*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Army sets pre-trial hearing date for Bradley. Vigils and rallies planned at Fort Meade MD, worldwide.
Protest his Pretrial Hearing Saturday, Dec 17th (Bradley's B-Day) at 12pm at Fort Meade, MD outside Washington D.C.! (Solidarity actions taking place around the world.)
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/army-schedules-dec-16-pretrial-hearing-for-pfc-bradley-manning
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Occupy Oakland Calls for TOTAL WEST COAST PORT SHUTDOWN ON 12/12
Posted 21 hours ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 8:35 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-oakland-calls-total-west-coast-port-shutdow/
Proposal for a Coordinated West Coast Port Shutdown, Passed With Unanimous Consensus by vote of the Occupy Oakland General Assembly 11/18/2012:
In response to coordinated attacks on the occupations and attacks on workers across the nation:
Occupy Oakland calls for the blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th. The 1% has disrupted the lives of longshoremen and port truckers and the workers who create their wealth, just as coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt our Occupy movement.
We call on each West Coast occupation to organize a mass mobilization to shut down its local port. Our eyes are on the continued union-busting and attacks on organized labor, in particular the rupture of Longshoremen jurisdiction in Longview Washington by the EGT. Already, Occupy Los Angeles has passed a resolution to carry out a port action on the Port Of Los Angeles on December 12th, to shut down SSA terminals, which are owned by Goldman Sachs.
Occupy Oakland expands this call to the entire West Coast, and calls for continuing solidarity with the Longshoremen in Longview Washington in their ongoing struggle against the EGT. The EGT is an international grain exporter led by Bunge LTD, a company constituted of 1% bankers whose practices have ruined the lives of the working class all over the world, from Argentina to the West Coast of the US. During the November 2nd General Strike, tens of thousands shutdown the Port Of Oakland as a warning shot to EGT to stop its attacks on Longview. Since the EGT has disregarded this message, and continues to attack the Longshoremen at Longview, we will now shut down ports along the entire West Coast.
Participating occupations are asked to ensure that during the port shutdowns the local arbitrator rules in favor of longshoremen not crossing community picket lines in order to avoid recriminations against them. Should there be any retaliation against any workers as a result of their honoring pickets or supporting our port actions, additional solidarity actions should be prepared. In the event of police repression of any of the mobilizations, shutdown actions may be extended to multiple days.
In Solidarity and Struggle,
Occupy Oakland
-In Oakland: the West Coast Port Shutdown Coordinating Committee will meet on General Assembly days at 5pm before the GA to organize the local shutdown, and to network with other occupations.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:
DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/protesters-and-officers-clash-near-wall-street/?permid=567#comment567
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE BRADLEY MANNING! SUPPORT GI RESISTANCE!
MAILING / PIZZA PARTY
Wednesday, November 30th ~ 5 pm to 10 pm
55 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland CA
Dear Friend,
We would love your help with sending out our tri-annual newsletter and fund appeal Wednesday evening, November 30th. If you're in the Bay Area, please drop by for the evening, or just a few spare minutes! This is a great way to learn more about our work in support of GI resisters.
Newsletter highlights will include updates on the growing international campaign to free alleged WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning, Army objector Daniel Birmingham, solidarity with the Occupy Movement, and much more.
GI Resistance Pizza / Mailing Party Wednesday, November 30th, 5 pm to 10 pm at 55 Santa Clara Ave, Suite 126, Oakland CA 94610 (One block north of 580 at Harrison--behind the Budget Inn). We can also use help earlier in the day Wednesday as well. Call us for more info at 510-488-3559, or courage@riseup.net
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Courage to Resist project director
Bradley Manning Support Network steering committee member
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Art as Organizing
Political Art From the 1930s to Today
A Community Discussion
at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics in San Francisco November 30
Art as Organizing
Political Art From the 1930s to Today
Eric Quezada Center for Culture & Politics
518 Valencia Street @ 16th Street, San Francisco
Wednesday, 6:30-9:30,
November 30, 2011
Artists and activists will come together for a discussion on the use of art for political organizing. As the numbers of people living in poverty continues to swell, this evening will explore the past, present and future uses of art for social justice. Art Hazelwood will present images and themes from the new book Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present.
A community discussion will be kicked off by speakers Western Regional Advocacy Project organizer, Paul Boden, photographer, Francisco Dominguez, Coalition on Homelessness civil rights organizer, Bob Offer-Westort, Roaddawgz Homeless Youth Creative Drop-in Center director, Machiko Saito
The evening includes an exhibition of political art posters, prints, and photographs by local activist artists.
$5 at the door to benefit Center for Political Education - no one turned away for lack of funds. The event is wheelchair accessible and offers childcare during the event.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
es we can! *We are the 99%!*
SI PODEMOS! *NOSOTROS SOMOS EL 99%*
*Join Occupy SF, Mission community, and immigrants rights groups*
*March for Immigrants Rights!*
UNASE A OCCUPY SF, LA COMUNIDAD DE LA MISSION, Y GRUPOS POR LOS DERECHOS DE
LOS INMIGRANTES!
*MARCHE POR LOS DERECHOS DE LOS INMIGRANTES!*
Sat, Nov 26th/SABADO, 26 DE NOVIEMBRE
3pm - March: Occupy SF (Justin Herman Plaza)
4pm - Rally: 16th & Mission
4:30pm - March: to 24th & Mission
3 PM Marcha desde Occupy SF (Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero)
4 PM Rally en la esquina de la 16 y Mission
4:30 PM Marcha a la esquina de la 24 y Mission
Download English or Espanol flyers (1/4 sheets or 8 1/2 x 11)
*http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/22/18700768.php*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
December 2 "Stop the Cuts" Day of Action
November 19 Organizers' Report on December 2 "Stop the Cuts" Day of Action
Two dozen very experienced organizers met on Saturday, November 19, 1pm-3pm at Local 2 offices in San Francisco. I would say another very collaborative & productive meeting.
Holiday schedule for our LAST Coalition meeting will be
Sunday, November 27, Local 2 offices, 1pm-3pm.
1. Assembly at Federal Building -2pm, Friday, December 2. In addition to core group of CARA; Independent Living Resource Center-SF; SinglePayer Now! & Senior Action Network, assignments were made to discuss further participation of ILWU Drill Team (Connie), Veterans (Frank), USLAW & New Priorities (Charlie?). Richard will contact Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). We will have a IATSE sound truck (Hene) with speakers and entertainment (Pat W. & David) but are still looking for vans or minibus to transport seniors and disabled desiring to participate in the rest of the dayĆ¢€(tm)s activities. Charlie is contacting Brass Liberation to march with us from the Federal Building.
2. At 3pm we begin marching down Market Street to our first 15-minute stop at the Westfield Mall on 5th & Market which is in a labor dispute with SEIU 87 janitors; then to another 15-minute stop at the Wells Fargo on Montgomery & Market; then down Montgomery to Bush & Battery for another 15-minute stop at the Verizon store. Conny will meet with the core groups organizing this segment which are SF Labor Council, Jobs with Justice, CWA and SEIU 87. Additional assignments were made to contact wide variety of student groups (Alan, Don, Charlie), Occupy CAL (Ramon), AFT 2121 (Conny), Causa Justa & Central Legal (Alan) & SF State Teachers & students (Ann).
3. At 5pm approximately, we will arrive at the Hyatt and spend around one hour picketing with Local 2 (exact time yet to be decided by Local 2). We then will gather for the concert/rally around the Teamster Flat-Bed Long Haul truck (Rudy) near the foot of Market Street. Occupy SF activists (Alan, Rudy & Connie) will be among the featured speakers but there will be plenty of musicians and spoken word artists (Pat W). No additional artists are being solicited except Alan is contacting "Angry Retired Teachers", SF Living Wage is looking for talent that particularly appeals to youth and all are encouraged to think of a Major celebrity they personally can contact to spice the program up a bit.
Leaflets: A new version discussed at the meeting will be ready this week in mass quantities. Call Amber at the SF Labor Council 415-440-4809. We will email the leaflet and a photo copy suitable for posting on FaceBook pages which we very strongly urge all to do.
Security: Our leaflets will note that December 2 is a Peaceful & Family-Friendly Event. Looking for 25 volunteers for any section of the day's activities and also some experienced folks to take leadership of a safety team. David is contacting SEIU 1021, Conny is contacting Rudy, IBT856 and Alan & Richard each pledged three volunteers. For now, additional volunteers can reply to Carl at local1781@yahoo.com
Permits, Sound: Being handled by Amber, SF Labor Council.
Speakers: Contact Conny Ford if you have suggestions ope3conny@sbcglobal.net
These are public minutes, distribute as you feel necessary.
Fraternally submitted,
Carl Finamore
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Youth Together: RALLY & MARCH NOV. 30
STOP CORPORATIONS STEAL OUR FUTURE!
They make billions, pay little or no tax at all, buy and run our government, and get bailed out at our expense.
Date: Wednesday, Nov. 30th
Time: 4pm
Gather at the steps of City Hall in Oakland and march to Chevron Gas Station on Castro Street
Chevron as the largest corporation in California:
Made $18 billion in profits in 2009 and paid no federal tax. In fact, it received $19 million in benefits;
Pays no tax on drilling oil in California;
Enjoys millions from its under-assessed properties under Prop. 13;
Spent nearly $7 million on lobbying this year;
Contributed almost $1 million to California state politicians during 2009-2010 session;
Has $13 billion in cash on hand, etc.
Money for schools and our future!
JOIN KIDS COUNT! CAMPAIGN
For more information please contact us at 510-645-9209 ext.316 or visit www.youthtogether.net -- facebook.com/kidscountca
Please check the attachment for the flier in PDF File.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Friday, December 2 - Day of Action in SF
To Stop the Cuts!Proposed by the SuperCommittee & Congress
Because the 1% Got Bailed Out & the 99% Got Sold Out
Because a Phony Deficit Crisis Transfers More Wealth to the 1%!
Because We Oppose Cutting Social Benefits already Paid For by the 99%!
Because We Should Tax the 1%!
Because We Should Fund Jobs instead of Wars!
Because We Should Pay for Schools instead of Prisons!
Expand Social Security!
No Cuts to Medicaid!
Medicare for All!
2pm - Occupy the Federal Building (7th & Mission St.-Civic Center Bart/Muni).Assemble at the SF Federal Building where hundreds of us will peacefully deliver our strong message to government representatives of No Cuts to Medicaid; Expand Social Security and Medicare for All while a rally is held outside in the Federal Building Plaza. We will then march to the Financial District.
3:30pm - Occupy Wall Street West- route to be announced soon. We will march to several symbols of financial gluttony before heading to the Occupy SF area at the foot of Market St.
5pm into the night - Celebrate & Defend Occupy SF - We call upon Bay Area labor and community activists to join us for a rally/concert in Justin Herman Plaza that will support Occupy SF and express solidarity with Hotel Workers Local 2 boycott activity across the street at the Hyatt Hotel, a notorious symbol of corporate greed.
Contact Conny Ford, SF Labor Council Vice President at 415-647-7776
Endorsers forming -San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO; Single Payer Now; CARA; Independent Living Resource Center; Jobs with Justice....
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Subject: OCCUPY SF HOUSING: MASS DAY OF ACTION
Hi All,
I hope you can join us!
Save the date: Saturday December 3: OccupySF Housing Day of Actions
In conjunction with OccupySF, the Tenants Union, Causa Justa:: Just Cause, Housing Rights Committee. Eviction Defense Collaborative, ACCE, Tenants Together & others will be holding a day of actions focused on the role banks play in the evictions of tenants via their financing of real-estate speculators.
Banks: No more Evictions and Foreclosures for Profit!
Join tenant and homeowner groups together with Occupy SF for a Mass March on December 3rd, 2011. We gather and rally in four neighborhoods in San Francisco which have experienced high rates of evictions for profit, and highlight the local struggles of the 99% against banks, and greedy real estate speculators. Then join us for a mass march at 3pm from Justin Herman Plaza to demand housing justice and corporate accountability.
Neighborhood actions kick off in the following locations:
Bayview: 11am, 3rd and Palou—focused on foreclosures by banks
Castro: 12pm, Harvey Milk Plaza—focused on banks financing Ellis Act
Mission: 1pm, corner of 24th and Mission--focused on banks financing Ellis Act
Tenderloin: 1pm, Civic Center—focused on banks financing Citi Apartment purchases
Mass March: Meet at 3pm at Justin Herman Plaza
The SFTU will focus on the 1pm march and rally in the Tenderloin. Here is a link to the facebook event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/280334935337958/
Here is the event for the full day of events:
https://www.facebook.com/events/143521945754017/
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS!
Also, a facebook page has been created for the mass day of action:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-SF-Housing-Day-of-Actions/204052893006469?sk=info
On December 1st, from 5-8pm SFTU will host a sign making party for the march. We will make signs, eat pizza, and get ready for the big day. All are welcome!
Please spread the word!!
Best,
Becca Gourevitch
Volunteer Coordinator, San Francisco Tenants Union
558 Capp St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-282-6543
www.sftu.org
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
MECA and Joining Hands' 9th Annual Palestinian Bazaar
One Day Only: Sunday, December 4th
10 AM - 4PM
Live Oak Park
1301 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Beautiful Hand-Crafted Gifts
Bring your friends! Grab a bite of delicious Arabic food and coffee --
Benefits Palestinian craftspeople
Come shop at this popular annual sale of beautifully crafted items:
Olive wood, First Cold Press Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, Pure Olive Oil Soap, Beautiful Scarves & Shawls (new styles!), Traditional Embroidery, Hand-blown Glassware from Hebron, Colorful Hand woven rugs, Ceramics from Jerusalem & Gaza, Cookbooks, Children's books, Calendars, Honey, Jewelry, Children's clothing, Dolls from Gaza, food items and more! New this year-Palestinian Dead Sea Products.
