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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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"If corporations are people, why can't we put them in jail?"
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.
California Prison Hunger Strike Resumes as Sides Dig In
"The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers. In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because 'their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.' But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved. 'We're freezing,' Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. 'The air-conditioner is blowing. It's like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It's torture. They're trying to break us.'"
By IAN LOVETT
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/hunger-strike-resumes-in-california-prisons.html?ref=us
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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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*Fightback Tour!*
*No to FBI Repression,Islamophobia and War! Civil Liberties for All!*
[Part of the 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]
Saturday, October 15, 7PM
518 Valencia Street (near 16th St.) SF
(Wheelchair accessible)
*Bring the Troops, Mercenaries, War Contractors Home Now! Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya!*
*Please click for flyer & tour schedule:*
http://nepajac.org/unactour.pdf
*$10 sliding scale. No one turned away.*
*Featuring:*
*Stephen Downs*, 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; Committee to Stop FBI Repression
*Richard Brown,* San Francisco 8; Former Black Panther free after 40 years of struggle
*Michael Thurman,** *Organizer, Bradley Manning Support Network
*Andrew Philipps,* General Manager, KPFA
*Omar Shakir,* Co-Chair, National Lawyers Guild Chapter. Stanford Univ.; Past Pres. Stanford Muslim Students Awareness Network; Co-chair, Students for Palestinian Equal Rights/Stanford; Pres., Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program
*Other tour speakers participating in some of the tour meetings: Zahra Billoo,* Executive Director, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) *• Hatem Bazian*, Palestinian-Amer. UC Berkeley Professor of Near Eastern Studies • *Jeff Mackler,* Lynne Stewart Defense Comm. and Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
*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 Coalition • South Bay Committee Against 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 • Middle East Children's Alliance • BAYAN/USA • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee • Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy • 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 • Courage to Resist*
* **All meetings wheelchair accessible. All meetings co-sponsored by United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC), 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
UNAC Conference.
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
Oct. 15-22, 2011 antiwar week of solidarity and in defense of civil liberties...
Marking the 10th year of the U.S. war against the people of Afghanistan...
Bring the Troops Home Now! Civil Liberties for all!
Fightback Tour!
No to FBI Repression, Government Islamophobia and War
Civil Liberties for All!
Featuring:
Stephen Downs, Albany, NY civil liberties attorney; Legal Counsel, Project Salam (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims); Leading national spokesman against government-promoted Islamophobia and repression against the Islamic-American communities
Jess Sundin, Chicago Grand Jury subpoena victim and solidarity/antiwar activist facing, along with 23 others, felony charges of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism. Twin Cities antiwar activist; Leader, Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Other tour speakers participating in some of the meetings listed below include:
• Zahra Billoo, Executive Director, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
• Hatem Bazian, Palestinian-American UC Berkeley Professor of Near Eastern Studies
• Carlos Villarreal, Exec. Dir., National Lawyers Guild
• Rep., United National Antiwar Coalition
• Michael Thurman, Bradley Manning Support Network
• Laura Herrera, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Jeff Mackler, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Rep., Immigrant rights community
October 15-22 Initial Tour Schedule
Sat., October 15, 2:30 - 4 PM, 1182 Market Street (near 8th Street) Suite 203, San Francisco, Sponsor: SF Gray Panthers, reception/meeting, donations accepted 415-552-8800, graypanthers-sf@sbcglobal.net
Sat., October 15, 7 PM, 518 Valencia St. (near 16th St.), San Francisco, Main sponsor: Northern California UNAC 510-268-9429. $10 sliding scale. No one turned away.
Sun., October 16, Oakland Reception/lunch/meeting at the home of Jeff Mackler... with KPFA friends, 1-4 PM, $20/no one turned away. RSVP: 510-268-9429
Monday, October 17, 7-9 PM, The Redwoods Auditorium, 40 Camino Alto, Mill Valley, CA, Sponsor, Mill Valley Seniors for Peace; Marin Peace and Justice Coalition warrenut@aol.com 415-389-9040 Free
Tuesday, Oct 18, 7pm, 909 12th St, Sacramento. Free/donation requested. Sponsors: Sacramento Valley Chapter, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, 916-369-5510 & Sacramento Area Peace Action,
Wednesday, October 19, Campus meeting to be announced.
Thursday, October 20, 7:30 PM Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar Street at Bonita, Berkeley, Free/donation requested.
Friday, October 21, 7:00 PM, Sonoma State University, Warren Auditorium (Tentative location) in Ives Hall (Directions to Warren Auditorium: At the Main Entrance to the University, turn left off of E. Cotati Avenue onto Sequoia Drive. Take the first right at the Information Booth onto Redwood Drive. Turn left into parking lot E. Ives Hall is the building on the North side of the parking lot.. Parking free after 5:00 pm), 707-874-2695 Sponsor: Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action and Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center
Saturday, October 22, 2- 4 PM, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, 48 S. Seventh Street (between San Fernando and Santa Clara Streets), San Jose, Sponsors: San Jose Peace and Justice Center and San Jose Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Donations accepted. 408-373-0817
Tour co-sponsors: United National Antiwar Coalition • National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area Chapter Committee to Stop FBI Repression • Project Salam • San Jose Peace and Justice Center • Mill Valley Seniors for Peace • Marin Peace and Justice Center • South Bay Committee to Stop Political Repression • Green Party of Alameda County • Oakland Education Association Peace and Justice Caucus • Peninsula Peace and Justice Center • Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists • International Action Center • International Socialist Organization • BAYAN/USA • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee • Code Pink San Francisco • Socialist Viewpoint • Solidarity • Sacramento Area Peace Action • Socialist Action • Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action • Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center • Sacramento Valley Chapter Women's International League for Peace and Freedom • Veterans for Peace Chapter 162 East Bay • Afghans for Peace • California Peace and Freedom Party • Michel Shehadeh, Case of the Los Angeles 8 • Cindy Sheehan, Peace activist • Courage to Resist • Muslim Peace Coalition/USA • Samina Sundas, Founding Executive, American Muslim Voice • Bay Area Committee To Stop Political Repression
All meetings wheelchair accessible. All meetings co-sponsored by United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC), 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
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Please share this announcement widely
MoveOn.org East Bay Council, Alameda Labor Council, San Francisco Labor Council,
New Priorities Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
1PM Rally at Laney College
2:30 PM March to Federal Building & Frank Ogawa Plaza
Urge you to Rally & March for:
Jobs not Cuts !!!
Education not Incarceration
Work not War
Clean Energy not Climate Change
Social Security not Bank Bailouts
Main St. not Wall St.
Prosperity not Austerity
Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
End the Wars! Invest in Our Communities!
BRING ALL THE TROOPS AND WAR DOLLARS HOME!
We want an economy that supports the rights of all people to jobs at decent pay in safe workplaces, affordable healthcare for all, decent affordable housing, quality education in modern schools, a secure retirement, and a clean sustainable environment. We oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs. The rich, corporations, Wall St. banks and financial speculators should pay to fix the crisis that their irresponsibility and greed created. We have made our sacrifices. Now they should make theirs.
Make your voices heard!
www.jobs-not-cuts.org
For more information and to register endorsements, write to:
MoveOnEastBay@gmail.com
NewPrioritiesCampaign@gmail.com
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The Call for the 16th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation
Saturday, October 22,2011
12:00 NOON
3rd Street and Palou
San Francisco
(Endorse this call, forward to others. Return endorsements to oct22bayarea@gmail.com or call 510 206-0742)
Across the U.S., Black, Latino, and poor neighborhoods are treated like occupied territory by increasingly militarized armies of law enforcement. People are criminalized and brutalized for their perceived status - socioeconomic, immigration, mental health, and/or racial, gender, or sexual identity. People living in our communities, especially youth, are routinely stopped, harassed, beaten, and even killed.
--In Chicago, the home of the first Black president, police have shot 44 people so far this year, mostly youth of color, including 13-year-old Jimmell Cannon, who was shot eight times.
--NYPD continues to stop hundreds of thousands of youth of color every year for the most minimal suspicion, fewer than 10 percent of which result in arrest, and far fewer in charges or conviction.
--Police nationwide continue to kill with very little consequence. Twelve Miami cops shot at 22-year-old Raymond Herisse 100 times, then threatened those who recorded the incident, destroying their cellphones. A Tucson SWAT team shot at 26-year-old Iraq War veteran Jose Guerena over 70 times, claiming that he fired at them and then leaving him to bleed to death in his home. Both their allegations of gunfire and drug-dealing were later revealed to be false. In New York and New Jersey, at least 27 people have been killed by police since October 22 of last year, while at least 35 people have been killed by law enforcement in Washington State in the last 12 months. The killing of 22-year old Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009 resulted in a rare conviction for the officer who shot him; however, he was freed after mere months in prison, while people protesting the outrageous verdict were met with police violence and mass arrests. In the weeks following that cop's release, SF cops killed Charles Hill, a 45-year-old homeless man, on a subway platform and 19-year old Kenneth Harding after he supposedly failed to pay a $2 train fare, then left him dying on the pavement in front of dozens of outraged witnesses.
--Police routinely abuse the mentally ill and disabled. Fullerton, CA cops beat to death homeless and mentally ill 27-year-old Kelly Thomas, described by many in the community as "a gentle, childlike soul." In Fresno, CA, 28-year-old Raul Rosas, Jr. died after being tasered by police. His girlfriend said "I didn't call the Fresno County Sheriff to kill him. I called because he needed help with his mental illness." Raul went into cardiac arrest and was denied access to three medical ambulances that showed up to assist.
--Recently enacted anti-immigrant laws have given police in the states of Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama sweeping powers to stop people "suspected" of being undocumented on no other basis than appearance. The hostility and racism stoked by these policies have already culminated in violence, as seen in the killing of 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereka by a border patrol agent and the beating death of 42-year-old Anastasio Hernández Rojas at the hands of La Migra. More than one million have been deported under the Obama administration.
--Racially targeted mass incarceration exacerbates the criminalization and marginalization of Black people, playing the same role as the Jim Crow laws that sprang from the Virginia slave codes of 1705. In 1954, 90,000 Black people were incarcerated. Now, over 900,000 Black people are imprisoned, a tenfold increase, while the total U.S. Black population has merely doubled in the same period. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate worldwide, with 2.4 million people in prison.
--Law enforcement continues to harass and sexually assault people, most especially women and the transgendered. According to the website InjusticeEverywhere.com, sexual misconduct was the second most common complaint (following excessive force) against police in 2010, involving 618 cops.
--Young schoolchildren are increasingly labeled and treated as criminals by school security and local police. Eight-year-old Aidan Elliot was peppersprayed and handcuffed by Colorado police, and ten-year-old Sofia Bautista was removed from her elementary school, then taken to a NYPD precinct, handcuffed, and interrogated for hours, while police nationwide continue to use tasers on students as young as six.
Meanwhile, repression against those who take action against injustices continues to escalate. Over a dozen activists with Food Not Bombs have been arrested in Orlando for feeding the homeless in public parks. The killings of Oscar Grant, Kenneth Harding, Kelly Thomas, Raymond Herisse, and John T. Williams in Seattle were all caught on video. Now, as if in retaliation against the subsequent public outrage, police in cities and towns nationwide have attacked and arrested people merely for recording their activity, while in Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts, video-recording the police is now explicitly illegal. Cops haven't stopped killing and brutalizing people--they're just making it a crime to record them while they do. Repression against progressive and antiwar activism has intensified: simultaneous FBI raids on activists from numerous antiwar and international solidarity organizations in three U.S. cities took place on September 24, 2010. Twenty-three activists now face serious jail time for refusing to participate in the ensuing grand jury witch hunts that clearly intend to discourage and intimidate would-be dissenters.
These vicious attacks are not going down without opposition. Whether standing up to police violence when it happens, as we saw in the video of Kenneth Harding's shooting, or organizing inspiring prison strikes in Georgia and California, people are uniting to fight back. Determined outcry from people nationwide against the shooting of unarmed men crossing the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has finally brought convictions of the guilty cops and exposed the sort of extensive cover-ups that are routine with police shootings. More and more crimes against the people are being revealed, as we have seen with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' Operation Fast and Furious, which intentionally provided weapons to Mexican drug cartels, and the overturning of over 4,000 convictions of youth in Pennsylvania after it was found that juvenile judge Mark Ciavarella received kickbacks from private for-profit detention centers.
Once we have seen the man behind the curtain, how can we pretend he is not there? One thing we know from years of experience is that when this system has to answer to organized people, it can't easily get away with all the things it's used to doing. Resistance matters.
THE VIOLENCE OF THE COPS, THE COURTS, THE FBI, LA MIGRA, AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS INTENSIFYING. OUR RESISTANCE MUST INTENSIFY AS WELL! Every year, thousands of people nationwide express their outrage, creativity, and resistance in response to the crimes of this system. People speak out and perform, they march in the streets, and more. The October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation embraces and encourages any and all such expressions of people's righteous outrage.
As said by the mother of Gil Barber, gunned down by a deputy in High Point, NC in 2001, "October 22nd is our day." ORGANIZE against these injustices! BREAK DOWN the barriers between communities that these crimes seek to strengthen! MOBILIZE people of all communities in the most visible way...and on October 22, 2011, WEAR BLACK! FIGHT BACK!
JOIN US if there is already an October 22nd event in your area. CREATE one if you are in an area where there is currently no group organizing. For listings of activities in your area, check the websitewww.october22.org.
To start building for an event in your area, email info@october22.org
TO ENDORSE THIS CALL, SIGN BELOW AND MAIL TO: October 22, P.O. Box 2627, New York, NY 10009, along with your tax-deductible donation to the national organizing effort. Suggested donation $15.00 (paid to "IFCO/October 22")
Name: ___________________________________________
Email: ____________________________________________
Organization: __________________________________________________________* (note if for identification purposes only)
Signature: __________________________________________________________
You may also make this endorsement directly on the website www.october22.org
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MEDICARE IN THE CROSS-HAIRS
SOCIAL SECURITY NEXT?
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL TEACH-IN
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011, 7:30-9PM
Plumbers Union Hall, 1621 Market St., S.F.
(5 blocks from Civic Center BART station)
For more information call Carl, San Francisco Labor Council Education Project
415-829-3816
CUTTING MEDICARE-MEDICAID IS THE POLITICIANS CONSENSUS #1 BUDGET TARGET
• President Obama has just proposed a $248 billion cut in Medicare as a starter & another $72 billion in Medicaid cuts.
• Obama indicated September 19 he will support cutting more than $320 Billion if Republicans agree with him on taxes.
• Vice-President Joe Biden last June offered Republicans to cut $400-$500 billion in Medicare-Medicaid
• Republicans last April proposed to raise out-of-pocket costs for Medicare for seniors by $7,000 per year
• The 'Supercommittee' of 12 in Congress said last week they want to cut even more than Obama has proposed. They will report 'how much' more on November 19.
• Congress will vote on how much more in Medicare-Medicaid cuts before December 23.
How Much Will Your Medicare Be Cut?
How Much More Will You Have to Pay?
Come Hear the Facts
Open Discussion to Follow
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For Immediate Release
Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years" at The Marsh-Berkeley, Oct 20-Dec 10
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
San Francisco. September 26, 2011. The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Alston Way in Berkeley, October 20 through December 10.
The story begins as Petrick (aka 'Hanoi Howie") reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
La Colmenita, the National Children's Theater of Cuba, US tour 2011
Whether you are 7 or 70, Abracadabra will move you...Come and enjoy!
ABRACADABRA is not a play. It is an act of Justice and Life, written mainly by children who share the dream of freedom. A teacher invites her students to walk the road to the essences, through five very true stories of heroism and virtue.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Wednesday October 26, 7pm
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
339 11th Street, Richmond, CA 94801-3105
Suggested donation at the door $10, Children Free
http://eastbaycenter.org/Events/EventsbyDate/tabid/261/Default.aspx
Thursday October 27, 1pm
Esperanza Elementary School, Oakland
Private Presentation
Friday October 28, 7:30pm & Saturday October 29, 2pm
Fort Mason Center, Cowell Theater
Entrance at intersection of Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St., San Francisco, CA 94123
Tickets $20, Students & Seniors $15, Children Free
www.fortmason.org/events/events-details?id=2026
Tickets on line: http://lacolmenita.eventbrite.com
For more information about performances in your area, please visit:
www.lacolmenitacuba.com
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Here is the official statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression on the 1-year anniversary of the raids.
Build the Movement Against Political Repression
One year since the September 24 FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas
Statement of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, 9-22-2011
Please come to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression one-day Conference in Chicago on November 5, 2011.
http://www.stopfbi.net/national-conference-2011
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) is asking you to build the movement against political repression on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 24, 2010 FBI raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists. We need your continued solidarity as we build movements for peace, justice and equality.
The storm of political repression continues to expand and threaten. It is likely to intensify and churn into a destructive force with indictments, trials, and attempts to imprison anti-war activists. The last we knew, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was preparing multiple indictments as he and Attorney General Eric Holder attempt to criminalize the targeted activists and the movements to which we dedicate our lives.
It is one year since the FBI raided two homes in Chicago and five homes plus the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, eventually handing out 23 subpoenas. The anti-war activists' homes were turned upside down and notebooks, cell phones, artwork, computers, passports and personal belongings were all carted off by the FBI. Anyone who has ever been robbed knows the feelings - shock and anger.
The man responsible for this assault on activists and their families, on free speech and the right to organize, is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago. Fitzgerald has an ugly record of getting powerful Republicans like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove off the hook, while mercilessly pursuing an agenda to scare America into silence and submission with the phony 'war on terror.' Fitzgerald is attempting to criminalize anti-war activists with accusations of 'material support for terrorism,' involving groups in Palestine and Colombia.
First the U.S. government targeted Arabs and Muslims, violating their civil rights and liberties and spying on them. Then they came for the anti-war and international solidarity activists. We refuse to be criminalized. We continue to speak out and organize. We say, "Opposing U.S. war and occupation is not a crime!" We are currently building a united front with groups and movements to defeat Fitzgerald's reactionary, fear mongering assault on anti-war activism and to restore civil liberties taken away by the undemocratic USA PATRIOT Act.
Many people know the developments in the case, but for those who do not, we invite you to read a timeline at stopfbi.net. We think the repression centers on this: During the lead up to the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a federal law enforcement officer, using the phony name of "Karen Sullivan" got involved and joined the Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis. She lied to everyone she met and helped the FBI to disrupt many activities in the anti-war, international solidarity and labor movements in Minnesota - and also other states and even over in Palestine. It is outrageous.
