased the risk of infected women's transmitting the virus to men.
"This is a good study, and I think it does add some important evidence," said Dr. Morrison, who wrote a commentary accompanying the Lancet article.
Although the study has limitations, including its use of data not originally intended to determine the link between contraceptive use and H.I.V., "I think this does raise the suspicion" that injectable contraceptives could increase transmission risk, he said.
Why that would occur is unclear. The researchers recorded condom use, essentially excluding the possibility that increased infection occurred because couples using contraceptives were less likely to use condoms.
The progestin in injectable contraceptives appears to have a physiological effect, scientists said. Renee Heffron, an epidemiologist and co-author of the study, said research examining whether the hormone changes genital tissue or vaginal mucous had been inconclusive. Studies in macaques found that progestin thins vaginal tissue, she said, "but studies among women didn't show the same amount of thinning."
It could be that progestin causes "immunologic changes in the vagina and cervix" or could increase the H.I.V.'s "ability to replicate," Dr. Morrison said.
At one point, the researchers measured the concentration of H.I.V. in infected women's genital fluid, finding "there was more H.I.V. in the genital fluid of those using hormonal contraception than those who aren't," Dr. Baeten said, a possible reason men might have increased risk of infection from hormonal contraceptive users. Those women "don't have more H.I.V. in their blood," he said.
The researchers also found that oral contraceptives appeared to increase risk of H.I.V. infection and transmission, but the number of pill users in the study was too small to be considered statistically significant, the authors said.
Previous research on the pill has been more mixed than with injectables, which could have a greater impact because they involve a strong dose meant to last for three months, Dr. Baeten said.
In another troubling finding, results from the same study, published separately, showed that pregnancy also doubled the risk of women's contracting H.l.V. and of infected women's transmitting it to men. That may partly be due to increased unprotected sex, but could also relate to hormones, researchers said.
But there are no simple solutions, the authors acknowledge. Any warning against such a popular contraceptive method may not only increase complications from pregnancy but increase H.I.V. transmission, too, since pregnancy itself may raise a woman's risk of H.I.V. infection.
First, the researchers and others say, greater emphasis should be placed on condom use along with hormonal methods.
Some experts, like Dr. Morrison, favor a randomized controlled trial for more definitive proof, but others question how to "randomize women who may have strong preferences about their contraception," he added.
Dr. Ludo Lavreys, an epidemiologist who led one of the first studies to link injectable contraceptives to increased H.I.V. risk, said intrauterine devices, implants and other methods should be explored and expanded. "Before you stop" recommending injectables, he said, "you have to offer them something else."
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16) Cooling Problem Shuts Nuclear Reactor in Japan
By HIROKO TABUCHI
October 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/world/asia/cooling-problem-shuts-nuclear-reactor-in-japan.html?ref=world
TOKYO -- In a fresh blow to public confidence, a reactor in southern Japan went into automatic shutdown on Tuesday because of problems with its cooling system, clouding the outlook for an imminent restart of the country's idled nuclear plants.
Kyushu Electric, the operator of the reactor at the Genkai nuclear power plant, characterized the incident as minor and said there was no risk of a radiation leak. A problem with the condenser unit that turns steam back into cooling water appeared to have triggered the halt, but the reactor stopped safely and was undergoing checks, the utility said.
"At no point was the plant under any danger, and the reactor has been brought to a stable shutdown," said Eiji Yamamoto, a spokesperson for Kyushu Electric. "There has been no effect on radiation levels outside the plant."
Still, the shutdown came as the government was renewing a push to restart reactors that were idled following the nuclear accident at Fukushima in March. Kyushu Electric said that inspection work had been carried out on a valve of the condenser in question on Tuesday, raising the possibility that human error had triggered the shutdown.
"As we saw in Fukushima, cooling systems are central to the safety of nuclear reactors," said Chihiro Kamisawa, a researcher at the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, an antinuclear organization. "We cannot take lightly the fact that there was also trouble with the cooling system at Genkai," he said. "It underscores the fact that safety problems riddle Japan's reactors."