This is a great opportunity to buy something quite special -- and also support cooperative unions and crafts people living under Israeli Occupation.
Please join us in celebrating the heritage, artistry, and creativity of the Palestinian people!
EVENT WEBSITE: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/berkeley-ca-meca-and-joining-hands-9th-annual-palestinian-bazaar
--
Leena Al-Arian
Program and Communications Coordinator
Middle East Children's Alliance
1101 8th Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-548-0542
www.mecaforpeace.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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)
* * * * *
(*) 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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Mic Check Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Jmqo1yQag
*---------*
UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Officers Put on Leave After Pepper Spraying Protesters
By BRIAN STELTER
November 20, 2011, 2:58 pm
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/officers-put-on-leave-after-pepper-spraying-protesters/?scp=1&sq=Officers%20Put%20On%20Leave%20After%20Pepper&st=cse
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
*---------*
THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
*---------*
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 (c) 2011
Download song for free here:
http://makanamusic.com/?slide=we-are-the-many
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Rafeef Ziadah - 'Shades of anger', London, 12.11.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vFJE93LTI
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
News: Massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Fukuoka Nov. 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_xKEWuj1I&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Capt Ray Lewis Joins OWS Protest,Gives Message to NYPD and Slams The Greed 1% from Zuccotti Park
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ocdnl4XlTOU#!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*
Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
*---------*
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
*----*
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
*----*
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
*----*
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
*---------*
Marine Vet at #OccupyWallStreet Tells Sean Hannity to "F**k Off"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aaTGsGdp4c&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Labor Beat: Chicago - War Protest March to Obama's 2012 HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkOincM93s
*---------*
Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
*---------*
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
*---------*
#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
*---------*
ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
*---------*
#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
*---------*
#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
*---------*
#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
*---------*
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTERS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
*---------*
Police Raid on Occpy Boston 10 11 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5G9agQjM60&noredirect=1
*---------*
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)
*---------*
Video of Boston PD attacking veterans at OWS protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3zFca5znU&feature=relmfu
*---------*
Occupy Frankfurt Germany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmxQP2eMdMU&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Occupy Rome - La manifestazione di Roma October 15th OccupyTogether
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25CWyNnJVOI&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding the Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.
The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific case raised in this petition...
"This email was sent to giobon@comcast.net
Manage Subscriptions for giobon@comcast.net
Sign Up for Updates from the White House
Unsubscribe giobon@comcast.net | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House
"The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111"
That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about Bradley:
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, RenƩ GonzƔlez, 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 RenƩ 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 RenƩ 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 RenƩ 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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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 ļ¬ght 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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) For the Rich, Cargo Vans on Steroids
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
November 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/nyregion/rich-new-yorkers-are-driving-custom-designed-cargo-vans.html?ref=nyregion
2) Taking First-Class Coddling Above and Beyond
"The gap between first class and coach has never been so wide."
By JAD MOUAWAD
November 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/business/taking-first-class-coddling-above-and-beyond.html?ref=business
3) We Are the One Per Cent
Average wealth of the top 1 percent was almost $14 million in 2009, according to a 2011 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
-Washingtonpost.com.
"Shit is fucked up and bullshit."
-Sign seen at the Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan.
by John Kenney
November 28, 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/28/111128sh_shouts_kenney?printable=true
4) Egypt Military Pledges Faster Handover to Civilian Rule
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/world/middleeast/egypts-cabinet-offers-to-quit-as-activists-urge-wider-protests.html?_r=1&hp
5) As Layoffs Rise, Stock Buybacks Consume Cash
"The principle behind buybacks is simple. With fewer shares in circulation, earnings per share can rise smartly even if the company's underlying growth is lackluster. In many cases, like that of the medical device maker Zimmer Holdings, executives are able to meet goals for profit growth and earn bigger bonuses despite poor stock performance. ...In addition, executives, who are often large shareholders, stand to benefit from even a small, short-term jump in stock prices.
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/business/rash-to-some-stock-buybacks-are-on-the-rise.html?hp
6) Kansas Abortion Prosecution Loses Some Steam, but Fire Is Still Hot
By A. G. SULZBERGER
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/kansas-abortion-prosecution-loses-some-steam-but-fire-is-still-hot.html?ref=us
7) California's Campus Movements Dig In Their Heels
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/police-officers-involved-in-pepper-spraying-placed-on-leave.html?ref=us
8) Hearing Set in Leak Case
By SCOTT SHANE
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/hearing-set-in-leak-case.html?ref=us
9) After an Eviction, Digging Through a Surplus of Donations
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
November 22, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/ows-storage/?ref=nyregion
10) News Organizations Complain About Treatment During Protests
By BRIAN STELTER
November 21, 2011, 7:25 pm
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/news-organizations-complain-about-treatment-during-protests/
11) UC Davis English Department Calls for Disbanding UCPD
Monday, November 21, 2011
http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/uc-davis-english-department-recommends.html
12) Radioactive cesium blankets 8% of Japan's land area
By HIROSHI ISHIZUKA / Staff Writer
November 21, 2011
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201111210014
13) The cop group coordinating the Occupy crackdowns
By Shawn Gaynor
November 18, 2011
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/11/18/cop-group-coordinating-occupy-crackdowns
14) UC Davis Students Are Role Models
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
November 22, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8535-focus-uc-davis-students-are-role-models
Exclusive Video: Chancellor Katehi faces students of UC Davis after pepper spray attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfzQyT9nUMk&feature=player_embedded
Speech by pepper spray victim at UC Davis
"Not a single student was violent, ever. Not a single student resisted arrest; not a single one. So I ask you guys, out of respect for me and my friends who sat there and allowed a police officer to, point blank, spray pepper spray into our face three times while we looked him in the face--do not choose the path of violence. Our best weapon is to pass on violence. Their only weapon is violence. That is why we will prevail. That is why we must prevail..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mse5wfBZ4j8&feature=player_embedded
15) PCJF and NLG File Freedom of Information Act Requests
November 22, 2011 12:14 pm : Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee
November 16, 2001
Civil Rights Legal Groups Demand Records on Federal Law Enforcement Involvement in Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement
PCJF and NLG Mass Defense Committee File Multi-Agency Requests
VIA Email
16) Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement
Van Jones and Democratic Party Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement
Make Your Own Program Don't Try to Steal Ours
By Kevin Zeese
Occupy Washington, DC
November 23, 2011
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/van-jones-and-democratic-party-operatives-you-do-not-represent-occupy-movement
17) Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis
by Dave Zirin
November 23, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164783/two-scandals-one-connection-fbi-link-between-penn-state-and-uc-davis
18) Military Moves to End Clashes in Egyptian Square
By ANTHONY SHADID
November 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/world/middleeast/egypt-protesters-and-police-clash-for-fifth-day.html?_r=1&hp
19) South Africa Passes Law to Restrict Reporting of Government Secrets
By JOHN ELIGON
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/world/africa/south-african-parliament-to-vote-on-press-law.html?ref=world
20) Pepper Spray's Fallout, From Crowd Control to Mocking Images
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/pepper-sprays-fallout-from-crowd-control-to-mocking-images.html?ref=us
21) Oregon Governor Says He Will Block Executions
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/oregon-executions-to-be-blocked-by-gov-kitzhaber.html?ref=us
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) For the Rich, Cargo Vans on Steroids
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
November 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/nyregion/rich-new-yorkers-are-driving-custom-designed-cargo-vans.html?ref=nyregion
Steve Kantor admits that he likes to travel in style. He is an affable investment banker, concerned about flaunting his wealth, but he drives around Manhattan in what looks like a simple black delivery van.
Of course, most vans do not have chauffeurs, as Mr. Kantor's has. Or a built-in office, custom installed.
"I have two big-screen televisions; I have a couch in the back that goes into a bed," Mr. Kantor said. "I have four chairs that go back and massage you. It has a desk, a table and an intercom so you can have meetings in there if you want to."
As the economy limps along and more attention is paid to the so-called 1 percent, some of the richest New Yorkers have taken to driving around in vehicles that ooze neither wealth nor privilege. But on the inside, the vans may be as lavishly decorated as the private railroad cars owned by turn-of-the-century industrialists.
Some owners use them as mobile offices, outfitted with fine leather chairs and Persian rugs; vans may also double as a child's playroom on wheels, complete with a built-in vacuum to clean what the children dirty.
And while some owners say they are drawn to the vehicles' vanilla exteriors, their outsize profiles cannot help but draw attention: at more than 22 feet long and nearly 9 feet tall, they look like cargo vans on steroids, their high roof lines dwarfing nearly all that surrounds them on the streets of New York. And that's before the satellite dishes are raised.
They are a striking and sometimes unwelcome counterpoint to other trends seen on city streets, where tiny Smart cars dart around hybrid taxis and traffic lanes once reserved for gas-guzzlers are now for bicycles or pedestrians.
"Using your vehicle as a luxury lounge is just usurping public space for your own private use," said Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that encourages New Yorkers to travel around the city more responsibly. "Streets are shared space and belong to the community."
Nonetheless, during morning spin classes at Soul Cycle, the Upper East Side studio, the parking spaces cannot accommodate the Sprinter vans, Range Rovers and Lexus GX470s that are sometimes double-parked. A modified black Mercedes van owned by Philip A. Falcone, the chief of Harbinger Capital Partners, has become a fixture on the Upper East Side, idling by the Michael Kors shop on Madison Avenue.
Jill Kargman, a writer and mother of three who lives on the Upper East Side, said that play dates adhered to a certain pecking order: those that start in one of these ultra-luxury vans are preferable because they can "just bop into a souped-up bulletproof living room on wheels," she said.
The most popular model is made by Mercedes: a stripped-down, basic version of the van, the Sprinter, starts at $41,315; Mr. Kantor's version, which Mercedes-Benz Manhattan arranged to have customized, is fitted with satellite television, a Wi-Fi network and flat-screen monitors, and sells for $189,000. Even that is not quite enough for some New Yorkers, who employ designers to install even pricier custom details that easily drive up the total cost to $500,000.
Daniel Barile, a Mercedes-Benz spokesman, said that because many buyers were going to after-market shops to decorate their van interiors, Mercedes started releasing its own version in early 2010, and sold 8,000 the first year. Mercedes has sold 13,000 this year.
And although the modified Mercedes van is popular in several large cities, Howard Becker, president of Becker Automotive Design in Oxnard, Calif., said New York, with its executives in hedge funds and finance, had become his best market.
Hyde Ryan, a designer who worked with a wealthy New York family on decorating the interior of their Mercedes Sprinter van, said that the family wanted gold-plated fittings for every button that would be pushed. The owner installed a vacuum cleaner so the chauffeur could remove every crumb and grain of sand each time the children stepped out of the van.
The vacuum option could be seen on a recent morning on Park Avenue, when Carmelo Umpierre, a 44-year-old chauffeur, idled the $425,000 van he drives for an executive based in Connecticut. It is nearly impossible to find a parking space for such a large vehicle, so Mr. Umpierre often waits for his boss in illegal spots, and moves when the police come by.
The car's owner declined to be interviewed, saying he did not want to draw attention to himself. But he allowed Mr. Umpierre to display the van's interior: the seats were upholstered with heavily scented leather and a stocked bar had individual lighting for each wine glass and Champagne flute. Mr. Umpierre said he vacuumed the interior every night and covered the custom-designed gray wool rugs with towels when it rained. He said he tried to navigate the van through side streets so gawkers could not peek in when he dropped off his boss.
"He likes to be private," Mr. Umpierre said of his employer. "He doesn't like to be dropped off in the front."
On Friday, Martin Brass, a 43-year-old former Wall Street executive turned investor, was shopping for a Mercedes Sprinter at a Manhattan dealership. Mr. Brass, whose work-related travel often finds him in New York or Hawaii, said he planned to buy a basic model and then have some after-market improvements made to the interior.
Mr. Brass did not so much want to be bathed in luxury, he said; he simply wanted to "have meetings and presentations in those vehicles."
The more luxurious accouterments, he said, were not really part of his style. "That's New York City," he said. "There are people who have endless amounts of money."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Taking First-Class Coddling Above and Beyond
"The gap between first class and coach has never been so wide."
By JAD MOUAWAD
November 20, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/business/taking-first-class-coddling-above-and-beyond.html?ref=business
The gap between first class and coach has never been so wide.
Carriers on international flights are offering private suites for first-class passengers, three-star meals and personal service once found only on corporate jets. They provide massages before takeoff, whisk passengers through special customs lanes and drive them in a private limousine right to the plane. Some have bars. One airline has installed showers onboard.
The amenities in the back of the cabin? Sparse.
So as domestic travelers take to the skies for the holiday season, most will be in cramped cabins, their food is likely to be bland and they will have paid for it, along with any fees for slightly more legroom or checked bags.
But even as they have cut back on domestic service, including first-class accommodations, the airlines have been engaged in a global battle for top executives and the superwealthy on their international routes. Though only a privileged few can afford to pay $15,000 to fly first class from New York to Singapore or Sydney, the airlines are betting that the image of luxury they project for the front helps attract passengers to the rest of the plane. That includes a growing business-class section with offerings once solely the preserve of first class.
