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Police raid Occupy Oakland
All out to the streets!
Reconvene at Oakland Public Library at 4pm Pacific
(14th and Madison)
Police Raid Occupy Oakland Camp
By MALIA WOLLAN
November 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/us/police-raid-occupy-oakland-camp.html?hp
OAKLAND, Calif. — Hundreds of police officers in riot gear circled the Occupy Oakland encampment downtown on Monday morning, making arrests and flattening tents after city officials had issued several warnings for protesters to abandon the camp after the fatal shooting last week of a man who had been staying there.
There were far fewer demonstrators at the encampment than usual when the police arrived at Frank Ogawa Plaza on Monday at about 4 a.m., because many of them were marching in a nearby intersection and others had already left because of rumors of an impending police crackdown.
The police quickly set up barricades between the crowd and the camp and then moved into the plaza, arresting those who remained as police helicopters with spotlights circled overhead. The number of arrests was not immediately clear.
There has so far been no violence between protesters and officers, and by 7 :30 a.m. Monday, there were only about 50 protesters left at the plaza.
Some of the demonstrators shouted, “Shame, shame, shame,” and “We’ll be back.”
The plaza smelled strongly of vinegar, which protesters had poured onto bandanas worn over their eyes, noses and mouths to protect themselves against tear gas. Others carried a mixture that included milk of magnesia and could be used as an eye rinse.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” Jimi Devine, 25, said. “The banks obviously don’t want a bunch of riffraff living in the plaza.”
Richard Mead, president of a local chapter of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, who was at the plaza as an official observer with about 50 other union representatives, said he did not see any violence.
“I’m happy it’s going this way so far instead of tear gas, concussion grenades and people getting their heads beat in like last time,” Mr. Mead said.
Last month, the police rousted and then tear-gassed Occupy Oakland protesters, in the process critically injuring an Iraq War veteran who was struck in the head by a projectile thrown or shot by law enforcement officers combating protesters trying to re-enter the plaza. The police had cleared the plaza of an Occupy Oakland encampment earlier in the day.
The wounded veteran, Scott Olsen, 24, who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine, suffered a fractured skull. He was released from the hospital last week but continues to have difficulty speaking.
After that confrontation, Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland allowed protesters to remain at the plaza, which is adjacent to City Hall. The number of police officers patrolling the area was also scaled back.
The violence however, intensified the animosity between protesters and the police and led to a march that shut down the Port of Oakland for several hours, the nation’s fifth-busiest shipping port.
Thursday’ s fatal shooting occurred in the plaza, about 25 yards from Occupy Oakland’s tents.
On Friday night, the police released descriptions of two suspects, including one who witnesses told investigators “was a frequent resident at the Frank Ogawa Plaza for the past several days,” the authorities said. The victim also had been staying on-and-off at the camp, the police said.
City officials had issued at least three warnings to protesters since Thursday’s shooting, the most recent on Sunday.
Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York.
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Occupy With Aloha -- Makana -- The Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M07v8N_eU&feature=channel_video_title
My guitar tech shot this with a camera phone during my performance for the World Leaders Dinner at APEC, which was hosted by the First Family.
He had to be extremely discreet as Secret Service had warned those on site that any phones used to capture photography or video would be confiscated. Since he has a guitar tuner app on the phone we were able to justify having it out, but grabbing video was not easy. We were under constant surveillance. Personally I like to have video of every performance. It's my art and my right.
About an hour into my set of generally ambient guitar music and Hawaiian tunes, I felt inspired to share some songs that resonated with the significance of the occasion.
I sang a few verses from "Kaulana Na Pua" (a famous Hawaiian protest song in honor of the anniversary of our Queen's passing), then segued into Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", Sting's "Fragile", and finally my newest song "We Are The Many".
My goal was not to disturb the guests in an offensive fashion but rather to subliminally fill their ears and the entire dinner atmosphere with a message that might be more effectively received in a subconscious manner. I sweetly sang lines like "You enforce your monopolies with guns/ While sacrificing our daughters and sons/ But certain things belong to everyone/ Your thievery has left the people none". The event protocol was such that everyone there kept their expressions quite muffled. Now and then I would get strange, befuddled stares from heads of state. It was a very quiet room with no waiters; only myself, the sound techs, and the leaders of almost half the world's population.
If I had chosen to disrupt the dinner and force my message I would have been stopped short. I instead chose to deliver an extremely potent message in a polite manner for a prolonged interval.
I dedicate this action to those who would speak truth to power but were not allowed the opportunity.
Me ka ha'aha'a,
Makana
We Are The Many -- Makana -- The Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=relmfu
We Are The Many
Lyrics and Music by Makana
Makana Music LLC © 2011
Download song for free here:
http://makanamusic.com/?slide=we-are-the-many
We Are The Many
Ye come here, gather 'round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who've trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage
From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won't withdraw
We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight
They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free
We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none
So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest
We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You can't divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can't buy
Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail
We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
We are the many
You are the few
Credits:
Directed & Edited by Kamuela Vance
Filmed by Tom Hackett & Kamuela Vance
Creative Consultant: Evan Tector
Thanks to 'Olelo Community Television
All images Fair Use.
Our heartfelt gratitude to the Artists and Photographers.
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We are the 99 percent!
There has been a call from Occupy the Hood:
Occupy The Hood Calls On Young People of African Descent to Uplift the Community" On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities."
By Phillip Jackson
http://thyblackman.com/2011/11/01/occupy-the-hood-calls-young-people-uplift-the-community/
There is an ongoing Occupy movement in San Francisco and Oakland
• Solidarity with the world-wide Occupy movement!
• End police attacks on our communities!
• Defend Oakland schools and libraries!
• Against an economic system built on imperialism, inequality and corporate power that perpetuates all forms of oppression and the destruction of the environment!
There is a 24/hr presence/protest at:
Oakland at Oscar Grant (Frank Ogawa) Plaza
San Francisco at the Federal Reserve, 101 Market St., S.F. and the OccupySF encampment is at Justin Herman Plaza
This is only the beginning!
In solidarity,
Bonnie Weinstein
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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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Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
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.
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon
in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years"
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
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 Allston Way in Berkeley.
The story begins as Petrick 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.
A twenty-year-old anti-war activist in 1966 when he was drafted into the Army, Pvt. Petrick was a model soldier except when the subject of Vietnam came up. At that point, he missed no opportunity to make his opinions known to his fellow GIs and anyone else who would listen. His activities helped ignite an antiwar movement in the barracks and led to a confrontation with the brass. Calls from the Pentagon! Threats of treason! By the time it was all over, Petrick, who never backed down, had become something of a celebrity. He even had a song written about him and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. From the ass-scratching first cook to the frustrated Military Intelligence officer, Petrick brings over twenty characters to life in this autobiographical solo piece.
"If Westmoreland can give a political partisan speech to the Press Club in New York City supporting the war, then I should be able to speak in uniform opposing the war." - Howard Petrick quoted in the Texas Observer in 1967.
It's a comedy that keeps hope alive. Here are more kudos for the show:
"Petrick made headlines as a GI for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, and he's turned his experiences into a deftly crafted solo show." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
His "aw shucks" attitude had me right there with him every step of the way, rooting for my new hero. Please don't miss this true tale. - Jenny Revue (Winnipeg)
"His ear for dialogue...is superb." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
"It's an engaging tale, often funny...Petrick's writing is strong...valuable as a piece of history in a time when for much of the population, Vietnam is just a vague, long-ago event." - Fresno Bee
"This is an important piece of history - from the common man's point of view." - Victoria Fringe
"A must see!" - The Plank (Vancouver)
Howard Petrick has studied solo performance with David Ford, Ann Randolph, James Donlon, Mark Kenward and Leonard Pitt. He has performed at FronteraFest, The Marsh, Words First, City Solo, San Francisco Theater Festival, Solo Sundays, Tell it on Tuesday, the Fresno Rogue Festival and Fringe Festivals in Boulder, Chicago, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.howardpetrick.com
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Sat. Nov. 12, 3pm
Occupy SF Answers the Call:
Defend the Revolution - Solidarity with Egypt
Gather at Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero BART
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Montes' next court date is Monday, Nov. 14. Please call Obama and Holder - "Drop the Charges!"
Drop the Charges Against
Carlos Montes!
Join the national call-in day on November 14 to
-- President Obama at 202-456-1111 and
-- Attorney General Holder at 202-514-2001
Demand: "Drop the charges against Carlos Montes."
Contact us and let us know how your calls went: info@stopFBI.net
If you are in the L.A. area...
Join us and Occupy the Court!
Downtown Courthouse on Temple St
Los Angeles, CA
Monday, November 14th - 8:00 AM
13th Floor, Department 123
After a hugely successful conference on November 5 in Chicago, 150 activists and organizers committed to organizing solidarity with Carlos Montes. So across the country, activists and defenders of human rights are mobilizing to support Carlos Montes as he appears for a Preliminary Hearing at the LA County Superior Courthouse Dept. on Monday.
On May 17, under the direction of the FBI, LA Sheriffs brandishing automatic weapons broke down Montes' door at 5:00am and ransacked his home, seizing meeting notes and writings covering over 40 years of activism in the Chicano, immigrant rights, labor and anti-war movements. Carlos Montes is charged with 6 felony counts for weapons possession, threatening 18 years in prison - essentially a life sentence.Carlos Montes is directly connected to the Midwest 23 through working to organize the mass protest at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Montes' name appeared on the FBI search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis one year ago on September 24 during the raids. While under arrest, the FBI attempted to question Carlos about his political activism and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. We demand all charges be dropped and the political repression end now.
Please take the following steps to the support Carlos Montes and the 23 Midwest activists facing FBI repression:
Sign the national petition supporting Carlos Montes:
http://www.stopfbi.net/petition/national
Sign the Pledge to Resist FBI and Grand Jury Repression:
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/pledge-of-resistance
Join a local support committee of the CSFR or organize one in your town:
http://www.stopfbi.net/supporting-organizations/local-committees
Donate to the legal defense fund:
http://www.stopfbi.net/donate
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
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Courage to Resist SF Bay Area event!
Military servicemembers and the Occupy movement
Tuesday, November 15, 7pm
American Friends Service Committee
65 Ninth St., San Francisco
As part of the 99%, military servicemembers and veterans have been participating in Occupy protests in droves. But what are the consequences for such actions? Can servicemembers be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for such protests, or do the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution apply to them, too?
Please join the Bay Area Military Law Panel of the National Lawyers Guild, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, the GI Rights Hotline - SF, Swords to Plowshares, and Courage to Resist, for a workshop on servicemembers' rights to protest and related issues.
Topics covered:
• Servicemembers' protest rights
• Potential impact on veterans benefits for criminal justice-involved veterans
• Protest participation and PTSD triggers
• Report back from IVAW's participation and update on Scott Olsen
Moderator: Jane Kaplan
Presenters: Steve Collier, Teresa Panepinto, Rai Sue Sussman (BAMLP); Joshua Shepherd (IVAW); others TBA
California attorneys may receive 1.5 hours of free CLE credit, .5 of which is ethics credit. Please RSVP to militarylawpanel@gmail.com to ensure handouts will be available for all attendees. This event is wheelchair accessible.
couragetoresist.org
510-488-3559
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University of California-wide general strike to be held Tuesday, November 15
Call for a Strike and Day of Action on November 15
By Lauren Kelley, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/728865/occupy_updates%3A_extreme_police_violence_in_berkeley%2C_with_calls_for_a_strike%3B_harvard_protesters_shut_out_of_harvard_yard
Occupy Cal 11/9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ&feature=player_embedded&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FbuovLQ9qyWQ&has_verified=1
A few Occupy stories for today:
The big news is the violent police clash that took place yesterday at Occupy Berkeley. In the below video, you can clearly see police officers in riot gear (Salon\'s Justin Elliot identifies them as UC Berkeley police) hitting the protesters with batons and bean bag guns. The violence started after Berkeley students tried to set up tents on the school\'s campus following a 3,000-person rally at the school. Police tore down the tents and arrested seven occupiers during the clash.
In response, the occupiers have agreed to call for a strike and day of action on November 15. Via the action's Facebook event page:
After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation.
We also call for simultaneous solidarity actions in workplaces and k-12 schools. We will organize through daily, 5pm strike planning meetings at our encampments, followed by general assemblies.
--Across the country, students from another university -- Harvard -- faced a show-down with security over access to Harvard Yard. After a 350-person protest against the university\'s complicity with growing income inequality, university police and security guards effectively shut down Harvard Yard. The Crimson reports:
Around 7 p.m., protesters were met with increased security that would prevent Boston residents who were not Harvard affiliates from entering the Yard.
"I think it's absurd. Do we really need eight guards per gate?" said Nicandro G. L. Iannacci '13, who has participated in other Occupy events. "The idea that the only people allowed here to have this conversation are members of the Harvard community, specifically, is wrong. Why not welcome more people in?"
In response to the limited access to the Yard, demonstrators relocated to the Harvard Law School campus. As they marched past freshman dorms, they chanted, "Out of your rooms and into the Yard," rallying the students in the dorms to join.
After a general assembly, protesters left the Law School campus and tried to re-enter the Yard to set up a tent city, but Securitas guards prevented demonstrators from entering by locking the gates.
In a tense exchange, students tried to push their way into the Yard-some holding up their Harvard IDs-while guards pushed back to prevent protesters from breaking through the gates.
--In New York, Mayor Bloomberg is being wishy-washy about where he stands on OWS. In the past he's talked about evicting protesters, but on Morning Joe yesterday his stance was essentially "ehhh?" His quote, via Runnin' Scared:
It's a whole bunch of people that are just disinf-disaffected. They don't know what's wrong. They say, "we don't know what we want but we want it now," which I think is as good a way of saying it as anything. That it's not their job to solve the problems, it's the job of the government and the press and those of us that have some insight on how policies affect people.