After Tuesday's shutdown, only 10 of 54 reactors remain on the grid, threatening to deprive the nation of the source of almost a third of its electricity. At least four of six reactors at the Fukushima plant, which suffered multiple meltdowns earlier this year, are expected to be permanently decommissioned.
Many other reactors have passed maintenance checks, but have not received the go-ahead to restart. At Genkai, five of six reactors remain offline, and the last is due to halt in December for a scheduled maintenance check, legally required every 13 months.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda recently argued for a swift restart of reactors, albeit after extensive "stress tests" of their safety and ability to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis. Such a drastic loss of nuclear power would bring dire economic consequences, he has repeatedly argued, echoing warnings from Japan's business lobby.
But he faces an uphill battle amid a collapse of public confidence in Japan's nuclear program following the accident at Fukushima, where a tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems, triggering meltdowns and a major radiation leak.
The government's handling of the crisis and its aftermath, from the inadequate evacuation of local residents to scandals involving the restart of other reactors, have added to the public mistrust.
In fact, the governor of the southern prefecture of Saga had tentatively agreed to allow the restart of two idle reactors at Genkai in July. But he rescinded his permission when it was found that Kyushu Electric had tried to manipulate public opinion with fake e-mails to support a reopening of the reactors.
In an Associated Press-GfK poll of Japanese voters published last month, 6 out of 10 respondents said they had little or no confidence in the safety of the country's nuclear plants. Only 5 percent were very confident.
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17) TransCanada Pipeline Foes See U.S. Bias in E-Mails
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/earth/04pipeline.html?ref=us
A State Department official provided Fourth of July party invitations, subtle coaching and cheerleading, and inside information about Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton's meetings to a Washington lobbyist for a Canadian company seeking permission from the department to build a pipeline that would carry crude from the oil sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
E-mails released Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the environmental group Friends of the Earth paint a picture of a sometimes warm and collaborative relationship between the lobbyist for the pipeline company, Trans-Canada, and officials in the State Department, the agency responsible for evaluating and approving the billion-dollar project.
The exchanges provide a rare glimpse into how Washington works and the access familiarity can bring. The 200 pages are the second batch of documents and e-mails released so far.
They also offer insight into the company's strategy, not revealed publicly before. TransCanada lobbyists exchanged e-mails with State Department officials in July about their intention to drop their request to operate the Keystone XL pipeline at higher pressures than normally allowed in the United States to win political support, but then suggested they would reapply for the exception once the project had been cleared.
"You see officials who see it as their business not to be an oversight agency but as a facilitator of TransCanada's plans," said Damon Moglen, the director of the climate and energy project for Friends of the Earth. While the e-mails refer to multiple meetings between TransCanada officials and assistant secretaries of state, he said, such access was denied to environmentalists seeking input, who had only one group meeting at that level.
Environmental groups argue that the 1,700-mile pipeline, which could carry 700,000 barrels a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas, would result in unacceptably high emissions and disrupt pristine ecosystems.
Wendy Nassmacher, a State Department spokeswoman, disputed that the e-mails showed a pro-pipeline bias. "We are committed to a fair, transparent and thorough process," she said in an e-mail. "Throughout the process we have been in communication with industry as well as environmental groups, both in the United States and in Canada."
TransCanada's chief Washington lobbyist is Paul Elliott, a top official in Mrs. Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. All of the documents pertain to contacts between Mr. Elliott and government officials.
"What differentiates this case is the potential for conflict of interest. That really raises eyebrows," said Jake Wiens, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington.
Many of the e-mails released Monday are between Mr. Elliott and Marja Verloop, the counselor for energy and environment at the United States Embassy in Ottawa.
On Sept. 10, 2010, in response to an e-mail from Mr. Elliott announcing that Senator Max Baucus of Montana was supporting the pipeline, Ms. Verloop wrote, "Go Paul!"
In an e-mail to David Jacobson, the United States ambassador to Canada, she described TransCanada as "comfortable and on board" with some developments in the review process.