In fact, many of those being investigated travelled to Colombia or Palestine to learn firsthand about U.S. government funding for war and oppression. There was no money given to any groups that the U.S. government lists as terrorist organizations. However, we met people who are a lot like most Americans - students, community organizers, religious leaders, trade unionists, women's group leaders and activists much like ourselves. Many of the U.S. activists wrote about their trips, did educational events, or helped organized protests against U.S. militarism and war. In a increasingly repressive period, this is enough to make one a suspect in Fitzgerald's office.
This struggle is far from one-sided however. The response to the FBI raids and the pushback from the movement is tremendous. Minneapolis and Chicago immediately organized a number of press conferences and rallies with hundreds of people. Over the first two weeks after the raids, 60 cities protested outside FBI offices, from New York to Kalamazoo, from traveled to the Bay Area. The National Lawyers Guild convention was in New Orleans the day of the FBI raids and they immediately issued a solidarity statement and got to work on the case. Solidarity poured in from anti-war, civil rights, religious and faith groups, students and unions. Groups and committees began working to obtain letters of support from members of Congress. The solidarity was overwhelming. It was great!
It is possible that U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald thought he was picking on an isolated group of activists. Instead, those raided proved to have many friends and allies from decades of work for social justice and peace. Over the months, all the targeted activists refused to appear at the grand jury dates set by U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office. In November 2010, a large crew of us travelled to New York City to found the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, after the United National Antiwar Committee meeting.
In December 2010, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office called in three of the Minnesota women and threatened them. We prepared a campaign in case they were jailed for refusing to speak. The FBI also delivered subpoenas to nine more Arab-American and Palestine solidarity activists in December. Their grand jury date was on Jan. 25, 2011, and we organized protests in over 70 American cities, plus a few overseas. The movement was building and expanding, so we organized conferences with over 800 participants in the Midwest, the South, and on the East and West Coasts. While we were organizing a pushback, the FBI was making new plans.
On May 17, 2011, at 5:00 a.m., the Los Angeles, California Sheriff, under the direction of the FBI, busted down the front door of Chicano leader Carlos Montes, storming in with automatic weapons drawn and shouting. The early morning raid was supposedly about weapons and permits, but they seized decades of notes and writings about the Chicano, immigrant rights, education rights and anti-war movements. The FBI attempted to question Carlos Montes while he was handcuffed and in the back of a L.A. sheriff squad car. Montes is going to another preliminary court date on Sept. 29, prepared to face six felony charges, carrying up to three years in prison for each, knowing he is extraordinarily targeted by the FBI. We will walk every step of the way with Carlos Montes, and more. Montes was with us at the Republican National Convention protests; his name was included on the search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, and the FBI attempted to question him about this case. We ask you to support Carlos Montes and to organize speaking events with him and local protests on his important court dates, Sept. 29 being the next one.
The same week the FBI raided Carlos Montes in May 2011, the CSFR came back with a big revelation - we released a set of documents, the FBI game plan, which the FBI mistakenly left behind in a file drawer at one of the homes. The FBI documents are on the CSFR website and are fascinating to read. Fitzgerald and company developed 102 questions that come right from a McCarthy witch-hunt trial of the 1950s. It is like turning back the clock five decades.
The whole intention of the raids is clear: They want to paint activists as 'terrorists' and shut down the organizing. They came at a time when the rich and powerful are frightened of not just the masses of people overseas, but of the people in their own country. With a failing U.S. war in Afghanistan, a U.S. occupation of Iraq predicted to last decades, a new war for oil and domination in Libya, a failing immigration policy that breaks up families and produces super-profits for big business, and now a long and deep economic crisis that is pushing large segments of working people into poverty, the highest levels of the U.S. government are turning to political repression.
The only hope for the future is in building stronger, consistent and determined movements. In a principled act of solidarity, the 23 subpoenaed activists refuse to testify before the grand jury. This sets an example for others.
In addition, the outpouring of support and mobilization into the streets from the anti-war, international solidarity, civil rights, labor and immigrant rights movements means that not one of the 24 has spent a single day in jail. That is a victory.
We ask you to stand with us, to stay vigilant and to hold steady as we proceed to organize against wars abroad and injustice at home and as we defend Carlos Montes from the FBI charade in Los Angeles.
Committee to Stop FBI Repression - www.stopfbi.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Add us to your address book
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White House Petition for Leonard Peltier - October 22 deadline
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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Harry Belafonte: Herman Cain is a "bad apple"
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/10/11/harry-belafonte-and-herman-cain-trade-verbal-jabs/?KEYWORDS=cain
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A Familiar Figure Begs on the Street, but Not for Himself
97-year-old "Professor Irwin Corey" collects money for medical aid for children in Cuba.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/11/nyregion/100000001099057/hes-97-and-famous-spare-some-change.html
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Great videos of #Occupy Wall Street from all over the place:
#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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600+ Protesters March on Bank of America - #Occupy Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1JOJ3joOA&feature=player_embedded
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Scenes From #Occupy Las Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=olatH3pSvlk
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Could Occupy Wall Street be infiltrated by political groups?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D983q4xOnZg
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Make Revolution, Not Reform: A Warning to the 'Occupy' Movement
andrewgavinmarshall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oneVFYeMHjU#!
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#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
[This truly is an amazing thing to see -- no microphones allowed by NYPD yet the crowd is completely engaged with the speakers. The speeches have to be short because the words are repeated and passed along to those furthest away since they can't hear them. Mohammed's speech is great and there's no doubt that the crowd thinks so, too...Bonnie Weinstein]
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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#Occupy Wall Street Begins To Go National!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDnFbIwZUWQ
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OCCUPY-WALL-STREET-PROTESTERS-ARRESTS( Sept 20, 2011) Spread This Video Please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvbI6Eq-qA
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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
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UNEDITED - COP KNEE ON THROAT 9/24/2011 #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbXfelyIoM&NR=1
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9/24/2011 COPS KETTLING AT UNION SQUARE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaQvh80L-g&NR=1
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Empire State Rebellion: An Idea Whose Time Has Come - OpESR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIlfV1pCZY&feature=player_embedded
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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Protesters pepper sprayed at the National Air & Space Museum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc9OSFLnyUI&feature=youtu.be
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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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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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What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?
Narrated by Tony Benn. Music by Brian Eno
Mass Demonstration October 8, Noon, Trafalgar Square, London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Bkg8zgoYQ&feature=youtu.be
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LOWKEY OBAMA NATION (BANIDO DA TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFywomdJTM&feature=related
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Labor Beat: THE PEOPLE'S PUTT PUTT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FkYBneJpds
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Very reminiscent of Obama...bw
Pat Paulsen 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oiQhhdz8ys
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children's urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.
When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens' right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies "I don't know if they have that right."
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Let's torture the truth out of suicide bombers says new CIA chief Petraeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sm02UbKNCKQ
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. ...bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Resumes
By Erin Sherbert
September 26 2011
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/pelican_bay_hunger_strike_resumes.php
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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Your help is needed to defend free speech rights
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
We are writing to urge you to send an email letter today that can make a big difference in the outcome of a free speech fight that is vital to all grassroots movements that support social justice and peace.
It will just take a moment of your time but it will make a big difference.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=326
All across the country people and organizations engaged in producing and disseminating leaflets and posters - the classic method of grassroots outreach used by those without institutional power and corporate money - are being faced with bankrupting fines.
This has been happening with ferocity in the nation's capital ever since the ANSWER Coalition was fined over $50,000 in the span of a few weeks for posters advertising the Sept. 15, 2007, protest against the Iraq war.
Attorneys for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) filed a major lawsuit in August 2007 against the unconstitutional postering regulations in Washington, D.C.
"The District has employed an illegal system that creates a hierarchy of speech, favoring the speech of politicians and punishing grassroots outreach," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, stated in explaining a basic tenet of the lawsuit. "It's time for that system to end, and it will."
The hard-fought four-year-long lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund against Washington, D.C.'s unconstitutional postering regulations has succeeded in achieving a number of important victories, including the issuance of new regulations after the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia warned just last month of an impending declaration of unconstitutionality against the District.
In July 2011 the federal District Court issued a preliminary opinion regarding one aspect of our lawsuit and suggested that the D.C. government "revise the regulations to include a single, across-the-board durational restriction that applies equally to all viewpoints and subject matters."
But this battle is not finished. The new regulations still contain dissent-crushing "strict liability" provisions (explained below) and remain unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous. Plus the District has never withdrawn the tens of thousands of dollars of fines against ANSWER.
The District of Columbia is required by law to open the new rules to public comment, which it has done with an extremely short comment period that is now open. We need people to send a comment today to the government of Washington, D.C. It just takes a minute using our online Submit a Comment tool, which will send your comment by email.
Send a letter today in support of the right to produce and disseminate leaflets and posters in Washington, D.C. We have included a sample comment but we encourage people to use or add your own language.
An Opportunity for You to Make a Difference
In response to our lawsuit, the District of Columbia has now issued "Emergency Regulations" replacing the current system which the city now admits are a "threat to the public welfare," after the court issued a preliminary opinion that agreed with a basic argument of the lawsuit.
This is an important moment and we need you and others who believe in Free Speech to weigh in during the short 15-day public comment period in response to the proposed Emergency Regulations for postering. Submit an online Comment now that makes one or more of three vital points:
Drop the $70,000 fines that have been applied to the ANSWER Coalition for anti-war posters during the past four years.
End "Strict Liability" fines and penalities. Strict Liability constitutes something of a death penalty for Free Speech activities such as producing leaflets and posters. It means that an organization referenced on posted signs can be held "strictly liable" for any materials alleged to be improperly posted, even if the group never even posted a single sign or poster. The D.C. government is even going further than that - it just levied fines against a disabled Vietnam veteran who didn't put up a single poster but was fined $450 because three posted signs were seen referencing a Veterans for Peace demonstration last December, and the District's enforcement agents researched that his name was on the permit application for the peace demonstration at the White House. Any group or person that leaves literature at a bookstore, or distributes literature, or posts .pdf fliers on the Internet, can be fined tens of thousands of dollars simply for having done nothing more than making political literature available.
Insist that any new regulations be clear, unambiguous and fair. The District's new "Emergency" Regulations are still inadequate because they are vague and ambiguous. Vaguely worded regulations in the hands of vindictive authority can and will be used to punish, penalize and fine grassroots organizations that seek to redress grievances while allowing the powerful and moneyed interests to do as they please. The District's postering regulations must be clear and unambiguous if they are to be fair, uniform and constitutional.
Take two minutes right now, click through to our online comment submission tool.
Thank you for your continued support. After you send your comment today to the District of Columbia please send this email to your friends and encourage them to take action as well. Click here to send your comment to the District.
Sincerely,
ANSWER Coalition
www.AnswerCoalition.org
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, René González, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing René and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow René Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of René Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
* take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
* ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Stop Coal Companies From Erasing Labor Union History
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-coal-companies-from-erasing-labor-union-history
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
Courage to Resist needs your support
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?hp
2) Artists Occupy Wall Street for a 24-Hour Show
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 9, 2011, 11:33 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/artists-occupy-wall-street-for-a-24-hour-show/?hp
3) Daughter of 'Dirty War,' Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?ref=world
4) California Begins Moving Prison Inmates
By JENNIFER MEDINA
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/california-begins-moving-prisoners.html?ref=us
5) How the FBI's Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots "Foiled" in the US Since 9/11
By Trevor Aaronson, Mother Jones
Posted on October 9, 2011, Printed on October 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152670/how_the_fbi%27s_network_of_informants_actually_created_most_of_the_terrorist_plots_%22foiled%22_in_the_us_since_9_11
6) Japan Studies Radiation Effects on Children
By HIROKO TABUCHI
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/japan-studies-radiation-effects-on-children.html?hp
7) Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling
By ROBERT PEAR
October 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/us/recession-officially-over-us-incomes-kept-falling.html?ref=us
8) About That 99 Percent
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
October 10, 2011, 2:07 pm
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/about-that-99-percent/?src=busln
9) Police Assault Occupy Boston! Help us!
Occupy Boston Press Statement: http://occupyboston.com/2011/10/11/boston-police-brutally-assault-occupy-boston/
Legal aid: https://www.wepay.com/donate/42546
http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyBOS_Media
http://occupyboston.com/
http://www.occupytogether.org/
Boston Police Brutally Assault Occupy Boston
Posted on October 11, 2011 by JPo
*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 11th, 2011*
Contacts: OccupyBostonMedia@gmail.com
Twitter: @occupyBOS_media
10) Who Do the White Shirt Police Report to at Occupy Wall Street Protests?
Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
by PAM MARTENS
October 10, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
11) Hunger strikes will continue until prisoners' demands respected
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
The Electronic Intifada
Haifa
October 10, 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/content/hunger-strikes-will-continue-until-prisoners-demands-respected/10470#.TpRj0OtAvIY.email
12) States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare
By A. G. SULZBERGER
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/states-adding-drug-test-as-hurdle-for-welfare.html?hp
13) At One College, a Fight Over Required Drug Tests
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/at-linn-state-technical-a-fight-over-required-drug-tests.html?ref=us
14) New Tool for Police, the Video Camera, and New Legal Issues to Go With It
By ERICA GOODE
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/police-using-body-mounted-video-cameras.html?ref=us
15) Hedge Fund Assets Back Above 2006 Levels: Data
"Funds that manage more than $1 billon grew their assets $150 billion to $1.85 trillion during the six months through June and the top 345 firms now manage some 82 percent of industry assets, the data shows. ...Assets rose in the United States, which is still the largest center for hedge fund managers and sits on close to three quarters of total assets, as well as in Europe."
By REUTERS
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/10/11/business/business-us-financial-hedgefunds-assets.html?src=busln
16) US court turns down Philly DA in cop-killing case
AP
Tue, Oct 11, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/us-court-turns-down-philly-da-cop-killing-142151283.html
17) Justifying the Killing of an American
New York Times Editorial
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/justifying-the-killing-of-an-american.html?hp
18) A Year Out of the Dark in Chile, but Still Trapped
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/world/americas/chiles-rescued-miners-face-major-struggles-a-year-later.html?hp
19) Response of the Police Is Expanding With Protests
By KIRK JOHNSON
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/police-response-expands-with-protests.html?ref=us
20) Fingerprinting Those Seeking Food Stamps Is Denounced
By KATE TAYLOR
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/nyregion/christine-c-quinn-urges-city-to-drop-rule-on-fingerprinting-food-stamp-seekers.html?ref=us
21) A Familiar Figure Begs on the Street, but Not for Himself
By COREY KILGANNON
October 11, 2011, 7:00 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/a-familiar-figure-begs-on-the-street-but-not-for-himself/?ref=nyregion
22) In Seeking Rate Increases in New York, Health Insurers Fight to Keep Secrets
By NINA BERNSTEIN
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/nyregion/health-insurers-ask-to-keep-rate-increase-data-secret.html?ref=nyregion
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1) Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.
The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama - to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.
The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki's case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.
The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.
But the document that laid out the administration's justification - a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 - was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.
The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.
The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.
The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.
It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki was accused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.
Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was also accused of playing a role in a failed plot to bomb two cargo planes last year, part of a pattern of activities that counterterrorism officials have said showed that he had evolved from merely being a propagandist - in sermons justifying violence by Muslims against the United States - to playing an operational role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's continuing efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.
Other assertions about Mr. Awlaki included that he was a leader of the group, which had become a "cobelligerent" with Al Qaeda, and he was pushing it to focus on trying to attack the United States again. The lawyers were also told that capturing him alive among hostile armed allies might not be feasible if and when he were located.
Based on those premises, the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.
It then considered possible obstacles and rejected each in turn.
Among them was an executive order that bans assassinations. That order, the lawyers found, blocked unlawful killings of political leaders outside of war, but not the killing of a lawful target in an armed conflict.
A federal statute that prohibits Americans from murdering other Americans abroad, the lawyers wrote, did not apply either, because it is not "murder" to kill a wartime enemy in compliance with the laws of war.
But that raised another pressing question: would it comply with the laws of war if the drone operator who fired the missile was a Central Intelligence Agency official, who, unlike a soldier, wore no uniform? The memorandum concluded that such a case would not be a war crime, although the operator might be in theoretical jeopardy of being prosecuted in a Yemeni court for violating Yemen's domestic laws against murder, a highly unlikely possibility.
Then there was the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment's guarantee that a "person" cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that the government may not deprive a person of life "without due process of law."
The memo concluded that what was reasonable, and the process that was due, was different for Mr. Awlaki than for an ordinary criminal. It cited court cases allowing American citizens who had joined an enemy's forces to be detained or prosecuted in a military court just like noncitizen enemies.
It also cited several other Supreme Court precedents, like a 2007 case involving a high-speed chase and a 1985 case involving the shooting of a fleeing suspect, finding that it was constitutional for the police to take actions that put a suspect in serious risk of death in order to curtail an imminent risk to innocent people.
The document's authors argued that "imminent" risks could include those by an enemy leader who is in the business of attacking the United States whenever possible, even if he is not in the midst of launching an attack at the precise moment he is located.
There remained, however, the question of whether - when the target is known to be a citizen - it was permissible to kill him if capturing him instead were a feasible way of suppressing the threat.
Killed in the strike alongside Mr. Awlaki was another American citizen, Samir Khan, who had produced a magazine for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula promoting terrorism. He was apparently not on the targeting list, making his death collateral damage. His family has issued a statement citing the Fifth Amendment and asking whether it was necessary for the government to have "assassinated two of its citizens."
"Was this style of execution the only solution?" the Khan family asked in its statement. "Why couldn't there have been a capture and trial?"
Last month, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, delivered a speech in which he strongly denied the accusation that the administration had sometimes chosen to kill militants when capturing them was possible, saying the policy preference is to interrogate them for intelligence.
The memorandum is said to declare that in the case of a citizen, it is legally required to capture the militant if feasible - raising a question: was capturing Mr. Awlaki in fact feasible?
It is possible that officials decided last month that it was not feasible to attempt to capture him because of factors like the risk it could pose to American commandos and the diplomatic problems that could arise from putting ground forces on Yemeni soil. Still, the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan demonstrates that officials have deemed such operations feasible at times.
Last year, Yemeni commandos surrounded a village in which Mr. Awlaki was believed to be hiding, but he managed to slip away.
The administration had already expressed in public some of the arguments about issues of international law addressed by the memo, in a speech delivered in March 2010 by Harold Hongju Koh, the top State Department lawyer.