It's hardly an endorsement, and you can bet he still dislikes the protesters being in Zuccotti Park. But he's trying to put on a semi-happy face for the national press now, which may be kind of telling.
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HANDS OFF COPWATCHERS
We have the right to observe and record police!!
Show your love and support for Fly Benzo at his upcoming hearing:
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 9:00 a.m.
Department 22
850 Bryant, San Francisco hall of (in)justice
Check out Fly's video "War On Terror": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1H8Q2DENr0
It's Really Real TV: FLY Benzo - "War On Terror" // #BlackPOWER #DropTheCHARGES
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Occupy Education -- Nov. 16, 2011 -- The 99% Say No Fee Hikes, No Cuts, No Privatization!
Meet at 7 am at UCSF Mission Bay Campus,
1555 6th Street, San Francisco
-- Occupy San Francisco
(adopted at the Oct. 19 General Assembly)
Call by Occupy San Francisco
We the 99% commit ourselves to mobilize against the privatization of public education being forced upon California and the country. The 1% -- the bankers, the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees, and the corporate politicians -- are pushing through vicious fee hikes, layoffs, and budget cuts under the pretext of the financial crisis that they created and profited off of.
They say cuts are inevitable because there are no funds -- but we know that if we really taxed the corporations, ended the wars, or took back the bailout funds, there would be no budget shortfall. They say we have to accept-- but we know that if we take mass collective action, we can defeat these attacks.
On November 16th, the UC Regents will be discussing and possibly voting on a proposal to raise fees up to 81% over the next 4 years -- raising tuition to over $22,000. This is a brutal attack against the 99% of California, particularly for communities of color and working families, and on all sectors of public education, from pre-K-12 to higher education.
We call on all the 99%, on all the Occupy general assemblies and camps throughout Northern California, on all student, labor, and community organizations, to come together in a massive display of non-violent civil disobedience to prevent the UC Regents meeting from taking place, to send the strongest message that we will not accept any fee hikes, cuts, or concessions in any level of public education.
We can win this struggle. Join us!
For more info, contact:
occupyeducation@gmail.com
www.occupyed.org
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November 18-20 Stand up for Dignity, Justice, Solidarity and Self-Determination
Converge at the Gates of Fort Benning, Georgia
Shut Down the School of Assassins
http://soaw.org/
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Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression and Berkeley Copwatch present a community forum and video showing:
Silencing The Witnesses:
Government Attacks on the Right To Observe
Saturday, December 3, 2011, 2:00 p.m.
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street (between Broadway & Telegraph)
Oakland, California 94612
Recent protests have drawn incredibly violent responses from police agencies. Tear gas, flash bang grenades, bean bag rounds and overwhelming force has been documented by civilian journalists across the country at Occupy protests.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, people who attempt to document police abuse are increasingly being targeted for their efforts to bring human rights violations to light. In response to new legislation and outright assaults, activists are waging a national struggle to keep copwatching safe and legal. Join us for an update of where the right to record stands, how the government is suppressing evidence of brutality and how we can defend our first amendment rights right here in the Bay Area.
· Video Updates will include footage from civilian monitors
· Wheelchair accessible
· There is a $5-$10 suggested donation
· Refreshments will be provided
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CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Against the wars of occupation; Against the interference in the internal affairs of countries; In defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations
Algiers, Algeria -- December 3-5, 2011
Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops in 2001, under the pretext of the "War on Terror," and of Iraq in 2003, in the name of a so-called "struggle for democracy," imperialist governments, under the leadership of the U.S. government, have implemented a strategy based on international wars of occupation and plunder. This strategy has also included widespread interference in the internal affairs of nations, the astronomic growth of war budgets, the assault on democratic rights, and the massive cuts in social spending -- particularly in Europe and the United States.
Today, the governments of the imperialist powers -- specifically the U.S., French, British and Italian governments -- have opened a new front in the war; this time in the Maghreb region of Northern Africa. (*)
A new step has been taken with the further implementation of the U.S. government's Greater Middle East Plan, which was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003 at the time of the launching of the war of occupation and looting of Iraq. It's a plan that aims to dismantle nations along ethnic, religious and communitarian lines -- from Pakistan to Mauritania.
At the very moment when the Tunisian and Egyptian workers and peoples are struggling to exercise their full sovereignty by means of democracy, Libya is descending into chaos after a foreign military intervention under the aegis of NATO -- an intervention that threatens its territorial integrity.
By this means, all the countries of the Maghreb region are now facing threats to their integrity. But this is not all: The implications for the SAHEL countries (parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and, more generally, for sub-Saharan Africa are incalculable. This is because the conflict has gone way beyond the Libyan borders in terms of the movement of weapons -- including heavy weapons massively distributed among Libyan civilians and armed terrorist groups who have openly displayed them in the aftermath of the foreign military intervention.
This is not to mention the devastating effects on the economies of these countries, especially when combined with the massive return of hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been working in Libya, as well as more than one million Libyan refugees, mostly in Tunisia.
In reality, through the foreign military intervention in Libya, the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists seek to terrorize all the peoples of the region and the world.
No political party genuinely committed to the sovereignty of nations and to democracy can condone, under whatever pretext whatsoever, the imperialist war of occupation and plunder in Libya. No labor organization faithful to the traditions of the international labor movement can condone such a war. That is why we the undersigned reject another war on our African continent -- a continent that is already bloodied and torn apart by so-called ethnic conflicts, which are really nothing but the result of foreign plunder of the continent's natural resources, the repayment of foreign debt, and the various manipulations that result therewith.
We reject any foreign military presence in any form whatsoever in our region of the Maghreb, elsewhere across Northern Africa, and, more generally, on our continent of Africa.
We reject any and all attacks upon sovereign nations.
We reject the foreign looting of the riches and resources of the peoples of the Maghreb and of Africa as a whole. Taking control over these resources -- including through the installation of foreign military bases, starting with AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) -- is the real objective of the war of occupation in Libya, under the auspices of NATO. This is what's really at stake.
We denounce the imperialist designs of the governments that are racing to grab the reconstruction deals for the infrastructure of Libya, destroyed by NATO air strikes - another stake of the war.
We deny the imperialist governments, NATO and the mongers of war and chaos the right to decide the fate of the peoples of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and all peoples of the world.
We affirm that because there can be no popular sovereignty without national sovereignty, from the standpoint of democracy it is up to sovereign peoples -- and up to them alone -- to define their present and their future without external interference and foreign military intervention.
We call upon organizations and parties around the world and in our own country that oppose the imperialist wars to join us in supporting and participating in an Emergency International Conference in Algiers on December 3-5, 2011, against the wars of occupation, against the interference in the internal affairs of countries, and in defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations. (**)
signed/
A. Sidi Said
General Secretary
General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary
Workers Party of Algeria (PT)
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(*) The five countries that make up the Maghreb region are Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
(**) For more information about the conference or how you can get involved, please contact the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples in Paris at
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Occupy The Hood Calls On Young People of African Descent to Uplift the Community" On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities."
By Phillip Jackson
http://thyblackman.com/2011/11/01/occupy-the-hood-calls-young-people-uplift-the-community/
(Liberia, West Africa) The Occupy Wall Street Movement has captured the imagination of the world. We now have Occupy Tokyo, Occupy Berlin, Occupy Mexico, Occupy Australia, Occupy Brazil, Occupy Denmark, Occupy Asia and even Occupy Antarctica. But where are the voices of young people of African descent and why are their voices silent?
On Saturday, November 19, 2011, people of African descent are being encouraged to join the Occupy Wall Street Movement in their cities and in their communities. But before occupying Wall Street or any street, we need to properly and successfully occupy the minds and spirits of people of African descent with thoughts of improvement, achievement, excellence, progress and cooperative labor. We must do this every day until we have created a new world in which people of African descent will thrive!
To look at the evening news on the occupations, it would seem as though young White men and women suffer most from the problems of our societies and the world in which we live. That is absolutely not true! In fact, the suffering from social and economic ills of people of African descent around the world is hugely disproportionate. So why has the "Occupy Movement" not inspired more young Black people across the globe to demand change and improvement in their world?
Some say Black people have too many "real" problems to be concerned about the volatility of the stock markets or whether Fortune 500 companies will each capture another billion dollars. Some say that Black Americans have forgotten the lessons learned from the civil rights movement. And others say that young Africans and young Black Americans today have been reprogrammed with technological toys, various forms of entertainment and other relatively mindless distractions. Regardless, young Black people around the world do not understand that decisions that govern the quality of their lives are being made without their input.
But a glimmer of hope has come to us in the form of a spinoff from Occupy Wall Street. It is called Occupy The Hood. While Occupy Wall Street addresses the viciousness of capitalism, uneven distribution and control of world resources, corrupt and ineffective governments, lack of human well-being across the world, climate change and the environment, wars and global violence and other dire issues, Occupy The Hood is being led by young people of African descent and addresses issues that cause people of African descent to suffer. And while we must absolutely stand in solidarity with our White, Asian, Arab and Hispanic brothers and sisters working to change the world, we must also organize to directly improve the conditions in our "hood."
To look at the evening news on the occupations, it would seem as though young White men and women suffer most from the problems of our societies and the world in which we live. That is absolutely not true! In fact, the suffering from social and economic ills of people of African descent around the world is hugely disproportionate. So why has the "Occupy Movement" not inspired more young Black people across the globe to demand change and improvement in their world?
Some say Black people have too many "real" problems to be concerned about the volatility of the stock markets or whether Fortune 500 companies will each capture another billion dollars. Some say that Black Americans have forgotten the lessons learned from the civil rights movement. And others say that young Africans and young Black Americans today have been reprogrammed with technological toys, various forms of entertainment and other relatively mindless distractions. Regardless, young Black people around the world do not understand that decisions that govern the quality of their lives are being made without their input.
But a glimmer of hope has come to us in the form of a spin-off from Occupy Wall Street. It is called Occupy The Hood. While Occupy Wall Street addresses the viciousness of capitalism, uneven distribution and control of world resources, corrupt and ineffective governments, lack of human well-being across the world, climate change and the environment, wars and global violence and other dire issues, Occupy The Hood is being led by young people of African descent and addresses issues that cause people of African descent to suffer. And while we must absolutely stand in solidarity with our White, Asian, Arab and Hispanic brothers and sisters working to change the world, we must also organize to directly improve the conditions in our "hood."
- November 1, 2011
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UNAC Conference: March 23-25, 2012
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
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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
NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.
In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.
We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:
Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.
During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.
Our demands are simple:
That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and
That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.
The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.
In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.
The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.
We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.
How you can help:
1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.
2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.
3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com
4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.
4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!
Formore info: www.CANG8.org or email us at cangate2012@gmail.com
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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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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
antiprocon 62 videos Subscribe Alert iconSubscribed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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Handful of Violent Rioters Don't Represent "Occupy" Protests
November 4, 2011 in Direct Action, Oakland, OccupyTogether, Saboteurs & Provocateurs, Video
By Washington's Blog
http://owsnews.org/handful-of-violent-rioters-dont-represent-occupy-protests/
While there was senseless destruction of property in Oakland, NBC Bay Area notes that people of Occupy Oakland say that "anarchists" not associated with the group are responsible for last night's violence.
The New York Times reports:
A belligerent fringe group that seemed intent on clashing with law enforcement and destroying property.
[They were] part of an Occupy Oakland subgroup that the city's interim police chief, Howard A. Jordan, described as "generally anarchists and provocateurs."
Some members of the group that had closed the port reprimanded those who smashed windows, threw rocks, ignited a 15-foot-high bonfire of garbage and covered downtown storefronts with graffiti.
When a man wearing a bandana broke a window with an empty beer bottle, another protester yelled, "Who are you? That isn't what this is about!"
Indeed, as the following two videos show, the overwhelming majority of protesters were peaceful and tried to stop the provocateurs:
Black Bloc Provocateurs Vandalize Property During Occupy Oakland's General Strike (11-02-2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWHjPdAS1oU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
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Provocateurs Used By Governments All Over the World to Discredit Peaceful protests
Wikipedia notes:
An agent provocateur may be a police officer or a secret agent of police who encourages suspects to carry out a crime ....
A political organization or government may use agents provocateurs against political opponents. The provocateurs try to incite the opponent to do counter-productive or ineffective acts to foster public disdain-or provide a pretext for aggression against the opponent (see Red-baiting).
Historically, labor spies, hired to infiltrate, monitor, disrupt, or subvert union activities, have used agent provocateur tactics.
There are numerous, documented cases from around the world of government provocateurs acting violently at peaceful protests in order to discredit the peaceful movements.
For example - during the Egyptian "Arab Spring" protests - Mubarak's security force thugs dressed as protesters and committed violence ... in order to discredit the protests.
An Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that "elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked".
In Burma:
"They've ordered some soldiers in the military to shave their heads, so that they could pose as monks, and then those fake monks would attack soldiers to incite a military crackdown. The regime has done this before in Burma, and we believe they would do so again."
Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
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quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence. (And here is a video possibly showing a provocateur being let through the police line.)
In 2003, FAIR reported:
According to reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (1/7/03, 1/8/03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July 22 raid on the school. According to the BBC, the bombs had in fact been found elsewhere in the city, and Troijani now says planting them at the school was a "silly" thing to do.
The BBC and DPA also report that another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged over the course of a parliamentary inquiry into police conduct that was initiated by the Italian government under pressure from "domestic and international outrage over the blood-soaked G8 summit in Genoa" (London Guardian, 7/31/01). Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges.
The U.S. is not exempt from such shenanigans.
Denver police officers were found to have used undercover detectives to instigate violence against police during the 2008 Democratic National Convention (this ultimately resulted in the use of pepper spray against their own infiltrating agents).
The New York Times pointed out in 2005:
At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.
Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.