Though first class represents less than 5 percent of all seats flown on long-haul routes, and business class accounts for 15 percent, those seats combined to generate 40 to 50 percent of airlines' revenue, according to Peter Morris, the chief economist at Ascend, an aviation consulting firm.
As a general rule, business class is five to 10 times the price of an economy ticket, while first class is usually twice the price of business. "First class," said Brett Snyder, president of Cranky Concierge, an air travel assistance Web site, "is status."
Until the 1980s, first class was roomier than coach, but not all that fancy. The seats in the front offered more legroom but did not recline more than 40 degrees. The food was better in first class too, though even the meals in coach were better than they are now. With globalization, particularly the rise of Asia, passengers began demanding more from first class, especially with new planes that could fly much longer routes without stopping.
Airlines have expanded their focus - which had been limited to London, Paris, and New York - to emerging economic centers like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Dubai. "Obviously the first-class passenger is a very senior person in his company, coming a long way around the world, and probably doing something very important for his business," said John Slosar, the chief executive of Cathay Pacific Airways. "He requires to be able to sleep, work on his speech, perhaps take a shower upon arrival, so he can hit the ground running."
British Airways was among the first airlines to change the definition of what first class entailed by offering flat-bed seats in the 1990s on its long-haul routes.
In recent years, the airlines most aggressive in adding luxury touches to first class have come from Asia and the Middle East, among them Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. Emirates, based in Dubai, came up with personal suites for first-class passengers in 2003 and in 2008 installed two showers on its Airbus A380 planes for them.
European airlines quickly recognized the threat. Air France, for instance, now has a dedicated first-class lounge in Paris with a spa and a restaurant catered by the chef Alain Ducasse. Immigration officers come directly into the lounge to check passports, and passengers are driven to the airplane in a limousine only seconds before the doors shut.
But American carriers were slower to react, largely because they lacked the funds to upgrade their cabins until recently. Now, they have little choice. International rivals are starting to encroach deeper into their domestic markets, beyond New York and Los Angeles. Emirates, for instance, announced it would begin service from Dubai to Dallas and Seattle early next year.
"If you don't refurbish your cabins, then all you are left with is the low-yielding traffic," Mr. Morris said. "It's just not an option." First class has also served as a lab for in-flight amenities that eventually trickled down to the rest of the plane. Individual screens are now found in the seatbacks in coach. Lie-flat seats have moved to business class.
In fact, business class has become so comfortable that, in many cases, it can rival first class itself. "People demand more from the business class than they used to," Mr. Snyder said.
That is why some airlines have concluded that the market for first-class passengers is too slim to justify the investments, especially since passengers sitting in the front seats are often upgraded from business class or got their tickets using airline miles.
"A plane is only so big," said Jim Compton, the chief revenue officer at United Continental Holdings. "And the reality is that demand for the product in all markets is not necessarily there."
After its merger with Continental last year, United Airlines kept its first-class cabin only on some international routes that used to be served by United but not on those flown by Continental. It is also installing new flat-bed seats across its fleet in business class.
Delta Air Lines and Qatar Airways, by contrast, do not have a first class, just business and coach. Others have reduced the number of seats in first class. Air France now flies planes with first-class seats to only 28 international cities, out of a network of over 250 destinations.
Lufthansa, for its part, has kept its first class on most flights but has removed half the seats to focus on a more intimate experience on board. In the new A380 aircraft, Lufthansa also installed a system that increases the humidity in the first-class cabin by 25 percent, which the airline says will help ease jetlag. It has also insulated the cabin with special soundproofing material.
"It is our premium product, and our customers were asking for more intimacy, more privacy," said JĆ¼rgen Siebenrock, Lufthansa's vice president for North and South America. "If you want to be competitive, you really need to upgrade your product."
Nothing compares with the experience of flying first class, said Geoffrey Fischer, a 33-year-old social media consultant based in Seattle. Even after his 15-hour flight on Cathay Pacific landed in Hong Kong, he did not want to get off the plane, he said. Throughout the trip, which he also wrote about on the Cranky Flier blog, he was plied with Champagne and wine. He was served caviar as an appetizer on fine bone china and with a linen tablecloth. His seat turned into a full-size bed. He was handed designer pajamas to wear while an attentive flight attendant made up his bed, complete with a pillow, duvet and sheets.
"I've never experienced such a private jet atmosphere," said Mr. Fischer, who snagged his seat using frequent flier miles. "It was the best flight I've ever been on."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) We Are the One Per Cent
Average wealth of the top 1 percent was almost $14 million in 2009, according to a 2011 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
-Washingtonpost.com.
"Shit is fucked up and bullshit."
-Sign seen at the Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan.
by John Kenney
November 28, 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/28/111128sh_shouts_kenney?printable=true
We, too, have mobilized.
We come from near and far, by any means necessary, some on private jets, others on extremely large private jets.
But you will not find us sleeping in a park and waiting in line at a Burger King to urinate. Have you heard of Mustique? Because that's where we have mobilized. Don't bother trying to Google Earth us, though, because we have proprietary military software that prevents you from doing so.
Our numbers may be smaller than those demonstrating in New York and other cities, but we are still a movement, coalesced around a cause, sleeping two and sometimes three people to a villa.
Perhaps you are wondering what our cause is. Perhaps you're wondering why we, the richest people on the planet, have come together. Perhaps you're curious whether what we're undertaking couldn't technically be called a vacation. These are all good questions.
We're angry. We're angry at something we're calling "imagined frustration." By this we mean that, except for Congress, the White House, banks, major lobbyists, and the editorial boards of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, no one is listening to us. And we're tired of it.
You claim to know something about us. You think we are rich beyond comprehension, that we can do anything we please at any time, go anywhere we want at a moment's notice, wander the earth in a state of constant bliss, enjoying abundant and fabulous sex. Perhaps you do know us.
There are those in the more liberal press who have questioned whether the wealthiest one per cent truly understand how difficult life is for so many Americans right now, and to that we would say- Oh, look, someone just brought in lobster and a Bollinger Grande AnnƩe.
Except for money and the almost unnatural flawlessness of my skin, we are no different, you and I. I don't know who you are or what you look like or how much money you have in the bank. Nor does it matter. Because we're just men. Unless you are a woman. Or a child. Or a pony. But ponies don't read magazines, do they? Unless they're precocious ponies, like Mister Ed. And he wasn't real. But I think you get my point. And that is: we are the same, except for the coarseness of the skin on your elbows. Do you know that feeling, upon waking at 4 A.M., heart racing, your mind looking twenty, thirty years down the road, wondering how you are going to make ends meet? Worrying about what would happen if you lost your job, asking yourself how you're going to pay for your kids' college or retire? Well, I don't. But I read a story about it once and remember thinking, I'm so glad that's not me.
What do we want?
Here is our manifesto, still very much a work in progress, as it's cocktail hour and several of our protesters are out at the pool:
-All wealth should be shared equally among the wealthy.
-Eradicate poverty. (Note: Maybe a clearer way to say this would be "Eradicate the poor." Need to discuss.)
-End business as usual. (Note: Several members like the sound of this, but they don't know what it means. A suggestion has been made to add the word "hours" after "business.")
-Implement a rule whereby the public cannot look at us and must keep a distance of at least twenty feet at all times.
Yes, I have more things-more homes and cars and planes and art and underground passages and satellites and private militias and a person whose only job is to grow hair that is genetically identical to my own. But when you take off your pants and I take off my pants and we stand facing each other as naked as the day we were born, except for socks, all I would ask is that you feel my skin and tell me it's not the softest skin you've ever felt on a man. And also realize that we are the same, except for the fact that I have four submarines.
Shit is fucked up and bullshit.
We agree.
Except that we would substitute "money" for "shit," "awesome" for "fucked up," and "squash courts" for "bullshit," and add the words "cannot be used for more than ninety minutes. Please respect club rules. Thank you."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Egypt Military Pledges Faster Handover to Civilian Rule
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/world/middleeast/egypts-cabinet-offers-to-quit-as-activists-urge-wider-protests.html?_r=1&hp
CAIRO - The ruling military council agreed on Tuesday to speed up the transition to civilian rule in a deal made with Islamist groups but which seemed unlikely to satisfy the demands of liberal parties and the more than 100,000 protesters who gathered in the center of the capital to demand an immediate transfer of power.
The agreement came after the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces met with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in a session that was boycotted by most other political parties. The deal called for a new constitution and a presidential election no later than next June, as well as a new civilian cabinet to be led by a technocrat prime minister rather than a politician.
Under the agreement, the first round of elections for a national assembly would go ahead as scheduled on Monday, a major goal of the Brotherhood, which stands to win a large share of the seats. But it would also leave the civilian government reporting to the military - effectively a continuation of what amounts to martial law in civilian clothes - until next June.
With the police crackdown galvanizing anger at what protesters see as the military council's increasingly open play for long-term political power, it was unclear whether any credible civilian leader would take the job of prime minister if the government remained subordinate to the military.
"No one is going to accept another civilian government micromanaged" by the military commanders, said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces by its initials, Islam Lotfy, a onetime leader of the Muslim Brotherhood youth movement, said: "The people will not be happy if the SCAF just give them some painkillers." Mr. Lotfy was among the instigators of the revolution; he was later expelled from the Brotherhood for starting a more centrist breakaway political party with other young Brothers.
"It may be the solution will be the SCAF delegating responsibilities to a new cabinet with full authority to manage the country," he said.
Protesters in Tahrir Square in central Cairo battled with the police in nearby streets for the fourth straight day, braving an increasingly lethal crackdown in what seemed to be a leaderless expression of rage. The brutal treatment of the protesters prompted the resignation of the first civilian cabinet, which the military council accepted on Tuesday.
Each day the crowds have grown at the epicenter of Egyptian resistance - first to the former president, Hosni Mubarak, ousted in February and now to the military commanders who replaced him - and the violence has mounted as well.
Intense skirmishes continued on the main avenue leading to the Interior Ministry. Though the security forces could have reached the square from other streets and the protesters could have attacked the Interior Ministry from other directions as well, each side continued to hammer the other - protesters with rocks, the security forces with tear gas that wafted back through the square - along the same charred and pockmarked block.
Many of the protesters wore green face masks, of the type used by medics, to try to filter tear gas fired by security forces in the ebb and flow of the fighting along streets littered with debris. Both sides sought to reinforce makeshift barricades.
A reporter for Al Jazeera held up a spent tear-gas canister to a camera and said its markings said it was manufactured in the United States. But the words were not easily legible to viewers.
By midday, the crowd in Tahrir Square had swelled to many tens of thousands - far larger than at the same time on previous days.
A new banner across the center of the square declared, "This land is owned by the Egyptian people." Tents and a field clinic to treat injured protesters were being set up nearby.
The fighting on Tuesday came as criticism of the military spread beyond Egypt's borders. In a statement, Amnesty International said the ruling commanders had "been responsible for a catalog of abuses which in some cases exceeds the record of Hosni Mubarak."
The military had been seen as the linchpin of the political transition after the enforced departure of Mr. Mubarak.
It was the institution Islamists hoped would steer the country to early elections that they were poised to dominate. Liberals regarded it as a hedge against Islamist power. And the Obama administration considered it a partner that it hoped would help secure American interests.
But the violent crackdown and the resignation of the civilian cabinet were blows to the tenuous legitimacy of the ruling military council.
Reeling from the swift collapse of the military's authority, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamist group, urged protesters to show restraint or risk delaying the elections.
Many activists, though, were talking about renewed signs of divisions inside the Muslim Brotherhood.
Reopening a split that emerged at the start of the revolution in January, many of the younger members of the group were said to be coming to the square in defiance of their elders' orders to stay home in order to avoid upsetting the elections.
"Just like in January, I think the older leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood will eventually follow as well," said Mr. Bahgat of the Personal Rights Initiative.
Referring to the same quandary, Mr. Lotfy, the onetime leader of the Brotherhood youth. said young Brotherhood followers "will have to take our own decision between what the organization wants and what our conscience tells us to do."
But other Islamists, some more conservative and others more moderate, joined secular parties in calling for the protest Tuesday to demand that the military hand power to a civilian authority.
In the report by Amnesty International, drawn up before the paroxysm of violence began in Cairo and other cities on Saturday, Philip Luther, an Amnesty official, said military rulers had "continued the tradition of repressive rule" which the anti-Mubarak protests had sought to end.
"Those who have challenged or criticized the military council - like demonstrators, journalists, bloggers, striking workers - have been ruthlessly suppressed, in an attempt at silencing their voices," he said. Mr. Luther said the human rights "balance sheet" of the military rulers showed that "the aims and aspirations" of the anti-Mubarak protests had been crushed.
"The brutal and heavy-handed response to protests in the last few days bears all the hallmarks of the Mubarak era," he said.
Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, called the violence "deplorable" and urged that elections take place on schedule.
The Health Ministry said at least 23 people had died in the four days of violent clashes, and several doctors treating patients at a field clinic and nearby hospital said several had been killed by live ammunition, contrary to denials by the Interior Ministry. More than 1,500 people have been seriously injured in the clashes, the Health Ministry said. Two more people died in protest at Ismailiyah on the Suez Canal on Monday, news reports said.