In a fragmented exchange, Ms. Verloop wondered whether TransCanada could reapply to use higher pipeline pressures in the future, to which Mr. Elliott replied, "You are correct." Such a request after the State Department signed off on the pipeline would require approval only by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a small federal agency, bypassing broader political scrutiny.
Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, said Mr. Elliott lobbied the State Department officials as did lobbyists for many environmental groups. "Mr. Elliott was and is simply doing his job," Mr. Howard said. "No laws have been broken."
The State Department is tasked with granting permission, according to the "national interest," for pipelines that cross national borders and is weighing the environmental impact of Keystone XL against the benefit of expanding the fuel supply for the United States. Its third and final environmental impact statement, released in late August, said the pipeline would have "limited adverse environmental impacts" if operated according to regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which may offer comments on such pipelines but is not empowered to rule on their authorization, sharply criticized the State Department's previous environmental assessments as inadequate but has not yet weighed in on the August report.
Though the pipeline would help ensure a stable fuel supply from a friendly neighbor, environmental groups oppose it because much of the crude would be extracted from subterranean oil sands in a process that they say results in heavy emissions and destroys the overlying forests. In addition, the pipeline would go through the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the Great Plains' principal water sources, where a spill could prove disastrous.
While acknowledging that the extraction produces higher emissions than conventional oil drilling, proponents say that environmental groups exaggerate the difference and that new processes are making it cleaner.
Some of the e-mails have a cozy tone while others reveal a sometimes tense and conflicted relationship. Officials in Washington repeatedly rejected and parried requests for meetings with TransCanada executives even while trying to placate Canada; Keystone XL has the strong support of the Canadian government and would provide a lucrative new outlet for Canadian oil.
This year, for example, State Department officials struggled with how to respond to Mr. Elliott's request for a second meeting with Jose W. Fernandez, assistant secretary for economic, energy and business affairs.
"I definitely think that Fernandez should NOT meet with TransCanada folks at this point," one e-mail said. Another said: "It would be unusual for an Assistant Secretary to meet twice with the same company in such a short time, and we wouldn't be sending a message that we're unwilling to meet since others of us will be meeting with them."
Environmental groups have long argued that Mr. Elliott's lobbying of the State Department is a conflict of interest since he served as Mrs. Clinton's deputy national campaign director and chief of delegate selection in 2008.
The department has said the decision about whether to permit the pipeline "is not and will not be influenced by prior relationships that current government officials have had."
In the first cache of e-mails, made public in September, State Department officials seem at times to advise TransCanada officials on how to maximize their chances for pipeline approval.
That tone continued on Dec. 14, when Ms. Verloop sent Mr. Elliott a copy of an article raising questions about his conflicts of interest with information about Mrs. Clinton's trip to Canada for a meeting of North American foreign ministers, noting: "Oversaw S's trip to Ottawa yesterday for the trilat. KXL not raised, but Doer flew back on the plane with her." Gary Doer is Canada's ambassador to the United States.
Mr. Elliott responded by saying the coverage made him ill.
Ms. Verloop replied: "Sorry for the stomach pains but at the end of the day it's precisely because you have connections that you're sought after and hired." For emphasis, she added a frowning emoticon.
With a judge now checking to make sure the State Department complies with Friends of the Earth's document requests, Mr. Moglen anticipates more e-mails will be released. A final decision on the pipeline is expected by the end of the year.
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18) California: Trail of 100 Giants Fall in Sequoia National Forest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 3, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/trail-of-100-giants-fall-in-sequoia-national-forest.html?ref=us
The popular Trail of 100 Giants is temporarily closed in Sequoia National Forest after two of the trees fell side by side over the trail. The Forest Service said that the downed trees were reported Friday and that no one was injured. Officials are still working to determine the ages of the trees and why they fell. Some of the giant trees in that area are 245 feet tall and have diameters of 18 feet. Forest Service officials said tourists could still see giant sequoias in other areas of the park.
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19) On Wall Street, a Protest Matures
"...the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap."