Activists ....say that police officers masquerading as protesters and bicycle riders distort their messages and provoke trouble.
At one point, the [apparent officer] seemed to try to rile bystanders.
Indeed, obvious provocateurs were filmed at the G20 in Pittsburgh:
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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As I noted in 2008:
When agents provocateur commit violence or destroy property at peaceful protests, they are carrying out false flag terrorism.
Wikipedia defines false flag terror as follows:
False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.
If intelligence agencies or federal, state or local police themselves commit acts of violence against people or property, and then blame it on peaceful protesters, that is - by definition - false flag terror.
Indeed, governments from around the world admit that they carry out false flag terror to discredit their enemies.
Oakland Rioters: Provocateurs?
While we are not yet sure whether the tiny group Oakland group of rioters (among tens of thousands of peaceful protesters) are police provocateurs, it is clear that they don't represent the Occupy protests in any way, shape or form.
The direct democracy practiced by the protesters is nothing at all like the violent rioting by the thugs.
Anyone who focuses on the handful of provocateurs - as opposed to the hundreds of millions of peaceful protesters and their supporters - is uninformed or dishonest.
For more on this issue, read: CopWatch Exposes Police Infiltrators at #OccupyOakland
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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
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Marine Vet at #OccupyWallStreet Tells Sean Hannity to "F**k Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaTGsGdp4c&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Chicago - War Protest March to Obama's 2012 HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkOincM93s
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
On Oct. 10, 2011, a combination of five feeder marches gathered in Chicago's Loop to protest the Futures & Options and American Mortgage Bankers Association expos. The feeders represented constituencies for jobs, housing, and public schools. They generated a combined march of 7,000, and finally ended up at the Art Institute where the banksters were having a reception dinner. Here are selected scenes and comments from a big spectrum of interests affected by the dictatorship of capital being forced upon the workers of Chicago. Includes the march for homes/housing starting from the Hyatt, the Occupy Chicago location where the teachers union gathered, and the final convergence at the Art Institute. Street interviews. Also, interview/speech by Karen Lewis, President of Chicago Teachers Union. Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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Tom Morello (The Nightwatchman) - This Land Is Your Land @OccupyLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ImQ7Ylvdo&feature=player_embedded#!
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#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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600+ Protesters March on Bank of America - #Occupy Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1JOJ3joOA&feature=player_embedded
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Scenes From #Occupy Las Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=olatH3pSvlk
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#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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PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTERS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
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Police Raid on Occpy Boston 10 11 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G9agQjM60&noredirect=1
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Occupy Boston protesters arrested
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/occupy-boston-protesters-arrested/2011/10/11/gIQAsCzWdL_video.html
Boston police have arrested 129 people during Tuesday's Occupy Boston demonstrations. The early morning arrests were mostly for trespassing. (Oct. 11) (/The Associated Press)
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Video of Boston PD attacking veterans at OWS protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3zFca5znU&feature=relmfu
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Occupy Frankfurt Germany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmxQP2eMdMU&feature=player_embedded
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Occupy Rome - La manifestazione di Roma October 15th OccupyTogether
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25CWyNnJVOI&feature=player_embedded
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
Courage to Resist needs your support
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
November 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/occupy-movement-inspires-unions-to-embrace-bold-tactics.html?ref=us
2) Ohio: Scientists Sound Alarm on Nuclear Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/us/ohio-scientists-sound-alarm-on-nuclear-plant.html?ref=us
3) Why Is the Oakland Police Department Hiding the Truth About Its Violent Crackdown on the Occupy Protests?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
[see videos in Section B, above...bw]
Posted on November 9, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153030/why_is_the_oakland_police_department_hiding_the_truth_about_its_violent_crackdown_on_the_occupy_protests
4) Murder as Instrument of Foreign Policy
By Liaquat Ali Khan
"Information Clearing House"
November 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29605.htm
5) Seventeen workers exposed to radiation at Idaho lab
By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho | Tue Nov 8, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-nuclear-lab-idaho-idUSTRE7A77QW20111108
6) Thank Obama for the Occupy Wall Street Movement
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
-Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/thank-obama-occupy-wall-street-movement
7) Rigged Games: Obama's Fake 'Jobs Bill' is Election-Year Theater
By Bruce A. Dixon
Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/rigged-games-obamas-fake-%E2%80%9Cjobs-bill%E2%80%9D-election-year-theater
8) Freedom Rider: Obama Perfects Right Wing Policy
By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama-perfects-right-wing-policy
9) Air Force Mortuary Sent Troop Remains to Landfill
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
November 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/us/dover-mortuary-burned-and-dumped-troop-remains-in-landfill.html?ref=us
10) UC Berkeley Police Beat Students in Sproul Plaza
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
10 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/316-20/8336-uc-berkeley-police-beat-students-in-sproul-plaza
11) Mayor Calls for Occupy Oakland Protesters to Clear Camp 'Voluntarily' After Shooting
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ROBERT MACKEY
November 11, 2011, 9:57 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/latest-updates-on-occupy-oakland/?hp
12) Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport
"The soldier, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, of Billings, Mont., was found guilty of three counts of murder, of conspiring to commit murder and several other charges, including assaulting a fellow soldier and taking fingers and a tooth from the dead. He was sentenced to life in prison but could be eligible for parole in less than 10 years."
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
November 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/calvin-gibbs-convicted-of-killing-civilians-in-afghanistan.html?ref=us
13) Vermont: Suicide at 'Occupy' Camp
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/vermont-man-shot-at-occupy-camp.html?ref=us
14) Sights and Sounds on the Grounds of a Nuclear Disaster
By MARTIN FACKLER
November 12, 2011, 8:08 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/sights-and-sounds-on-the-grounds-of-a-nuclear-disaster/?hp
15) Report Gives New Details of Chaos at Stricken Plant
By MATTHEW L. WALD
November 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/world/asia/report-details-initial-chaos-at-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html?_r=1&ref=world
16) The New Progressive Movement
By JEFFREY D. SACHS
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-new-progressive-movement.html?_r=1
17) Deportations Under New U.S. Policy Are Inconsistent
By JULIA PRESTON
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/president-obamas-policy-on-deportation-is-unevenly-applied.html?ref=world
18) Police in Denver Move on Protesters
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/police-in-denver-move-on-protesters.html?ref=us
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1) Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
November 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/business/occupy-movement-inspires-unions-to-embrace-bold-tactics.html?ref=us
Organized labor's early flirtation with Occupy Wall Street is starting to get serious.
Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help - tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation. About 100 protesters from Occupy Wall Street are expected to join a Teamsters picket line at the Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan on Wednesday night to back the union in a bitter contract fight.
Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.
Last Wednesday, a union transit worker and a retired Teamster were arrested for civil disobedience inside Sotheby's after sneaking through the entrance to harangue those attending an auction - echoing the lunchtime ruckus that Occupy Wall Street protesters caused weeks earlier at two well-known Manhattan restaurants owned by Danny Meyer, a Sotheby's board member.
Organized labor's public relations staff is also using Twitter, Tumblr and other social media much more aggressively after seeing how the Occupy protesters have used those services to mobilize support by immediately transmitting photos and videos of marches, tear-gassing and arrests. The Teamsters, for example, have beefed up their daily blog and posted many more photos of their battles with BMW, US Foods and Sotheby's on Facebook and Twitter.
"The Occupy movement has changed unions," said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. "You're seeing a lot more unions wanting to be aggressive in their messaging and their activity. You'll see more unions on the street, wanting to tap into the energy of Occupy Wall Street."
Unions have long stuck to traditional tactics like picketing. But inspired by the Occupy protests, labor leaders are talking increasingly of mobilizing the rank and file and trying to flex their muscles through large, boisterous marches, including nationwide marches planned for Nov. 17.
Organized labor is also seizing on the simplicity of the Occupy movement's message, which criticizes the great wealth of the top 1 percent of Americans compared with the economic struggles of much of the bottom 99 percent.
A memo that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. sent out last week recommended that unions use the Occupy message about inequality and the 99 percent far more in their communications with members, employers and voters.
Indeed, as part of its contract battle with Verizon, the communications workers' union has began asserting in its picket signs that Verizon and its highly paid chief executive are part of the 1 percent, while the Verizon workers who face demands for concessions are part of the 99 percent. A dozen Verizon workers plan to begin walking from Albany to Manhattan on Thursday in a "March for the 99 percent."
"We think the Occupy movement has given voice to something very basic about what's going on in our country right now," said Damon Silvers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s policy director. "The fact that they've figured out certain concepts and language for doing that, we think is really important and positive."
Over the last month, unions have provided extensive support to Occupy protesters around the country, from rain ponchos to cash donations. National Nurses United is providing staff members for first-aid tables at many encampments, while the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s headquarters two blocks from the White House is providing shower facilities for the protesters occupying McPherson Square, 300 yards to the east.
Unions have also intervened with politicians on behalf of the protesters. In Los Angeles, labor leaders have repeatedly lobbied Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa not to evict the protesters. When New York City officials were threatening to evict the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, hundreds of union members showed up before daybreak to discourage any eviction, and the city backed down.
Like any relationship, however, the one between the Occupy movement and labor is complicated.
Dozens of Occupy protesters have joined union members to picket the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Verizon offices in Washington, Buffalo and Boston. (A Verizon spokesman said the Occupy protesters "do not have the benefit of any information about the Verizon issues except what they've been told by the union, which is obviously one-sided and most likely inaccurate.")
In New York, the Occupy protesters have joined the Teamsters in their attacks on Sotheby's. The art auction house locked out 43 Teamster art handlers on July 29, after the union balked at its demands for sizable concessions.
In addition to the lunchtime protest at the Danny Meyer restaurants, Occupy protesters also joined recent picketing against Sotheby's outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Diana Phillips, a Sotheby's spokeswoman, said the company had offered a fair contract and "is unwilling to accept demands that virtually double the cost of their contract."
Arthur Brown, a mental health worker who is one of the founders of Occupy Buffalo, where 50 people camp out each night, said the Occupy movement badly needed labor's backing if it is to change the nation's policies and politics.
"Young people started this movement, but they can't finish it," Mr. Brown said. "They don't have the capacity or the experience to finish it. We really need the working class and union folks, the older folks, the activists from the '60s. '70s and '80s, to help make this a full-fledged movement that will change the political landscape of America."
But some Occupy protesters worry that organized labor might seek to co-opt them.
Jake Lowry, a 21-year-old college student and an Occupy participant, said: "We're glad to have unions endorse us, but we can't formally endorse them. We're an autonomous group and it's important to keep our autonomy."
George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U., a union that represents more than 300,000 health care workers in the Northeast, said his union wanted to help the Occupy movement amplify its voice.
"This is a dream come true for us to have these young people speaking out about what's been happening to working people," Mr. Gresham said. His union has offered to provide 500 flu shots and a week's worth of meals for the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said it remained to be seen whether the unions and the protesters could, by working together, achieve concrete change.
"Workers are with the Occupy movement on the broader issues; they're with them on the issue of inequality," she said. "The question is, can the labor movement or the Occupy movement move that message down to the workplace, where workers confront low wages, low benefits and little power? Can we use it to organize workers where it really matters, in the workplace, to help their everyday life?"
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2) Ohio: Scientists Sound Alarm on Nuclear Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/us/ohio-scientists-sound-alarm-on-nuclear-plant.html?ref=us
A watchdog group is questioning the soundness of a nuclear plant where a 30-foot hairline crack was recently discovered. The crack was found in the thick concrete on the outside of the reactor containment building at the Davis-Besse plant outside Toledo. Further inspections found numerous, tiny cracks on the building's facade. The Union of Concerned Scientists has written the Nuclear Regulatory Commission asking whether the concrete walls were built to adequate engineering specifications. The plant's owner, the FirstEnergy Corporation, says that the walls were designed properly and that the building has been inspected thoroughly. The plant has been shut down for installation of a new 82-ton reactor head, replacing one that cracked.
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3) Why Is the Oakland Police Department Hiding the Truth About Its Violent Crackdown on the Occupy Protests?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
[see videos in Section B, above...bw]
Posted on November 9, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153030/why_is_the_oakland_police_department_hiding_the_truth_about_its_violent_crackdown_on_the_occupy_protests
After three notably violent crackdowns on protesters in as many weeks, Oakland Police Department officials have refused a request by the ACLU of Northern California to release police reports documenting their use of force as required by law.
"We saw events that we found extremely troubling, and which violated provisions of Oakland's own crowd control policy," Linda Lye, a staff attorney with ACLU of Northern California told AlterNet.
After recent police actions in Oakland gained national attention, "there was a lot of lip service paid to transparency and accountability and the public's interest in monitoring the situation," she said. "But then OPD proceeded to say that it was invoking one of the statutory exceptions to the Public Records Act for the vast majority of our requests."
The exception officials cited exempted documents prepared pursuant to a criminal investigation, but, says Lye, "these records weren't notes of a detective working on a murder case. These were very different records -- they're reports documenting the use of force during a massive police enforcement action, and many are required pursuant to routine reporting procedures under Oakland's own policies." She added, "Not only does the law require that they release the records, but the overall situation demands that they do so."
A legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild told AlterNet that they had received "numerous reports of excessive force" after riot police evicted the encampment in front of City Hall during the early morning hours of October 25. According to Lye, one of the difficulties sorting out exactly what happened stems from the fact that, according to reports, as many as 17 police agencies were involved in the raid, which, according to the National Lawyers Guild observer, resulted in a head injury requiring hospitalization and three broken hands.
The following evening, as protesters regrouped, police dispersed crowds with round after round of teargas, flash-bang grenades and "less lethal" projectiles. Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen suffered a traumatic head injury when he was struck by some sort of projectile - reportedly a teargas canister - in the melee. As a group of people rushed to drag the unconscious Olsen to safety, police threw a flash-bang grenade into their midst (video of the incident is below).