Though all the political leaders called for elections to begin on schedule next week, a growing number acknowledged privately that the violence was likely to force their delay - potentially adding to the unrest. And even as the political leaders unified around the demands, new divisions emerged among them over how the military might begin to hand over power.
Some liberal groups, led by the former diplomat and presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei, called for the military council to give up power immediately to a civilian "government of national rescue." Other liberals said they sought only the replacement of the current cabinet with a new civilian team with more power to make decisions independently of the council.
Mr. Hamzawy, the founder of a new liberal party and a parliamentary candidate well positioned for a seat from an upscale district of Cairo, said in another Twitter message that he still favored holding elections before picking a new national unity government that would continue to govern under the military council, but called for replacing the current prime minister, Essam Sharaf.
"I'm still convinced that elections are the way to transfer power and I changed my position along with others to demand Sharaf's dismissal after yesterday's statement," he said.
In the square, some protesters worried about who might succeed the military council and its leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, even as they chanted for his ouster.
"People don't want military rule, and they won't leave here until the field marshal goes too," said Omar Tareq, 18, a university student from the province of Qalyoubeya. "But I don't really know what happens if he does. Who will take hold of the country?"
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London. Liam Stack, Mayy el Sheikh and Dina Amer contributed reporting from Cairo.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) As Layoffs Rise, Stock Buybacks Consume Cash
"The principle behind buybacks is simple. With fewer shares in circulation, earnings per share can rise smartly even if the company's underlying growth is lackluster. In many cases, like that of the medical device maker Zimmer Holdings, executives are able to meet goals for profit growth and earn bigger bonuses despite poor stock performance. ...In addition, executives, who are often large shareholders, stand to benefit from even a small, short-term jump in stock prices.
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/business/rash-to-some-stock-buybacks-are-on-the-rise.html?hp
When Pfizer cut its research budget this year and laid off 1,100 employees, it was not because the company needed to save money.
In fact, the drug maker had so much cash left over, it decided to buy back an additional $5 billion worth of stock on top of the $4 billion already earmarked for repurchases in 2011 and beyond.
The moves, announced on the same day, might seem at odds with each other, but they represent an increasingly common pattern among American corporations, which are sitting on record amounts of cash but insist that growth opportunities are hard to find.
The result is that at a time when the nation is looking for ways to battle unemployment, big companies are creating fewer jobs, and critics say they are neglecting to lay the foundation for future growth by expanding into new businesses or building new plants.
What is more, share buybacks have not fulfilled their stated purpose of rewarding investors over the last decade, experts say. "It's a symptom of a deeper problem, which is a lack of investment in the long term," said William W. George, a Harvard Business School professor and former chief executive of Medtronic, a medical technology company. "If we're not investing in research, innovation and entrepreneurship, we're going to be a slow-growth country for a decade."
Liberal critics insist the trend is another example of top corporate executives raking in an inordinate share of the nation's wealth, even as their employees suffer.
"It's an extraordinarily unimaginative way to use money," said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor under President Clinton who now teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. After diving in the wake of the financial crisis, buybacks have made a remarkable comeback in recent years, with $445 billion authorized this year, the most since 2007, when repurchases peaked at $914 billion.
But spending on capital investments like new plants and infrastructure has stagnated more broadly in corporate America, confounding efforts by the Obama administration to spur economic growth. Capital expenditures by companies on the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index are expected to total $546 billion in 2011, down from $560 billion in 2008, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters Eikon.
The principle behind buybacks is simple. With fewer shares in circulation, earnings per share can rise smartly even if the company's underlying growth is lackluster. In many cases, like that of the medical device maker Zimmer Holdings, executives are able to meet goals for profit growth and earn bigger bonuses despite poor stock performance.
"It's clear there's a conflict of interest," said Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. "Unless earnings per share are adjusted to reflect the buyback, then to base a bonus on raw earnings per share is problematic. It doesn't purely reflect performance."
In addition, executives, who are often large shareholders, stand to benefit from even a small, short-term jump in stock prices.
Earlier this month, Pfizer increased its estimate for stock repurchases this year to between $7 billion and $9 billion - essentially spending in one year nearly all of the money it set aside in February for multiyear buybacks. There has been a steady drumbeat of other companies laying off workers even as they have disclosed plans to buy back more stock. On June 23, Campbell Soup said it would buy back $1 billion in stock; five days later it announced plans to eliminate 770 jobs. Hewlett-Packard announced a $10 billion stock repurchase in July, and jettisoned 500 jobs in September after it discontinued its TouchPad and smartphone product lines.
Last month, the first layoffs began at Zimmer's plant in Statesville, N.C., which is due to shut early next year. The company made splints and tourniquets there for more than three decades. For the sewing machine operators and the rest of the 124 workers at the plant, it is bad news, but it is a different story for Zimmer's top executives.
Powered by huge stock buybacks - the company bought $500 million worth of its own shares last year, more than twice what it spent on research and development - Zimmer posted earnings growth of 10 percent a share, even though operating income and revenue grew by less than 5 percent in 2010.
That helped its senior management, including the chief executive, David C. Dvorak, collect millions in cash and stock incentive payments by meeting earnings-per-share goals. For example, 50 percent of Mr. Dvorak's $1.03 million cash bonus was tied to achieving per-share earnings of $4.28 in 2010. The company earned $4.33, but without the share repurchases the company would have made $4 to $4.10 a share.
Investors have not rewarded the strategy, however: Zimmer's shares have dropped 32 percent in the last five years, while Pfizer's are down 30 percent in the same period.
Over the last decade, in fact, companies that spent the most on repurchases had a total shareholder return of 37 percent versus 127 percent for companies that spent the least, according to research by Gregory V. Milano, chief executive of Fortuna Advisors, which consults with companies on how to raise their share price over the long term.
In the cases of Pfizer and Zimmer, analysts say the rush to buy back shares crimped development of new products, a prime reason that both companies are experiencing slow revenue growth.
Despite the looming expiration of the patent for its best-selling drug, Lipitor, Pfizer spent more than $20 billion repurchasing shares from 2005 to 2010.
"In that era, it wasn't the best use of cash," said Catherine Arnold, an analyst with Credit Suisse. "They should have been doing more to fix the company."
Matthew Dodds, an analyst with Citigroup, said, "Zimmer has shown little appetite for acquisitions or diversification, yet they don't sport a pipeline that can drive investor interest."
Nevertheless, Zimmer is on track to repurchase $1 billion worth of its shares this year, double last year's pace, and it actually borrowed money last quarter to achieve its goal.
In a statement, Zimmer said its bonus programs were "designed to pay for performance," and that overall compensation strategy was "designed to align the interests of its employees and stockholders." Zimmer is committed to research and development and the introduction of new products, the company said, adding that the factory closure in North Carolina, while difficult, "is in the best interest of the company's stockholders."
Pfizer declined to make an executive available to discuss its policy. But in a statement, the company said it "remains committed to returning capital to shareholders through share buybacks and dividend payments."
As for the cut in research spending in February, Pfizer said it has "accelerated our research strategy and made important changes to concentrate our efforts to deliver the greatest medical and commercial impact."
In a conference call with analysts this month, Pfizer's chief executive, Ian C. Read, said his company would "continually look" for acquisitions that would increase revenue growth. But in deciding how to use the proceeds from recent asset sales, he said "the case to beat is share repurchase."
Financial institutions, which bought back huge amounts of stock over the last decade at share prices far higher than they are today, do not seem to have learned their lesson either. JPMorgan Chase, for example, spent $4.4 billion repurchasing shares in the third quarter even as its stock fell more than 25 percent.
Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive, actually apologized for the move last month, conceding: "It would have been wise to wait. We're sorry."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Kansas Abortion Prosecution Loses Some Steam, but Fire Is Still Hot
By A. G. SULZBERGER
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/kansas-abortion-prosecution-loses-some-steam-but-fire-is-still-hot.html?ref=us
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - The prosecution of a Planned Parenthood affiliate here, the first such criminal case in the nation, has been treated locally as something of a proxy in the battle over abortion rights. Derided by supporters of the organization as politically motivated, the prosecution was celebrated by opponents as the capstone of increasingly aggressive actions here and elsewhere against Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other services at health clinics around the country.
Despite the heated rhetoric, though, much of the legal case was technical, centering on the most politically bland of allegations: faulty record keeping.
So it came as a surprise to many this month when county prosecutors here announced that after years of legal battling, they had been forced to drop nearly half the charges, including all of the felony counts, citing - of all things - faulty record keeping. The misdemeanor charges, which involve accusations of failing to fully determine viability before performing some abortions, are still pending.
The revelations that documents in the case had been destroyed years ago added a fresh dose of controversy to what has been a particularly strange chapter in the abortion fight in Kansas, a messy and tangled case that emerged out of a wide-ranging investigation into abortion providers and that has been consumed by allegations of misconduct by political leaders on both sides of the issue.
The state's vocal, and increasingly empowered, contingent of abortion opponents, including a number of Republican elected officials, wondered aloud whether a cover-up was to blame. And Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri questioned whether prosecutors were encouraging conspiracy theories as a way to blame abortion rights supporters while abandoning a losing case.
As the sides swapped accusations, the state attorney general requested an investigation into the document destruction, which is now under way.
This year had already seen escalating conflict over abortion in Kansas, the staging ground for some of the most divisive battles in the nation over the issue. Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican who strongly opposes abortion, approved a series of restrictions, most notably establishing new regulations on clinics that nearly forced two of the three abortion providers in the state to shut down before a federal judge blocked them. Another rule prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving federal family planning money was also blocked by a federal judge.
Peter B. Brownlie, president and chief executive of the local affiliate, praised the dismissal of the most serious charges and said the organization would prevail on the remaining ones. "There's no question that political opponents of Planned Parenthood and abortion would have been emboldened by a conviction, particularly on a felony charge," he said.
The case emerged from a long investigation by one of the state's most polarizing elected officials, Phill Kline, who had used his position as Kansas attorney general and later as Johnson County district attorney to crusade against abortion providers, earning a series of official rebukes along the way for his tactics, including a recommendation last month by a state board that he be prohibited from practicing law in the state.
Though the investigation, started in 2003, initially centered on explosive allegations that abortion providers were not reporting all cases of child rape, the charges Mr. Kline eventually filed in 2007 were far less dramatic, including that Planned Parenthood failed to maintain copies of abortion paperwork (a misdemeanor) and, fearing detection, completed the paperwork after an investigation was begun (a felony).
At issue was the fact that the copies of the "termination of pregnancy" reports filed with the state had different handwriting than those kept at the clinic. Planned Parenthood said the reports were different because the copies were made by hand rather than on a copy machine.
As the case was being prepared for trial, Steve Howe, the Johnson County prosecutor who took up the case in 2009 after defeating Mr. Kline in a Republican primary, discovered that the records that were to be used as evidence had been destroyed years earlier, the originals by the Department of Health and Environment and the only authenticated set of copies by the attorney general's office. As a result, Mr. Howe told a judge this month that there was no longer enough admissible evidence to proceed with 49 charges, including 23 felonies.
Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, which opposes abortion, was among those who noted that the governor at the time, Kathleen Sebelius, now secretary of health and human services, was a strong supporter of abortion rights and that the attorney general then, Steve Six, was her appointee. "It's beyond belief that evidence was purposely destroyed, but I believe that's what happened," Ms. Culp said.
But supporters of abortion rights disputed the allegations that the documents were intentionally, rather than routinely, destroyed, and questioned why they had not been requested and secured previously. "It's a red herring to avoid having to walk into court, present the case and lose on the merits because there was never any crime," said Pedro Irigonegaray, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood.
An official investigation is under way at the request of Derek Schmidt, the Republican attorney general who defeated Mr. Six in 2010. He wrote to the Shawnee County sheriff this month requesting an inquiry, because documents pertaining to abortion-related investigations and prosecutions had been destroyed by the attorney general's office in 2009 after Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who was later murdered by an abortion opponent, was acquitted of criminal charges. "Sufficient questions exist to require a full and complete investigation of this matter to determine what actually happened," Mr. Schmidt wrote.
A spokeswoman for health and human services said Ms. Sebelius "had no knowledge of the document shredding issues." Mr. Six, who had a nomination to the federal bench blocked because of opposition from abortion opponents, did not return a call for comment.
Mr. Kline, the former prosecutor who now teaches at Liberty University School of Law in Virginia, said he believed the destruction revealed pervasive corruption in state government. "How does it end?" he asked. "I don't know, but I don't expect the judicial system to get to the truth."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) California's Campus Movements Dig In Their Heels
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/police-officers-involved-in-pepper-spraying-placed-on-leave.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - It has become something of an annual tradition on California college campuses, in what is perhaps the most prestigious state university system in the country: the state makes large cuts in public universities, they in turn raise tuition, and students respond with angry protests.
But this year, propelled in part by the fervor of the Occupy Wall Street movement and in part by the state of the economy and California's mountainous budget woes, the battle is sharpening. Indeed, the Occupy movement - on campuses, at least - is transforming itself into a student-led crusade against increases in tuition.
A video that showed two University of California, Davis, police officers using pepper spray on seated protesters has gone viral, with hundreds of thousands watching what might have been a relatively small encampment compared with the larger protests across the country. The video has led to demands that Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi resign. On Monday, Ms. Katehi said she was putting the campus police chief on administrative leave as a way to rebuild trust on campus.
The attack has galvanized protesters on other campuses. Students at the Los Angeles, Berkeley, Riverside and Davis campuses said Monday that they intended to restart their encampments Monday night, in part to test whether they will be rousted or arrested in the wake of the pepper-spraying.