The memorandum examined whether it was relevant that Mr. Awlaki was in Yemen, far from Afghanistan. It concluded that Mr. Awlaki's geographical distance from the so-called hot battlefield did not preclude him from the armed conflict; given his presumed circumstances, the United States still had a right to use force to defend itself against him.
As to whether it would violate Yemen's sovereignty to fire a missile at someone on Yemeni soil, Yemen's president secretly granted the United States that permission, as secret diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks have revealed.
The memorandum did assert that other limitations on the use of force under the laws of war - like avoiding the use of disproportionate force that would increase the possibility of civilian deaths - would constrain any operation against Mr. Awlaki.
That apparently constrained the attack when it finally came. Details about Mr. Awlaki's location surfaced about a month ago, American officials have said, but his hunters delayed the strike until he left a village and was on a road away from populated areas.
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2) Artists Occupy Wall Street for a 24-Hour Show
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 9, 2011, 11:33 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/artists-occupy-wall-street-for-a-24-hour-show/?hp
For weeks, a growing collection of protesters have tried to get their grievances heard on Wall Street - even if the police have prevented them from establishing a physical presence on the fabled street.
On Saturday night, the Occupy Wall Street movement managed to gain a temporary foothold on Wall Street, courtesy of an art show partly inspired by the group's protests.
The show was held inside a landmark building built in 1914 as the headquarters of J.P. Morgan, across from the New York Stock Exchange; it has been empty for about five years.
The show, called No Comment, was scheduled to be up for only 24 hours, from Saturday evening until Sunday evening. It combined art that addressed a wide variety of political themes with pieces that were derived directly from the recent protests.
The organizers included Marika Maioroa, who arranged to use the former bank building in September for a show reflecting on the events of Sept. 11, 2001; and Anna Harrah, one of those who had been participating in three weeks of protests, aimed at criticizing inequities in the financial system.
The idea for the show came, Ms. Maioroa said, when her September show was disrupted to some degree by the maze of metal barricades set up by the police to help control marches by protesters.
She joined with Ms. Harrah, who had joined Occupy Wall Street's art and culture committee. The two put out a call for submissions and ended up with dozens of pieces of work, including paintings, illustrations, photographs and video installations.
Items inspired by the protests included a collection of cardboard signs created by demonstrators, a large spray-painted banner reading "Occupy Wall Street," and a plate that had been at the protesters' stronghold at Zuccotti Park, which carried the message, "If you need money take some," and also held a handful of dollar bills.
One of the artists who assisted in putting the show together, Lee Wells, contributed an installation consisting of two tents and American flags. It was a commentary, he said, on the fact that the police had decreed that the protesters sleeping in Zuccotti Park could not erect tents.
Ms. Maioroa said that some of the pieces of art could be sold at a silent auction, with most of the proceeds going to the artists but some being donated to Occupy Wall Street, or to her own organization, Loft in the Red Zone, which had rented the raw, cavernous space inside the Morgan building.
As crowds strolled through the show on Saturday night, three men with badges walked past barricades set up outside, entered the show and looked around. Soon, the streets outside were filled with police vehicles and uniformed officers.
Inside the gallery, Ms. Harrah gazed at the crowd and reflected on the irony of the show's setting.
"As soon as I saw this place, I said let's make something happen here,"
she said. "It seems only right to occupy this space."
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3) Daughter of 'Dirty War,' Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?ref=world
BUENOS AIRES - Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where "subversives" had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his "slamming his gun on the table," she said.
It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father - nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.
Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.
He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her - María Sol - after falsifying her birth records.
The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation's top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.
Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina's dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.
The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.
The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other "dirty war" crimes.
"Even the many Argentines who considered the amnesty a necessary evil were unwilling to forgive the military for this," said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.
In Latin America, the baby thefts were largely unique to Argentina's dictatorship, Mr. Vivanco said. There was no such effort in neighboring Chile's 17-year dictatorship.
One notable difference was the role of the Catholic Church. In Argentina the church largely supported the military government, while in Chile it confronted the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and sought to expose its human rights crimes, Mr. Vivanco said.
Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government on national security concerns, and defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not "contaminated" by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate who has investigated dozens of disappearances and testified at the trial last month.
Ms. Montenegro contended: "They thought they were doing something Christian to baptize us and give us the chance to be better people than our parents. They thought and felt they were saving our lives."
Church officials in Argentina and at the Vatican declined to answer questions about their knowledge of or involvement in the covert adoptions.
For many years, the search for the missing children was largely futile. But that has changed in the past decade thanks to more government support, advanced forensic technology and a growing genetic data bank from years of testing. The latest adoptee to recover her real identity, Laura Reinhold Siver, brought the total number of recoveries to 105 in August.
Still, the process of accepting the truth can be long and tortuous. For years, Ms. Montenegro rejected efforts by officials and advocates to discover her true identity. From a young age, she received a "strong ideological education" from Colonel Tetzlaff, an army officer at a secret detention center.
If she picked up a flier from leftists on the street, "he would sit me down for hours to tell me what the subversives had done to Argentina," she said.
He took her along to a detention center where he spent hours discussing military operations with his fellow officers, "how they had killed people, tortured them," she said.
"I grew up thinking that in Argentina there had been a war, and that our soldiers had gone to war to guarantee the democracy," she said. "And that there were no disappeared people, that it was all a lie."
She said he did not allow her to see movies about the "dirty war," including "The Official Story," the 1985 film about an upper-middle-class couple raising a girl taken from a family that was disappeared.
In 1992, when she was 15, Colonel Tetzlaff was detained briefly on suspicion of baby stealing. Five years later, a court informed Ms. Montenegro that she was not the biological child of Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife, she said.
"I was still convinced it was all a lie," she said.
By 2000, Ms. Montenegro still believed her mission was to keep Colonel Tetzlaff out of prison. But she relented and gave a DNA sample. A judge then delivered jarring news: the test confirmed that she was the biological child of Hilda and Roque Montenegro, who had been active in the resistance. She learned that she and the Montenegros had been kidnapped when she was 13 days old.
At a restaurant over dinner, Colonel Tetzlaff confessed to Ms. Montenegro and her husband: He had headed the operation in which the Montenegros were tortured and killed, and had taken her in May 1976, when she was 4 months old.
"I can't bear to say any more," she said, choking up at the memory of the dinner.
A court convicted Colonel Tetzlaff in 2001 of illegally appropriating Ms. Montenegro. He went to prison, and Ms. Montenegro, still believing his actions during the dictatorship had been justified, visited him weekly until his death in 2003.
Slowly, she got to know her biological parents' family.
"This was a process; it wasn't one moment or one day when you erase everything and begin again," she said. "You are not a machine that can be reset and restarted."
It fell to her to tell her three sons that Colonel Tetzlaff was not the man they thought he was.
"He told them that their grandfather was a brave soldier, and I had to tell them that their grandfather was a murderer," she said.
When she testified at the trial, she used her original name, Victoria, for the first time. "It was very liberating," she said.
She says she still does not hate the Tetzlaffs. But "the heart doesn't kidnap you, it doesn't hide you, it doesn't hurt you, it doesn't lie to you all of your life," she said. "Love is something else."
Charles Newbery contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 8, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that "The Official Story" was a film about a boy who was taken from his family. The movie was about a girl.
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4) California Begins Moving Prison Inmates
By JENNIFER MEDINA
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/california-begins-moving-prisoners.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - Facing an unprecedented order from the Supreme Court to decrease its inmate population by 11,000 over the next three months and by 34,000 over the next two years, California prisons last week began to shift inmates to county jails and probation officers, starting what many believe will be a fundamental and far-reaching change in the nation's largest corrections system.
Last spring, the Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding and poor conditions in state prisons violated inmates' constitutional rights and, in a first, ordered a state to rapidly decrease its inmate population. Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved a plan that would place many more offenders in the custody of individual counties.
Under the plan, inmates who have committed nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual offenses will be released back to the county probation system rather than to state parole officers. Those newly convicted of such crimes will be sent directly to the counties, which will decide if they should go to a local jail or to an alternative community program. And newly accused defendants may wear electronic monitoring bracelets while they await trial.
"This is the largest change in the California state system in my lifetime," said Barry Krisberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has watched the state prisons for decades and testified in the Supreme Court case last year. "Given that what we had was completely broken and was the most expensive, overcrowded and least effective in America, there's some hope that this will change it."
The shift of prisoners to county facilities began Monday, and state officials expect to satisfy the Supreme Court's mandate by June 2013 - at which time they must have reduced the state inmate population of 144,000, which put the prisons at 180 percent capacity, to 110,000, or 135 percent of capacity. First, though, they must reach the initial court-ordered benchmark by reducing the prison population to 133,000 by December.
In what the state calls a realignment of the criminal justice system, the plan places more responsibilities on the counties, and some local officials say they are unprepared and underfinanced to get the job done. But state officials say that keeping inmates closer to their communities will increase the chances that they can be rehabilitated, rather than in and out of state prison.
For the last several years, state parole officers would often catch criminals on technical parole violations, sending them back to prison for several weeks at a time - a practice many derided as a revolving door.
The constant influx of new and former inmates also sharply increased the cost for the state, because it must pay for a medical evaluation and several other assessments every time an inmate enters the system.
Matthew Cate, the secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the state hoped that the counties would concentrate on rehabilitating prisoners and helping them reintegrate into the community, something the state system was never able to do. Figures show that nearly 70 percent of inmates in California prisons end up there again.
"The catch-and-release way we had before was not working - I don't know how anyone could disagree with that," Mr. Cate said. "The only alternative we had was just a massive release of people from prison. Nobody seemed to want to talk about that."
But some city and county officials say that the changes are likely to overwhelm local law enforcement agencies and that the state has not given them enough time or money to prepare. Last week, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and the city's police chief, Charlie Beck, said they would have to reassign 150 police officers to help monitor the former inmates.
Sheriff Scott R. Jones of Sacramento County has been one of the most outspoken critics of the plan, saying it is likely to drive up crime. He called it a "collision course with disaster," because there is not enough money for the counties.
"To do all the things that they are asking everyone to do will cost an enormous amount of money, and we don't have it," Sheriff Jones said. "If this doesn't work, it's not like we get to go back and try again - we're going to be stuck with the consequences."
Sheriff Jones said the state might have been better off simply releasing 10,000 inmates, so it could use the extra time to figure out how to get more money or create a more comprehensive system for counties. "It's not like we're ready, because we're not, and it's not like we know what is best, because we don't," he added. "The only thing that is driving this is a court demand."
But Mr. Cate dismissed the criticisms, saying the state had no other choice and had been coordinating plans for months.
"Everyone just wants to inoculate themselves from any kind of crime increase and blame it on realignment," Mr. Cate said. "This is some massive change. It's going to be subtle and happen over time."
Counties across the state have been working "feverishly" to figure out their plans to handle the new responsibilities, said Sheriff Mark Pazin of Merced County, president of the California State Sheriffs' Association.
"It's a little tiring that we're finally at the point where we have to do something and people start to react by just hitting the panic button," Sheriff Pazin said.
Studies show that reduced sentences do not cause drastic increases in crime, he said, and many counties are working on alternative programs. "We need to be concentrating on what works best and how we can actually turn things around," he said.
Sheriff Pazin said Mr. Brown had reassured him that the state would consider changing the way money is allocated to individual counties. Officials hope that five years from now, they will be able to determine which counties have been most effective at reducing the recidivism rate.
But several advocates for prisoners say they worry that the state is not doing enough to ensure that the counties will consider alternatives to jail, and several counties have said they will deal with the influx simply by adding more beds to their jails. Many of the county jails across the state are already overcrowded, and the Los Angeles County jails are being investigated by the F.B.I. over accusations of inmate abuse by deputies.
"There are no kind of guiding principles or oversight or monitoring," said Donald Specter, the director of the Prison Law Office, which argued for the prisoners in the Supreme Court case. "I think there will be extreme variations, where some counties just will use the money to lock them up with no support and others who really try to figure out real solutions."
Any violent crime committed by one of the former inmates is likely to grab headlines, but it will be years before the state can measure the impact of the change.
"We don't have a lot of options," Mr. Cate said. "The question years from now will really be: Did we avoid a disaster?"
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5) How the FBI's Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots "Foiled" in the US Since 9/11
By Trevor Aaronson, Mother Jones
Posted on October 9, 2011, Printed on October 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152670/how_the_fbi%27s_network_of_informants_actually_created_most_of_the_terrorist_plots_%22foiled%22_in_the_us_since_9_11
UPDATE: On September 28, Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-old graduate of Northeastern University, was arrested and charged with providing resources to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to destroy national defense premises. Ferdaus, according to the FBI, planned to blow up both the Pentagon and Capitol Building with a "large remote controlled aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives."
The case was part of a nearly ten-month investigation led by the FBI. Not surprisingly, Ferdaus' case fits a pattern detailed by Trevor Aaronson in his article below: the FBI provided Ferdaus with the explosives and materials needed to pull off the plot. In this case, two undercover FBI employees, who Ferdaus believed were al Qaeda members, gave Ferdaus $7,500 to purchase an F-86 Sabre model airplane that Ferdaus hoped to fill with explosives. Right before his arrest, the FBI employees gave Ferdaus, who lived at home with his parents, the explosives he requested to pull off his attack. And just how did the FBI come to meet Ferdaus? An informant with a criminal record introduced Ferdaus to the supposed al Qaeda members.
To learn more about how the FBI uses informants to bust, and sometimes lead, terrorist plots, read Aaronson's article below.
James Cromitie [8] was a man of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi," he once said [9].
A 45-year-old Walmart stocker who'd adopted the name Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam during a prison stint for selling cocaine, Cromitie had lots of worries-convincing his wife he wasn't sleeping around, keeping up with the rent, finding a decent job despite his felony record. But he dreamed of making his mark. He confided as much in a middle-aged Pakistani he knew as Maqsood.
"I'm gonna run into something real big [10]," he'd say. "I just feel it, I'm telling you. I feel it."
Maqsood and Cromitie had met at a mosque in Newburgh, a struggling former Air Force town about an hour north of New York City. They struck up a friendship, talking for hours about the world's problems and how the Jews were to blame.
It was all talk until November 2008, when Maqsood pressed his new friend.
"Do you think you are a better recruiter or a better action man?" Maqsood asked [11].
"I'm both," Cromitie bragged.
"My people would be very happy to know that, brother. Honestly."
"Who's your people?" Cromitie asked.
"Jaish-e-Mohammad."
Maqsood said he was an agent for the Pakistani terror group, tasked with assembling a team to wage jihad in the United States. He asked Cromitie what he would attack if he had the means. A bridge, Cromitie said.
"But bridges are too hard to be hit," Maqsood pleaded, "because they're made of steel."
"Of course they're made of steel," Cromitie replied. "But the same way they can be put up, they can be brought down."
Maqsood coaxed Cromitie toward a more realistic plan. The Mumbai attacks were all over the news, and he pointed out how those gunmen targeted hotels, cafés, and a Jewish community center.
"With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone," Cromitie told his friend. "But not me, because I'm intelligent." The pair settled on a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, and then fire Stinger missiles at airplanes taking off from Stewart International Airport in the southern Hudson Valley. Maqsood would provide all the explosives and weapons, even the vehicles. "We have two missiles, okay?" he offered [12]. "Two Stingers, rocket missiles."
Maqsood was an undercover operative; that much was true. But not for Jaish-e-Mohammad. His real name was Shahed Hussain [13], and he was a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI's No. 1 priority, consuming the lion's share of its budget-$3.3 billion, compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime-and much of the attention of field agents and a massive, nationwide network of informants. After years of emphasizing informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies-many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. In addition, for every informant officially listed in the bureau's records, there are as many as three unofficial ones, according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as "hip pockets."
The informants could be doctors, clerks, imams. Some might not even consider themselves informants. But the FBI regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO [14], the program the bureau ran from the '50s to the '70s to discredit and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.
Throughout the FBI's history, informant numbers have been closely guarded secrets. Periodically, however, the bureau has released those figures. A Senate oversight committee in 1975 found the FBI had 1,500 informant [15]s [15]. In 1980, officials disclosed there were 2,800 [16]. Six years later, following the FBI's push into drugs and organized crime, the number of bureau informants ballooned to 6,000, the Los Angeles Times reported [16] in 1986. And according to the FBI, the number grew significantly after 9/11. In its fiscal year 2008 budget authorization request [17], the FBI disclosed that it it had been been working under a November 2004 presidential directive demanding an increase [18] in "human source development and management," and that it needed $12.7 million [19] for a program to keep tabs on its spy network and create software to track and manage informants.
The bureau's strategy has changed significantly from the days when officials feared another coordinated, internationally financed attack from an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Today, counterterrorism experts believe groups like Al Qaeda, battered by the war in Afghanistan and the efforts of the global intelligence community, have shifted to a franchise model, using the internet to encourage sympathizers to carry out attacks in their name. The main domestic threat, as the FBI sees it, is a lone wolf.
The bureau's answer has been a strategy known variously as "preemption," "prevention," and "disruption"-identifying and neutralizing potential lone wolves before they move toward action. To that end, FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.
Here's how it works: Informants report to their handlers on people who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names are then cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records. FBI agents may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical. Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, there's an arrest-and a press conference [20] announcing another foiled plot.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro [21] bombing plot? The New York subway [22] plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower [23]? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree [24] lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.
Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley have examined prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as defined by the Department of Justice. Our investigation found:
* Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations. (For more on the details of those 508 cases, see our charts page [6] and searchable database [25].)
* Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur-an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
* With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing [26] the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet [27], an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport; and failed Times Square bomberFaisal Shahzad [28].)
* In many sting cases, key encounters between the informant and the target were not recorded-making it hard for defendants claiming entrapment to prove their case.
* Terrorism-related charges are so difficult to beat in court, even when the evidence is thin, that defendants often don't risk a trial.
"The problem with the cases we're talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents," says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York's Herald Square [22] subway station. "They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror." In the FBI's defense, supporters argue that the bureau will only pursue a case when the target clearly is willing to participate in violent action. "If you're doing a sting right, you're offering the target multiple chances to back out," says Peter Ahearn, a retired FBI special agent who directed the Western New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and oversaw the investigation of the Lackawanna Six [29], an alleged terror cell near Buffalo, New York. "Real people don't say, 'Yeah, let's go bomb that place.' Real people call the cops."
Even so, Ahearn concedes that the uptick in successful terrorism stings might not be evidence of a growing threat so much as a greater focus by the FBI. "If you concentrate more people on a problem," Ahearn says, "you'll find more problems." Today, the FBI follows up on literally every single call, email, or other terrorism-related tip it receives for fear of missing a clue.