The following week, after a rousing, peaceful day of demonstrations culminated in the Port of Oakland being "occupied," things once again became violent on the streets of Oakland. During that action, Kayvan Sabehgi, also a veteran of the Iraq war, ended up in intensive care with a ruptured spleen. Sabehgi told the Guardian that he was walking alone, away from the action when he ran into trouble.
"There was a group of police in front of me," he told the Guardian from his hospital bed. "They told me to move, but I was like: 'Move to where?' There was nowhere to move.
"Then they lined up in front of me. I was talking to one of them, saying 'Why are you doing this?' when one moved forward and hit me in my arm and legs and back with his baton. Then three or four cops tackled me and arrested me."
Sabehgi says he lay on the floor of a jail cell writhing in pain for hours until finally receiving medical attention the following evening.
That night, another protester videotaped what appears to be a flagrant and unnecessary use of force against him (view the video below). Scott Campbell, 30, a resident of Oakland, was also standing away from the bulk of the action, taping a line of riot police on the north end of Frank Ogawa Plaza. An officer asked him to move back and he complied. On the tape, he can be heard asking police repeatedly, "Is this OK?" He gets no answer, and then suddenly an officer raises a weapon and shoots him with a "less lethal" projectile of some kind. The tape ends with him crying out in pain.
Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who's an expert in police procedures and the use of force, told the Oakland Tribune that the video left him "astonished, amazed and embarrassed."
"Unless there's something we don't know, that's one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm that I've ever seen," he said. "That just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force."
All of these acts, on their face, violate OPD's own manual for proper crowd control (PDF). The strict guidelines resulted from a 2003 civil suit against OPD for using wooden bullets and teargas to disperse a nonviolent crowd of citizens protesting the Iraq war. Jim Chanin, the civil rights attorney who won the suit, told CBS news that they restrict the use of chemical weapons until "all other means have failed." "From what I could see [in videos of the incidents on March 25], they hadn't even tried marching forward," he said.
California's Crowd Management and Civil Disobedience guidelines (PDF) state, "Only that force which is objectively reasonable may be used to arrest violators and restore order."
Officials Aren't Giving Honest Accounts of Events
These actions are justified by officials with inaccurate claims of what happened out on the streets those nights.
The first pre-dawn raid was necessary, according to the mayor's office, due to health and safety violations, and a report that protesters had blocked emergency personnel from entering the camp after a fight broke out.
Those are legitimate concerns, but we know that suppressing dissent is a goal unto itself because on October 25, police also raided, and made arrests at Snow Park, a small satellite occupation some distance from City Hall. Snow Park was a small cluster of tents on a hill overlooking Lake Merritt. It had no kitchen, no sanitation issues - it had been established more recently than the main encampment - and while there is a small minority within Occupy Oakland that wants to mix it up with the police, everyone at Snow Park was committed to a non-confrontational stance. If the eviction of the camp in front of City Hall was executed only because of the reasons stated by the mayor's office and police officials, Snow Park would have been left unmolested.
In a press conference following the first raid, Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan claimed that teargas and other weapons were used on protesters only "in order to stop the crowd and people from pelting us with bottles and rocks." I was not at the very front, but I saw nothing thrown at officers before the first round of gas was deployed. Other accounts appear to confirm that, but in any event they were not, as the chief claimed, being "pelted" with multiple projectiles. (I did witness a few plastic water bottles and perhaps a rock thrown before subsequent uses of force by police.)
During a city council meeting on November 3, Jordan said that during the evening of the 25th, the protesters had been given free rein to demonstrate throughout the city with a few exceptions, one of which was that they couldn't attempt to enter the police building located on 6th Street and Broadway. "But," he said, "they did try to enter the building." This is false -- I can't be sure if police set up their lines on 7th or 8th Street, but in any event, at no time did protesters get anywhere near the police building.
The protesters had been peaceful throughout the afternoon, and if OPD had let them demonstrate outside the police building where over 100 of their fellow activists were being detained - allowing some tension to be diffused - they likely would have remained so. Instead, lines of riot police repeatedly blocked and boxed in protesters in a seemingly random fashion, and it was only when the crowd's frustration had mounted that some protesters surrounded a small number of police, which led to a violent response.
If All You Have Is a Hammer, All the World Looks Like a Nail
During that same city council meeting, addressing the violence on the night of November 2, both interim Chief Jordan and Mayor Jean Quan said that police "had to" use significant force against protesters who had "occupied" an abandoned building that once served as a shelter for the Traveler's Aid Society. The officials said that protesters had erected a barricade on 16th Street, which they set ablaze, and only then did OPD deploy multiple rounds of teargas and open fire with "less lethal" rounds.
That analysis is marred by a common problem: examining events in the moments before violence breaks out while ignoring the fact that command decisions taken beforehand had an enormous influence on the nature of the protests.
It's true that when police arrived, they found a chaotic and provocative crowd. When I arrived at the scene a half-hour before police, it was already clear that things would not end peacefully that night. And, sure enough, injuries and over 100 arrests followed (including that of AlterNet contributor Susie Cagle, whose account can be read here).
But the sequence of events leading up to that point is crucially important. The "occupiers" plan, at first, was to "reclaim" the building and use it as a refuge for protesters to get indoors, have access to electricity, etc. At first, about 50 people did just that.
A decision was made by officials to send a large contingent of riot police to evict those 50 original occupiers in the middle of the night on a non-residential street. It was only when word spread through the camp that hundreds of police were staging for a raid did another 150 or so protesters join them, including a number who were not dedicated to the nonviolent nature of the Occupy Movement. And that was when the barricade was erected and things started getting rowdy.
A question nobody asked at the press conference that followed or at the city council meeting is whether it was necessary to send a large force of riot police to evict those 50 original occupiers, or if a less aggressive solution could have been worked out in the light of the following day. Again, this is an unexamined question, and it represents a major problem in Oakland: during my time at these protests, I have seen only two modes of enforcement: either police maintain a "minimal presence" - without an officer in sight - or there is a massive, heavily armed and aggressive display of force. There appears to be no middle ground, and judging by officials' statements, such a middle ground never occurred to them.
Those who have developed an image of police actions from New York should understand that riot police in Oakland - and those from the neighboring agencies that joined these actions - are highly militarized, clad in full, black body armor and bristling with automatic weapons, tear gas launchers, flash-bang grenades and tasers. When they move in, it's reminiscent of a battlefield, with a series of jarring explosions and extensive gunfire. Those aggressive tactics create a dangerous cycle, allowing the minority of protesters who do seek confrontation with law enforcement to justify their provocations as acts of "self-defense."
Legacy of Distrust
In Oakland, tensions between law enforcement and the community predate the Occupy Movement by generations, and it's proving to be a real obstacle for addressing the legitimate concerns that many Oaklanders have about the camp. Both occupiers and the mayor's office have repeatedly called for "dialogue," but the sense that the citizens of Oakland are under siege - felt especially by people of color - makes cooperation between the city and protesters extremely difficult. There is a serious deficit of trust.
That should come as little surprise. The OPD has been involved in a number of controversial shootings. The department has been under a federal consent decree since 2003, stemming from a 2003 case in which a band of "rogue" OPD officers were fired for beating and robbing suspects in West Oakland and then planting evidence on them. (Criminal charges against three of the officers ended in mistrials, but the city paid out $10 million to the plaintiffs and entered into the federal decree as a result of the civil suit.)
Just weeks before the recent clashes with Occupy Oakland protesters, Robert Warshaw, the federal monitor assigned to oversee the department, issued a report that found that in 28 percent of the instances in which OPD officers pointed their guns at someone, there was no indication that the officer or anyone else "faced imminent threat of harm." Warshaw called the instances "inappropriate" and "unnecesary." Civil rights attorney Jim Chanin told the San Jose Mercury News, "if you are doing nothing and you have a gun pointed at you by a police officer, it leaves an indelible impression and can alienate someone from the police forever, particularly if they're a minority."
Another Crackdown Imminent?
There are signs that city officials are preparing to evict the Occupy Oakland encampment once again. On November 9, four members of the City Council joined the Oakland Chamber of Commerce for a press conference decrying the Occupation's purported impact on the local community and insisting that the protesters be removed as soon as it is practically feasable. The San Francisco Chronicle reported,
"Oakland police have canceled all training exercises for next week, which is a 'pretty good indication' that the cops are making plans once again to clear out the Occupy camp outside City Hall," according to a police source.
The next step -- if there is one -- would be to cancel police leaves and put out the call for mutual aid from surrounding law enforcement agencies.
According to the source, police brass issued the no-training order just about the time Mayor Jean Quan handed out a warning Tuesday to the Occupy camp that "we cannot ignore violence, property destruction and health and safety issues in Frank Ogawa Plaza."
The occupiers, meanwhile, appear intent on remaining in the plaza. So it appears that the already tense situation is likely to end up in another night of violence on the streets of Oakland.
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4) Murder as Instrument of Foreign Policy
By Liaquat Ali Khan
"Information Clearing House"
November 03, 2011
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29605.htm
President Obama has openly deployed murder as an instrument of foreign policy. Soon after assuming office, Obama authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to plan and execute the murder of terrorists and other enemies, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens. Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Muammar Gaddafi are the prominent murder victims while numerous others in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Pakistan have been purposely targeted and killed.
The legitimization of extra-judicial killing is a disturbing development in international law as other nations are certain to follow suit. In pursuit of pre-meditated murders, the collateral damage (the killing of the obviously innocent) has been extensive. The claim that such murders can be executed with electronic precision, though false, serves as an incentive for other nations to develop drones to perpetrate their own surgical assassinations. For now, however, the CIA enjoys the monopoly over drone kills.
Covert Murders
The 1947 National Security Act created the CIA for the purpose of gathering and evaluating information necessary to protect the nation from foreign threats. Right from the beginning, however, the CIA assumed a proactive role in promoting U.S. economic and military interests. In 1948, the CIA was transformed into a paramilitary organization, empowered under law to engage in "propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion against hostile states through assistance to underground resistance movements and guerillas." Ever since, the CIA has engineered world events for U.S. hegemony.
The murder policy under the CIA aegis is by no means an Obama invention. Over the decades, the CIA has spearheaded what Vice President Dick Cheney once described as the "dark side" of the United States. Previously, however, the murders were covert, not to be openly admitted. In the 1960s, the CIA planned the murders of "communists who threatened the free world," including those of Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Fidel Castro of Cuba. Researchers dispute over whether the CIA participated in Che Guevara's murder. The evidence is mounting, however, that the CIA head in Bolivia had a "prior agreement or understanding with the Bolivians that Che would be killed if captured." (See Ratner & Smith, Who Killed Che?: How the CIA Got Away with Murder).
Covert murders were planned to shield the President from the attendant foreign policy fallout and the moral discomfort emanating from cold-blooded strategies. Notably, the President chairs the National Security Council (NSC), the supreme body that empowers the CIA to conduct covert operations. In the early decades, intelligence experts instituted the doctrine of plausible deniability under which the facts of a covert operation were reported to the President in a way that he could deny the knowledge of a murder. The words "killing" or "murder" or "assassination" were rarely used in oral and written memos to the President. For example, Che's murder was reported to President Johnson as a "stupid murder." Such wink, wink linguistic deceptions allow the President to occupy the high moral ground and deny that the U.S. "murders" foreign enemies or "tortures" detainees. The President's veil of deniability was considered necessary to safeguard America's image as "the city on the hill," "the beacon of liberty," "the greatest nation in the world," etc.
Audacity of Murder
Since the 9/11 attacks, the policy logistics of murder have been dramatically transformed. The doctrine of plausible deniability has been discarded. Moral constraints on killing enemies, including heads of states and governments, have been cast away. The notion of the U.S. as a "moral nation" is now viewed as an impediment in the conduct of international relations. The "dark side" freely informs the foreign policy. The audacity of murder has gained depth and momentum. The President does not think twice about the moral implications of boasting a drone kill.
In a major policy shift, the murder has been institutionalized. Now, the NSC may itself approve a pending murder. Remember the President and statutory members of the NSC (including Secretaries of State and Defense and the CIA Director) watching bin Laden's murder as it was happening. The NSC released the picture for public consumption, implying that watching the murder of a noted enemy is morally acceptable. Imagine barbarism if this practice is writ large in the world. No one would be surprised if the NSC itself has authorized the murder of Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen or if the NSC itself has authorized the drone attack on the Gaddafi motorcade to flush him out for murder in public view.
These and similar international murders are no longer the CIA secrets that the Senate needs to investigate as it did in the 1970s. This time, the fascination with murder has metastasized. It is bipartisan. Except Ron Paul, Republican Presidential candidates endorse the murder of "terrorists" who threaten "our way of life." (Juxtapose the historical massacres of Indian "savages" who too threatened "our way of life."). Upon the execution of a successful murder, President Obama walks to the podium to express joy in a causal tone of voice. Many politicians join the happy hours. Congratulations are exchanged. The corporate media invites the public to celebrate the great news. This is the most vivid moral collapse of a nation that brazenly talks about human rights and universal values. The American people cannot choose to be silent. They must restore the nation's moral dignity.
Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas and the author of A Theory of International Terrorism (2006).
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5) Seventeen workers exposed to radiation at Idaho lab
By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho | Tue Nov 8, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/08/us-nuclear-lab-idaho-idUSTRE7A77QW20111108
(Reuters) - Seventeen workers were exposed to low-level radiation from plutonium on Tuesday at a U.S. Energy Department nuclear research lab in Idaho, but there was no risk to the public, the government said.
The accident at the Idaho National Laboratory occurred inside a facility used for remotely handling, processing and examining spent nuclear fuel, radioactive waste and other irradiated materials, the lab said in a series of statements.
The so-called Materials and Fuels Complex is located near the edge of the sprawling 890-square-mile laboratory site in the high desert in eastern Idaho about 38 miles from the city of Idaho Falls.