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
October 3, 2011
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/on-wall-street-a-protest-matures/?ref=business
"I think a good deal of the bankers should be in jail."
That is what Andrew Cole, an unemployed 24-year-old graduate of Bucknell University, told me Monday morning in Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Mr. Cole, an articulate young man dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt and with a blue wool beanie on his head, had just arrived by bus from Madison, Wis., where he recently lost his job.
There was nothing particularly menacing or dangerous about Mr. Cole. He said he had come to participate in Occupy Wall Street because he believed in its "anticapitalist" message. "I see Wall Street as responsible for the mess we're in."
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?" the C.E.O. asked me. I didn't have an answer. "We're trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this," he continued, clearly concerned. "Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?"
As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don't have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn't seem like a brutal group - at least not yet.
But the underlying message of Occupy Wall Street - which spread to Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles on Monday - is something the big banks and corporate America may finally have to grapple with before it actually does become dangerous.
What's the message?
At times it can be hard to discern, but, at least to me, the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.
And that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge - as we've seen in some European countries - if our economy continues to struggle.
"Ultimately this is about power and greed, unchecked," said Jodie Evans, the co-founder of Code Pink. She, too, said she wanted to see Wall Street executives go to jail.
Consider the protests a delayed reaction to the financial crisis that has now reached a fever pitch as the public's lust for scalp has gone unfulfilled. In Chicago on Monday, one sign read: "If corporations are people, why can't we put them in jail?"
In Zuccotti Park, several protesters were gathered around a laptop watching an online video that had just gone viral of Rosanne Barr, the comedian, recently interviewed by a newscaster.
"I am in favor of the return of the guillotine," she told a newscaster, in reference to bankers, with a straight face. "I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million," she said, before adding that they should go to "re-education camps and if that doesn't help, then being beheaded." She made the comments without a hint of laughter, yet the group watching around the laptop seemed to be quite amused.
Some people have suggested the Occupy Wall Street protest is a mere form of street theater, that the protesters have a myriad of grievances with no particular agenda. All of that may be true.
Edward Heath, 36, of Chicago, who is unemployed, said he was participating in the protest, in part, to ensure a more fair tax regime. When I asked about his views on Warren Buffett's "Buffett Rule," he replied: "I really can't comment because I haven't heard of him." But this group may be worth paying attention to if for no other reason than they are organized and growing in ranks. (They are beginning to link up with union organizations.) Later this week, more protests are expected to be staged around the country with the number of protesters swelling. And they are beginning to form groups to develop demands.
"We're disenfranchised," said Chris Cobb, a 41-year-old writer and designer from Brooklyn who was conducting mock interviews with a cardboard television camera and microphone emblazoned with the Fox News logo. "Wall Street is a metaphor for the financial industry," Mr. Cobb said.
Acknowledging that most financial executives now work in Midtown, he said with a laugh, "We couldn't do this on Park Avenue. Park Avenue isn't a metaphor for anything. This is a metaphor for David and Goliath." While the protesters generally didn't talk much about politics, most leaned left. Mr. Cobb said, "Like the Tea Party was about reinvigorating the right, this is about reinvigorating the left."
As evidence of the underlying politics, Ms. Evans volunteered that she had proudly disrupted the Koch brothers' Tea Party conference earlier this year in Palm Springs, Calif. "They put me in shackles," she said with a grin. "They were looking down at me with their drinks in hand."
Ms. Evans, who said she has made a career of participating in protests, said she had just flown to New York from Los Angeles to join Occupy Wall Street. How did she get here, I asked. "Virgin America," she replied with a smile. But doesn't Virgin America represent the corporations you are trying to fight? "No," she insisted. Referring to Richard Branson, she said, "He's working on creating solar planes."
As I was leaving, having spoken to scores of protesters, I noticed two of them walking over to the A.T.M. at Bank of America. As much as this group may want to get away from Wall Street and corporate America, it may be trapped by it. In the eyes of these young protesters, until they can unshackle themselves from the system - or perhaps make the system work for them - the sense of unrest is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
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