After years of watching the state's budget for higher education erode, they are demanding that the state and university administrators find a way to lower tuition that they say is squeezing out the middle class.
"These are institutions that we call the people's university, but all of us who are in it have just watched this thing collapse on itself being starved for resources year after year," said Lillian Taiz, the president of the California Faculty Association, the union that represents professors in the California State University system. "What keeps happening is that we are turning the university into a place where really only the wealthy can go. The students are watching their parents fall out of the middle class and watching their own ability to move into it be sabotaged."
Tuition at the University of California has nearly doubled over the last several years, and next year the system will collect more money from student tuition than from state revenues. And with the state budget situation worsening by the month, the Legislature seems likely to impose another $200 million in higher education cuts next year. Last week, the California State University Board of Trustees approved a 9 percent tuition increase, even as it cuts courses and student services.
"For the last several years, the debate has been what are we going to cut, but we need to change the conversation to who is going to pay for public education?" said Kyle Arnone, one of the protest organizers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a graduate student in sociology. "We are forcing people to consider the financing of education in a larger context."
Like many of the organizers involved in the protest, Mr. Arnone is a member of the union that represents graduate students. The union is part of a coalition of labor groups and other organizations that are pressing to close a loophole in the state's property taxes and to increase taxes on the state's wealthiest residents. Mr. Arnone said the organization hoped to pressure the regents who oversee the system's budget to sign a pledge backing the changes in the state's tax system.
Mr. Arnone said he expected dozens of students to camp at U.C.L.A. overnight Monday. At the same time, other students are planning to camp out and guard a Bruin statue, the campus mascot. The statue is often vandalized this time of year, ahead of the football game against the school's cross town rival, the University of Southern California. "We're going to make them deal with whether they'll selectively enforce their laws."
The University of California president, Mark G. Yudof, convened a conference call with the chancellors of all 10 campuses, urging them not to use police force to respond to "peaceful, lawful protests," said Daniel M. Dooley, a senior vice president for the system who participated in the call. The president also plans to create protocols to detail how the campuses should respond to the ongoing protest.
Mr. Dooley said that he did not expect Ms. Katehi to resign and that President Yudof had confidence that she could move the campus beyond the incident.
Thousands of people gathered on the Davis campus for a noon rally Monday where Chancellor Katehi spoke. Organizers of the protest there told her she should wait in line with other speakers.
"I am here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened on Friday," she told the crowd. "I don't want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday."
She added: "I know you may not believe anything I am telling you today, and you don't have to. It is my responsibility to earn your trust."
Administrators in the U.C. system have long complained about the state's budget cuts and in many ways are sympathetic to the protesters' demands.
"The rapidly rising fees give us all heartburn," said Gibor Basri, the vice chancellor for equity and inclusion at Berkeley, who has met with the protesters several times. "We don't believe that higher education is a private right but a public good."
Mr. Basri added: "The problem is that the protesters aren't one group. We've got protesters who want to take the place down, and we have very responsible student leaders and everybody in between. When it gets tangled up with how the university responds, it makes things more complicated."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 21, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the vice chancellor for equity and inclusion at the University of California, Berkeley. His name is Gibor Basri, not Gibor Bafri.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) Hearing Set in Leak Case
By SCOTT SHANE
November 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/us/hearing-set-in-leak-case.html?ref=us
Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of providing thousands of secret documents to the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, will face an evidentiary hearing beginning Dec. 16, Army officials said Monday. The public hearing at Fort Meade, Md., is the military's equivalent of a grand jury and is called an Article 32 hearing. Private Manning, 23, was arrested in Kuwait. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted of three dozen charges, including "aiding the enemy," for passing secret military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) After an Eviction, Digging Through a Surplus of Donations
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
November 22, 2011
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/ows-storage/?ref=nyregion
In a back room on the first floor of an office building on lower Broadway, with wires dangling from tent-sized holes in the ceiling and organizers folding piles of sweaters across the room, Occupy Wall Street opened its mail on Monday.
Monday's was a small load, about two dozen packages, retrieved from the post office address listed on the group's Web site. But since last week's eviction from Zuccotti Park, which thinned the protesters' reserves for staples like blankets and bandages, every parcel has counted.
"We were shipping our surplus supplies to other cities," said Justin Strekal, a member of the storage team. "We no longer know what surplus is."
As the protest's most public face, the Manhattan camp has long attracted donations at a greater clip than counterparts in other cities. Until recently, the group had tried to share the wealth: Days before the eviction, protesters from Philadelphia received a truck-full of blankets, clothing and comforters. "Hand deliveries," as protesters call them - wherein demonstrators planning to travel to other cities bring excess supplies with them - have also been made to Washington and Detroit.
Now, planned shipments to Atlanta, Boston and New Haven, Conn., have been put on hold, as the group tries to gauge which items, stacked on shelves and buried beneath piles inside a donated storage space in the United Federation of Teachers building at 52 Broadway, are worth holding onto.
Donations have come in from Oregon and China, Maine and Ohio, where a woman named Bette Snyder sends oatmeal raisin cookies every week. There have been essentials - aspirin, tampons, hats and heaps of hand-warmers - and non-essentials.
One organizer said the most memorable donation had been a third of a jar of mustard. Another cited a package of 200 eyeglass pouches, shipped from China. "Just the pouches," he marveled.
Sparro Kennedy, a protester from Mount Vernon, N.Y., said a delivery of thongs was particularly galling because "we really needed underwear."
One movement supporter from Oregon contributed laxatives, vinyl gloves and stool softener. The sender, whose package identified him only as "Spang," has become something of an urban legend among the protesters.
Many observers of the movement have also sent books: self-published tomes; a copy of "Sensible Job Interviewing: Understanding the Employer's Role and Responsibilities"; the Steve Jobs biography; and illustrated copies, in English and Spanish, of "The Communist Manifesto."
"It portrays the Communist Party in a bad light," one protester griped on Monday, leafing through the images. "But it's kind of accurate though."
Other items have simply been lost among the space's detritus, perplexing organizers when they turn up during a survey of inventory: a baby mannequin, a George Foreman grill, a board-game version of "The $25,000 Pyramid" ("based on the highly rated TV show," the box reads, beside a grinning Dick Clark).
Between shelves of over-the-counter medications and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cart, a sign hangs on a moldering column: "Please Pardon Our Appearance," it reads. "We Are Revolting."
Steve Iskovitz, 51, from Pittsburgh, said donations had begun to dip in the days before the eviction last week. Throughout the occupation, he added, mail supply tended to drop in the absence of high-profile showdowns with the city. "Just when we're struggling," he said, "Mayor Bloomberg always helps us out."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) News Organizations Complain About Treatment During Protests
By BRIAN STELTER
November 21, 2011, 7:25 pm
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/news-organizations-complain-about-treatment-during-protests/
A cross-section of 13 news organizations in New York City lodged complaints on Monday about the New York Police Department's treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement. Separately, 10 press clubs, unions and other groups that represent journalists called for an investigation and said they had formed a coalition to monitor police behavior going forward.
Monday's actions were prompted by a rash of incidents on Nov. 15, when police officers impeded and even arrested reporters during and after the evictions of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the two-month-old movement.
At a news conference after the park was cleared that day, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media were kept away "to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press."
The news organizations said in a joint letter to the Police Department that officers had clearly violated their own procedures by threatening, arresting and injuring reporters and photographers. The letter said there were "numerous inappropriate, if not unconstitutional, actions and abuses" by the police against both "credentialed and noncredentialed journalists in the last few days." It requested an immediate meeting with the city's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, and his chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne.
The letter was written by George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel for The New York Times Company, and signed by representatives for The Associated Press, The New York Post, The Daily News, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones & Company, and three local television stations, WABC, WCBS and WNBC. It was also signed by representatives for the National Press Photographers Association, New York Press Photographers Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the New York Press Club.
"Over the past few months we have tried to work with D.C.P.I. to improve police-press relations," the letter stated, using shorthand for the department commissioner of public information. "However, if anything, the police actions of last week have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory."
Similarly, the New York Press Club and other groups that represent journalists said Monday that "what the police did on November 15th to suppress coverage of their activities was intolerable." The groups called for an investigation into the police action and said a new group, the Coalition for the First Amendment, would "monitor relations" between the police and the press.
"We are determined to use any means needed to fight such censorship in the future," the groups said.
The groups involved are the Deadline Club and its foundation, the Newspaper Guild of New York, the News Media Guild, the New York Press Club and its foundation, the Newswomen's Club of New York, the New York Press Photographers Association, the Society of Silurians, and the New York City Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Last week, individual journalism groups filed complaints about the restrictions and arrests on Nov. 15, resulting in renewed scrutiny of how the Police Department processes requests for press credentials. The New York Times reported Monday that of the 10 reporters arrested in New York that day, half had city-issued press credentials.
In a memorandum last week, Stu Loeser, the press secretary for Mr. Bloomberg, said "there's no doubt" that some of the arrested reporters "were in fact trespassing." The arrests were voided, Mr. Loeser noted.
"That they were never formally charged," Monday's letter from Mr. Freeman stated, "still does not mitigate the fact that their detention prevented them from carrying out their journalistic functions."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) UC Davis English Department Calls for Disbanding UCPD
Monday, November 21, 2011
http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/uc-davis-english-department-recommends.html
The following statement was read to a crowd of thousands during today's rally at UC Davis and posted on the front page of the UCD English Department's website:
The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi's immediate resignation and for "a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus."
Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuine collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the UC Davis campus community.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) Radioactive cesium blankets 8% of Japan's land area
By HIROSHI ISHIZUKA / Staff Writer
November 21, 2011
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201111210014
Some 8 percent of Japan's land area, or more than 30,000 square kilometers, has been contaminated with radioactive cesium from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Spanning 13 prefectures, the affected area has accumulated more than 10,000 becquerels of cesium 134 and 137 per square meter, according to the science ministry.
The ministry has released the latest version of its cesium contamination map, covering 18 prefectures.
Radioactive plumes from the Fukushima No. 1 plant reached no farther than the border between Gunma and Nagano prefectures in the west and southern Iwate Prefecture in the north.
Ministry officials said the plumes flowed mainly via four routes between March 14 and 22 after the plant was damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
The first plume headed westward from late March 14 to early March 15, when huge amounts of radioactive materials were released following a meltdown at the No. 2 reactor.
It moved clockwise over a wide area in the Kanto region. Radioactive materials fell with rain and snow, particularly in the northern parts of Tochigi and Gunma prefectures.
A branch of the plume moved southward from Gunma Prefecture, passing through western Saitama Prefecture, eastern Nagano Prefecture and western Tokyo.
It stopped in western Kanagawa Prefecture, where the Tanzawa mountain range rises up.
The second plume headed northwest in the afternoon of March 15, heavily contaminating parts of Namie and other municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture.
The third plume headed northward, apparently in the afternoon of March 20.
Areas in northern Miyagi Prefecture and southern Iwate Prefecture were probably contaminated when it rained between the late afternoon of March 20 and early March 21.
The fourth plume headed southward from the night of March 21 and early March 22.
It passed through northern Chiba Prefecture but largely skirted central Tokyo due to a pressure pattern, limiting contamination in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture.
It is believed that the amount of radioactive materials released from the Fukushima No. 1 plant increased between March 20 and 23, but the reasons are not yet known.
In Fukushima and seven other prefectures, 11,600 square kilometers, or 3 percent of Japan's land area, have annual additional radiation levels of at least 1 millisievert, according to Environment Ministry estimates.
The government has said it will remove radioactive materials if annual additional radiation levels reach 1 millisievert or more.
The science ministry has been carrying out aerial monitoring of radioactive materials since April.
Helicopters fly at relatively low speeds, allowing monitoring of levels of radiation released from the ground at a height of 1 meter.
Cesium accumulations in soil and radiation levels are also measured separately at selected sites on the ground.
Officials estimate cesium accumulations at other locations using correlations between radiation levels 1 meter above the ground monitored from helicopters and the actual cesium accumulations at the selected sites.
Cesium 137 will have a long-term impact on the environment because it has a half-life of 30 years.
It was detected even before the Fukushima accident, apparently as a result of nuclear testing conducted by other nations.
Still, the maximum amount found in nationwide surveys since fiscal 1999 was 4,700 becquerels in Nagano Prefecture.
The science ministry's cesium contamination map excludes the effects of pre-disaster contamination.
The map will cover 22 prefectures when it is completed by the end of the year. Data for Aomori, Ishikawa, Fukui and Aichi prefectures will be added.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) The cop group coordinating the Occupy crackdowns
By Shawn Gaynor
November 18, 2011
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/11/18/cop-group-coordinating-occupy-crackdowns
As cities across America evict encampments of the Occupy Wall Street movement, similarities of timing, talking points and tactics among major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs have led critics to wonder: Is some sort of national coordination going on?
The White House says there's no federal oversight. Speaking November 15 aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said "The president's position is that obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues."
But a little-known but influential private membership based organization has placed itself at the center of advising and coordinating the crackdown on the encampments. The Police Executive Research Forum, an international non-governmental organization with ties to law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has been coordinating conference calls with major metropolitan mayors and police chiefs to advise them on policing matters and discuss response to the Occupy movement. The group has distributed a recently published guide on policing political events.