But the lab's latest bulletin on the mishap said there was no evidence of a release of radiation outside the facility, and "there is no risk to the public or environment."
At least 17 employees were working inside a decommissioned research reactor when "a container was opened for normal, scheduled work, resulting in low-level worker exposure to plutonium," the statement said.
There were no immediate details from the lab on the precise cause or nature of the radiation release, such as whether it resulted from an equipment malfunction or human error.
Lab spokesman Earl Johnson told Reuters the exposed workers were engaged in an activity and in an area that required no special protective shielding.
"We certainly didn't expect this to happen," he said, adding that radiation-control technicians monitoring the area detected the low-level release.
Johnson said the "zero-power physics reactor" where the accident occurred was decommissioned in 1992 and had been used to study and test technology for space and commercial nuclear reactors.
The exposed workers underwent initial decontamination procedures at the complex before they were taken to a medical facility elsewhere on the lab grounds for "further evaluation," the lab said. Details of their condition were not immediately provided.
Some 6,000 employees and contractors work at the Idaho National Laboratory, the Energy Department's leading facility for nuclear reactor technology.
According to lab records, Tuesday's incident appeared to be the most serious accident at the lab since June 2007, when a worker was treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation from a small laboratory fire, though no radiation release was reported in connection with that mishap.
It was too early to say how serious Tuesday's accident was compared to previous mishaps "since we don't yet know what the consequences of the accident will be," said Liz Woodruff, head of a private, nonprofit nuclear watchdog group in Idaho called the Snake River Alliance.
But, she said, "These are a lot of workers."
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)
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6) Thank Obama for the Occupy Wall Street Movement
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
-Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/thank-obama-occupy-wall-street-movement
"Opposition to the rule of finance capital - to Wall Street - is opposition to capitalism as it actually exists in the here and now."
There is no particular political genius to the Occupy Wall Street movement, no soaring, searing vision that sets the world afire in some new and different way. When it comes to political analysis, much of what emanates from the swirl of activity is no more than soggy old left-liberal reformism that only feels more dynamic when wrapped in a youthful, "movement" package. And yet it is the most promising mass U.S. phenomenon in more than forty years. Why, and why now?
The power of the movement derives from the inexorable logic of its animating slogans. It is, at root, opposed to the rule of finance capital - although even the word "capital" is repugnant to some participants who believe themselves to be engaged in a spiritual quest far beyond the parameters of political economy. Nevertheless it is a fact that opposition to the rule of finance capital - to Wall Street - is opposition to capitalism as it actually exists in the here and now. Judging by the ballooning of the movement and the demeanor of its troops, opposition to capitalism as it actually exists turns out to be an exquisitely exhilarating and fulfilling activity, whether those so engaged consider themselves socialists or not.
The anti-Wall Street slogans and rhetoric have their own logic and dynamic that should - in struggle and over time - push aside left-liberal pabulum and weak reformist nostrums that cannot possibly even begin to contain, much less defeat, the hegemonic power of massed capital.
"Opposition to capitalism as it actually exists turns out to be an exquisitely exhilarating and fulfilling activity, whether those so engaged consider themselves socialists or not."
It did not take genius to identify the rule of finance capital as the common enemy of humankind. Millions, if not billions, have already come to that conclusion, and the inevitable trajectory of capital was predicted and plotted long ago. But the United States, a nation conceived as a white man's empire and singularly dedicated to the project of business, confronts the 21st century as a political-cultural desert, a place where May Day is largely unknown, supplanted by a Labor Day four months removed on the calendar and eons away in class content. The centrality of racial oppression has so distorted relationships of class that the very language is impoverished and popular political discussion, infantilized.
Thus, we in the U.S. are relegated to working our way through the logic of slogans that are broadly informed by a reality that is everywhere manifest, but only stiltedly articulated. But that's the political culture we've got, and the OWS slogans do point, inexorably, to confrontation with The Hegemon: the Lords of Capital, their servants and institutions.
The brilliance - if not genius - of the movement, is in the evocation of "occupation" when coupled with the address of the enemy, Wall Street. To many of the participants, "Occupy Wall Street" signifies the elevation of human needs and values over Wall Street profits - a laudable, though amorphous, goal. But to "occupy" the enemy's camp is to grapple with him for physical and/or political space. Inevitably, that means a struggle whose outcome can only be measured in terms of power. In this arena, left-liberal nostrums of tinkering and accommodation with fundamental evils must fail - and will be seen as inadequate to the struggle, early on.
"The centrality of racial oppression has so distorted relationships of class that the very language is impoverished and popular political discussion, infantilized."
The imperative to "occupy" space means the movement is constantly challenged to find new arenas to manifest itself, whether or not the original occupation sites are lost. It is a promise to the people that the movement intends to be permanent, a commitment to provide a focus for expanding spaces of struggle. That is the new and dynamic element that has intruded upon the national psyche, and has so energized and inspired previously existing Left political forces. It is the promise - the possibility - of a popular, activist movement that is, for practical purposes, as permanent as the presence of the enemy: Wall Street.
The cumbersome horizontal mechanisms of the Occupy movement are, in practice, a prophylactic against co-optation by the Democratic Party - a greater danger than the police. To put it bluntly, OWS practice makes it difficult for the movement to make a "deal" with Wall Street's minions in the Democratic Party and like-minded circles, even if the weaker reformers in the ranks wanted to - which many do, judging by some of the proposals swirling around the milieu.
The movement's machinery has also stifled radicals in some locations, but it does not prevent them from functioning outside of and in close collaboration with OWS elements. That's because there is no OWS "franchise" that must be bought into; if there were, then OWS would become its own opposite - a limiting structure in a movement whose central purpose is to constantly expand against the hegemonic power of massed capital.
"It is a promise to the people that the movement intends to be permanent, a commitment to provide a focus for expanding spaces of struggle."
The movement has had dramatic effect in Black America. By virtue of its whiteness, the OWS has been allowed to exercise citizenship rights that have been effectively denied to African Americans in their militarized communities. A Black-occupied Zuccotti Park, or Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, or any of the other occupation sites, is unthinkable under the New Jim Crow. It would invite massacre, as virtually every African American knows. White privilege - in this case, the privilege not to be summarily shot or beaten to a pulp en masse when confronting authority - has been on televised display for the past six weeks. Black perceptions of the spectacle were mixed. There was, of course, deep resentment of the ease with which young white kids from "wherever" could flaunt petty public assembly laws and, for the most part, get away with it, while Black youth are routinely accosted, humiliated and falsely imprisoned by police while simply walking or standing in their own neighborhoods. Black activists who have labored for decades in the urban trenches recoiled at the media exposure garnered by even relatively small groups of white OWSers at their downtown encampments.
But, there is another side of the racist coin. The mostly white OWS movement had, in a sense, legitimized civil disobedience and confrontation with the cops in the current era - an opening that could be exploited. And, if the cameras followed the white people like drones on the kill, then Black outfits should take advantage of the new publicity. After all, African American audiences get most of their information from the same corporate media as whites. If white people could take over a city site and proclaim themselves the Occupation, why not "occupy" Black neighborhoods? In a matter of weeks, Occupy the Hoods proliferated, quite often generating more neighborhood organizing activity than had previously existed, and this time with the cameras rolling.
"The OWS has been allowed to exercise citizenship rights that have been effectively denied to African Americans in their militarized communities."
To the extent that it collaborates with people of color within and outside the OWS, the mostly white movement gains legitimacy among those with the greatest (objective) stake in toppling Wall Street. Without such legitimacy, it is doomed, and no amount of white privilege will save it.
It is doubtful that there would have been an Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, as we have experienced it, if President Obama had not lost his last stitch of emperors clothes this past spring and summer. His abject subservience to the "market's" (Wall Street's) demands that the budget deficit take priority over human needs - a logic that would necessitate the gutting of virtually every social program of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security - broke the heart of every left-liberal Obamite, and every Black person that was not still drunk on ObamaL'aid. His 2008 activist base watched as Obama pleaded with Republicans to accept his $4 trillion budget cut "Grand Bargain" that would roll back a lifetime of social safety nets. The "progressive's" champion became the star in their nightmare. This is what their votes had bought them: a total disaster.
And then the OWS folks gave them a movement.
In that sense, we should thank Obama for shattering the illusion that a Black corporate Democrat with better snake oil-selling skills than Bill Clinton can be anything but a more efficient facilitator of Wall Street's all-consuming, world-killing agenda. However, this unintended favor is nothing compared to the catastrophic harm Obama's ascent has wreaked on Black politics. The advent of the First Black President has politically neutralized Black America, the most progressive constituency in the nation - despite the fact that Obama opposes every element of the historical Black political consensus on peace and social justice. The opening that OWS has created for movement politics comes not a moment too soon for African Americans, the group most in need of a movement, and with the deepest historical experience in movement-building.
Glen Ford is Black Agenda Report executive ecitor and can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
-Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/thank-obama-occupy-wall-street-movement
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7) Rigged Games: Obama's Fake 'Jobs Bill' is Election-Year Theater
By Bruce A. Dixon
Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/rigged-games-obamas-fake-%E2%80%9Cjobs-bill%E2%80%9D-election-year-theater
"'Pass this jobs bill,' is one of the president's recurring lines in this year's episode "
The calendar still says 2011, but with the election a mere 51 weeks distant, it's election year already. The actors, the special effects and the props are being lined up as we speak. Every move candidates make from here on out is carefully choreographed election year theater.
In keeping with Michael Hudson's observation that a corporate politician's job is to deliver his voters to the interests of his campaign contributors, Barack Obama is campaigning to bring the Democratic party's base voters, blacks, Latinos, the poor and whatever "independent" whites he can wrangle, to his sponsors, Wall Street, the telecoms, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Real Estate, Big Oil, Clean Coal, Safe Nukes, and the Pentagon. Republicans have substantially the same set of contributors, but those donors are giving Barack Obama's party alone more than all the Republican candidates put together, and have the presidential campaign, an entirely separate affair, backed to the tune of a billion dollars this cycle. So with different voting constituencies, Republicans and Democrats will campaign differently. But when governing, they remain on the same team.
"Pass this jobs bill," is one of the president's recurring lines in this year's episode ---- as though Barack Obama actually had a bill that might create jobs for the record number of jobless, and as if he even imagined he could or ought to do such a thing. On the real, he hasn't and he doesn't. Politicians come closest to saying what they really think right after elections, not before them.
"...in keeping with Obama's philosophy, his so-called "jobs bill" proposes nothing of the kind. "
Shortly after the 2008 election, Barack shared with the nation a few of his thoughts on job creation, economics and history. He said it was the private sector's job, not the government's role to create jobs and wealth, so no massive WPA-style jobs proposal would be forthcoming. Not soon. Not ever. Not from his administration, at least.
Like today, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, private industry was intent on driving wages further down, and quite happy with massive unemployment and poverty. Popular pressure forced the Roosevelt administration to make the federal government the employer of last resort, and hundreds of thousands of jobless were hired to build parks and roads and bridges and dams and schools across the country. Those WPA workers even dug the subways under downtown Chicago's State Street, which are still creating wealth and jobs 75 years later.
But in keeping with Obama's philosophy, his so-called "jobs bill" proposes nothing of the kind. More than half its original $447 billion price tag is made up of tax cuts, many billions of it to the same industries that are laying people off.
At the same time, the Obama White House has advanced NAFTA-like free trade bills for Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, a kind of legislation that is a proven job-killer. Though the package of free-trade bills does contain a stipulation that additional billions be spent on retraining, this isn't part of the bill the White House is pushing, and is extremely unlikely to pass in any case.
Even individual pieces of the president's "jobs bill" are unlikely to pass. The president knows it, and so does every member of Congress. Harry Reid only put it up for a Senate vote so he'd have Republicans on record as voting against something called a "jobs bill," whether it was or not. The latest chunk of it got 51 votes out of 100 in the US Senate and still failed, due to the 60 vote rule, which is only applied when Democrats need an excuse for not passing nominally progressive legislation that their financiers would rather see fail. Remember Obama's health insurance company bailout bill? That didn't need 60 votes, because health insurance companies loved it.
"When it comes to the interest of Wall Street and the one percent, Obama is effective. He gets it done where Republicans cannot."
Republicans are playing their usual "bad cop" role in the production, opposing the fake "jobs bill," in an effort to make Barack Obama look like the good guy by comparison. They'll vote it down. They'll call it a "jobs killer" and accuse the president, a far more effective capitalist tool at this point than they are, of being a socialist. The Republican role in this drama is to oppose Obama's fake jobs bill as though it were real, to distract attention away from his real record, to make Obama look good, and to retain credibility in front of their own frequently racist constituencies, so that they too can be delivered to donors each and every election cycle.
It's a game, played out on our TVs and blogs and newspapers daily and nightly, a fake world pulled over our eyes to distract us from the real game the players are playing.
On the real, Barack Obama's job creation policies, like his foreign policies, like his environmental policies, like his stands on Clean Coal and Safe Nuclear Power, like where he is on network neutrality, genetically modified crops, and a hundred other issues, are pretty much the same as that of his Republican opponents. Obama is firing and terrorizing government whisteblowers and kidnapping foreign civilians for secret imprisonment and torture, just as Bush did, while launching more drones and commando raids into Africa than Bush ever could have. Obama built the border fence Bush wanted to and could not, passed the bank bailout Bush tried to and failed, and has deported more Latinos in three years than Bush did in eight.
That's why Republicans put on their crazy candidate hats. It's the best, the one, the proven way to distract attention from Obama's actual record, to make the president look good enough to be re-elected in spite of that record. When it comes to the interest of Wall Street and the one percent, Obama is effective, more effective than his Republican colleagues. He gets it done where Republicans cannot. And when it comes to the interests of the rest of us, Barack Obama is not the lesser evil, not even close. He IS THE evil. The more effective evil. That's the truth, the core. The rest is theater.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report.
-Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/rigged-games-obamas-fake-%E2%80%9Cjobs-bill%E2%80%9D-election-year-theater
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8) Freedom Rider: Obama Perfects Right Wing Policy
By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama-perfects-right-wing-policy
"Nothing sticks to him, no matter how awful his actions."
Conservative pundit William Kristol had this to say about Barack Obama, a man he lauded as a "born again neo-con." "What's the joke - they told me if I voted for McCain, we'd be going to war in a third Muslim country? I voted for McCain and we're doing it."
It was said that Ronald Reagan had teflon, that is to say, nothing stuck to him. If Reagan had teflon, then Barack Obama has patented a brand new, space aged non-stick material, because nothing sticks to him, no matter how awful his actions. Thanks to his success in marketing himself as an agent of change, and the complete capitulation of black voters and other progressives, Obama is free to do as he pleases in America and around the world.
He is showing his true self, and the portrait is an ugly one. Obama has been able to follow his predecessor George W. Bush in spreading evil intent and action around the world.
It was clear to anyone who was paying close attention that Barack Obama is a lover of conservative policy. His demonization of the 60s and its supposed excesses, his paeans of praise to Ronald Reagan, and his love of a so-called consensus with Republicans were proof that the idol of progressives didn't have a progressive bone in his body.
Being a smart man with conservative leanings, Obama had only to ponder how he would get away with the worst right wing behavior and still get Democratic love. In foreign policy it is very simple. Make a case for saving people and don't get any Americans killed.
"Obama, the idol of progressives, didn't have a progressive bone in his body."
If Obama, makes the case for war and terror even after having consulted with Bill Kristol and his ilk, most progressives will go along with whatever he says without question, complaint, or protest. If as in the case of Libya, the dirty deed is done without a loss of American lives, as the president bragged after Gaddafi was killed by a raging mob, then so much the better. "Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end."
Americans love wars if they are short and sweet, don't result in coffins covered by Old Glory, and are waged for what they consider to be noble motives. Obama got the evil tyrant routing down perfectly, and helped people who think of themselves as do gooders to justify their support for the horror inflicted upon Libya.
In domestic policy, Obama continues on this path of making what used to be unacceptable suddenly palatable. The budget deal, rightly called "a Satan Sandwich" has resulted in Democrats outdoing Republicans in their pledges to cut the budget. Social Security is no longer the third rail of politics because Obama put it on the table along with earmarks and every other government expenditure. Republicans can breath a sigh of relief as even the lowest hanging fruit stays on the tree.
Obama policy making is worse than Bill Clinton's cynical triangulating. Obama's plans for grand designs are meant to change politics forever by making the most fundamental principals of the Democratic party irrelevant. The president is happiest when John Boehner and the Republicans come to the negotiating table but that is when the rest of us are most at risk.
"Social Security is no longer the third rail of politics because Obama put it on the table."
Naïve Democrats may excoriate him for caving to the Republicans or for not having a backbone but their observations are wildly off the mark. Obama has plenty of backbone. This very perceptive man sought out the job that requires him to do the bidding of corporate interests and the dictates required of an empire. He is certainly not naïve, he is very ambitious and a true believer in the right of the state and corporations to exert their influence over the rest of humanity.
The result is that Republicans are winning whether they are in power or not. If Obama succeeds in being re-elected in 2012 he will probably be followed by a Republican in 2016. Having discredited nearly everything that Democrats claim to want, right wing ideology will have emerged triumphant, perhaps permanently.
It seems that every Democratic president pushes American politics further to the right. Triangulation is followed by a budget super committee and Republican wars are followed by Democratic interventions. Clinton may have said that the era of big government is over, but Obama agreed to across the board budget cuts and refuses to protect entitlements.
Perhaps it isn't surprising that the man who is president at this momentous point in history would be a person who changes politics in such a negative way. The influence of money, the death of black politics, and the end of the financial system as we know it combine to insure that the person who emerges at the top of the political heap will be an unmitigated disaster. The question is, will we rise to the occasion and call him what he is.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.com.
-Black Agenda Report, November 9, 2011
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama-perfects-right-wing-policy
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9) Air Force Mortuary Sent Troop Remains to Landfill
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
November 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/us/dover-mortuary-burned-and-dumped-troop-remains-in-landfill.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - The mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware disposed of some body parts of the nation's war dead from 2003 to 2008 by burning them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, an Air Force official said on Wednesday. The practice has since been stopped and the ashes are now put in urns and buried at sea.
The practice, which was limited to body parts that families of the war dead did not want to receive, was first reported by The Washington Post. The Air Force official said that body parts sometimes would come into the mortuary after families had already buried the remains of their loved ones and had instructed the military to dispose of the additional parts. But the families were not informed of the way the military was disposing of them.
The Air Force official said that the body parts were first cremated and then given to a private contractor, who incinerated them before putting them in the landfill. The Air Force official said he did not know why it was necessary to first cremate the parts and then incinerate them.
The disclosure follows an Air Force announcement on Tuesday that three top officials at the Dover Port Mortuary, the largest in the nation and the main entry point for the nation's war dead, knew about lost body parts at the mortuary but did nothing to fix a sloppy system. The three officials were responsible for "gross mismanagement" at the facility, the Air Force said, and were disciplined but not fired.
Also Wednesday, a Pentagon official said that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta was holding out the possibility of further action against the officials if an outside review found more problems at the mortuary, which has been a hectic place as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sent the bodies of thousands of American men and women to Dover.
"The door is open, depending on what's found," a Defense official said.
Col. Robert H. Edmondson, the former commander of the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center, who left his position as part of a regular rotation last year, received a letter of reprimand, effectively ending any further promotions. Trevor Dean, Colonel Edmondson's former deputy, and Quinton R. Keel, the former mortuary director, both civilians, were demoted within the last two months and moved to lesser jobs at Dover, although not in the mortuary.
A separate investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that handles whistle-blower complaints within the government, said that Mr. Dean and Mr. Keel should have been fired.
However, the Air Force official said on Wednesday that Mr. Dean was one of those responsible for changing the mortuary's practice of dumping the ashes of body parts in the landfill and instead moved to have them buried in urns at sea.
The Air Force said that Colonel Edmondson, Mr. Dean and Mr. Keel were unavailable for comment.
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10) UC Berkeley Police Beat Students in Sproul Plaza
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
10 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/316-20/8336-uc-berkeley-police-beat-students-in-sproul-plaza
The unarmed 'Occupy Cal' protesters were ousted from their encampment late Wednesday, but regrouped for a mass rally and sit-in.
In iconic Sproul Plaza, many hundreds or perhaps thousands of UC Berkeley students and Occupy Oakland activists clashed with university police late into the night Wednesday, after officers carried out instructions from administrators to clear Occupy Cal protesters from their makeshift encampment. "We formed a human barricade around our tents, and they just beat their way through it with batons," said one student. "It really, really hurt - I got the wind knocked out of me," another protester, doctoral student Shane Boyle, told the San Francisco Chronicle, showing the reporter a red welt on his chest. "I was lucky I only got hit twice," he added.
"After warning protesters that camping at the university is illegal, officers moved in and shoved demonstrators out of the way as they pushed toward the camp," the Contra Costa Times reported. "Six UC Berkeley students and an associate professor were arrested; charges included resisting officers and failing to disperse." The police succeeded in clearing away tents, but protesters refused to leave the plaza, insisting that they'd camp there with or without equipment. Protesters with smartphones took turns webcasting video from the scene, and ultimately voted around 1 am to approve a University of California-wide general strike to be held Tuesday of next week.
It took a couple hours to settle on that plan. Around 11:30 pm, students were massed in the plaza shouting at perhaps a couple hundred officers.
Quoth one chant, "Your families will see this."
Only afterward did they begin deliberating en masse.
The scene played out in a space most famous as ground zero during the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Sproul Plaza has since seen anti-Vietnam War sit-ins, anti-apartheid rallies, anti-Iraq War protests, and any number of smaller activist gatherings. A stroll through the plaza on an average day when school is in session is as colorful a scene as there is on campus, as student groups advertise, activists hand out leaflets, and nearby drum circles beat away.
The Daily Cal explains what precipitated the day's events:
The campuswide day of action in support of affordable higher education and the Occupy movement has grown throughout the day to over a thousand students at its peak in the early afternoon, from teach-outs in the morning to a noontime rally that was attended by about 1,000 people.
The protest activities thus far have mirrored past protests with teach-outs and a rally on Sproul Plaza, but in addition to a focus on state budget cuts and the affordability of higher education, the protest has strongly identified with the national Occupy movement and included a march to Bank of America on Telegraph Avenue.
The video at the top of this post captures a violent clash that occurred earlier in the day, when police aggressively pummeled student protesters with their batons. Said Matt Welch, editor of Reason magazine, "Watch cops at Occupy Berkeley launch coordinated baton attack against unarmed students."
As midnight approached, police were summoning reinforcements as protesters chanted, "The chancellor took our tents, but look, we took the plaza." Said another speaker: "Police are not our enemy in this fight. We must above all remain peaceful." The "human microphone" was later seized by an OWS ally from across the bay. "Occupy SF has brought some wifi," he said. "If you want the password come up here -- I can't give it to everyone including the police." Activists live-streaming from the scene at midnight claimed around 10,000 viewers as one protester after another began calling for a University of California-wide all student strike. The proposal was debated via the human microphone, and ultimately passed with 569 in favor and 31 against.
One observer estimated that about half the people present participated in the vote.
In related news, The Oakland Tribune reported the following just before Wednesday's events:
Citing excessive force and free speech violations by police during protests in Oakland and at UC Berkeley, the Berkeley City Council this week refused a mutual aid agreement with university police and nixed agreements with other police agencies on regional domestic surveillance. Council members used news reports of police using excessive force at the Occupy Oakland protests and at previous protests at UC Berkeley as reason for not renewing the agreements that usually are approved each year without fanfare.
In addition, the council did not renew an agreement with the federal government on detaining illegal immigrants at the city jail. The 8-0 vote, with Mayor Tom Bates abstaining, means the council will revisit those agreements at a later date after scrutinizing them more thoroughly.
University of California campuses are patrolled by state police officers.
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11) Mayor Calls for Occupy Oakland Protesters to Clear Camp 'Voluntarily' After Shooting
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ROBERT MACKEY
November 11, 2011, 9:57 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/latest-updates-on-occupy-oakland/?hp
Updated | 12:04 p.m. Occupy Oakland protesters are braced for another confrontation with the police on Friday after Mayor Jean Quan said that the demonstrators should vacate their encampment "voluntarily" within 24 hours.
The call for an end to the protest comes after a man was shot and killed in Frank Ogawa Plaza on Thursday evening, just outside the entrance to the Occupy Oakland camp.
An Oakland Tribune video report showed a medic from the protest camp tending to the shooting victim, as shocked bystanders looked on.
As The Tribune reported, some protesters insisted that the shooting was was unrelated to their camp. One of them, a man named Todd Walker who works with young people in the city, said: "Everyone is focusing on Occupy, but this guy has a family." He added that moving the protesters from the camp was less important than the ongoing problem of violent crime. "Everyone is worried about a patch of grass," he said, "but the problem is too many murders in Oakland."
According to a San Francisco Chronicle report on the shooting, "before the ambulance had even pulled away, people were debating whether the killing was somehow linked to the month-old gathering."
The Chronicle added that Oakland's interim police chief, Howard Jordan, - "speaking to reporters over protesters who shouted, 'This is not Occupy Oakland'" - told reporters later that two groups of people had been involved in a dispute that ended when someone began to fire shots. "Witnesses said they heard four to six shots, and saw several young men flee," the newspaper reported. No arrests have been made.
The Chronicle added, the shooting happened in a busy downtown area "adjacent to the Occupy encampment, where drug use is prevalent and where devoted protesters have increasingly struggled to control fights and robberies and deal with mentally ill homeless people."
The protesters have been camped out in the plaza for a month, and a previous attempt to clear the area by force led to clashes between the police and protesters, during which an Iraq war veteran who was protesting peacefully near police lines was struck in the head as tear gas was fired at the demonstrators.
Although it is unclear whether the shooting had any connection to the demonstration, officials in Oakland, including Mayor Quan, said it was an indication that the protesters needed to leave.
"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end," the mayor said in a statement. "The risks are too great. We need to return O.P.D. resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution. I call on the community to be united in the need for the camp to close. I am calling on campers to leave voluntarily."
Larry Reid, the City Council president, told the Tribune: "We can no longer continue to sit back. This has raised the red flag even more."
The photojournalist who shot The Tribune video report, Jane Tyska, reported on Twitter that a cameraman for a local news program was attacked soon after the shooting by people who wanted him to stop filming the crime scene. Like the shooting itself, this incident might not have involved any of the protesters at the camp nearby.
Ms. Tyska also shot video of a candlelight vigil for the shooting victim at the plaza on Thursday night.
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12) Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport
"The soldier, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, of Billings, Mont., was found guilty of three counts of murder, of conspiring to commit murder and several other charges, including assaulting a fellow soldier and taking fingers and a tooth from the dead. He was sentenced to life in prison but could be eligible for parole in less than 10 years."
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
November 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/calvin-gibbs-convicted-of-killing-civilians-in-afghanistan.html?ref=us
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. - The soldier accused of being the ringleader of a rogue Army unit that killed three Afghan civilians last year for sport, crimes that angered Afghan leaders and villagers and rattled high levels of the American military, was found guilty of all charges on Thursday.
The soldier, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, of Billings, Mont., was found guilty of three counts of murder, of conspiring to commit murder and several other charges, including assaulting a fellow soldier and taking fingers and a tooth from the dead. He was sentenced to life in prison but could be eligible for parole in less than 10 years.