And the emphasis is unlikely to shift anytime soon. Sting operations have "proven to be an essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing potential terror attacks," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a December 2010 speech [45] to Muslim lawyers and civil rights activists. President Obama's Department of Justice has announced sting-related prosecutions at an even faster clip than the Bush administration, with 44 new cases since January 2009. With the war on terror an open-ended and nebulous conflict, the FBI doesn't have an exit strategy.
Located deep in a wooded area on a Marine Corps base west of Interstate 95-a setting familiar from Silence of the Lambs-is the sandstone fortress of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. This building, erected under J. Edgar Hoover, is where to this day every FBI special agent is trained.
J. Stephen Tidwell graduated from the academy in 1981 and over the years rose to executive assistant director, one of the 10 highest positions in the FBI; in 2008, he coauthored the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG [46] (PDF), the manual for what agents and informants can and cannot do.
A former Texas cop, Tidwell is a barrel-chested man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He's led some of the FBI's highest-profile investigations, including the DC sniper case and the probe of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.
On a cloudy spring afternoon, Tidwell, dressed in khakis and a blue sweater, drove me in his black Ford F-350 through Hogan's Alley [47]-a 10-acre Potemkin village with houses, bars, stores, and a hotel. Agents learning the craft role-play stings, busts, and bank robberies here, and inside jokes and pop-culture references litter the place (which itself gets its name from a 19th-century comic strip). At one end of the town is the Biograph Theater, named for the Chicago movie house where FBI agents gunned down John Dillinger [48] in 1934. ("See," Tidwell says. "The FBI has a sense of humor.")
Inside the academy, a more somber tone prevails. Plaques everywhere honor agents who have been killed on the job. Tidwell takes me to one that commemorates John O'Neill, who became chief of the bureau's then-tiny counterterrorism section in 1995. For years before retiring from the FBI, O'Neill warned [49] of Al Qaeda's increasing threat, to no avail. In late August 2001, he left the bureau to take a job as head of security for the World Trade Center, where he died 19 days later at the hands of the enemy he'd told the FBI it should fear. The agents he had trained would end up reshaping the bureau's counterterrorism operations.
Before 9/11, FBI agents considered chasing terrorists an undesirable career path, and their training did not distinguish between Islamic terror tactics and those employed by groups like the Irish Republican Army. "A bombing case is a bombing case," Dale Watson, who was the FBI's counterterrorism chief on 9/11, said in a December 2004 deposition. The FBI also did not train agents in Arabic or require most of them to learn about radical Islam. "I don't necessarily think you have to know everything about the Ku Klux Klan to investigate a church bombing," Watson said. The FBI had only one Arabic speaker [50] in New York City and fewer than 10 nationwide.
But shortly after 9/11, President George W. Bush called FBI Director Robert Mueller to Camp David. His message: never again. And so Mueller committed to turn the FBI into a counterintelligence organization rivaling Britain's MI5 in its capacity for surveillance and clandestine activity. Federal law enforcement went from a focus on fighting crime to preventing crime; instead of accountants and lawyers cracking crime syndicates, the bureau would focus on Jack Bauer-style operators disrupting terror groups.
To help run the counterterrorism section, Mueller drafted Arthur Cummings, a former Navy SEAL who'd investigated the first World Trade Center bombing. Cummings pressed agents to focus not only on their immediate target, but also on the extended web of people linked to the target. "We're looking for the sympathizer who wants to become an operator, and we want to catch them when they step over that line to operator," Cummings says. "Sometimes, that step takes 10 years. Other times, it takes 10 minutes." The FBI's goal is to create a hostile environment for terrorist recruiters and operators-by raising the risk of even the smallest step toward violent action. It's a form of deterrence, an adaptation of the "broken windows" theory used to fight urban crime. Advocates insist it has been effective, noting that there hasn't been a successful large-scale attack against the United States since 9/11. But what can't be answered-as many former and current FBI agents acknowledge-is how many of the bureau's targets would have taken the step over the line at all, were it not for an informant.
So how did the FBI build its informant network? It began by asking where US Muslims lived. Four years after 9/11, the bureau brought in a CIA expert on intelligence-gathering methods named Phil Mudd [51]. His tool of choice was a data-mining system using commercially available information, as well as government data such as immigration records, to pinpoint the demographics of specific ethnic and religious communities-say, Iranians in Beverly Hills or Pakistanis in the DC suburbs.
The FBI officially denies that the program, known as Domain Management, works this way-its purpose, the bureau says, is simply to help allocate resources according to threats. But FBI agents told me that with counterterrorism as the bureau's top priority, agents often look for those threats in Muslim communities-and Domain Management allows them to quickly understand those communities' makeup. One high-ranking former FBI official jokingly referred to it as "Battlefield Management."
Some FBI veterans criticized the program as unproductive and intrusive-one told Mudd during a high-level meeting that he'd pushed the bureau to "the dark side." That tension has its roots in the stark difference between the FBI and the CIA: While the latter is free to operate internationally without regard to constitutional rights, the FBI must respect those rights in domestic investigations, and Mudd's critics saw the idea of targeting Americans based on their ethnicity and religion as a step too far.
Nonetheless, Domain Management quickly became the foundation for the FBI's counterterrorism dragnet. Using the demographic data, field agents were directed to target specific communities to recruit informants. Some agents were assigned to the task full time. And across the bureau, agents' annual performance evaluations are now based in part on their recruiting efforts.
People cooperate with law enforcement for fairly simple reasons: ego, patriotism, money, or coercion. The FBI's recruitment has relied heavily on the latter. One tried-and-true method is to flip someone facing criminal charges. But since 9/11 the FBI has also relied heavily on Immigration and Customs Enforcement [42], with which it has worked closely as part of increased interagency coordination. A typical scenario will play out like this: An FBI agent trying to get someone to cooperate will look for evidence that the person has immigration troubles. If they do, he can ask ICE to begin or expedite deportation proceedings. If the immigrant then chooses to cooperate, the FBI will tell the court that he is a valuable asset, averting deportation.
Sometimes, the target of this kind of push is the one person in a mosque who will know everyone's business-the imam. Two Islamic religious leaders, Foad Farahi[52] in Miami and Sheikh Tarek Saleh in New York City, are currently fighting deportation proceedings that, they claim, began after they refused to become FBI assets. The Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center has filed similar complaints on behalf of seven other Muslims with the Department of Homeland Security.
Once someone has signed on as an informant, the first assignment is often a fishing expedition. Informants have said in court testimony that FBI handlers have tasked them with infiltrating mosques without a specific target or "predicate"-the term of art for the reason why someone is investigated. They were, they say, directed to surveil law-abiding Americans with no indication of criminal intent.
"The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause," says Farhana Khera, executive director of the San Francisco-based civil rights group Muslim Advocates. "That raises serious constitutional issues."
Tidwell himself will soon have to defend these practices in court-he's among those named in a class-action lawsuit [53] (PDF) over an informant's allegation that the FBI used him to spy on a number of mosques in Southern California.
That informant, Craig Monteilh, is a convicted felon who made his money ripping off cocaine dealers before becoming an asset for the Drug Enforcement Administration and later the FBI. A well-muscled 49-year-old with a shaved scalp, Monteilh has been a particularly versatile snitch: He's pretended to be a white supremacist, a Russian hit man, and a Sicilian drug trafficker. He says when the FBI sent him into mosques (posing as a French-Syrian Muslim), he was told to act as a decoy for any radicals who might seek to convert him-and to look for information to help flip congregants as informants, such as immigration status, extramarital relationships, criminal activities, and drug use. "Blackmail is the ultimate goal," Monteilh says.
Officially, the FBI denies it blackmails informants. "We are prohibited from using threats or coercion," says Kathleen Wright, an FBI spokeswoman. (She acknowledges that the bureau has prevented helpful informants from being deported.)
FBI veterans say reality is different from the official line. "We could go to a source and say, 'We know you're having an affair. If you work with us, we won't tell your wife,'" says a former top FBI counterterrorism official. "Would we actually call the wife if the source doesn't cooperate? Not always. You do get into ethics here-is this the right thing to do?-but legally this isn't a question. If you obtained the information legally, then you can use it however you want."
But eventually, Monteilh's operation imploded in spectacular fashion. In December 2007, police in Irvine, California, charged him with bilking two women out of $157,000 as part of an alleged human growth hormone scam. Monteilh has maintained it was actually part of an FBI investigation, and that agents instructed him to plead guilty to a grand-theft charge and serve eight months so as not to blow his cover. The FBI would "clean up" the charge later, Monteilh says he was told. That didn't happen, and Monteilh has alleged in court filings that the government put him in danger by letting fellow inmates know that he was an informant. (FBI agents told me the bureau wouldn't advise an informant to plead guilty to a state criminal charge; instead, agents would work with local prosecutors to delay or dismiss the charge.)
The class-action suit, filed by the ACLU, alleges that Tidwell, then the bureau's Los Angeles-based assistant director, signed off on Monteilh's operation. And Tidwell says he's eager to defend the bureau in court. "There is not the blanket suspicion of the Muslim community that they think there is," Tidwell says. "We're just looking for the bad guys. Anything the FBI does is going to be interpreted as monitoring Muslims. I would tell [critics]: 'Do you really think I have the time and money to monitor all the mosques and Arab American organizations? We don't. And I don't want to.'"
Shady informants, of course, are as old as the FBI; one saying in the bureau is, "To catch the devil, you have to go to hell." Another is, "The only problem worse than having an informant is not having an informant." Back in the '80s, the FBI made a cottage industry of drug stings-a source of countless Hollywood plots, often involving briefcases full of cocaine and Miami as the backdrop.
It's perhaps fitting, then, that one of the earliest known terrorism stings also unfolded in Miami, though it wasn't launched by the FBI. Instead the protagonist was a Canadian bodyguard and, as a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, newspaper put it in 2002 [54], "a 340-pound man with a fondness for firearms and strippers." He subscribed to Soldier of Fortune [55] and hung around a police supply store on a desolate stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, north of Miami.
Howard Gilbert aspired to be a CIA agent but lacked pertinent experience. So to pad his résumé, he hatched a plan to infiltrate a mosque in the suburb of Pembroke Pines by posing as a Muslim convert named Saif Allah [56]. He told congregants that he was a former Marine and a security expert, and one night in late 2000, he gave a speech about the plight of Palestinians.
"That was truly the night that launched me into the terrorist umbrella of South Florida," Gilbert would later brag [57] to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Nineteen-year-old congregant Imran Mandhai, stirred by the oration, approached Gilbert and asked if he could provide him weapons and training. Gilbert, who had been providing information to the FBI, contacted his handlers and asked for more money to work on the case. (He later claimed that the bureau had paid him $6,000.) But he ultimately couldn't deliver-the target had sensed something fishy about his new friend.
The bureau also brought in Elie Assaad [58], a seasoned informant originally from Lebanon. He told Mandhai that he was an associate of Osama bin Laden tasked with establishing a training camp in the United States. Gilbert suggested attacking electrical substations in South Florida, and Assaad offered to provide a weapon. FBI agents then arrested Mandhai; he pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison. It was a model of what would become the bureau's primary counterterrorism M.O.-identifying a target, offering a plot, and then pouncing.
Gilbert himself didn't get to bask in his glory; he never worked for the FBI again and died in 2004. Assaad, for his part, ran into some trouble when his pregnant wife called 911. She said Assaad had beaten and choked her to the point that she became afraid [59] for her unborn baby; he was arrested, but in the end his wife refused to press charges.
The jail stint didn't keep Assaad from working for the FBI on what would turn out to be perhaps the most high-profile terrorism bust of the post-9/11 era. In 2005, the bureau got a tip [60] from an informant about a group of alleged terrorists in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood. The targets wereseven men [61]-some African American, others Haitian-who called themselves the "Seas of David" [62] and ascribed to religious beliefs that blended Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The men were martial-arts enthusiasts who operated out of a dilapidated warehouse, where they also taught classes for local kids. The Seas of David's leader was Narseal Batiste [63], the son of a Louisiana preacher, father of four, and a former Guardian Angel.
In response to the informant's tip, the FBI had him wear a wire during meetings with the men, but he wasn't able to engage them in conversations about terrorist plots. So he introduced the group to Assaad, now playing an Al Qaeda operative. At the informant's request, Batiste took photographs of the FBI office in North Miami Beach and was caught on tape discussing a notion to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago. Assaad led Batiste, and later the other men, in swearing an oath to Al Qaeda, though the ceremony (recorded and entered into evidence at trial) bore a certain "Who's on First?" flavor:
"God's pledge is upon me, and so is his compact," Assaad said as he and Batiste sat in his car. "Repeat after me."
"Okay. Allah's pledge is upon you."
"No, you have to repeat exactly. God's pledge is upon me, and so is his compact. You have to repeat."
"Well, I can't say Allah?" Batiste asked.
"Yeah, but this is an English version because Allah, you can say whatever you want, but-"
"Okay. Of course."
"Okay."
"Allah's pledge is upon me. And so is his compact," Batiste said, adding: "That means his angels, right?"
"Uh, huh. To commit myself," Assaad continued.
"To commit myself."
"Brother."
"Brother," Batiste repeated.
"Uh. That's, uh, what's your, uh, what's your name, brother?"
"Ah, Brother Naz."
"Okay. To commit myself," the informant repeated.
"To commit myself."
"Brother."
"Brother."
"You're not-you have to say your name!" Assaad cried.
"Naz. Naz."
"Uh. To commit myself. I am Brother Naz. You can say, 'To commit myself.'"
"To commit myself, Brother Naz."
Things went smoothly until Assaad got to a reference to being "protective of the secrecy of the oath and to the directive of Al Qaeda."
Here Batiste stopped. "And to...what is the directive of?"
"Directive of Al Qaeda," the informant answered.
"So now let me ask you this part here. That means that Al Qaeda will be over us?"
"No, no, no, no, no," Assaad said. "It's an alliance."
"Oh. Well..." Batiste said, sounding resigned.
"It's an alliance, but it's like a commitment, by, uh, like, we respect your rules. You respect our rules," Assaad explained.
"Uh, huh," Batiste mumbled.
"And to the directive of Al Qaeda," Assaad said, waiting for Batiste to repeat.
"Okay, can I say an alliance?" Batiste asked. "And to the alliance of Al Qaeda?"
"Of the alliance, of the directive-" Assaad said, catching himself. "You know what you can say? And to the directive and the alliance of Al Qaeda."
"Okay, directive and alliance of Al Qaeda," Batiste said.
"Okay," the informant said. "Now officially you have commitment and we have alliance between each other. And welcome, Brother Naz, to Al Qaeda."
Or not. Ultimately, the undercover recordings made by Assaad suggest that Batiste, who had a failing drywall business and had trouble making the rent for the warehouse, was mostly trying to shake down his "terrorist" friend. After first asking the informant for $50,000, Batiste is recorded in conversation after conversation asking how soon he'll have the cash.
"Let me ask you a question," he says in one exchange. "Once I give you an account number, how long do you think it's gonna take to get me something in?"
"So you is scratching my back, [I'm] scratching your back-we're like this," Assaad dodged.
"Right," Batiste said.
The money never materialized. Neither did any specific terrorist plot. Nevertheless, federal prosecutors charged (PDF [64]) Batiste and his cohorts-whom the media dubbed the Liberty City Seven-with conspiracy to support terrorism, destroy buildings, and levy war against the US government. Perhaps the key piece of evidence was the video of Assaad's Al Qaeda "oath." Assaad was reportedly paid [65] $85,000 for his work on the case; the other informant got $21,000.
James J. Wedick, a former FBI agent, was hired to review the Liberty City case as a consultant for the defense. In his opinion, the informant simply picked low-hanging fruit. "These guys couldn't find their way down the end of the street," Wedick says. "They were homeless types. And, yes, we did show a picture where somebody was taking the oath to Al Qaeda. So what? They didn't care. They only cared about the money. When we put forth a case like that to suggest to the American public that we're protecting them, we're not protecting them. The agents back in the bullpen, they know it's not true."
Indeed, the Department of Justice had a difficult time winning convictions in the Liberty City case. In three separate trials, juries deadlocked [66] on most of the charges, eventually acquitting one of the defendants (charges against another were dropped) and convicting five of crimes that landed them in prison for between 7 to 13 years. When it was all over, Assaad told ABC News' Brian Ross [58] that he had a special sense for terrorists: "God gave me a certain gift."
But he didn't have a gift for sensing trouble. After the Liberty City case, Assaad moved on to Texas and founded a low-rent modeling agency [67]. In March, when police tried to pull him over, he led them in a chase through El Paso [68] (with his female passenger jumping out at one point), hit a cop with his car, and ended up rolling his SUV on the freeway. Reached by phone, Assaad declined to comment. He's saving his story, he says, for a book he's pitching to publishers.
Not all of the more than 500 terrorism prosecutions [25] reviewed in this investigation are so action-movie ready. But many do have an element of mystery. For example, though recorded conversations are often a key element of prosecutions, in many sting cases the FBI didn't record large portions of the investigation, particularly during initial encounters or at key junctures during the sting. When those conversations come up in court, the FBI and prosecutors will instead rely on the account of an informant with a performance bonus on the line.
One of the most egregious examples of a missing recording involves a convoluted tale that begins in the early morning hours of November 1, 2009, with a date-rape allegation on the campus of Oregon State University. Following a Halloween party, 18-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud [70], a Somali-born US citizen, went home with another student. The next morning, the woman reported to police that she believed she had been drugged.
Campus police brought Mohamud in for questioning and a polygraph test; FBI agents, who for reasons that have not been disclosed had been keeping an eye on the teen for about a month, were also there [71]. Mohamud claimed that the sex was consensual, and a drug test given to his accuser eventually came back negative.
During the interrogation, OSU police asked Mohamud if a search of his laptop would indicate that he'd researched date-rape drugs. He said it wouldn't and gave them permission to examine his hard drive. Police copied its entire contents and turned the data over to the FBI-which discovered, it later alleged in court documents, that Mohamud had emailed someone in northwest Pakistan talking about jihad.
Soon after his run-in with police, Mohamud began to receive emails from "Bill Smith," a self-described terrorist who encouraged him to "help the brothers." "Bill," an FBI agent, arranged for Mohamud to meet one of his associates in a Portland hotel room. There, Mohamud told the agents that he'd been thinking of jihad since age 15. When asked what he might want to attack, Mohamud suggested the city's Christmas tree lighting ceremony [72]. The agents set Mohamud up with a van that he thought was filled with explosives. On November 26, 2010, Mohamud and one of the agents drove the van to Portland's Pioneer Square, and Mohamud dialed [73] the phone to trigger the explosion. Nothing. He dialed again. Suddenly FBI agents appeared and dragged him away as he kicked and yelled, "Allahu akbar!" Prosecutors charged him with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction; his trial is pending.