Speaking to Democracy Now! On November 17, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler acknowledged PERF's coordination of a series of conference-call strategy sessions with big-city police chiefs. These calls were distinct from the widely reported national conference calls of major metropolitan mayors.
The coordination of political crackdowns on the Occupy movement has been conducted behind closed doors, with city officials and PERF refusing to say how many cities participated in the conference calls and the exact nature of the discussions. Reports of at least a dozen cities and some indication of as many as 40 accepting PERF advice and/or strategic documents include San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Portland, Oakland, Atlanta, and Washington DC.
The San Francisco Police Department and Mayor Ed Lee's office did not returned the Guardian's request for comment about the PERF calls by press time. However, Oakland interim Police Chief Howard Jordan was quoted by the Associated Press confirming Oakland and San Francisco police involvement in the strategy sessions.
PERF coordinated a November 10 conference call with city police chiefs across the country - and many of these cities undertook crackdowns shortly afterward.
"We know that there were influential conference calls of private groups that include police chiefs who played key roles in repressing the anti-globalization movement, in order to stage rolling attacks on occupations across the country," said Baruca Peller, an organizer for Occupy Oakland. "In less than a week an unprecedented number of protesters have been brutalized and arrested, and in many cities such as Oakland these evictions were pushed for by the local one-percent."
"Occupy Oakland is calling for a national day of re-occupation on Saturday, to let them know that if they can take a national offensive against us, we can take a national offensive in response and we will re-take these public spaces and what is already ours."
According to PERF's website, general membership in the group is exclusive to "the executive head of a municipal, county or state-funded agency that provides general police services. The agency must have at least 100 full-time employees, or serve a population of 50,000 or more people."
PERF's current and former directors read as a who's who of police chiefs involved in crackdowns on anti-globalization and political convention protesters resulting in thousands of arrests, hundreds of injuries, and millions of dollars paid out in police brutality and wrongful arrest lawsuits.
These current and former U.S. police chiefs -- along with top ranking police union officials and representatives from Canadian and British police -- have been marketing to municipal police forces and politicians their joint experiences as specialists on policing mass demonstrations.
Chairing PERF's board of directors is Philadelphia Police Commissioner and former Washington D.C. Metro Police Chief Charles Ramsey, who was responsible for coordinating the police response to protests against international banking institutions including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Those protests, and Ramsey's response to massive anti-war demonstrations in Washington DC in the lead up the the Iraq War, often resulted in preemptive mass arrest of participants that were later deemed to be unconstitutional.
Ramsey's predecessor as organization chair is former Philadelphia Police Commissioner and former Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who is responsible for the so called "Miami Model," coined after the police crackdown on the 2003 Free Trade Agreement of the Americas protest.
The police response to protesters in Miami lead to hundreds of injuries to protesters. The ACLU won multiple suits against the Miami P.D. over abuse to protesters and free speech concerns.
Prior to the 2003 protest, Timoney was quoted as saying that the FTAA was "the first big event for homeland security ... the first real realistic run-through to see how it would work."
Timoney arrived in Miami with plenty of baggage. At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Timoney coordinated a crackdown that resulted in more than 420 arrests with only 13 convictions, none of which resulted in jail time. As in Miami, there was well documented abuse of some of the people arrested.
Also among PERF's directors is Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan, who was responsible for the crackdown on protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. That event also resulted in lawsuits, protester injuries and an outcry from the national press about police brutality and the preemptive nature of the police action.
PERF is more than a mere policy group. Wexler has personally represented PERF at major political events, in face-to-face dialog with police tactical commanders and leadership. That was the case at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where Wexler and Minneapolis Police Chief Dolan coordinated what is widely regarded as one of the most aggressive political crackdowns in recent American history.
Wexler spent the afternoon of October 14 observing Occupy Philadelphia with Philadelphia police commissioner Ramsey.
Speaking to the Philadelphia Tribune, Ramsey said: "They wanted to see what the Occupy protesters were doing here in Philadelphia. As we walked through their encampment, almost immediately they were texting other groups around the country - it was happening while we were there and that was very, very interesting. It's instant communication, and it's worldwide. We have to become more adept at using the technology. Our police department has its own active Facebook page as a way of reaching out to the community."
"Had a great one-day conference in Philly about social media - very pertinent these days with the occupy protests ..." Wexler stated from his twitter account.
As the occupation movement grew, PERF began circulating a publication titled Managing Major Events: Best Practices from the Field. The manual - a copy of which we downloaded -- amounts to a how-to guide for policing political events, and gives special attention to policing "Anarchists" and "Eco Terrrorists" at political events.
The guide encourages the use of undercover officers and snatch squads to "grab the bad guys and remove them from the crowd." It urges local law enforcement to use social media to map the Occupy movement.
An earlier PERF guide Police Management of Mass Demonstrations advocates the use of embedded media to control police messages, the use of undercover cops to infiltrate protest groups, the use and pitfalls of preemptive mass arrest, an examination of the use of less-than-lethal crowd control weapons, and general discussion weighing the use of force in crowd control.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) UC Davis Students Are Role Models
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
November 22, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8535-focus-uc-davis-students-are-role-models
Exclusive Video: Chancellor Katehi faces students of UC Davis after pepper spray attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfzQyT9nUMk&feature=player_embedded
Speech by pepper spray victim at UC Davis
"Not a single student was violent, ever. Not a single student resisted arrest; not a single one. So I ask you guys, out of respect for me and my friends who sat there and allowed a police officer to, point blank, spray pepper spray into our face three times while we looked him in the face--do not choose the path of violence. Our best weapon is to pass on violence. Their only weapon is violence. That is why we will prevail. That is why we must prevail..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mse5wfBZ4j8&feature=player_embedded
It would have been easy for students at UC Davis to riot after watching their classmates being assaulted with pepper spray. Instead, they remained nonviolent. That simple act gave them the moral high ground. And that's how social change movements grow.
Rewind a couple of weeks.
Occupy Oakland was in a similar situation. Police had violently cracked down on their encampment. Iraq War veteran Scott Olson almost died. They had the momentum, which led to a successful general strike that closed the Port of Oakland. As night fell on the day of that general strike, some of the protesters became violent. That violence turned public opinion, and slowed their momentum.
It reminds me of a 1988 demonstration at the Pentagon. We had a thousand people committed to nonviolent civil disobedience. We attempted to shut down the south parking lot. We went through nonviolence training prior to the action, and this was key to our success. Affinity groups were all on the same page. The action remained nonviolent and, in the words of Daniel Ellsberg, "Pentagon employees had to step over us to get to work." All went well until a small group decided to start lighting fires - some of them under transit buses. All of that hard work to keep the protest from turning violent quite literally "went up in smoke."
Problems like this have always plagued the progressive movement. The authorities know if they provoke the right groups they will become violent and public opinion will turn against whatever movement they are targeting. Those who keep wondering why the police fan the flames of the Occupy movement will learn the answer to their question if the Occupy movement responds to these provocations with violence.
The Occupy movement must strictly adhere to its guidelines of nonviolence, and publicly distance itself from acts of violence. As tempting as it may be to fight back when you are under attack, all that does is alienate future supporters.
Back to UC Davis.
Yesterday, thousands turned out on campus for a nonviolent rally, one that included an apology from Chancellor Katehi.
Exclusive Video: Chancellor Katehi faces students of UC Davis after pepper spray attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfzQyT9nUMk&feature=player_embedded
If the students reacted violently to the pepper spray, yesterday's rally would have been much smaller and much less effective. It was the nonviolent response that made people who usually don't attend protests, but are sympathetic to the cause, feel safe enough to attend and to stay.
While there is a time and a place for more militant actions like the blockade of the Pentagon, only the hardcore attend these events. If any movement is to grow and flourish, newcomers need to feel safe. One of the pepper-sprayed protesters put it best, "Do not choose the path of violence. Their only weapon is violence. We will prevail."
Speech by pepper spray victim at UC Davis
"Not a single student was violent, ever. Not a single student resisted arrest; not a single one. So I ask you guys, out of respect for me and my friends who sat there and allowed a police officer to, point blank, spray pepper spray into our face three times while we looked him in the face--do not choose the path of violence. Our best weapon is to pass on violence. Their only weapon is violence. That is why we will prevail. That is why we must prevail..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mse5wfBZ4j8&feature=player_embedded
The authorities will continue to use violence in the hope that they can inspire a violent reaction from us. They know that scenes like the violence in Oakland after the general strike will kill the momentum of the movement.
Let us learn from Oakland, and follow the example set by Occupy Davis. Right now Oakland is struggling to maintain a camp, while Occupy Davis is back, bigger and stronger than ever.
Scott Galindez is the Political Director of Reader Supported News, and the co-founder of Truthout.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) PCJF and NLG File Freedom of Information Act Requests
November 22, 2011 12:14 pm : Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee
November 16, 2001
Civil Rights Legal Groups Demand Records on Federal Law Enforcement Involvement in Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement
PCJF and NLG Mass Defense Committee File Multi-Agency Requests
VIA Email
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests today with the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Park Service (NPS) requesting that the agencies release information that they possess related to the involvement of federal agencies in the planning of a coordinated law enforcement crackdown that has taken places in multiple cities against the Occupy Movement in recent days and weeks.
The FOIA to the various federal law enforcement agencies states: "This request specifically encompasses disclosure of any documents or information pertaining to federal coordination of, or advice or consultation regarding, the police response to the Occupy movement, protests or encampments."
The Occupy Movement has been confronted by a nearly simultaneous effort by local governments and local police agencies to evict and break up encampments in cities and towns throughout the country. It is now known that mayors and other local officials have met together on conference calls in recent weeks and developed a coordinated strategy to dislodge and break up the encampments using common talking points including a public pretextual rationale to justify police action.
Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice and the co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild's National Mass Defense Committee, states: "The severe crackdown on the occupation movement appears to be part of a national strategy to crush the movement. This multi-jurisdictional coordination shows that the crackdown is supremely political."
"The FOIA requests seek critical information regarding the role of federal law enforcement agencies," Verheyden-Hilliard explained. "The Occupy demonstrations are not criminal activities, and police should not be treating them as such. This protest movement for social and economic justice has captured the imagination of the country. The coordinated effort of law enforcement to suppress it is a reflection of its political challenge to the status-quo."
"We see the scapegoating of these movements, the attacks at night, and in general tactics designed to terrorize and to scare protesters away," stated Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. "This request is critical to the transparency that is required in order for the people of the United States to be informed as to the U.S. government's action in regard to free speech activities."
Read the Freedom of Information Act request here.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) is a not-for-profit constitutional rights legal and educational organization which, among other things, seeks to ensure constitutional accountability within police practices and government transparency in operations. It is counsel on the Barham and Becker class action cases in which more than 1,000 persons were falsely arrested during protests in Washington, D.C., resulting in settlements totaling $22 million and major changes in police practices. The PCJF previously brought the successful litigation in New York challenging the 2004 ban on protests in the Great Lawn of Central Park. It is counsel with the National Lawyers Guild in Oakland, CA challenging police mass arrest tactics. It won a unanimous ruling at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals finding the MPD's unprecedented military-style police checkpoint program unconstitutional. The PCJF previously uncovered and disclosed that the D.C. police employed an unlawful domestic spying and agent provocateur program in which officers were sent on long-term assignments posing as political activists and infiltrated lawful and peaceful groups. For more information go to: www.JusticeOnline.org.
The National Lawyers Guild was formed as the nation's first racially integrated voluntary bar association, with a mandate to advocate for fundamental principles of human and civil rights including the protection of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The Guild has championed the First Amendment right to engage in vigorous political speech for 75 years. The Guild has a long history of defending individuals accused by the government of espousing "dangerous" ideas, including in hearings conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and other examples of governmental overreaching now popularly discredited. See e.g. Kinoy v. District of Columbia, 400 F.2d 761 (1968). Since then, it has continued to represent thousands of Americans critical of government policies, from civil rights advocates and anti-war activists during the Vietnam era to current anti-globalization, peace, environmental and animal rights activists. Its Mass
Defense Committee is a coordinated body of hundreds of lawyers, legal workers and law students who are defending the free speech rights of the Occupy actions around the country.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement
Van Jones and Democratic Party Operatives: You Do Not Represent the Occupy Movement
Make Your Own Program Don't Try to Steal Ours
By Kevin Zeese
Occupy Washington, DC
November 23, 2011
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/van-jones-and-democratic-party-operatives-you-do-not-represent-occupy-movement
The corporate media is anointing a false leader of the Occupy Movement in Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream.
The former Obama administration official, who received a golden parachute at Princeton and the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress when he left the administration, is doing what Democrats always do-see the energy of an independent movement, race to the front, then lead it down a dead end and essentially destroy it. Jones is doing the dirty work of a Democratic operative and while he and other Dem front groups pretend to support Occupiers, their real mission is to co-opt it.
Glenn Greenwald says in a recent blog, "White House-aligned groups such as the Center for American Progress have made explicity clear that they are going to try to convert OWS into a vote-producing arm for the Obama 2012 campaign."
Before he ran to the front of the Occupy Movement, Jones' Rebuild the Dream had been saying that its first task was to elect Democrats. Now he is claiming there will be 2000 "99% candidates" in 2012. These Democrats will be re-branded as part of the 99% movement. Democrats will now be re-labeled and marketed as part of the 99% movement. Republican operatives did the same thing to the Tea Party. Tea Party candidates, who often used to be corporate "Club for Growth" candidates, ran in the Republican Party. See, e.g. Senator Pat Toomey - before and after.