The verdict, rendered in under a day of deliberations by a five-member panel after a nine-day court-martial at this base 45 miles south of Seattle, was a decisive victory for Army prosecutors, whose case against Sergeant Gibbs was built largely on testimony from other soldiers, including many who had pleaded guilty in the crimes. Of the five soldiers accused of murder in the case, three have pleaded guilty, one of them to manslaughter.
Sergeant Gibbs's lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, tried to convince the panel that most of the soldiers who accused his client were doing so to get more lenient sentences, and that accounts from the soldiers differed. Army prosecutors said that because many of the soldiers had already pleaded guilty to murder and other serious charges, they had no reason to lie. "All to frame Staff Sergeant Gibbs?" Maj. Robert Stelle asked the panel during his closing arguments on Wednesday. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous."
All told, five soldiers were charged with killing civilians in three separate episodes early last year. Soldiers repeatedly described Sergeant Gibbs as devising "scenarios" in which the unit would fake combat situations by detonating grenades or planting weapons near their victims. They said he even supplied "drop weapons" and grenades to make the victims appear armed. Some soldiers took pictures posing with the dead and took body parts as trophies. Sergeant Gibbs is accused of snipping fingers from victims and later using them to intimidate another soldier.
He also pulled a tooth from one man, saying in court that he had "disassociated" the bodies from being human, that taking the fingers and tooth was like removing antlers from a deer.
Sergeant Gibbs said he that was ashamed of taking the body parts, that he was "trying to be hard, a hard individual." But he insisted that the people he took them from had posed genuine threats to him and his unit.
The soldiers were members of the former Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, which deployed to Afghanistan from this base in 2009. They spent much of their time patrolling roads and small villages near Kandahar, and some soldiers have said the sport killings followed frustration that the unit had not seen more combat.
Sergeant Gibbs joined the unit as a squad leader in the fall of 2009, several months into the deployment, having served previously in Iraq. He was big, 6 feet 4 inches tall, and his fellow soldiers described him as charismatic and tactically smart. While many members in the unit have admitted to smoking hashish on patrol, Sergeant Gibbs was not accused of taking drugs.
By January 2010, the first killing had taken place. The next occurred in February and the last in May. Each time the deaths were cast as combat situations.
While some of accused admitted involvement and implicated Sergeant Gibbs from the moment the investigation began, in May 2010, Sergeant Gibbs consistently said he was not guilty, that all of the killings happened in what he believed were legitimate combat situations. "Keep this one word in mind: betrayal," Mr. Stackhouse told the panel, "because what you're seeing in this case is the ultimate betrayal of an infantryman."
Sergeant Gibbs appeared stunned, his mouth open, when the verdict was read.
One of the principal witnesses against him, Pfc. Jeremy Morlock, pleaded guilty to all three killings in March and faces a 24-year sentence. Specialist Adam C. Winfield pleaded guilty in August to manslaughter in one of the killings and faces three years in prison. Pfc. Andrew Holmes pleaded guilty to one of the killings in September.
Many of the defendants, as well as six others charged in the unit, pleaded guilty to other charges, including smoking hashish and assaulting a soldier who eventually led Army investigators to discover the killings.
Sergeant Gibbs was the highest-ranking soldier charged in the case. The leader of the entire Stryker Brigade, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, was removed from his position in the summer of 2010, after the investigation into the killings began.
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13) Vermont: Suicide at 'Occupy' Camp
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/vermont-man-shot-at-occupy-camp.html?ref=us
Police say preliminary investigations show a 35-year-old military veteran fatally shot himself in the head at an Occupy Wall Street encampment in Burlington. The police were withholding the man's name because his family had not been fully notified. The man shot himself inside a tent in City Hall Park on Thursday afternoon and died in the evening at a hospital in Burlington. Deputy Chief Andi Higbee said the public was not believed to be at risk. On Thursday night, the police in Oakland, Calif., said a man died after being shot just outside the anti-Wall Street camp in that city. Police Chief Howard Jordan said the shooting took place after two groups of men fought near the camp on a plaza near City Hall. He said investigators did not know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but protest organizers said they were not.
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14) Sights and Sounds on the Grounds of a Nuclear Disaster
By MARTIN FACKLER
November 12, 2011, 8:08 am
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/sights-and-sounds-on-the-grounds-of-a-nuclear-disaster/?hp
Eight months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese government has opened the compound and surrounding area to the media for the first time. On Saturday, a group of reporters, including Martin Fackler of The New York Times, toured the plant. In this post, he describes his trip to the damaged facility:
About three dozen journalists - each wearing a protective suit, double gloves, a double layer of clear plastic booties over shoes, a hair cover and a respirator mask - were put onto two buses. Each of us was given a radiation detector.
We passed a police checkpoint as we drove to the plant from J-Village, the facility being used to house workers laboring to bring the reactors under control. As we drove, we saw abandoned homes, and the towns of Naraha, Tomioka and Okuma appeared to be empty. A company store was evident, with plants - withered and dead - still on display outside.
Many homes had been visited and fixed, and the surrounding area was swept clean, with debris put into neat piles. Others were left as they were when residents fled. Inside an office, papers could be seen scattered in piles on the floor, apparently untouched since the earthquake.
The road was collapsed in places. Along the way was a pachinko parlor with its front collapsed; a car dealership with windows shattered, insulation exposed; and a gas station that had been cleaned up but then taken over by crows.
The radiation readings rose as we approached the plant: 0.7 microsieverts per hour in Naraha, near the edge of the restricted zone. In Tomioka, the level rose to 0.9 and then 1.5.
In Tomioka, we passed the former welcome center for Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the operator of Fukushima: a small collection of Bavarian-style gingerbread buildings. Nearby was a political poster for Naoto Kan, the former prime minister.
The radiation reading rose to 2.7 micorsieverts as the buses approached Okuma. Then 3.7, 4.1. The levels rose quickly, with a warning buzzer going off constantly.
In Okuma, the level was 6.7. The bus stopped so we could put on the respirators, which meant every inch of skin was now covered.
We then turned onto the road that led to the plant. Here, just a little over a mile away, many houses were neat, with doors shut and curtains drawn. The reading was now 15 microsieverts.
The reading rose to 20 as we reached the security check at the plant gate.
The first objects visible on entering the plant were half a dozen large cranes dominating the skyline. We then passed a field filled with blue train-car-like tanks for contaminated water and dozens of large, four-story-tall silver tanks, for contaminated seawater. According to Tepco, there is 90,000 tons of water stored here. The company said the water was cleaned before storage, and that more storage capacity was being built.
Next, we passed a cluster of large white tents surrounded by black sandbags - used to protect workers from radiation, according to Tepco.
A pine forest fills much of the plant grounds, creating an almost bucolic setting. There were Japanese, American and French flags at the entrance to the water-decontamination facility.
Then we were received our first look at Fukushima's damaged reactor buildings. Unit No. 1 was covered by a new superstructure; No. 2 was intact, with blue and white colors; No. 3 was in the worst shape - a skeletal concrete frame, with much of it collapsed into a pile of rubble. Three cranes were cleaning up the rubble at Reactor No. 3, to prepare for capping that building with a superstructure.
Reactor No. 4 was also severely damaged. The building had buckled, with slabs blown out. The entire south side was blown out, exposing the green crane for the spent fuel rod pool.
The radiation reading here - a little more than 500 yards from the reactors - was 50 microsieverts. However, we saw signs of life: crows and dragonflies.
Tepco said 3,200 workers normally work at the plant on weekdays. But because it was Saturday, about half the number were at the facility. Workers were seen building water tanks and at a nearby site, a rectangular concrete building and a cream-colored building used to store highly radioactive waste, including sludge. That material is sealed inside vessels for storage, Tepco said.
Next, we drove down to the reactors. (Most of the plant grounds are about 30 meters, or 98 feet, above sea level, but the reactors are on a lower shelflike area, 10 meters, or about 33 feet, above sea level.)
The base of the reactor buildings was still not cleaned up from the tsunami and subsequent hydrogen explosions. Crumpled trucks were strewn along with twisted metal girders and frames of buildings. A huge storage tank was dented and bent and pipes on the side of a building were twisted and pulled off, left hanging. The damage reached to the second story, attesting to the March 11 tsunami's size.
Our buses then drove between the reactors and the sea. A sea wall of about four meters, or about 13 feet, had been built with rocks in black nets, which Tepco said was a makeshift defense against another tsunami.
The radiation reading here, inside the bus and at the base of the reactors, was 300 microsieverts.
The base of the reactor buildings was filled with debris. The debris included twisted metal, and we saw three white cars with Tepco markings crushed together. Twisted trucks had fallen into empty pools. An office building was left gutted.
Along the waterfront was a pile of disassembled cranes. We saw a megafloat tied to a pier. Offshore was a new wave wall of huge tetrapods, four-legged structures that are used as a guard against breakwaters.
Trucks with pumps used in the early effort to cool the reactors were nearby, but were not in use.
We then drove back up to the "seismic safety building" - the plant's disaster headquarters. On the way, we saw evidence of earthquake's damage: big cracks in the earth, buckled metal shutters on a building. Windows had blinds still out of shape. On the roof of the headquarters were small sheds that had toppled.
Entering the disaster center was a time-consuming process because of the radioactivity precautions. In the first room, we took off the booties. The room is lined with pink plastic sheets. In the next room, teams of workers cut off our protective suits with scissors, removed our gloves and our masks.
Inside the center was the roar of air filters. The radiation reading was about 1.5 microsieverts. On the walls were long strings of paper cranes, posters and even hand towels with messages of support for plant workers from around Japan, and a few from the United States.
The temperature at the three damaged reactors is below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), the target temperature for cooling them, a Tepco spokesman, Tetsuya Terasawa, said.
Mr. Terasawa said there was still 40,000 tons of water at the bottom of reactor buildings, and that much of this was groundwater and rain. The company could not just drain the reactor buildings because more water would simply flow in, he said. Caution also had to be taken not to let the water build up too much because the pressure could build to a point that contaminated water leaks underground. He said Tepco was engaged in a delicate balancing act of keeping water inside buildings at an optimal level of about 4 meters above sea level.
He said all vital electronic systems and pumps of the new cooling system were on 30-meter heights behind reactors, keeping them safely out of the tsunami's reach.
Next, we went into the Response Room, the plant's crisis center. This was a large room, filled with men. (No women are working at plant.) One wall was filled with screens that mostly showed live images from around the plant. In the center was a live image of the damaged reactor buildings.
At the front of the room was an oval of tables with 25 men sitting around. The rest of the room was filled with another dozen tables, each with a dozen men tapping at laptops. Near the oval was a white board with measurements from the six reactors that included temperature and hydrogen readings. On one wall sat a small, plain wood Shinto shrine.
Goshi Hosono, the country's environment and nuclear crisis minister, came to the front of the room to speak to the workers.
Wearing blue work clothes, he said that Saturday was his fourth visit to Fukushima Daiichi since May.
"Every time I come back, I feel conditions have improved," he said. "This is due to your hard work."
He said he felt relief that the hard work done at Fukushima was moving the facility toward stabilization, noting the especially difficult work performed in the first two months after the tsunami.
"In March and April, you overcame a very difficult predicament," he said.
Mr. Hosono said he wanted a cold shutdown by year's end. However, there was still 30 years of work after that, he said, referring to the dismantling of the reactors. Tepco and the government will work together to do this, he said.
The plant chief Masao Yoshida said that the reactors had stabilized, and that he thought workers would complete a cold shutdown of the facility. He said they were now focused on that.
"From the data at the plant that I have seen, there is no doubt that the reactors have been stabilized," he told reporters.
But he said the reactors could still pose a danger to the workers.
"But even saying it's stabilized doesn't mean that it is extremely safe. When working, the radiation remains high, so when it comes to working every day, there is still danger."
Mr. Yoshida said a cold shutdown was possible because the fuel, even though melted down, was still inside the secondary containment vessel so the water will cool it.
Asked how he felt in the early days of the crisis, Mr. Yoshida said he was afraid he and his fellow workers might die. He said he remembers hearing the first explosion on March 12. His first reaction to that was "What was that?" He also worried that workers might have died in an explosion.
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15) Report Gives New Details of Chaos at Stricken Plant
By MATTHEW L. WALD
November 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/world/asia/report-details-initial-chaos-at-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html?_r=1&ref=world
Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 was stuck in darkness, and everyone on site feared that the reactor core was damaged. It was the day after a huge earthquake and a towering tsunami devastated the plant, and the workers for Tokyo Electric Power Company knew they were the only hope for halting an unfolding nuclear disaster.
Another power company tried to help. It rushed a mobile electrical generator to the site to power the crucial water pumps that cool the reactor. But connecting it required pulling a thick electrical cable across about 650 feet of ground strewn with debris from the tsunami and made more treacherous by open holes left when manhole covers were washed away.
The cable, four inches in diameter, weighed approximately one ton, and 40 workers were needed to maneuver it into position. Their urgent efforts were interrupted by aftershocks and alarms about possible new tsunamis.
By 3:30 in the afternoon, the workers had managed what many consider a heroic feat: they had hooked up the cable. Six minutes later, a hydrogen explosion ripped through the reactor building, showering the area with radioactive debris and damaging the cable, rendering it useless.
Those details about the first hours after the earthquake at the stricken plant are part of a new 98-page chronology of the Fukushima accident. The account, compiled by American nuclear experts, is meant to form a basis for American nuclear operators and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to learn lessons from the disaster. But it also provides a rare, detailed look at workers' frantic efforts to save the plant, portraying (in measured technical language) scenes worthy of the most gripping disaster movies.
The experts who compiled the report work for the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an Atlanta organization that is an integral part of the American nuclear industry and one that has won praise over the years for its audits, sometimes critical, of plants around the country.