The Portland case has been held up as an example of how FBI stings can make a terrorist where there might have been only an angry loser. "This is a kid who, it can be reasonably inferred, barely had the capacity to put his shoes on in the morning," Wedick says.
But Tidwell, the retired FBI official, says Mohamud was exactly the kind of person the FBI needs to flush out. "That kid was pretty specific about what he wanted to do," he says. "What would you do in response? Wait for him to figure it out himself? If you'll notice, most of these folks [targeted in stings] plead guilty. They don't say, 'I've been entrapped,' or, 'I was immature.'" That's true-though it's also true that defendants and their attorneys know that the odds of succeeding at trial are vanishingly small. Nearly two-thirds of all terrorism prosecutions since 9/11 have ended in guilty pleas, and experts hypothesize that it's difficult for such defendants to get a fair trial. "The plots people are accused of being part of-attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building-are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury," notes David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied these types of cases.
But the Mohamud story wasn't quite over-it would end up changing the course of another case on the opposite side of the country. In Maryland, rookie FBI agent Keith Bender had been working a sting against 21-year-old Antonio Martinez [74], a recent convert to Islam who'd posted inflammatory comments on Facebook [75]("The sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease inshallah"). An FBI informant had befriended Martinez and, in recorded conversations, they talked about attacking a military recruiting station.
Just as the sting was building to its climax, Martinez saw news reports about the Mohamud case, and how there was an undercover operative involved. He worried: Was he, too, being lured into a sting? He called his supposed terrorist contact: "I'm not falling for no BS," he told him [75].
Faced with the risk of losing the target, the informant-whose name is not revealed in court records-met with Martinez and pulled him back into the plot. But while the informant had recorded numerous previous meetings with Martinez, no recording [76] was made for this key conversation; in affidavits, the FBI blamed a technical glitch. Two weeks later, on December 8, 2010, Martinez parked what he thought was a car bomb in front of a recruitment center and was arrested when he tried to detonate [77] it.
Frances Townsend, who served as homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, concedes that missing recordings in terrorism stings seem suspicious. But, she says, it's more common than you might think: "I can't tell you how many times I had FBI agents in front of me and I yelled, 'You have hundreds of hours of recordings, but you didn't record this meeting.' Sometimes, I admit, they might not record something intentionally"-for fear, she says, that the target will notice. "But more often than not, it's a technical issue."
Wedick, the former FBI agent, is less forgiving. "With the technology the FBI now has access to-these small devices that no one would ever suspect are recorders or transmitters-there's no excuse not to tape interactions between the informant and the target," he says. "So why in many of these terrorism stings are meetings not recorded? Because it's convenient for the FBI not to record."
So what really happens as an informant works his target, sometimes over a period of years, and eases him over the line? For the answer to that, consider once more the case of James Cromitie [8], the Walmart stocker with a hatred of Jews. Cromitie was the ringleader in the much-publicized Bronx synagogue bombing plot that went to trial last year [78]. But a closer look at the record reveals that while Cromitie was no one's idea of a nice guy, whatever leadership existed in the plot emanated from his sharply dressed, smooth-talking friend Maqsood, a.k.a. FBI informant Shahed Hussain.
A Pakistani refugee who claimed to be friends with Benazir Bhutto and had a soft spot for fancy cars, Hussain was by then one of the FBI's more successful counterterrorism informants. (See our timeline of Hussain's career as an informant [13].) He'd originally come to the bureau's attention when he was busted in a DMV scam [79] that charged test takers $300 to $500 for a license. Having "worked off" those charges, he'd transitioned from indentured informant to paid snitch, earning as much as $100,000 per assignment.
Hussain was assigned to visit a mosque in Newburgh, where he would start conversations with strangers about jihad [80]. "I was finding people who would be harmful, and radicals, and identify them for the FBI," Hussain said during Cromitie's trial. Most of the mosque's congregants were poor, and Hussain, who posed as a wealthy businessman and always arrived in one of his four luxury cars [81]-a Hummer, a Mercedes, two different BMWs-made plenty of friends. But after more than a year working the local Muslim community, he had not identified a single actual target [82].
Then, one day in June 2008, Cromitie approached Hussain in the parking lot outside the mosque. The two became friends, and Hussain clearly had Cromitie's number. "Allah didn't bring you here to work for Walmart," he told him [83] at one point.
Cromitie, who once claimed he could "con the corn from the cob," had a history of mental instability. He told a psychiatrist that he saw and heard things that weren't there and had twice tried to commit suicide [84]. He told tall tales, most of them entirely untrue-like the one about how his brother stole $126 million worth of stuff from Tiffany.
Exactly what Hussain and Cromitie talked about in the first four months of their relationship isn't known, because the FBI did not record [85] those conversations. Based on later conversations, it's clear that Hussain cultivated Cromitie assiduously. He took the target, all expenses paid [86] by the FBI, to an Islamic conference in Philadelphia to meet Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a prominent African-American Muslim leader. He helped pay Cromitie's rent [87]. He offered to buy him a barbershop [88]. Finally, he asked Cromitie to recruit others [89] and help him bomb synagogues.
On April 7, 2009, at 2:45 p.m., Cromitie and Hussain sat on a couch inside an FBI cover house on Shipp Street in Newburgh. A hidden camera [90] was trained on the living room.
"I don't want anyone to get hurt," Cromitie told the informant [91].
"Who? I-"
"Think about it before you speak," Cromitie interrupted.
"If there is American soldiers, I don't care," Hussain said, trying a fresh angle.
"Hold up," Cromitie agreed. "If it's American soldiers, I don't even care."
"If it's kids, I care," Hussain said. "If it's women, I care."
"I care. That's what I'm worried about. And I'm going to tell you, I don't care if it's a whole synagogue of men."
"Yep."
"I would take 'em down, I don't even care. 'Cause I know they are the ones."
"We have the equipment to do it."
"See, see, I'm not worried about nothing. Ya know? What I'm worried about is my safety," Cromitie said.
"Oh, yeah, safety comes first."
"I want to get in and I want to get out."
"Trust me," Hussain assured.
At Cromitie's trial, Hussain would admit that he created the-in his word-"impression" that Cromitie would make a lot of money by bombing synagogues.
"I can make you $250,000, but you don't want it, brother," he once told [92] Cromitie when the target seemed hesitant. "What can I tell you?" (Asked about the exchange in court, Hussain said that "$250,000" was simply a code word for the bombing plot-a code word, he admitted, that only he knew.)
But whether for ideology or money, Cromitie did recruit three others, and they did take photographs of Stewart International Airport in Newburgh as well as of synagogues in the Bronx. On May 20, 2009, Hussain drove Cromitie [93] to the Bronx, where Cromitie put what he believed were bombs [94] inside cars he thought had been parked by Hussain's coconspirators. Once all the dummy bombs were placed, Cromitie headed back to the getaway car [95]-Hussain was in the driver's seat-and then a SWAT team surrounded the car.
At trial, Cromitie told the judge [96]: "I am not a violent person. I've never been a terrorist, and I never will be. I got myself into this stupid mess. I know I said a lot of stupid stuff." He was sentenced to 25 years.
For his trouble, the FBI paid Hussain $96,000 [97]. Then he moved on to another case, another mosque, somewhere in the United States.
For this project, Mother Jones partnered with the University of California-Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program [98], headed by Lowell Bergman, where Trevor Aaronson [1] was an investigative fellow. The Fund for Investigative Journalism [99] also provided support for Aaronson's reporting. Lauren Ellis [100] and Hamed Aleaziz [101] contributed additional research.
Trevor Aaronson is an Investigative Reporting Program fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.
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6) Japan Studies Radiation Effects on Children
By HIROKO TABUCHI
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/japan-studies-radiation-effects-on-children.html?hp
TOKYO - In an effort to track the long-term health effects of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan has begun a long-term survey of local children for thyroid abnormalities, a problem associated with exposure to radiation.
The study comes in response to concerns over the health consequences of the serious radiation leaks caused by multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March. Japanese officials hope to study about 360,000 children who were under 18 at the time of the accident and track their health through their lifetimes, according to Fukushima Prefecture officials.
Children and pregnant women are particularly sensitive to radioactive iodine, which can harm the thyroid, studies after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have shown. According to research presented at a 2006 global conference, at least 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer among children have been linked to Chernobyl's fallout.
On Sunday, the first day of the Fukushima study, more than 100 children were tested. Specific test results will not be made public, according to Fukushima Prefecture. But the children, who will be tested every two years until they turn 20 and every five years after that, will receive further care if doctors discover abnormalities.
Almost 20,000 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, which also ravaged the Fukushima plant and led to a huge release of radioactive substances into the environment. Although no deaths have yet been linked to radiation, concerns remain high over its long-term health effects.
Tens of thousands of people are unable or unwilling to return to their homes because of fears of contamination in the area. A 12-mile evacuation zone remains in effect around the Fukushima plant, though some areas have been exempted in a bid by the government to reassure evacuees that it is safe to return to some regions.
Officials in those regions have begun decontaminating public areas by removing the topsoil from school playgrounds and hosing down roads and buildings. Government officials have acknowledged, however, that areas closer to the stricken plant may be off limits for decades.
A team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Fukushima on Sunday to monitor Japan's decontamination efforts. The I.A.E.A. group will visit schools and farms and meet with government officials throughout Fukushima, the agency said on its Web site. It is the nuclear agency's second major mission to Japan since the accident.
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7) Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling
By ROBERT PEAR
October 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/us/recession-officially-over-us-incomes-kept-falling.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.
Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession - from December 2007 to June 2009 - household income fell 3.2 percent.
The finding helps explain why Americans' attitudes toward the economy, the country's direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of the 2012 presidential campaign.
President Obama recently called the economic situation "an emergency," and over the weekend he assailed Congressional Republicans for opposing his jobs bill, which includes tax cuts that would raise take-home pay. Republicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a blizzard of regulations and promised future tax increases that have hurt business and consumer confidence.
Those arguments may be heard repeatedly this week, as the Senate begins debating the jobs bill. The full bill - a mix of tax cuts, public works, unemployment benefits and other items, costing $447 billion - is unlikely to pass, but individual parts seem to have a significant chance.
The full 9.8 percent drop in income from the start of the recession to this June - the most recent month in the study - appears to be the largest in several decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline "a significant reduction in the American standard of living."
That reduction occurred even though the unemployment rate fell slightly, to 9.2 percent in June compared with 9.5 percent two years earlier. Two main forces appear to have held down pay: the number of people outside the labor force - neither working nor looking for work - has risen; and the hourly pay of employed people has failed to keep pace with inflation, as the prices of oil products and many foods have jumped.
During the recession itself, by contrast, wage gains outpaced inflation.
One reason pay has stagnated is that many people who lost their jobs in the recession - and remained out of work for months - have taken pay cuts in order to be hired again. In a separate study, Henry S. Farber, an economics professor at Princeton, found that people who lost jobs in the recession and later found work again made an average of 17.5 percent less than they had in their old jobs.
"As a labor economist, I do not think the recession has ended," Mr. Farber said. "Job losers are having more trouble than ever before finding full-time jobs."
Mr. Farber added that this downturn was "fundamentally different" from most previous ones. Historically, other economists say, financial crises and debt-caused bubbles have led to deeper, more protracted downturns.
Mr. Green and Mr. Coder said the persistently high rate of unemployment and the long duration of unemployment helped explain the decline in income during the recovery.
In the recession, the average length of time a person who lost a job was unemployed increased to 24.1 weeks in June 2009, from 16.6 weeks in December 2007, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since the end of the recession, that figure has continued to increase, reaching 40.5 weeks in September, the longest in more than 60 years.
The new study by Mr. Green and Mr. Coder is based on monthly census surveys, rather than the annual data that appeared in last month's census report on income. The monthly figures allow researchers to measure income changes more precisely during a recession or a recovery and provide more current information. The annual report is based on surveys conducted early in the following year, and people sometimes confuse how much money they are making at the time of the survey with how much they made the previous year. Additionally, recessions usually do not line up with a calendar year.
A committee of academic economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group widely considered the arbiter of the business cycle, judged that the most recent recession began in December 2007. The bureau defines a recession as a significant, broad-based decline in economic activity.
The economists said the recession ended in June 2009. In every quarter since then, the economy has grown.
Some economists see signs that the United States may be in or about to enter another recession, though the evidence is mixed.
In their new study, Mr. Green and Mr. Coder found that income dropped more, in percentage terms, for some groups already making less, a factor that they say may have contributed to rising income inequality.
From June 2007 to June of this year, they said, median annual household income declined by 7.8 percent for non-Hispanic whites, to $56,320, and by 6.8 percent for Hispanics, to $39,901. For blacks, household income declined 9.2 percent, to $31,784.
Mr. Green and Mr. Coder, who both worked at the Census Bureau for more than 25 years, found other income changes over the four-year period examined.
For example, income, after adjustment for inflation, declined fairly substantially for households headed by people under age 62, but it rose 4.7 percent for those headed by people 65 to 74, many of whom are not in the labor force. The change was negligible for those 62 to 64.
The type of employment also made a difference. Real median annual income declined to a similar degree for households headed by private-sector wage workers (4.3 percent) and government-sector workers (3.9 percent), but fell much more for the self-employed (12.3 percent).
Family households generally had larger declines in real income than other households. Men living alone showed a bigger decline than women living alone.
Education levels were also a factor. Median annual income declined most for households headed by someone with an associate's degree, dropping 14 percent, to $53,195, in the four-year period that ended in June 2011, the report said.
For households headed by people who had not completed high school, median income declined by 7.9 percent, to $25,157. For those with a bachelor's degree or more, income declined by 6.8 percent, to $82,846.
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8) About That 99 Percent
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
October 10, 2011, 2:07 pm
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/about-that-99-percent/?src=busln
I received an e-mail over the weekend from a reader asking for some statistical context for the Occupy Wall Street protesters' "99 Percent" rallying cry. Who exactly are the people in the top 1 percent of the economy? How much do they make, and how much are they worth?
CATHERINE RAMPELL
Dollars to doughnuts.
Here are some numbers:
American households right at the 99th percentile (that is, the cut-off for the top 1 percent) will earn about $506,553 in cash income this year, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis. The income curve is very steep at the high end, meaning that people just a few tenths of a percentile point above that make much, much more. A family at the 99.5th percentile, for example, makes $815,868; its neighbor at the 99.9th percentile makes more than double that, at $2,075,574 a year.
The top 1 percent of American earners receive about a fifth of the country's income, according to Thomas Picketty and Emmanuel Saez, two economists who study inequality.
But as we've noted before, economic inequality isn't just about what you make each year. It's about how much wealth you have already accumulated, too. And inequality is far, far greater when you include wealth.
According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization, the top 1 percent of Americans by net worth hold about a third of American wealth.
The cutoff for the 99th percentile in net worth was $19,167,600 as of 2007, based on this research.
That means, of course, that the bottom 99 percent of Americans includes an awful lot of millionaires.
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9) Police Assault Occupy Boston! Help us!
Occupy Boston Press Statement: http://occupyboston.com/2011/10/11/boston-police-brutally-assault-occupy-boston/
Legal aid: https://www.wepay.com/donate/42546
http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyBOS_Media
http://occupyboston.com/
http://www.occupytogether.org/
Boston Police Brutally Assault Occupy Boston
Posted on October 11, 2011 by JPo
*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 11th, 2011*
Contacts: OccupyBostonMedia@gmail.com
Twitter: @occupyBOS_media
Boston Police Brutally Assault Occupy Boston
At 1:30 this morning hundreds of police in full riot gear brutally attacked Occupy Boston, which had peacefully gathered on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Boston Police Department made no distinction between protesters, medics, or legal observers, arresting legal observer Urszula Masny-Latos, who serves as the Executive Director for the National Lawyers Guild, as well as four medics attempting to care for the injured.
Earlier in the day, an estimated ten thousand union members, students, veterans, families, men, and women of all ages marched from the Boston Common to Dewey Square, and then to the North Washington Bridge to demand economic reform on Wall Street and the end of special interest influence in Washington.
Following this massive outpouring of public support, dozens of police vans descended on the Greenway, with batons drawn, assaulting protesters and arresting more than one-hundred people. Members of Veterans for Peace carrying American flags were pushed to the ground and their flags trampled as the police hauled them away.
Following the raid, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis made no mention of veterans, organized labor, students, or families, nor did he issue an apology for his department's aggressive tactics. Since the beginning of its occupation, Occupy Boston has worked tirelessly and successfully to maintain a positive working relationship with city officials. Today's reprehensible attack by the Boston Police Department against a movement that enjoys the broad support of the American people represents a sad and disturbing shift away from dialogue and towards violent repression.
Despite the city's attempt to silence us, Occupy Boston remains, and bears no ill-will towards the men and women of the Boston Police Department who were simply following orders. We hope that someday the peaceful pursuit of economic justice will not provoke the beating of elderly veterans and the arrest of medics and legal observers. We encourage everyone who continues to feel as strongly as we do about limiting the influence of Wall Street on our democracy to join us tomorrow, and in the future, down in Dewey Square.
"We will occupy. We are the 99 percent and we are no longer silent."
Occupy Boston is the beginning of an ongoing discussion about reforming Wall Street and removing special interests from government. The continuing occupation of Dewey Square (outside South Station) is just one of more than 120 separate Occupy encampments in cities across the nation and a symbol for "Occupiers" everywhere who support real and lasting change. Video: http://youtu.be/ZpttXetMX78.
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10) Who Do the White Shirt Police Report to at Occupy Wall Street Protests?
Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
by PAM MARTENS
October 10, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/
Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches. Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file. Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.
If you're a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public's radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It's called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York's finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City's 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: "... regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?"
Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department. Now corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up limited liability corporations to run upwards of $250,000 in Paid Detail work billed to the city.
When the infamously mismanaged Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, collapsed on September 15, 2008, its bankruptcy filings in 2009 showed it owed money to 21 members of the NYPD's Paid Detail Unit. (A phone call and email request to the NYPD for information on which Wall Street firms participate in the program were not responded to. The police unions appear to have only scant information about the program.)
Other Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.