Jones is urging the Occupy Movement to "mature" and move on to an electoral phase. This would only make us a sterile part of the very problem we oppose. The electoral system is a corrupt mirage where only corporate-approved candidates are allowed to be considered seriously. At Occupy Washington, DC, we recognize that putting our time, energy and resources into elections will not produce the change we want to see. What we need to do right now is build a dynamic movement supported by independent media that stands in stark contrast to both corporate-bought-and-paid-for parties.
Democratic operatives want to steal the energy of the Occupy Movement because they do not have any of their own. These Dem front groups operate within the confines of the two corrupt parties and their agenda is limited by what big business interests say is politically realistic. Rebuild the Dream is more of the same that has been seen over and over from groups like MoveOn and Campaign for America's Future - elect Democrats is their mantra. It is their only program. And, it is bankrupt.
Democrats need to derail and co-opt the Occupy Movement because it calls attention to what's really happening. The American people need a real jobs bill, not one that is merely a political tactic for an election year. We also need a truly progressive tax system-one that taxes wealth more and workers less. The poorest Americans pay taxes on necessities like food and clothing, so why is it that neither party urges a tax on the purchase of stocks, bonds and derivatives-a tax that could raise $800 billion over a decade? And finally, we need an end to the wars and militarism maintained and expanded by both parties, bringing huge profits to the arms industry and immense suffering to millions.
The Occupy Movement is not part of either corporate-dominated party and Van Jones is not our leader. It is corporate rule we oppose. The Obama administration and the Democrats as well as the Republicans maintain the rule of Wall Street. Occupiers have organized an independent movement that challenges the rule of the 1% and their Republican and Democratic lackeys. Bought and paid for with millions of dollars from Wall Street, the health insurance industry and big energy interests, Obama and the Democrats are part of the problem, not the solution.
Kevin Zeese is an organizer of Occupy Washington, DC and co-director of Its Our Economy and co-chair of Come Home America.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Two Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis
by Dave Zirin
November 23, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164783/two-scandals-one-connection-fbi-link-between-penn-state-and-uc-davis
Two shocking scandals. Two esteemed universities. Two disgraced university leaders. One stunning connection. Over the last month, we've seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and we've seen UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi pushed to the brink of resignation. Spanier was jettisoned because of what appears to be a systematic cover-up of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's serial child rape. Katehi has faced calls to resign after the she sent campus police to blast pepper spray in the faces of her peaceably assembled students, an act for which she claims "full responsibility." The university's Faculty Association has since voted for her ouster citing a "gross failure of leadership." The names Spanier and Katehi are now synonymous with the worst abuses of institutional power. But their connection didn't begin there. In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of 20 college Presidents on what's called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which "promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI."
Spanier said upon the group's founding in 2005, "The National Security Higher Education Advisory Board promises to help universities and government work toward a balanced and rational approach that will allow scientific research and education to progress and our nation to remain safe." He also said that the partnership could help provide "internships" to faculty and students interested in "National Security issues."
FBI chief Robert Mueller said at a press conference with Spanier, "We knew it would not be necessarily an easy sell because of the perceived tension between law enforcement and academia. But once we've briefed President Spanier on the national security threats that impact all of you here at Penn State and at other universities, it became clear to all of us why this partnership is so important. "
But the reality of this partnership is far different. Its original mandate was about protecting schools from "cyber theft" and "intellectual property issues.". But, as has been true with the FBI since Hoover, give them a foothold, and they'll take off their shoes and get cozy. Their classified mandate has since expanded to such euphemisms as "counter-terrorism" and "public safety." It also expanded federal anti-terrorism task forces to include the dark-helmeted, pepper-spray brigades, otherwise known as the campus police.
As Wired magazine put it in 2007, "Presidents are being advised to think like "Cold War-riors" and be mindful of professors and students who may not be on campus for purposes of learning but, instead, for spying, stealing research and recruiting people who are sympathetic to an anti-U.S. cause."
Chancellor Katehi said in 2010 that despite these concerns, she was proud to join the NSHEA because, "It's important for us to learn from the FBI about the smartest, safest protocols to follow as we do our work, and it is equally important that the FBI has a solid understanding of matters of academic freedom."
Sacremento's FBI Special Agent in Charge, Drew Parenti, praised her involvement, saying, "The FBI's partnership with higher education is a key component in our strategy of staying ahead of national security threats from our foreign adversaries.... we are very pleased that Chancellor Katehi has accepted an appointment to serve on the board."
As for the actual meetings between the presidents of academic institutions and the FBI, those discussions are classified. If you are a rabble-rousing faculty member or a student group stepping out of line, your school records can become the FBI's business and you'd be none the wiser.
Chris Ott, from the Massachusetts ACLU, said of the NSHEA, "The FBI is asking university faculty, staff, and students to create a form of neighborhood watch against anything that is so called 'suspicious.' What kinds of things are they going to report on? Who has the right to be snitching? One of the scary things is who [on the campuses] will take it upon themselves to root out spies?"
In the wake of the scandals that have enveloped and now destroyed the careers of Spanier and Katehi, the very existence of the NCHEA should now be called to question. Given the personal character on display by these two individuals, why should anyone trust that the classified meetings have stayed in the realm of "cyber theft" and intellectual property rights? What did the FBI tell Chancellor Katehi about how to deal with the peacefully assembled Occupiers? Was "counter-terrorism" advice given on how to handle her own students?
As for Spanier, how much of Sandusky's actions at Penn State, which were documented on campus but never shared with the local police, was the FBI privy to? Why did the school hire former FBI director Louis Freeh to head up their internal investigation? Does that in fact represent a conflict of interest? And most critically, did the "chilling effect" of a sanctioned FBI presence at Penn State, actually prevent people from coming forward?
When Spanier was asked in 2005, if he was concerned about whether a formal partnership with the FBI would cause objections he said, "If there is an issue on my campus, I'd like to be the first person to hear about it, not the last." In the context of recent events, it's probably best to let those words speak for themselves. But fear not for the futures of these two stewards of higher education and academic freedom. Maybe Spanier's can put his experience as a federal informant to good use from inside a federal prison. As for Katehi, if, as suspected, she'll be unemployed shortly, perhaps she can take advantage of one of those fabulous internship opportunities having the FBI on campus provides.
[Dave Zirin is the author of "The John Carlos Story" (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary "Not Just a Game." Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Military Moves to End Clashes in Egyptian Square
By ANTHONY SHADID
November 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/world/middleeast/egypt-protesters-and-police-clash-for-fifth-day.html?_r=1&hp
CAIRO - The outskirts of Tahrir Square, the iconic landmark of Egypt's revolution, plunged into chaos Wednesday, after attempts by the Egyptian military, religious clerics and doctors failed to stanch a sixth day of fighting that has posed the greatest crisis to the country since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February.
The fighting in darkened streets, suffused with tear gas and eerily lit by the flashing lights of police cars and floodlights of armored personnel carriers, seemed to stand as a metaphor for a political transition that has careened into deep uncertainty just days before elections that were supposed to anchor the shift from military to civilian rule.
The military that seized power with Mr. Mubarak's fall rebuffed protesters' demands to surrender authority this week, and the political elite has seemed paralyzed or defensive over the unrest. The discontent in Tahrir Square has broadened from demands for the generals to cede control and anger over bloodshed into discontent over a transition that has delivered precious little since the uprising's heady days in February.
"This is a revolution of the hungry!" declared Amr Ali Mohammed, a 23-year-old protester, taking a break from the battle with police. "Egyptians have had enough."
The sense of uncertainty that prevailed in Egypt echoed some of the most anxious days of the uprising that began in January against Mr. Mubarak's 30 years of rule. Though life went on in much of the capital, the protests demonstrated a resilience they lacked for months, and episodes of dissent have erupted in other parts of the country, including Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city. Neither politicians nor the military seemed ready to embrace a dramatic step that many insisted was needed to end the unrest.
By nightfall, crowds rivaled their size on past days, anchored by a demand that has become the anthem since the crisis began: the fall of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the de facto leader and longtime colleague of Mr. Mubarak. In the square's side streets, youths fought police to the backdrop of unending ambulance sirens.
"If he leaves it like this and stays silent, it will be a disaster," said Suleiman Mahmoud, as he stood in a street that looked like a symbol for urban distress - pools of stagnant water strewn with rocks, shattered glass, trash and fallen tree branches. "He'll pay the price, and the country will pay the price. Stubbornness is not a solution."
With political leaders tentative, and signs of the military unable to exert control over the police, other voices emerged in the country Wednesday, demanding some kind of action. Most important was the grand imam of al-Azhar, a prominent seat of religious scholarship long co-opted by the government but now seeking a more independent role.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb called on Egyptian police not to fire on protesters, "no matter what the reason." He urged protesters to restrain themselves and demanded that the military, whose relations have long been strained with the Interior Ministry and its loathed police forces, do everything it could to prevent more clashes.
"Al-Azhar reminds everybody that dialogue stained with blood is doomed and its fruit will be bitter in the throats of everyone," the cleric's statement said.
His warnings were echoed abroad, in a sign of growing international concern over the crisis in the Arab world's most populous country. The French Foreign Ministry condemned what it called "the excessive use of force against demonstrators," and Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights chief, called for an independent investigation into the bloodshed, which has killed 38 people and injured hundreds since it began Saturday.
Pronounced often is a sentiment that has become a refrain of sorts in moments of crisis here: a foreign hand. In a statement Wednesday, the Muslim Brotherhood suggested that "there has been a plan to create chaos," a contention that Field Marshal Tantawi made in an address to the country on Tuesday night. Even some onlookers at Wednesday's events in the square struggled to make sense of the turn of events.
"It is in someone's interest to benefit from the delay of elections, I just don't know who it is," said Marwa Hussein, an 18-year-old student, who visited the square for the first time Wednesday. "Someone is benefiting from this chaos. We just don't know who."
At times, the crowds in Tahrir Square have seem determined to recapture the spirit of February, when hundreds of thousands converged in downtown Cairo to press their demand for Mr. Mubarak's fall, to the backdrop of songs by the late Abdel-Halim Hafez. It was a moment of unity that contrasted with the current state of Egyptian politics, which fragmented soon after the military seized control, and a widespread sense that the generals, their decision-making opaque, have horribly mismanaged the transition.
But Wednesday had a more martial feel, evident at the square's entrance.
"Take care of yourself, captain," said a vendor selling surgical masks for an Egyptian pound. On broad avenues cordoned off to evacuate the wounded, youths sought to maintain order among crowds, as motorcycles carrying as many as four careened by.
"Clear the way!" men shouted.
The square was suffused with chants, sirens that blared through the night, vendors hawking food, flags and scarves. At a nearby cafƩ, men outfitted with goggles and gas masks sat along the sidewalk, sipping tea and smoking waterpipes.
"Live free, stay in the square," the graffiti read nearby.
"This is only going to end when the military turns over power," said Mohammed Gilal, a 28-year-old doctor treating patients in a makeshift clinic, where volunteers carted in canisters of oxygen and nurses treated wheezing protesters overwhelmed by gas. He said he had seen hundreds of wounded since he arrived Sunday. "I'm not leaving unless they kill me with my colleagues. We're not going to accept any more talk."
Some activists joked that the anger was so widespread, so deep among the protesters that their chants should be, "The people want the fall of the coming president."
By afternoon, the military tried to separate the protesters from the police, and they were joined by doctors and clerics from al-Azhar, in their distinct gray robes and white and red caps. The truce lasted for about 90 minutes, before a crack was heard behind a building. Crowds surged, then moments later, a round of tear gas canisters were fired.
Protesters seemed especially enraged that it was fired as some of them prayed, and it was unclear whether the military was exercising authority over the police. A prominent cleric, Mazher Shahin, whose mosque is in the square, blamed the police.
"Ambush," someone cried.
"The government withdrew and said 'Okay, we have withdrawn,' so we all went up to see it," said Islam Mohammed, an 18-year-old with his head and forearm bandaged. "We were praying and they attacked us in the middle of the prayer. We were all praying."
Clashes escalated through the night, and the Ministry of Health said 500 people were injured in just two hours. Bonfires cast a glow down darkened streets, where protesters retreated from tear gas, stumbling over the debris of their days of melees.
"The turning point is coming soon," said Mostafa Helmy, a 55-year-old engineer.
Liam Stack and Dina Salah Amer contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) South Africa Passes Law to Restrict Reporting of Government Secrets
By JOHN ELIGON
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/world/africa/south-african-parliament-to-vote-on-press-law.html?ref=world
JOHANNESBURG - Brushing aside protests by press-freedom advocates and heroes of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, Parliament overwhelmingly passed a contentious bill on Tuesday that will severely restrict the ability of journalists to report any information deemed to be a government secret.
The legislation, which still must undergo further steps to become law, would make it a crime, punishable by lengthy prison terms, to disseminate anything that any state agency regards as classified. Critics have called the legislation a throwback to the apartheid regime's harsh repression and say it is meant to protect corrupt officials from press scrutiny.
Anger over the legislation was embodied by the presentation of an article published last week in The Mail & Guardian, a major weekly newspaper here, about Mac Maharaj, the spokesman for President Jacob Zuma. Most of the text had been blacked out. This outcome, the paper's editor said, was what loomed for South Africa's press if the legislation became law.
The Protection of Information Bill, as the legislation is called, must still clear a national council of provinces before it takes effect. Critics have said they will challenge it in South Africa's constitutional court.