The authors could provide a deep level of detail because they were able to interview operators and executives from Tokyo Electric Power Company and had access to many of the company's documents and data.
The chronology does not draw any conclusions about the accident, or analyze the actions taken after the earthquake; it is intended only to provide an agreed-upon set of facts for further study. In that way the document might be more useful for the nuclear industry than for Japanese citizens still hungry for assurances that they are no longer in danger and angry over missteps, documented in the news media, that led to more people being exposed to more radiation than was necessary.
One aspect of the disaster that American companies are likely to focus on is Fukushima's troubles with its venting system, meant to reduce pressure and avert explosions when crucial cooling systems fail. Another focus is likely to be the extreme difficulty workers had in getting emergency equipment to the reactors where they were needed.
The report is likely to reinforce the conviction of American companies that operate reactors of the design used at Fukushima that venting from the containment vessels around reactors early in an accident is better than waiting, even though radioactive material will be released. The delays in Japan appear to have contributed to explosions that damaged the vessels and ultimately led to larger releases of contaminants.
It has been clear for months that Fukushima operators delayed venting for hours, even after the government ordered that the action be taken. The chronology, however, suggests for the first time that some delays were because plant executives believed that they were required to wait for evacuation of surrounding areas.
Because the chronology is based mainly on accounts by Tepco and its workers and company data, it is by nature limited. It does not, for example, relate that there was tension between Tepco and the government over when to vent, as the news media have reported.
The report is also likely to incite more debate about how emergency equipment and material are stored and what types of contingency plans need to be made to ensure equipment can reach reactors in a disaster. Nuclear critics in the United States have long complained that American emergency rules do not take into account that a natural phenomenon could cause an accident at a plant and make it hard to get help from outside.
For example, although the plant had three fire engines that could have pumped in vital cooling water, one was damaged in the tsunami and another was blocked by earthquake damage to roads. Inspections at some American reactors after the Japanese quake and tsunami found that they were storing emergency gear in a way that made it vulnerable to the emergency it was intended for.
The report was perhaps most vivid when it was describing workers' often unsuccessful efforts to salvage the situation. In one case, plant workers are said to have broken through a security fence to take a fire truck to unit 1 so it could pump water to cool the reactor. (The plant's cooling system by that time was unusable, and without it, reactors and fuel pools can overheat and cause meltdowns.)
But as often happened during the disaster, the workers' struggles only partly paid off. Increasing heat caused the pressure inside the containment vessel to build. By the time the fire truck started pumping, workers were able to force in less than 10 gallons per minute, not much more than a kitchen faucet puts out. That was far too little to cool the nuclear fuel and reduce pressure.
The report also takes note of the human toll the disaster took on workers.
It points out that many plant workers had lost their homes and even their families in the tsunami, and that for days after the quake, they were sleeping on the floor at the plant, soaking up radiation doses even in the control room. Because of food shortages, they were provided with only a biscuit for breakfast and a bowl of noodles for dinner.
Working in darkness and without electricity, even simple tasks became challenging. At one point, control room operators formed themselves into teams of two, to dash into high-dose areas to try to open a crucial vent. One would hold the flashlight and monitor the radiation dose, while the other would try to get a valve to move. But there was no communication once the team was in the field, so the next team could leave for the reactor only after the first had returned.
Eventually, the radiation levels got too high, and they gave up. The first explosion rocked the plant soon after, belching clouds of radioactive materials and giving the world its clearest sense of the scope of the catastrophe unfolding in Japan.
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
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16) The New Progressive Movement
By JEFFREY D. SACHS
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-new-progressive-movement.html?_r=1
OCCUPY WALL STREET and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.
Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' benefits were exempted from the squeeze.
Reagan's was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue - the rise of global competition in the information age - and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.
Washington still channels Reaganomics. The federal budget for nonsecurity discretionary outlays - categories like highways and rail, education, job training, research and development, the judiciary, NASA, environmental protection, energy, the I.R.S. and more - was cut from more than 5 percent of gross domestic product at the end of the 1970s to around half of that today. With the budget caps enacted in the August agreement, domestic discretionary spending would decline to less than 2 percent of G.D.P. by the end of the decade, according to the White House. Government would die by fiscal asphyxiation.
Both parties have joined in crippling the government in response to the demands of their wealthy campaign contributors, who above all else insist on keeping low tax rates on capital gains, top incomes, estates and corporate profits. Corporate taxes as a share of national income are at the lowest levels in recent history. Rich households take home the greatest share of income since the Great Depression. Twice before in American history, powerful corporate interests dominated Washington and brought America to a state of unacceptable inequality, instability and corruption. Both times a social and political movement arose to restore democracy and shared prosperity.
The first age of inequality was the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, an era quite like today, when both political parties served the interests of the corporate robber barons. The progressive movement arose after the financial crisis of 1893. In the following decades Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson came to power, and the movement pushed through a remarkable era of reform: trust busting, federal income taxation, fair labor standards, the direct election of senators and women's suffrage.
The second gilded age was the Roaring Twenties. The pro-business administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover once again opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess, this time culminating in the Great Depression. And once again the pendulum swung. F.D.R.'s New Deal marked the start of several decades of reduced income inequality, strong trade unions, steep top tax rates and strict financial regulation. After 1981, Reagan began to dismantle each of these core features of the New Deal.
Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.
None of this will be easy. Vested interests are deeply entrenched, even as Wall Street titans are jailed and their firms pay megafines for fraud. The progressive era took 20 years to correct abuses of the Gilded Age. The New Deal struggled for a decade to overcome the Great Depression, and the expansion of economic justice lasted through the 1960s. The new wave of reform is but a few months old.
The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days, will have to expand in several strategic ways. Activists are needed among shareholders, consumers and students to hold corporations and politicians to account. Shareholders, for example, should pressure companies to get out of politics. Consumers should take their money and purchasing power away from companies that confuse business and political power. The whole range of other actions - shareholder and consumer activism, policy formulation, and running of candidates - will not happen in the park.
The new movement also needs to build a public policy platform. The American people have it absolutely right on the three main points of a new agenda. To put it simply: tax the rich, end the wars and restore honest and effective government for all.
Finally, the new progressive era will need a fresh and gutsy generation of candidates to seek election victories not through wealthy campaign financiers but through free social media. A new generation of politicians will prove that they can win on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blog sites, rather than with corporate-financed TV ads. By lowering the cost of political campaigning, the free social media can liberate Washington from the current state of endemic corruption. And the candidates that turn down large campaign checks, political action committees, Super PACs and bundlers will be well positioned to call out their opponents who are on the corporate take.
Those who think that the cold weather will end the protests should think again. A new generation of leaders is just getting started. The new progressive age has begun.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity."
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17) Deportations Under New U.S. Policy Are Inconsistent
By JULIA PRESTON
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/president-obamas-policy-on-deportation-is-unevenly-applied.html?ref=world
A new Obama administration policy to avoid deportations of illegal immigrants who are not criminals has been applied very unevenly across the country and has led to vast confusion both in immigrant communities and among agents charged with carrying it out.
Since June, when the policy was unveiled, frustrated lawyers and advocates have seen a steady march of deportations of immigrants with no criminal record and with extensive roots in the United States, who seemed to fit the administration's profile of those who should be allowed to remain.
But at the same time, in other cases, immigrants on the brink of expulsion saw their deportations halted at the last minute, sometimes after public protests. In some instances, immigration prosecutors acted, with no prodding from advocates, to abandon deportations of immigrants with strong ties to this country whose only violation was their illegal status.
For President Obama, the political stakes in the new policy are high. White House officials have concluded that there is no chance before next year's presidential election to pass the immigration overhaul that Mr. Obama supports, which would include paths to legal status for illegal immigrants. But immigration authorities have sustained a fast pace of deportations, removing nearly 400,000 foreigners in each of the last three years.
With Latino communities taking the brunt of those deportations, Latino voters are increasingly disappointed with Mr. Obama. White House officials hope the new policy will ease some of the pressure on Latinos, by steering enforcement toward gang members and convicts and away from students, soldiers and families of American citizens.
In a June 17 memorandum, John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, laid out more than two dozen factors that its agents and lawyers should weigh when deciding whether to exercise prosecutorial discretion to dismiss a deportation. The memo called for "particular care and consideration" for veterans and active-duty troops, elderly immigrants and minors, and those brought here illegally as children.
In August, the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, announced additional measures to put Mr. Morton's guidelines into effect, including a review of all deportation cases - about 300,000 - currently in the immigration courts, with the aim of closing cases that do not meet the administration's priorities.
In a report released Wednesday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council collected 252 cases from lawyers across the country who had asked Mr. Morton's agency, known as ICE, to exercise prosecutorial discretion to spare immigrants from deportation. "The overwhelming conclusion is that most ICE offices have not changed their practices since the issuance of these new directives," the report found.
"This is a classic example of leadership saying one thing and the rank and file doing another," said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers association. The report found that training for immigration officers on the new guidelines had been lacking.
Officials at the Homeland Security Department acknowledge the policy's slow start. Mr. Morton's June guidelines were followed by a three-month lull, when resistance grew among agents in the field. In late September, Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton went on the offensive to press the policy, and since then Mr. Morton has been on the road inaugurating training programs.
"Like any major change in enforcement policy, this is a work in progress," Mr. Morton said by telephone from Miami, where he was joining in a training session. "I have been handling much of the initial explanation myself, because I feel so strongly about it."
Officials say they need time to transform federal agencies accustomed to cut-and-dried immigration enforcement, with any illegal immigrant a target for deportation. Ms. Napolitano says immigration agents must become more like other police officers, using "sound prosecutorial practice" to follow priorities. Those priorities are to deport convicted criminals, serial violators of immigration law and recent border crossers, officials said.
The priorities did not apply for Neida Lavayen, 46, an American citizen in Elizabeth, N.J. After a three-year courtship, she had planned on Sept. 23 to marry Rubén Quinteros, an illegal immigrant from Uruguay. Mr. Quinteros, 43, had come legally to the United States, then stayed past his time limit. But once he and Ms. Lavayen married, he would be eligible for a permanent resident's green card as the spouse of a citizen.
Eight days before the wedding, Mr. Quinteros was arrested by immigration agents. His lawyer, Heather Benno, argued that he should benefit from prosecutorial discretion, since he was days away from resolving his immigration status. He had no criminal record, had paid taxes and had provided vital support for his fiancée, who suffered domestic abuse in her first marriage.
Ms. Benno's motions were denied. Ms. Lavayen found a pastor to marry the couple in the detention center, but immigration agents declined to release Mr. Quinteros for a few hours so he could go with Ms. Lavayen to get the marriage license, since registrars would not issue one without him. They were not able to marry, and Mr. Quinteros was deported Oct. 27.
"I never thought I would fall in love again and have dreams again and live such a beautiful romance," Ms. Lavayen said in a telephone conversation, pausing often to cry. "How did my country take away my happiness?"
By contrast, a student from Germany received good news that he had not asked for. Manuel Bartsch, now 24, was brought to the United States when he was 10 years old, then remained without documents. He stuck to his studies and is now nearing graduation from a private university in Ohio. After a legal fight in 2006, the immigration agency suspended Mr. Bartsch's deportation, said his lawyer, David Leopold. On Nov. 3, the agency surprised Mr. Bartsch by terminating his deportation case entirely.
Like others whose deportations are canceled under the new policy, Mr. Bartsch will remain in limbo without any positive immigration status, Mr. Leopold said. But he will be able to apply for a work permit, an identity document that can open many doors.
"Hats off to ICE in the field for following the directives," Mr. Leopold said.
Outspoken resistance to the policy has come from Chris Crane, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees' union local that represents ICE deportation agents. In testimony last month before the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Crane said that Mr. Morton's guidelines were too complex and "cannot be effectively applied in the field."
Rather than adding flexibility, Mr. Crane said, the guidelines "take away officers' discretion and establish a system that mandates that the nation's most fundamental immigration laws are not enforced."
Still, uncertainty about the policy among agents appeared more widespread than outright rejection did. That was the experience of Shamir Ali, a 24-year-old student born in Bangladesh, who was detained Oct. 19 when the police raided a Miami car rental agency where he worked, looking for someone else. Mr. Ali seemed to fit within the discretion guidelines: he had no criminal record and had been brought by his parents to the United States when he was 7. But immigration agents denied his first requests to be spared from deportation.
Then student groups staged protests on Mr. Ali's behalf in eight cities. On Oct. 28, agents freed Mr. Ali on an order of supervision, also allowing him to apply for a work permit. For Mr. Ali, like Mr. Bartsch, that permit would be life-changing, since it would allow him to obtain a driver's license and to enroll at resident rates in a state college.
Mr. Ali said he felt deeply grateful to the immigration agency. But he wondered: "If I didn't have all that support, what would have happened to me?"
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18) Police in Denver Move on Protesters
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/police-in-denver-move-on-protesters.html?ref=us
DENVER - The Denver police cleared a protest encampment allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement in a downtown square Saturday evening. Sixteen people were arrested, according to the police.
"We warned the individuals about blocking right of way and setting up tents," said a police spokesman, Sonny Jackson. "We asked them to take some of the items down, and they refused."
The police arrived at Civic Center Park early Saturday evening and began dismantling the camp.
"We asked them to step back, and collected anything that was left behind," Mr. Jackson said.
Protesters said that some grabbed their belongings and went to regroup at Skyline Park, which is about a mile away, near the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
The move comes a month after the police ejected protesters from a park in front of the State Capitol, where Denver's Occupy offshoot began. Twenty-four people were arrested that night after refusing orders to disperse.
Saturday night also saw protesters swept out of an Occupy encampment in Salt Lake City. Nineteen people were arrested when they refused to remove tents from Pioneer Park, according to The Associated Press. The A.P. also reported that existing permits required for protesters to remain at the park were revoked after a man was found dead in a tent there Friday morning.
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