The New York Stock Exchange is the building in front of which the Occupy Wall Street protesters have unsuccessfully tried to protest, being herded behind metal barricades, clubbed with night sticks, kicked in the face and carted off to jail rather than permit the last plantation in America to be defiled with citizen chants and posters. (A sample of those politically inconvenient posters and chants: "The corrupt are afraid of us; the honest support us; the heroic join us"; "Tell me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like"; "I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one." The last sign refers to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, giving corporations First Amendment personhood, which allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.)
On September 8, 2004, Robert Britz, then President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, testified as follows to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services:
"...we have implemented new hiring standards requiring former law enforcement or military backgrounds for the security staff...We have established a 24-hour NYPD Paid Detail monitoring the perimeter of the data centers...We have implemented traffic control and vehicle screening at the checkpoints. We have installed fixed protective planters and movable vehicle barriers."
Military backgrounds; paid NYPD 24-7; checkpoints; vehicle barriers? It might be insightful to recall that the New York Stock Exchange originally traded stocks with a handshake under a Buttonwood tree in the open air on Wall Street.
In his testimony, the NYSE executive Britz states that "we" did this or that while describing functions that clearly belong to the City of New York. The New York Stock Exchange at that time had not yet gone public and was owned by those who had purchased seats on the exchange - primarily, the largest firms on Wall Street. Did the NYSE simply give itself police powers to barricade streets and set up checkpoints with rented cops? How about clubbing protesters on the sidewalk?
Just six months before NYSE executive Britz' testimony to a congressional committee, his organization was being sued in the Supreme Court of New York County for illegally taking over public streets with no authority to do so. This action had crippled the business of a parking garage, Wall Street Garage Parking Corp., the plaintiff in the case. Judge Walter Tolub said in his opinion that
"...a private entity, the New York Stock Exchange, has assumed responsibility for the patrol and maintenance of truck blockades located at seven intersections surrounding the NYSE...no formal authority appears to have been given to the NYSE to maintain these blockades and/or conduct security searches at these checkpoints...the closure of these intersections by the NYSE is tantamount to a public nuisance...The NYSE has yet to provide this court with any evidence of an agreement giving them the authority to maintain the security perimeter and/or conduct the searches that their private security force conducts daily. As such, the NYSE's actions are unlawful and may be enjoined as they violate plaintiff's civil rights as a private citizen."
The case was appealed, the ruling overturned, and sent back to the same Judge who had no choice but to dismiss the case on the appellate ruling that the plaintiff had suffered no greater harm than the community at large. Does everyone in lower Manhattan own a parking garage that is losing its customer base because the roads are blocked to the garage?
Some believe that Wall Street is given special privileges and protection because New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg owes his $18.1 billion in wealth (yes, he's that 1 percent the 99 percent are protesting) to Wall Street. The Mayor was previously a trader for Salomon Brothers, the investment bank made famous for attempting to rig the U.S. Treasury market in two-year notes.
The Mayor's business empire which bears his name, includes the awesome Bloomberg terminal, a computer that houses enormous pricing data for stocks and bonds, research, news, charting functions and much more. There are currently an estimated 290,000 of these terminals on Wall Street trading floors around the globe, generating approximately $1500 in rental fees per terminal per month. That's a cool $435 million a month or $5.2 billion a year, the cash cow of the Bloomberg businesses.
The Bloomberg businesses are run independently from the Mayor but he certainly knows that his terminal is a core component of his wealth. Nonetheless, the Mayor is not Wall Street's patsy. Bloomberg Publishing is frequently in the forefront of exposing fraud on Wall Street such as the 2001 tome "The Pied Pipers of Wall Street" by Benjamin Mark Cole, which exposed the practice of releasing fraudulent stock research to the public. Bloomberg News was responsible for court action that forced the Federal Reserve to release the details of what it did with trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to Wall Street firms, hedge funds and foreign banks.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly may also have a soft spot for Wall Street. He was formerly Senior Managing Director of Global Corporate Security at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the Wall Street firm that collapsed into the arms of JPMorgan in March of 2008.
There has also been a bizarre revolving door between the Wall Street millionaires and the NYPD at times. One of the most puzzling career moves was made by Stephen L. Hammerman. He left a hefty compensation package as Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2002 to work as Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters for the NYPD from 2002 to 2004. That move had everyone on Wall Street scratching their head at the time. Merrill collapsed into the arms of Bank of America on September 15, 2008, the same date that Lehman went under.
Wall Street is not the only sector renting cops in Manhattan. Department stores, parks, commercial banks and landmarks like Rockefeller Center, Jacob Javits Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral have also participated in the Paid Detail Unit, according to insiders. But Wall Street is the only sector that runs a private justice system where its crimes are herded off to secret arbitration tribunals, has sucked on the public teat to the tune of trillions of dollars, escaped prosecution for the financial collapse, and can put an armed municipal force on the sidewalk to intimidate public protestors seeking a realignment of their democracy.
We may be learning a lot more in the future about the tactics Wall Street and the NYPD have deployed against the Occupy Wall Street protestors. The highly regarded Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has filed a class action lawsuit over the approximately 700 arrests made on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. The formal complaint and related information is available at the organization's web site, www.JusticeOnLine.org.
The organization was founded by Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. The Washington Post has called them "the constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation."
The suit names Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, the City of New York, 30 unnamed members of the NYPD, and, provocatively, 10 unnamed law enforcement officers not employed by the NYPD.
The lawsuit lays out dwhat has been curtailing the constitutional rights of protestors for a very long time in New York City.
"As seen in the movements for social change in the Middle East and Europe, all movements for social justice, jobs, and democracy need room to breathe and grow and it is imperative that there be a halt to law enforcement actions used to shut down mass assembly and free expression of the people seeking to redress grievances...
"After escorting and leading a group of demonstrators and others well out onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway, the NYPD suddenly and without warning curtailed further forward movement, blocked the ability of persons to leave the Bridge from the rear, and arrested hundreds of protestors in the absence of probable cause. This was a form of entrapment, both illegal and physical.
"That the trap and detain mass arrest was a command-level-driven intentional and calculated police operation is evidenced by the fact that the law enforcement officials who led the demonstration across the bridge were command officials, known as 'white shirts.' "
In April 2001, I was arrested and incarcerated by the NYPD while peacefully handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside of the Citigroup shareholders meeting - flyers that warned of growing corruption inside the company. (The unlawful merger of Travelers Group and Citibank created Citigroup and resulted in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the depression era investor protection legislation that barred depositor banks from merging with high-risk Wall Street firms. Many of us from social justice groups in New York City had protested against the repeal but were out maneuvered by Wall Street's political pawns in Washington.)
Out of a group of about two dozen protestors from the National Organization for Women in New York City, Rain Forest Action Network, and Inner City Press, I was the only person arrested. There was no civil disobedience occurring. Rain Forest Action Network was handing out fortune cookies with prescient warnings about Citigroup and urging pedestrians to cut up their Citibank credit cards. The rest of us were peacefully handing out flyers.
Chained to a metal bar inside the police precinct, I was grilled on any crimes I might know about. I responded that the only crimes I knew about were listed on the flyer and apparently, in New York City, one gets arrested for disclosing crimes by Wall Street firms.
A mysterious, mature, white shirted inspector who ordered my arrest on the sidewalk, and refused to give his first name, disappeared from the police report when it was filed, blaming the arrest instead on a young police officer. Citigroup is only alive today because the Federal government inserted a feeding tube into Citigroup and infused over $2 trillion in loans, direct investment and guarantees as the company veered toward collapse.
The NYPD at the time of my arrest was run by Bernard Kerik - the man President George W. Bush later sent to Iraq to be the interim Interior Minister and train Iraqi police. The President subsequently nominated Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security for the entire nation. The nation was spared of that eventuality only because of an illegal nanny popping up. Today, Kerik is serving a four year sentence in Federal prison for a variety of criminal acts.
The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a Federal lawsuit on my behalf (Martens v. Giuliani) and we learned that the NYPD had arbitrarily established a policy to arrest and hold for 72 hours any person protesting in a group of 20 or more. The case was settled for a modest monetary award and the repeal by the NYPD of this unconstitutional and despicable practice.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street's private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com
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11) Hunger strikes will continue until prisoners' demands respected
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
The Electronic Intifada
Haifa
October 10, 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/content/hunger-strikes-will-continue-until-prisoners-demands-respected/10470#.TpRj0OtAvIY.email
HAIFA (IPS) - Sitting in the shade of a small lemon tree in the German Colony area of Haifa, eight Palestinian activists have been on hunger strike since last weekend in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners who have been going without food for nearly two weeks in protest against poor prison conditions and a lack of basic rights.
"I decided to participate in the hunger strike in order to support the political prisoners, the freedom fighters, imprisoned in the Israeli dungeons. As a Palestinian, I know for sure that those fighters, those men and women, have fought in order to defend my rights," Muhannad Abu Ghosh, a Haifa resident and one of the hunger strikers, said.
"This hunger strike declared in Haifa is breaking through the borders which were put by the Israeli occupation throughout the years," Abu Ghosh added.
More than 100 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails began an open-ended hunger strike on 27 September. Their demands include stopping Israel's use of solitary confinement, including that of Ahmad Saadat, general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), rectifying the arbitrary nature of denying family visits, and ending the routine humiliation of detainees during prison transfer.
Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are now said to be participating in acts of civil disobedience, including the hunger strike, in various Israeli-controlled prisons.
"I think that one of the main goals of our strike is to encourage the political prisoners, the political heroes, in continuing with their strike, (and) to fight for their basic and essential right to live peacefully," Nizar Jubran, a 22-year-old student and another hunger striker in Haifa said.
"They already know that we have started the strike here and I think that it encouraged them, when they are all alone in the prison and they can't see anyone. It will inspire them and will encourage them to continue their strike and fight for their rights."
Netanyahu denies right to education
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last June that he was imposing harsher conditions on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including ending their access to university education and books, due to the fact that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
More severe restrictions following Netanyahu's announcement included intensifying prisoner searches and placing Palestinian political leaders in solitary confinement, among others.
More than 5,200 Palestinian prisoners and security detainees were held in Israeli prisons at the end of August 2011, according to statistics provided by the Israeli Prison Service. It is estimated that Israel has detained over 700,000 Palestinians - 20 percent of the total Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank and Gaza - since the Israeli occupation began in 1967.
According to Sahar Francis, director of Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners support organization based in Ramallah, the Israeli prison authorities have worsened their treatment of Palestinian prisoners since their hunger strike began.
"In Ofer prison, three of the prisoners on the hunger strike were beaten and attacked by soldiers on their way from the detention facility to the court. They told the lawyers as well that, for the last couple of days, because they are on a hunger strike, every night the prison guards take them and force them to walk all over the prison in order to tire them. This is to put pressure on them so they will stop their strike," Francis said.
While initially led by prisoners affiliated with the PFLP, the hunger strike has extended to prisoners from other Palestinian political factions, including Hamas and Fatah.
Prisoners' demands are basic
"The other political groups will support the hunger strike three days a week, and if they feel that there's no positive reaction from the Israeli authorities, they will join the strike [full-time]. All the prisoners believe at this point that their demands are not very high and it's very basic rights that they are demanding," Francis said.
Demonstrations have been held in the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel in support of the prisoners' hunger strike, while activists from around the world staged protests, sit-ins and day-long hunger strikes in London, Edinburgh and Brussels, among other cities on 7 October.
According to Francis, this international support is important in order to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinian prisoners and the political context within which they are being denied their rights.
"It's related to the political discourse and the issue of the exchange with Gilad Shalit that failed. When comparing with what the Israeli political leaders are saying in their speeches on the issue of the prisoners, it's very clear that they are acting as a kind of revenge," Francis said.
"Now they're reacting in a very tough way to this strike. The Israeli authorities are not hearing what the prisoners want. They are not open to dialogue or discussion. But I don't think the prisoners will stop the strike without having achieved an agreement and succeeding to guarantee that they will get these rights back."
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12) States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare
By A. G. SULZBERGER
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/states-adding-drug-test-as-hurdle-for-welfare.html?hp
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - As more Americans turn to government programs for refuge from a merciless economy, a growing number are encountering a new price of admission to the social safety net: a urine sample.
Policy makers in three dozen states this year proposed drug testing for people receiving benefits like welfare, unemployment assistance, job training, food stamps and public housing. Such laws, which proponents say ensure that tax dollars are not being misused and critics say reinforce stereotypes about the poor, have passed in states including Arizona, Indiana and Missouri.
In Florida, people receiving cash assistance through welfare have had to pay for their own drug tests since July, and enrollment has shrunk to its lowest levels since the start of the recession.
The law, the most far-reaching in the nation, provoked a lawsuit last month from the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the requirement represents an unreasonable search and seizure.
The flood of proposals across the country, enabled by the strength of Republicans in many statehouses and driven by a desire to cut government spending, recall the politics of the '80s and '90s, when higher rates of drug abuse and references to "welfare queens" led to policies aimed at ensuring that public benefits were not spent to support addiction.
Supporters of the policies note that public assistance is meant to be transitional and that drug tests are increasingly common requirements for getting jobs.
"Working people today work very hard to make ends meet, and it just doesn't seem fair to them that their tax dollars go to support illegal things," said Ellen Brandom, a Republican state representative in Missouri.
The last three years, she sponsored legislation requiring testing of welfare recipients, and her bill was signed by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, in July.
Advocates for the poor say the testing policies single out and vilify victims of the recession, disputing the idea that people on public assistance are more likely to use drugs. They also warn that to the extent that testing programs were successful in blocking some people from receiving benefits, the inability to get money for basic needs would aggravate drug addictions and increase demand for treatment.
At Operation Breakthrough, which provides day care services to low-income women here in Kansas City, Nicole, 22, who asked to be identified only by her first name, began to cry as she described trying to provide for her three children on a monthly welfare check of $342, plus $642 in food stamps.
Her electricity was cut off that morning, she said, which meant she could be evicted from her subsidized housing. The struggle to make ends meet while pursuing a health care degree was so consuming that the idea of taking drugs seemed ridiculous, she added.
Kimberley Davis, the director of social services for Operation Breakthrough, said the legislation sent a bad message. "All this does is perpetuate the stereotype that low-income people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts and if all they did was pick themselves up from the bootstraps then the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in," Ms. Davis said.
Many states have already established ways to prevent people with known drug problems from receiving benefits - about 20 states prohibit unemployment payments for anyone who lost a job because of drug use, and more than a dozen states refuse welfare payments to anyone convicted of a drug felony.
But, as tight state budgets have raised concern about government spending and fostered an impatience with aid to the poor, these efforts have gone further. Some point to federal statistics showing that unemployed adults are about twice as likely as employed adults to have used drugs in the previous month.
This year, 36 states considered drug testing for recipients of cash assistance from the major welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures; 12 states proposed it for unemployment insurance; and some also considered making it a requirement for food stamps, home heating assistance and other programs.
At the same time, a number of cities, including Chicago and Flint, Mich., considered drug testing public housing residents. There have also been proposals in Congress for nationwide testing of welfare recipients.
To date, most of the proposals have failed to win support because of concerns about legality, stemming from a decade-old federal court ruling. That ruling struck down a Michigan law that mandated testing for all welfare recipients as a violation of the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Money has also been an issue - the sides dispute whether the savings in unpaid benefits will eclipse the spending on administration, including the cost of testing.
"It really speaks to how the politics of the moment are dominating the policy conversation in the virtual absence of any evidence," said Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago whose research has indicated that people on welfare used drugs at rates similar to the general population.
In Arizona, under a 2009 program reauthorized this year, applicants are tested if they answer yes to a question about recent drug use. Only 16 out of 64,000 answered yes; 931 did not submit the form. The state estimated the savings on benefits had totaled $116,000.
The law in Florida, where the average recipient receives $253 a month for less than five months, is more expansive. It requires applicants to pay for their own drug tests, which the state says costs up to $40, and the state will reimburse those who pass. People who fail the test are disqualified for one year - six months if they receive treatment - and are reported to the Florida abuse hot line. Payments to children can continue through another person, like a grandparent.
Since July, 7,030 passed, 32 failed and 1,597 did not provide results, according to the state. The state said it does not track what drugs caused failures, but elsewhere the vast majority of cases involved marijuana.
Both sides have seized on the early results. Opponents argue that they suggest the number of drug users among people who receive public benefits is lower than the general population, and proponents say that it suggests that drug users are being deterred from taking the test.
A decline in the number of applicants appears to have accelerated since the testing started, according to a spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families.
State leaders have defended the program as "nothing more than an additional eligibility criteria," noting that applicants are free to decline benefits if they do not want to be tested.
"To me it's real simple: money is going to go to the benefit of children, not to a parent using drugs," said Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who campaigned on the proposal.
Arthenia L. Joyner, a Democratic leader in the State Senate who introduced a bill to repeal the law, said that now was not the right time for such policies.
"There are millions of people seeking aid from the state for the first time because they have lost their jobs and they still have children to feed and bills to pay," she said. "These people now are having to suffer the indignity of having to undergo a drug test."
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13) At One College, a Fight Over Required Drug Tests
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/us/at-linn-state-technical-a-fight-over-required-drug-tests.html?ref=us
Linn State Technical College in Linn, Mo., informed students this semester that they would be required to submit to a urine test that would be checked for illegal drugs as a condition of studying at the college. Almost immediately, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued on behalf of several dissenting Linn State students and have won a temporary injunction. The A.C.L.U. says Linn State is the first public college in the country to require all adult students to submit to mandatory drug tests. Linn State officials however, say the policy is legal and was developed in the interest of their 1,200 students.
The tests, which require a $50 fee per student, would be used to determine the presence of the following, according to the university: cocaine; amphetamines and methamphetamines; marijuana; opiates; PCP; benzodiazepines; barbiturates; methadone; methaqualone; propoxyphene; and oxycodone. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Oct. 25. Kent Brown, the college's lawyer, discusses.
QUESTION Why did Linn State decide drug testing was necessary?
ANSWER There are several reasons that culminated in the decision. It was a progression, I would say. Several of the programs have been drug tested previously, either because there's a federal or state law or regulation that requires it. The school has advisory councils that are made up of businesses that would be potential businesses to hire our graduates that support the program with their expertise, and those advisory councils have been surveyed and the majority of their comments is that drug testing is pretty well becoming the norm in their industries so there was that vector also that was moving toward drug testing. And the third thing that I would identify: the college has been moving toward its mission, which is preparing students for profitable employment and a lifetime of learning. And there was a feeling that the college wasn't properly stepping up to prepare the students for getting jobs in industries where drug testing was becoming the norm and an unavoidable barrier to getting and keeping the good jobs in the industry. There was an educational motivation as well. And that, and other miscellaneous things, I think motivated the adoption of the policy.