"The bill in its current form does take us back to pre-1994," said Elston Sippie, executive director of the country's Freedom of Expression Institute, referring to the year South Africa became a democracy. "I do think it is a setback in that we fought hard and long to get our bill of rights accepted amongst all South Africans. And it is that bill of rights that is now under threat."
The onerous implications have some members of the media here feeling under more pressure than at any time since the fall of apartheid.
On both sides of the debate, people have said the battle between the press and the ruling party speaks to the fact that this country, less than two decades after the fall of apartheid, is still figuring out just how to get democracy right.
"Like the United States, it took many, many decades to have your Constitution developed to where it is now," said Moegsien Williams, the editor of The Star, a daily newspaper based here. "We are now in that kind of process where we're trying to kind of live up to and entrench the Bill of Rights."
The news media and civil rights groups had fought unsuccessfully to get the ruling party, the African National Congress, to include an exception in the law that would allow for the revelation of classified information if it were in the public interest.
On Tuesday, protesters urged people to wear black, calling the day "Black Tuesday," evoking memories of a similarly titled press crackdown in the 1970s under white rule. Demonstrators picketed outside of Parliament in Cape Town and in front of A.N.C. headquarters here.
Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate and leading figure in the fight to end white-minority domination, said it was "insulting to all South Africans to be asked to stomach legislation that could be used to outlaw whistle-blowing and investigative journalism."
The office of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first post-apartheid president and emblem of the struggle for democracy, said the legislation was "not yet at a point where it can be said to have met" constitutional standards.
But A.N.C. members stood firm in their support of the legislation, arguing it was repealing a harsher 1982 protection of information law.
"It is our experience that most opponents of this bill have not actually read this bill," said Luwellyn Tyrone Landers, an A.N.C. parliamentary member. "Today's events confirm that view."
The bill will make it a crime punishable by 5 to 25 years in prison for anyone to reveal information that the state labels classified.
Journalists also have expressed concern about a looming proposal by the A.N.C. to create a tribunal that would hear and adjudicate citizen complaints against media outlets over issues of fairness and accuracy.
"These are the toughest times," said Ferial Haffajee, the editor of City Press, a weekly newspaper here. "Across the board, I think you see attempts to curtail media freedom and free expression."
Ms. Haffajee said she believed that the legislation reflected the vulnerabilities felt by the A.N.C., which has been the dominant party in South African politics since 1994. It is instinctive, she said, "for people in power to attempt to stifle the media when it makes exposures that are uncomfortable."
But the protection bill "is not about suppressing the media or corruption," Siyabonga Cwele, the minister of state security, said through an e-mailed statement from his spokesman, Brian Dube.
"The South African government is clear on the role of the media in our democracy, and our Constitution provides expressly for freedom of expression," the statement continued. It added that the bill sought to balance "the right to access to information on the one hand, and the critical issues of national security."
In a bluntly worded report released last year, a media watchdog established by Parliament and led by an A.N.C. member suggested that the media needed greater regulation.
"Freedom of expression needs to be defended, but freedom of expression can also be a refuge for journalist scoundrels, to hide mediocrity and glorify truly unprofessional conduct," the report read.
The conflict between Mr. Maharaj and The Mail & Guardian came to a head when the paper told him it was publishing information from a confidential interview that Mr. Maharaj had with corruption investigators almost a decade ago. The information proved that Mr. Maharaj had lied to investigators, who were examining allegations of corrupt payments made to Mr. Zuma, who was then a high-ranking official, during a major arms deal in the late 1990s, said Nic Dawes, the paper's editor in chief.
But under a little-known South African law, it would have been illegal for anyone to reveal the contents of Mr. Maharaj's statements to investigators because they were made during a process in which he had to waive his right to remain silent. Even though the paper withheld the statements, Mr. Maharaj filed a criminal complaint, saying that it had intended to publish the information.
Mr. Maharaj said the media could not hold freedom of the press above his individual rights.
"There's no single right that stands in a hierarchy," he said. "It's a balancing of those rights, and the process of building a democracy, is an ongoing exercise."
Mr. Maharaj said he believed that The Mail & Guardian was using him as political football to raise opposition to the protection bill.
Indeed, the day before the blacked-out paper was published, Mr. Dawes posted a photo of the newspaper page on his Twitter feed with the note "A glimpse of life under #secrecybill."
Mr. Dawes also posted a copy of The Weekly Mail, the Mail & Guardian's former name, from 1986 in which lines of an article were blacked out because of government censorship. It was routine practice in those days, Mr. Dawes said.
"For all of the problems that we have now, we still live in a democracy now and we didn't then," he said. "But you can't avoid the kind of awful analogy that arises in these circumstances."
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Pepper Spray's Fallout, From Crowd Control to Mocking Images
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/pepper-sprays-fallout-from-crowd-control-to-mocking-images.html?ref=us
Some women carry it in their purses in a pink, lipstick-shaped container. Hikers use it to deter bears. People in most states can buy a small canister of it on a quick-release key ring on Amazon.com for $7.07.
As pepper spray has become ubiquitous in this country over the last two decades, it has not raised many eyebrows. But now, after images of the campus police at the University of California, Davis, spraying the Kool-Aid-colored orange compound on docile protesters on Friday, pepper spray is a topic of national debate.
It has become the crowd-control measure of choice lately by police departments from New York to Denver to Portland, Ore., as they counter protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
To some, pepper spray is a mild, temporary irritant and its use has been justified as cities and universities have sought to regain control of their streets, parks and campuses. After the video at Davis went viral, Megyn Kelly on Fox News dismissed pepper spray as "a food product, essentially."
To the American Civil Liberties Union, its use as a crowd-control device, particularly when those crowds are nonthreatening, is an excessive and unconstitutional use of force and violates the right to peaceably assemble.
Some of the Davis students are threatening civil suits against the university on these grounds. The chancellor has called the use of pepper spray "unacceptable" and has put the officers on administrative leave.
"The courts have made it very clear that these type of devices can't be used indiscriminately and should be used only when the target poses a physical threat to someone," said Michael Risher, staff attorney for the A.C.L.U. of Northern California.
To Kamran Loghman, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980s, the incident at Davis violated his original intent.
"I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents," Mr. Loghman said in an interview.
Mr. Loghman, who also helped develop guidelines for police departments using the spray, said that use-of-force manuals generally advise that pepper spray is appropriate only if a person is physically threatening a police officer or another person.
In New York, for example, a police commander who sprayed several women in an Occupy demonstration last month faced disciplinary proceedings. The New York Police Department says pepper spray should be used chiefly for self-defense or to control suspects who are resisting arrest.
To many watching from the sidelines, pepper spray remains an obscure agent, even as the video of its spraying at Davis has become the defining image of an otherwise amorphous Occupy movement.
Pepper spray - its formal name is oleoresin capsicum, or O.C. spray - finds its power in an inflammatory agent that occurs naturally in more than 300 varieties of peppers, including cayenne, and that vary by their degree of hotness. (Black pepper is not part of the capsicum family.) When sprayed in someone's face, it causes an intense burning sensation of the eyes, resulting in temporary blindness, and restricts breathing, induces coughing and leaves the person at least temporarily incapacitated.
Pepper's use as a deterrent dates to the ancient cultures in China and India, which sometimes used it in war, sometimes for torture. Because it was effective, cheap and widely cultivated, pepper persisted as a weapon through the ages, mostly for self-defense. Some Japanese women kept it tucked into their kimonos in case a man made aggressive advances.
It is now used the world over in its spray form, under numerous brand names, mostly to foil criminal suspects but also for self-protection against both humans and animals.
But the public rarely witnesses such scenes, and that was one of the reasons that the video from Davis was so powerful. It captured many elements - seated protesters being doused with a bright orange spray by campus officers, whose body language appeared surprisingly casual.
"What makes this so oddly interesting is that those officers don't look like the Chicago police in 1968," said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. They are so casual, he said, "it's as if they were called because someone was sunbathing naked on the quad."
All of these elements, Mr. Thompson said, added up to a riveting image. "All of these contradictions are jammed into that little video, where we have this casual disenfranchising of rights, but it is a new era, where pepper spray is used as opposed to batons and guns."
That nonaggressive posture by the police, he said, has fueled some of the widespread online reaction to the video, in which thousands of Internet users recast an image of one of the officers, inserting it digitally into famous paintings. Suddenly, on Web pages, blogs and Twitter messages, the officer, identified as Lt. John Pike, appeared to be standing in the field in Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," spraying Christina as she sprawled on the grass. He cropped up, too, in the harsh angles of Picasso's "Guernica," and in scenes from movies. There he was zapping Julie Andrews on a mountaintop in "The Sound of Music."
It also prompted several satiric reviews on Amazon of pepper-spray products.
"It really is the Cadillac of citizen repression technology," one reviewer wrote. "This is space age domination technology," wrote another. "Works on citizens. AND ALIENS!!"
But inevitably, the image of Lieutenant Pike was inserted into more sobering images from real life, like the famous photograph of the Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after planes dropped napalm on her village. He also stood in the 1970 picture of a woman at Kent State, her arms raised in horror over the body of a student shot to death by National Guardsmen.
Those jarring images, Mr. Thompson said, were a reminder that "this is a new generation of subduing people, and while the decision to use it may not be right," he added, "we are in the age of pepper spray, not the age of real bullets."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 23, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated the year of a photograph taken at Kent State. It was taken in 1970, not 1968.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Oregon Governor Says He Will Block Executions
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
November 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/us/oregon-executions-to-be-blocked-by-gov-kitzhaber.html?ref=us
Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon on Tuesday said he would halt the execution of a death row inmate scheduled for next month and that he would allow no more executions in the state during his time in office.
"It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach," Governor Kitzhaber, a Democrat elected last fall, said in a news conference in Salem on Tuesday afternoon. "I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor."
Oregon, which uses lethal injection, has executed just two people since its voters approved the death penalty in 1984, and both of those inmates waived certain rights to appeal, making them so-called volunteers. The state, which has 37 inmates on death row, last executed someone in 1997. It has been one of at least seven states that allow the death penalty but have not used it in more than a decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
But Oregon's status appeared likely to change after Gary Haugen, a twice-convicted murderer, waived several appeals and asked to be executed. Mr. Haugen, convicted of killings in 1981 and in 2003, has testified that the death penalty wastes taxpayer money and is unjustly carried out. But in a court appearance in October, Mr. Haugen said: "This is going to be one time where I just don't do a lot of talking, because I'm ready, your honor. Because I'm ready."
Outside groups fought to stop the execution, but late Monday the Oregon Supreme Court ruled, 4 to 3, to allow it to go forward. By Tuesday morning, Governor Kitzhaber's office had scheduled his afternoon announcement.
The governor, a physician who served two previous terms, from 1995 to 2003, noted that he had allowed the two earlier executions to go forward under his watch.
"They were the most agonizing and difficult decisions I have made as governor and I have revisited and questioned them over and over again during the past 14 years," Governor Kitzhaber said. "I do not believe that those executions made us safer; certainly I don't believe they made us more noble as a society. And I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong."
Noting the length of time many inmates spend on death row, often more than 20 years, he said Oregon had an "unworkable system that fails to meet basic standards of justice." He said there was a wide sense the death penalty process was flawed but that the state had "done nothing; we have avoided the question."
"It is a perversion of justice when the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury," he said. "The only factor that determines in Oregon whether someone sentenced to death will actually be executed is that they volunteer to die."
The governor did not commute the sentence of Mr. Haugen or any of the other death row inmates. He granted Mr. Haugen what he called a temporary reprieve. He asked the Legislature "to bring potential reforms before the 2013 legislative session" and he encouraged "all Oregonians to engage in the long overdue debate that this important issue deserves."
In all, 34 states allow the death penalty, but only 27 have executed someone in the past decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that has been critical of how the death penalty is carried out around the country. The annual number of executions nationwide has declined by about half over the past decade.
Gov. George Ryan of Illinois halted executions in that state in 2000, then, as he was leaving office in 2003, commuted the sentences of all death row inmates. The Illinois Legislature banned the death penalty this year. New Jersey abolished the practice in 2007. The New Mexico Legislature ended the death penalty in 2009.
Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that states could be forced into the death penalty debate when inmates volunteered.
"An execution focuses everybody's attention," Mr. Dieter said. "It becomes real and people have to decide. And of course the governor has a personal responsibility."
Governor Kitzhaber said he would be criticized, and he was.
"If the review system is broken such that nobody but volunteers are being executed, the answer is to fix the review system," said Kent S. Scheidegger, the legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty.
Mr. Scheidegger said the authority some governors had to commute or delay death penalty sentences "is given for the purpose of correcting injustices in individual cases. It's not given for the purpose of negating an entire law."
Governor Kitzhaber said his decision was rooted in policy and personal views. He noted he had taken an oath as a physician to "never do harm." Asked with whom he had consulted, he said, "Mostly myself."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2 comments:
lupus is generally more severe form of lupus. They
will conduct a sleep study for various reasons, the chemicals,
adhesives glues and heat. In the new makeup.
Feel free to visit my weblog ... Oriskany lupus specialist
on with sound cookies with less than 3g of Boilersuit
fat. And the almost exciting enquiry shows that are Bully in calories
so its ideal to interchange them with other heights pure fats.
It has a Deep broth, dozens of to Scan more on Lovastatin.
my web site ... medicine cholesterol effects side without
Post a Comment