Q. How many students had been tested prior to the injunction?
A. About 540. It was all of the incoming freshmen and any student who had not been involved for a semester.
Q. Did any students refuse to take the test?
A. No. People showed up and took the test and no one objected.
Q. Would they have been expelled otherwise?
A. That's not accurate. They would be administratively withdrawn if they refused to participate in the drug screening program. The drug screening program is more than just a drug test. There are several ways where students can actually avoid giving a test and continue going to school. They, for example, can petition the president of the college and if they have a valid reason why they should not be required to participate - that's one reason to be excused from the test. The program applies to all students. Any concerns that they had would be answered. They would talk to school counselors, and if they just flat-out refused to participate in this, I guess, ultimately, if they did this they would be administratively withdrawn or they could withdraw themselves.
Q. What would be a valid excuse for opting out of a test?
A. The policy does give some valid examples, and I would certainly not speak for Dr. Claycomb, the president of the college, and the board. But for example, I would assume, you know, if someone had an extraordinarily confidential blood problem that would be disclosed or would be shown by this testing - and I don't think anything would - if that's a possibility, that would be a good reason for them to be excluded.
Q. Is there precedent for this?
A. There is certainly precedent for drug testing, which is a much more punitive screen then what we're doing. The industries that we train students for, for example, I believe there's a federal regulation that over-the-road truckers are randomly drug tested. So our students who are applying for a commercial driver's license have to do drug testing under the federal regulation or they can't get their license. There is precedent in the industries that the students will be applying to work in. And I think a lot of notoriety has arisen from the fact that there's a perception we are testing an entire student body. Well, the student body at Linn State is very different from, for example, the University of Missouri or Harvard or some place like that. We are a technical college. We do heavy equipment operations. The vast majority of our training programs deal with either high-voltage electricity or heavy equipment operations, for dangerous, caustic chemicals or combinations of the above. All of these things are things we need to guard against for the safety of the students.
Q. What would the punishment be if someone tested positive?
A. We don't view it as a punishment, but the response would be, well, they'd of course have appeal rights if they think something was wrong with the test, But assuming everyone agreed, they'd have to meet with a counselor and then they can participate in an online program designed to avoid drug abuse and dependence. There are options for education. And they would retest, and originally, it would have been about 45 days later. So there's no adverse action from a positive initial test. It would not be until a second or even a third bad test that they would seriously be considered to be forced out of the college.
Q. Did graduates have problems with failed drug tests at their jobs? Is that the reason for this?
A. I probably need to answer that this way: I can't give you specific examples, but it would not surprise me at all if some students encountered difficulties with drug tests after they graduated. The members of our advisory councils for various programs were some of the initiators of this idea and I doubt they would have brought it up if it hadn't been a problem. We don't have any statistics once they graduate.
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14) New Tool for Police, the Video Camera, and New Legal Issues to Go With It
By ERICA GOODE
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/police-using-body-mounted-video-cameras.html?ref=us
When a man was fatally shot by a police officer on a street in Oakland, Calif., late last month, the shooting was captured by a video camera.
But the video was not taken by an alert pedestrian with an iPhone. It was recorded by a device clipped onto the police officer's chest.
The Oakland Police Department is one of hundreds of law enforcement agencies that are trying out the body-mounted video cameras, using them to document arrests, traffic stops and even more significant encounters, like officer-involved shootings.
The cameras, legal experts say, are the latest addition in a world where everyone is increasingly watching everyone else.
The police already record illegal left turns and ignored stop signs using cameras mounted on the dashboards of cruisers - evidence displayed vividly on video screens in courtrooms, sometimes to the chagrin of drivers who have just insisted they did no such thing.
Surveillance cameras watch for shoplifters and potential terrorists. And ever since a bystander recorded Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King in 1991, video has been used by witnesses or suspects to record what they believe to be misconduct or inappropriate behavior by the police - a practice that has proliferated with the advent of smart phones.
The ubiquity of video in police encounters - some of it promptly uploaded onto YouTube - is creating new frontiers for judges and lawmakers, who must sort out the issues raised by the new technologies.
Courts in several states are considering cases where citizens who videotaped the police have been charged with violating wiretapping or eavesdropping statutes, prosecution that civil rights lawyers say violates First Amendment rights.
If body cameras are widely adopted by police departments - Vievu, the Seattle-based firm that sold Oakland its cameras, has supplied them to more than 1,100 police agencies across the country, according to Heidi Traverso, a company spokeswoman - privacy questions are likely to be added to the legal stew.
"If a police officer is taking a picture of every interaction, one of the things that he may find is me, naked as a jay bird, when my wife calls to complain," said Franklin E. Zimring, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. "Let's assume that it's either against the law or not, but I sure don't want it on YouTube. The potential for a sort of permanent embarrassment is a looming presence when everything is filmed."
Police officers argue that the pager-size devices, which are more versatile and cost far less than dashboard cameras, can provide objective evidence in situations that might otherwise depend on "he said, she said" accounts. Indeed, the videotape of the police shooting in Oakland is likely to play a critical role in the investigation by the department's Internal Affairs division. The department has not released the names of the victim or the officers involved in the shooting.
Video from the cameras has also been used in Oakland to evaluate citizen complaints about police behavior, said Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the department, adding that in one case - she declined to provide the details - an officer's video proved that a complaint was unfounded.
Some legal experts also say that the more video evidence available, the better.
"With all its ambiguities and difficulties, the photographic brave new world is better than its predecessor," Professor Zimring said. "The kinds of mistakes you can make with it are less often and less catastrophic" than with dueling verbal renditions of what occurred.
Howard Wasserman, a First Amendment scholar at Florida International University's law school, noted that video recordings were not free from subjective interpretation.
"Film and literary theory show that it is a myth that video evidence is an unambiguous, objective, conclusive, singular and clear reproduction of reality," Professor Wasserman wrote in a 2009 paper on the implications of video recordings for civil rights litigation.
But he, too, said that a world where "all encounters can be recorded by everybody" is "not necessarily a bad state of affairs."
If nothing else, he and other legal scholars said, the adoption of the body cameras by police departments may help discourage attempts to prosecute citizens for making their own video records of police interactions, in most cases under wiretapping or eavesdropping laws that prohibit recording without consent from both parties.
In Maryland, for example, a speeding motorcyclist, Anthony Graber, was charged with illegal wiretapping last year when he used a helmet-mounted camera to record the state trooper who pulled him over, and then posted the resulting video on YouTube. A judge later threw out the charges, saying that Mr. Graber was within his rights in making the video.
In Illinois, Christopher Drew, an artist, may not be so lucky. He used a digital audio recorder to document his arrest for selling art without a permit in 2009 - a friend also videotaped the arrest and uploaded it on YouTube - and was promptly charged under the state's unusually restrictive eavesdropping law, which makes recording a police officer without consent a class 1 felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The case has not yet come to trial.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, arguing that Illinois' statute violates the First Amendment and would keep the organization's members from monitoring citizen-police interactions, filed a lawsuit in 2010 challenging the law. A district court dismissed the case. The civil liberties group is now appealing the judgment.
Professor Wasserman noted that if the police are also videotaping their actions, "to say 'we can have the cameras and nobody else can' really becomes problematic."
He pointed to a sweeping decision issued by a federal appeals court in Massachusetts in August in the case of Simon Glik, a recent law school graduate who was charged under the state's wiretapping law in 2007 after he used his cellphone to videotape three uniformed police officers he believed were using excessive force. In ruling on a civil rights lawsuit brought by Mr. Glik after the wiretapping charges were dismissed, the appeals court judges said he "was exercising his clearly established First Amendment rights in filming the officers in a public space."
David Milton, a lawyer who represented Mr. Glik, said he hoped that the federal court's ruling would influence cases in other states, like the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
"It's such a strong decision and it's well reasoned and the first decision that really addresses this case," Mr. Milton said. "It's only fair and right that citizens should have the right to record the police."
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15) Hedge Fund Assets Back Above 2006 Levels: Data
"Funds that manage more than $1 billon grew their assets $150 billion to $1.85 trillion during the six months through June and the top 345 firms now manage some 82 percent of industry assets, the data shows. ...Assets rose in the United States, which is still the largest center for hedge fund managers and sits on close to three quarters of total assets, as well as in Europe."
By REUTERS
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/10/11/business/business-us-financial-hedgefunds-assets.html?src=busln
LONDON (Reuters) - Global hedge fund assets rose 6.7 percent to $2.16 trillion in the first half of the year as investors backed the bigger, established managers to steer them through volatile markets, data showed on Tuesday.
The rise in assets means the industry is now managing more than in 2006, but less than its pre-credit crunch peak in 2007, when assets briefly topped $2.6 trillion, according to the research by HedgeFund Intelligence.
Hedge funds have been slowly rebuilding their businesses after losing around 30 percent of their assets during and after the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis.
While the trend since then has generally been upwards, the bigger managers are enjoying almost all of the recent rise in assets, according to the data.
Funds that manage more than $1 billon grew their assets $150 billion to $1.85 trillion during the six months through June and the top 345 firms now manage some 82 percent of industry assets, the data shows.
The increase in assets comes despite many hedge funds struggling to turn a profit this year, with Hedge Fund Research's HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index 4.74 percent lower in 2011.
Man Group Plc's computer-driven AHL fund has lost an estimated 1.5 percent, based on Monday's net asset value per share, while John Paulson's Advantage Plus Fund has tumbled almost 47 percent in 2011, two people who saw the numbers said.
The rise in total assets was not uniform across geographies.
Assets rose in the United States, which is still the largest center for hedge fund managers and sits on close to three quarters of total assets, as well as in Europe.
However, Asia saw its share drop 5 percent, HedgeFund Intelligence cited a survey from news and data provider AsiaHedge as showing.
Almost $100 billion is now held in hedge fund strategies only available under onshore UCITS-compliant format, wrappers which allow financial institutions to sell funds into any European Union country after approval from a single member state, HedgeFund Intelligence also said.
(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Laurence Fletcher and David Holmes)
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16) US court turns down Philly DA in cop-killing case
AP
Tue, Oct 11, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/us-court-turns-down-philly-da-cop-killing-142151283.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request from prosecutors who want to re-impose a death sentence on former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of killing a white Philadelphia police officer 30 years ago.
The justices on Tuesday refused to get involved in the racially charged case. A federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal after finding that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were potentially misleading.
Courts have upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction for killing Officer Daniel Faulkner over objections that African-Americans were improperly excluded from the jury.
The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said prosecutors could agree to a life sentence for Abu-Jamal or try again to sentence him to death.
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17) Justifying the Killing of an American
New York Times Editorial
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/opinion/justifying-the-killing-of-an-american.html?hp
The Obama administration apparently spent months considering the legal implications of targeting Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen who was killed in Yemen last month after being accused of being a terrorist organizer. It prepared a detailed and cautious memorandum to justify the decision - a refreshing change from the reckless legal thinking of the Bush administration, which rationalized torture, claimed unlimited presidential powers and drove the country's fight against terrorists off the rails.
But the memo, as reported by Charlie Savage in The Times, is an insufficient foundation for a momentous decision by the government to kill one of its own citizens, no matter how dangerous a threat he was believed to be. For one thing, the administration has refused to make it public or even acknowledge its existence. It was described to Mr. Savage by anonymous officials, and the administration will not openly discuss even its most basic guidelines for choosing assassination targets.
The decision to kill Mr. Awlaki was made entirely within the executive branch. The memo was not shared with Congress, nor did any independent judge or panel of judges pass judgment. The administration set aside Mr. Awlaki's rights to due process.
President Obama said Mr. Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, had taken "the lead role in planning and directing the efforts to murder innocent Americans." The administration said he inspired several planned terrorist attacks, including the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. (Testimony in the trial of the accused bomber began on Tuesday.) Officials have said Mr. Awlaki's role went beyond inspiration into operational planning of attacks, though they have not supplied proof of that. If the White House would release the evidence it has to back up these claims, it would have a better chance of justifying the cleric's death.
The memo, prepared by two lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, said Mr. Awlaki could be killed because he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, but it stopped short of analyzing the quality of the evidence. It said joining an enemy force deprived him of a citizen's due process rights, citing several Supreme Court rulings that put the protection of innocent lives above the risk of possible death of a suspect.
Mr. Awlaki was not entitled to full protections - an open-court trial in absentia would have been time-wasting and impractical - but as an American, he was entitled to some. The memo said Mr. Awlaki should be captured if feasible - an important principle, even though the government did not believe it could safely put commandos in Yemen to capture him.
Due process means more than a military risk analysis. It requires unambiguous and public guidelines for how the United States will follow federal and international law in approving targeted killings, particularly of Americans. And it means taking the decision beyond the executive echo chamber. We have argued that judicial review is required, perhaps a closed-door court similar to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, before anyone, especially a citizen, is placed on an assassination list.
The Obama administration seems to know that antiterrorist operations do not escape the rule of law. Its case would be far stronger if it would say so, out loud.
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18) A Year Out of the Dark in Chile, but Still Trapped
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/world/americas/chiles-rescued-miners-face-major-struggles-a-year-later.html?hp
COPIAPÓ, Chile - After his dramatic rescue from a mine last year, Jimmy Sánchez traveled the world, cruising the Greek islands, visiting Britain, Israel, Los Angeles, Disney World - all paid for by people who were moved by the Chilean miners' story of courage and perseverance.
But today Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 33 miners who survived 69 days nearly a half-mile underground, is jobless and at wits' end. Twice a month, he boards a bus to Santiago, Chile's capital, traveling 11 hours each way for a short visit with a psychiatrist. He is one of nine miners receiving sick-leave pay for prolonged post-traumatic stress; a handful of others say they are seeing private therapists.
"Most of us are in the same place with emotional and psychological problems," said Mr. Sánchez, 20. "It was the fear that we would never again see our families, that we were going to die. We just can't shake those memories."
One year after their globally televised rescue, after the worldwide spotlight faded and the trips and offers have dwindled, the miners say that most of them are unemployed and that many are poorer than before.
Only a handful of them have steady jobs, they say. Just four have returned to mining. Two others, Víctor Zamora and Darío Segovia, are trying to make ends meet by selling fruits and vegetables, one from a stall, the other out of his truck.
"They made us feel like heroes," said Edison Peña, another miner, who is now in a psychiatric clinic. "In the end, we are selling peanuts. It's ironic, isn't it?"
Some miners have been paid to do interviews or give motivational speeches. But those opportunities proved fleeting for most. Now many are counting on a Hollywood movie about them - which still does not have a script - to be their economic savior.
Mr. Peña, the miner who became famous for his love of Elvis Presley and running, is coping with trauma caused not only by his time below but also by the aftermath of the rescue, when the demands of instant celebrity proved overwhelming, his doctor said, leading him to abuse drugs and alcohol.
Three miners, including Mr. Sánchez and Mr. Segovia, recently resumed psychiatric treatment after the nightmares and sleeplessness returned. Doctors said that they expected more of them to have a relapse, and that many now get by on a steady regimen of sedatives and antidepressants.
"This is very similar to how Vietnam veterans suffered," said Rodrigo Gillibrand, the psychiatrist treating the nine men on sick leave covered by labor insurance, though the mine has been closed down. "They have post-traumatic symptoms that could be chronic."
In the wake of the rescue, the miners benefited from an outpouring of sympathy and support. A Chilean mining magnate, Leonardo Farkas, gave the miners more than $15,000 each so they could rest and recuperate. He also gave free homes to two who were marrying, and he said he helped one miner find psychiatric care after the miner found his fiancée with another man.
Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 16 miners interviewed, said he wanted to return to the mines. But Dr. Gillibrand has recommended that none of them work underground again.
José Ojeda tried to go back in February. After descending more than 1,000 feet in a drilling truck, the water was cut off. An assistant went to turn it back on, leaving Mr. Ojeda alone. He suffered a panic attack.
"I started to sweat a lot, a cold sweat," he said. "I don't even remember how they took me out; I blacked out."
Potential employers in Copiapó have declined to hire the miners for fear that they were psychologically scarred by their experience, several miners said.
Some people wonder whether the miners are trying. Mr. Farkas said no miner took him up on his job offer. But their requests for money keep rolling in.
He said he "felt taken advantage of" by Claudio Yáñez, a miner for whom he bought a house worth $63,500, at least twice as much as he would usually pay for a worker's house. Mr. Farkas said that he wanted to give him a less expensive house, as he had done for his own employees, but that Mr. Yáñez used a television crew to press him to buy the costly one.
"I did plenty for the miners; now they have to do it on their own," Mr. Farkas said.
Mr. Yáñez, 35, denied taking advantage of Mr. Farkas, who he said gave him the house "from his heart."
He said he used a cash gift from Mr. Farkas to "completely furnish" the two-story home. But he has not worked since the rescue. "We are in really bad shape; we don't have work, and no one wants to hire us," he said.
Much has changed in Chile since August 2010, when the miners were trapped after a gold-and-copper mine collapsed, only to be all discovered alive 17 days later. Their inspiring struggle to survive motivated Chile's president, Sebastián Piñera, to show the world that his country was at once compassionate and capable.
After a determined effort that cost millions of dollars, workers rescued all 33 miners last Oct. 13. The popularity of Mr. Piñera's government soared. He took maximum advantage, traveling around the world with the note in which a miner had first signaled that they were alive. But this year, amid months of protests about educational and environmental policies, the president's ratings have dropped to their lowest levels since he took office.
Despite criticism by politicians and some miners that Mr. Piñera has not done enough for them, the government recently gave $500-a-month pensions to 14 miners (the oldest and those with the most serious physical problems). But they were less than half of what most earned as miners.
On Thursday, local officials in Copiapó will commemorate the rescue by unveiling a 39-foot statue donated by a Chinese foundation. The miners say that they have been better appreciated abroad than at home in Chile. "We feel a little abandoned here," said Mr. Peña, 35.
Mr. Peña became an instant celebrity upon exiting the mine. Soon he was invited to visit the grave of his hero Elvis Presley at Graceland. He appeared on "Late Show With David Letterman" while on a free trip to run the New York City marathon.
But the spotlight proved disorienting. The normally shy Mr. Peña turned to drinking and drugs. Last month, he walked into a private clinic that had offered him free care out of sympathy. These days, he spends his days painting and in numerous therapy sessions, he said.
A handful of miners continue to profit from their fame. Mario Sepúlveda, dubbed "Super Mario" after his kinetic show of emotion upon exiting the mine, started a company to give motivational speeches, prompting jealousy among some of the other survivors.
"If I am persistent and keep on working, one day I might be a millionaire," he said last week before flying to Costa Rica to give another talk.
Still, Mr. Sepúlveda, 41, is among those on sick leave for post-traumatic stress. "This has been the worst year of my life, although you would not believe it," he said.
He recently joked on Twitter that he should act in the movie about the miners. Mike Medavoy, the Hollywood producer who has worked on films like "Black Swan" and "Annie Hall," said on a visit here last month that he hoped to film in the Atacama Desert using relatives of the miners as extras.
"There is a lot of pressure now to do this right," Mr. Medavoy said at a lunch with the miners' families. "Look at what would happen if I let these people down, forget the rest of it."
While some miners are waiting for the movie to provide financial salvation, others are taking more concrete steps.
Pablo Rojas, 47, is a partner in a small mining operation with four employees. Another miner, Pedro Cortez, 26, inspired by setting up video feeds for the trapped miners to talk to their families, is studying electronics.
"Thirty-three people enter into a mine," Mr. Cortez said. "We didn't exit the mine 33 friends."
With an 8-year-old daughter to support, he sold a motorcycle he was given as a present after the rescue. A Swiss-Chilean man from Zurich who had read about Mr. Cortez's educational ambitions visited Copiapó last month and paid 70 percent of his tuition for the second semester, vowing to help him next year as well.
As a gesture of thanks, Mr. Cortez gave the man, Christian Ferrari, his last Chilean flag signed by all the miners.
"I have to get my family ahead; we can't be in the same place we were before," Mr. Cortez said. "They fought for me for 70 days. Now it's my turn to step up."
Aaron Nelsen contributed reporting from Copiapó and Santiago, Chile.
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19) Response of the Police Is Expanding With Protests
By KIRK JOHNSON
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/police-response-expands-with-protests.html?ref=us
DENVER - Whatever the original impulse behind "Occupy Wall Street," or the speculation of what the movement might become, this much is true: The groups of protesters, now camping or hanging out in many American cities, and the police agencies that have responsibility for public safety and order, are both shifting into new postures of action and response.
Whether that evolving chemistry will push things toward more confrontation remains unclear. But the combination - new participants, new police tactics - is clearly opening an uncertain chapter in a story that from its inception has embraced the notion of unplanned, unscripted civil action.
People like Darrel Egemo, 75, a former money manager, are part of this new ferment. Mr. Egemo came to the protests, now in their third week, on the grounds of the State Capitol here for the first time on Tuesday.
"I decided they needed one person in a necktie and sport coat," Mr. Egemo said, looking dapper as he waved a sign to motorists, reading, "Integrity sold short by greed."
Larger numbers are pushing protesters into new areas as well, raising tensions.
In Boston early Tuesday morning, about 100 protesters were arrested when the group expanded from its previous area in the center of Dewey Square in the financial district to a nearby part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, part of the necklace of open park space through downtown.
By Tuesday morning, protesters were in sharp disagreement at their general assembly meeting whether the group should have expanded its turf, and whether it had been a collective decision.
"More people are coming, we're not shrinking," said Philip Anderson, an unemployed recent college graduate who has been acting as a spokesman. "If we grow into a place they don't want us, it may come to another standoff like last night. We hope they don't make the decision to use violence against us, but we'll have to deal with whatever happens as it comes up."
In Los Angeles, where protesters as recently as last week were dominated by young people in what seemed a tie-dye and guitar-circle subculture, a second wave of older protesters and homeless people has gravitated toward the encampment at City Hall, demonstrators said.
Elise Whitaker, 21, a freelance script editor and assistant film director, said she thought it was about technology - older protesters took longer to tune in to the gatherings, she said, which had been organized largely through Internet social networks.
"It is the youth who spend the majority of our time on Facebook and Twitter," she said. "That's why we knew about it first."
In Seattle, officials began on Monday pressuring protesters to relocate to City Hall from Westlake Park, in the busy downtown shopping district, after what had been a mostly peaceful, if statutorily illegal standoff.
The police showed up at 10 p.m. Monday and announced that the park was closed for the night, said Gabriel Bell, a volunteer legal adviser for Occupy Seattle. Anyone who stayed was at risk of being arrested, they were warned. After a fourth announcement at 11 p.m., Mr. Bell said, the protesters went across the street to avoid arrest. Many slept in doorways of nearby businesses, but the police kept their flashing lights going all night, making it difficult to sleep, protesters said.
Shifting coalitions and alliances are also complicating the internal politics of the protest movement.
In Chicago, for example, protesters from Occupy Chicago joined forces on Tuesday with members of Action Now, a group concerned with vacant lots in the city's South and West Side neighborhoods.
The combined groups piled at least a dozen garbage bags on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America building in the Chicago Loop, along with couches and other trash that they said had been pulled from a foreclosed property. Five women, ranging in age from 56 to 80, were arrested there after they went inside the bank lobby and scattered trash.
In Washington, where disparate groups of protesters with overlapping agendas from pacifism to poverty have been demonstrating in recent days, members of a group called Veterans for Peace joined in on Tuesday, crowding the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, which they entered a few at a time before unfurling colorful banners and an upside-down American flag.
"We want to stop the financial influence on our government and we want our people to be taken care of," said Leah Bolger, national vice president of Veterans for Peace.
In some places, the new alliances are making for some fine-point factional clarification. A spokesman for Occupy Chicago, Micah Philbrook, emphasized that his group had voted to join a week of protests organized by a coalition called Stand Up Chicago, but had not become members of that coalition in participating in Tuesday's activities, including the one at the Bank of America.
"We don't want people to think that we are being co-opted by other movements," Mr. Philbrook said. "Occupy Chicago, like all the Occupy movements, stands apart from any political parties, stands apart from any existing movement."
A sometimes tentative police response is adding its own element to the mix. In Atlanta, protesters were warned by the police on Tuesday that if, at 11 p.m., they were still in Woodruff Park, a small oasis in the heart of downtown, they would be arrested. Anyone who does not want to be arrested can simply leave the park, the police said. But protesters said they were told the same thing on Monday. Instead, dozens of police officers showed up but made no arrests.
The protesters also seem to have significant numbers of uncounted allies, silent or on the sidelines, at least for now.
Daniel Eavenson, an engineer in Chicago, said he had only been "witnessing."
"There are millions of us watching online and sending out our hope," he said.
In New York, a "Millionaire's March" of about 400 people affiliated with Occupy Wall Street wound its way through Upper East Side on Tuesday afternoon, with participants protesting outside the homes of financial titans, including JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the industrialist David H. Koch.
The march was peaceful, if noisy, with protesters chanting, trumpeting and drumming their way along Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue under the watchful gaze of dozens of police officers and doormen like John Tima, who stood at the entry to 791 Park Avenue.
"What are they going to accomplish out of this? What's going to happen, higher taxes for rich people? O.K.," he shrugged.
Reporting was contributed by Jess Bidgood from Boston, Ian Lovett from Los Angeles, Jada F. Smith from Washington, Stacey Solie from Seattle, Dan Frosch from Denver, Steven Yaccino from Chicago, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, and Rob Harris and Cara Buckley from New York.
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20) Fingerprinting Those Seeking Food Stamps Is Denounced
By KATE TAYLOR
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/nyregion/christine-c-quinn-urges-city-to-drop-rule-on-fingerprinting-food-stamp-seekers.html?ref=us
Taking aim at a practice she called unnecessary, costly and punitive, the speaker of the City Council, Christine C. Quinn, is asking the Bloomberg administration to justify requiring applicants for food stamps to be electronically fingerprinted.
New York City, where 1.8 million people receive food stamps, is one of only two jurisdictions in the country that require applicants to be fingerprinted, according to Ms. Quinn's office. The other is Arizona.
California and Texas recently lifted a similar requirement; New York stopped using fingerprinting for food-stamp recipients statewide in 2007, but kept it in New York City at the Bloomberg administration's request.
Robert Doar, the commissioner of the city's Human Resources Administration, said the policy deterred fraud and prevented case duplication, catching 1,200 duplicated cases a year and saving about $4 million annually in federal benefits.
But Ms. Quinn and opponents of the practice say that there is no evidence that it prevents fraud and that cases of duplication could be found through other means. Instead, they say, it simply deters some New Yorkers from applying for food stamps.
In an interview, Ms. Quinn said that, at a time of rising poverty and budget cuts, the city should not be spending money on unnecessary enforcement measures.
"We're spending public dollars where there is no crime being committed," she said.
Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, said that electronic fingerprinting created a stigma around applying for federal aid, treating "poor people as if they're basically criminals for trying to access a program to which they're legally entitled." Since many of the city's applicants for food aid are minorities, Mr. Berg said, requiring fingerprinting here, and not in the rest of the state, also raised civil rights issues. It is "electronic stop-and-frisk," he said.
Applicants for cash assistance, like welfare, are also subject to electronic fingerprinting throughout the state, as well as in many other states, and the City Council is not questioning that practice.
The Council has estimated, based on research by the nonprofit Urban Institute, that 30,000 New Yorkers are not seeking food stamps because of the fingerprinting requirement.
"That's $55.4 million of federal money we're not getting in New York City to support people - money they would then spend at the supermarket or at the bodega," Ms. Quinn said.
Because the Council cannot lift the requirement itself, Ms. Quinn and another councilmember, Annabel Palma of the Bronx, plan to introduce a bill that they hope will pressure the Bloomberg administration to change its view.
The bill would require the administration to disclose annually how many applicants to the federal food stamp program who were not also applying for cash assistance were subject to fingerprinting; how much money the city spent on the fingerprinting; how many cases of fraud were detected; and how many applicants were referred for criminal prosecution based on information obtained by fingerprinting.
Mr. Doar said in an interview that the city spent $190,000 to fingerprint food-stamp applicants last year. He said the number of people receiving food stamps had increased by 50 percent in the past three years and argued that people were not being dissuaded from applying because of the policy. "We haven't found an alternative method that's any better," he said, adding, "We listen and learn from other states, but we also need to make our own decisions."
In a statement, Samantha Levine, a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said of the proposal: "This bill sounds as though it's asking the wrong question. The right question is how much fraud is there, and the answer is: thanks to imaging, next to none."
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21) A Familiar Figure Begs on the Street, but Not for Himself
By COREY KILGANNON
October 11, 2011, 7:00 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/a-familiar-figure-begs-on-the-street-but-not-for-himself/?ref=nyregion
He is a familiar sight, the old man who solicits change from drivers stopped at a red light on East 35th Street in Midtown Manhattan every day near Third Avenue.
After all, he has been at it for 17 years now, seven days a week. With the help of a walker, he hobbles between lanes of traffic, approaching drivers, proffering newspapers - often a free paper collected from boxes on the sidewalk nearby - and asking for change.
"Help a guy out?" he repeated on a recent Wednesday afternoon to drivers who would often hand over a dollar or some change and then zoom off.
Most drivers simply regard him as another homeless down and outer, but every so often one might squint at the jolly man's scruffy beard, scarecrow hair and zany smile and realize that - holy cow! - it's the legendary comedian Professor Irwin Corey.
Mr. Corey is now 97.
Over his eight-decade career, he has been a staple on television and in comedy clubs, nightclubs and concert halls worldwide. His film career includes working with Jackie Gleason and Woody Allen. He appeared regularly on talk shows and sitcoms and was a skilled actor who began his stage career on Broadway in 1943.
Indeed, he still performs fairly regularly - a week ago he flew to Chicago to play two nights at a local club. Street panhandling is something of a side gig for Mr. Corey, who sets upon the cars emerging from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
And disregard that homeless appearance. Mr. Corey lives around the corner in a cozy 1840 carriage house on East 36th Street that he estimates he could sell for $3.5 million. He returns there each afternoon and empties half a dozen pockets bulging with small change and dollar bills. On a recent day, he spread the money on his dining room table and counted it slowly: $106.19. He wrote down the amount on a carefully kept list of his daily takes and then added the money to desk drawers loaded with hundreds of rolls of coins and long rows of bundled dollar bills.
Mr. Corey said he gathers his daily take - usually about $100, though there have been $250 days - every few months and donates the money to a charity that buys medical supplies for children in Cuba.
As for the drivers he solicits, Mr. Corey said, "I don't tell them where the money's going, and I'm sure they don't care."
Mr. Corey has traveled to Cuba to donate personally, he said, pointing to the photographs on his wall of him with Fidel Castro. One is autographed by Castro, with the words "with admiration, gratitude and affection."
There are also photographs of him on the David Letterman show, and with the likes of the comedian Dick Gregory and the actor Ossie Davis.
Mr. Corey has long billed himself as "The World's Foremost Authority," a reference to his trademark style of doubletalk and long, nonsensical observations that typically start with "However ..."
He has cultivated his "Professor'' charade since the 1940s, with his trademark black tails, a string tie, high-top sneakers and scarecrow hairdo.
His home is in the exclusive enclave known as Sniffen Court, where the likes of Lenny Kravitz and Claudia Schiffer have lived. Mr. Corey said he bought the home for $175,000 in 1974. The house next door recently sold for $5 million, he said.
While on stage Mr. Corey is known for his quick wit and exchanges with hecklers, he is mild mannered in the street, usually bidding drivers farewell with a "See you later, Alligator."
Every morning, around 11, he shuffles slowly the two blocks to his spot.
Mr. Corey says he carries out this daily routine "because I want to help people." He also said that living through the Great Depression left him with a hardened work ethic.
He was born in 1914 in Brooklyn and was placed by his struggling parents in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum. He began doing comedy to cheer the other children. In his early teens, he rode in boxcars to Los Angeles and enrolled in the prestigious Belmont High School.
Mr. Corey is vague on his financial situation, but his agent of more than 50 years, Irvin Arthur, 85, said he had plenty of money without having to scrounge change in the street.
"This is not about money," Mr. Arthur said. "For Irwin, this is an extension of his performing."
Mr. Corey became known for his left-wing advocacy and an outspokenness that he says hobbled his career as an entertainer, getting him blacklisted from television networks.
While selling papers, Mr. Corey wears a white baseball hat on which he has written various slogans, including "Uncle Sam Is a Big Bully" and "Bribery Rules Washington" and "Let's Replace Our Corrupt Government."
Mr. Corey's wife of 70 years, Fran, died in May at age 95, and Mr. Corey says that selling newspapers helped him take his mind off the loneliness.
Many of the old timers in the neighborhood know exactly who he is. At one point on Wednesday, a local resident named Roxie Cherishian, 81, walked over to say hello to Mr. Corey.
"Look at him - he's still performing out there," she said, as Mr. Corey charmed a driver. "When drivers wave him off, I want to tell them, 'Do you have any idea what a legend this man is?' "
David Woolley, 85, a retired sales executive, spends afternoons at a nearby bar and watches Mr. Corey through the windows.
"It may seem crazy to us," he said, "but if it makes him happy, let him do it."
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22) In Seeking Rate Increases in New York, Health Insurers Fight to Keep Secrets
By NINA BERNSTEIN
October 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/nyregion/health-insurers-ask-to-keep-rate-increase-data-secret.html?ref=nyregion
Major health insurance companies seeking steep premium increases in New York have submitted memos to state officials to justify the higher rates. Now they are fighting to keep the memos from the public, saying they include trade secrets that competitors could use against them.
"How these companies are setting these rates is vital for the public to know, and should not be treated like a state secret," Benjamin M. Lawsky, the state superintendent of financial services, said on Tuesday. "Transparency will promote healthy competition and enable the public to rigorously comment on proposed rates, two goals that all of us should favor."
Mr. Lawsky, whose new agency oversees the state insurance division, has ordered that the memos be made public. His decision, which will go into effect by the end of November unless the companies obtain a court injunction, ends a longstanding policy that exempted the insurance companies from public access under a "trade secret" exception.
The decision followed a battle by a consumer advocacy coalition, Health Care for All New York, which had first sought information for a policyholder in Queens who faced a 76 percent increase in his family's Emblem Health premium. (The fee was later raised by 270 percent.)
Last year, the then-State Insurance Department gained new power to reject rate increases proposed for about three million residents covered by individual and small-group policies. It has since been flooded with consumer protests over proposed premium increases, many of them double-digit percentages. The department does not control rates for customers in large-group plans.
In a typical message, an unemployed 61-year-old, informed that Aetna wanted to raise her $1,932 monthly premium as much as 19.7 percent, wrote: "I worry every day how I will keep a roof over my head in the future. My teeth are all broken and I cannot afford to get them fixed because all my $$ is going to Aetna. So actually you could say that I am neglecting my health in order to be able to pay for my insurance."
Aetna, like other carriers, has said premium increases are driven by the actual cost of health care. But consumer advocates dispute such assertions, while complaining that it is hard to challenge the increases without access to the company filings.
Mr. Lawsky's decision would add New York to a list of at least 12 states that make insurance company filings public. It fits with an Obama administration effort, part of the federal health care reform, to curb health care costs through more oversight and transparency when insurance rates are set.
The companies, notified of Mr. Lawsky's decision in late September, had 10 days to file objections. Two companies, Atlantis Health Plan and Humana, have not done so. But 10 others contended in letters last week that disclosure would provide competitors with an unfair advantage, possibly reducing competition and raising prices even higher.
"This matter is of critical importance to us," United Health/Oxford wrote Oct. 7, calling the information "proprietary." Aetna wrote that "public disclosure in this format will provide ready and easy access to comprehensive pricing, product and marketing strategies," and warned of "substantial and irreparable injury to Aetna." Another company, Independent Health, said it had spent "well over $700,000 developing the trade secret documents" and estimated that the value of keeping them confidential was much higher.
Moreover, other companies argued, the filings are too technical to be understood by consumers.
"Several of the exhibits to the rate application as well as the actuarial memorandum contain not only trade secrets as noted above, but esoteric actuarial pricing precepts best understood by fellow actuaries and health plan competitors," Sean M. Doolan, a lawyer representing Excellus, Empire, Connecticut General, and Capital District Physicians' Health Plan wrote to state officials. "These documents, often speaking of concepts such as morbidity and anti-selection, could cause not only confusion, but also unnecessary alarm to the layman policyholder."
Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and a founder of Health Care for All New York, a coalition of 100 groups working for more affordable medical care, called such concerns "patronizing" and noted that her coalition had hired its own actuaries.
"The only way the public will find out whether these outlandish price hikes are justified is if we can see the underpinnings," she said. "They would like to have us ignorant. What they are saying to us, by opposing the disclosure of why they think their rate increases are justified, is that they want to keep us uninformed consumers."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 11, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated the date of Mr. Lawsky's decision to order the release of the insurance companies' data.
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