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FYI:
Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:
DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT:
http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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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.
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FRIDAY, DEC. 2
DAY OF ACTION IN SF TO STOP THE CUTS
The 1% Got Bailed Out & The 99% Got Sold Out!
NO CUTS!
* 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 and Forgive Student Loans!
Expand Social Security!
No Cuts to Medicaid!
Medicare for All!
Jobs for All & Economic Fairness!
2:00 PM OCCUPY THE FEDERAL BUILDING PLAZA
(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.
3:30 PM OCCUPY WALL STREET WEST
We will march to several wretched symbols of corporate and financial corruption K Westfield Plaza (to support SEIU Local 87), Wells Fargo Bank (to demand cancellation of student debt), and Verizon (to demand end to attacks on 45,000 union workers) K then to the Occupy SF area at the foot of Market St.
4:30 HYATT REGENCY
5:00 PM INTO THE NIGHT CELCEBRATE & DEFEND OCCUPY SF
We will gather for a protest action at Hyatt Regency Hotel (foot of Market St.), a notorious symbol of corporate greed, to express our solidarity with Hotel Workers Local 2 before assembling for a rally/concert in Justin Herman Plaza to support Occupy SF.
This is a peaceful & family-friendly day of protest.
Contact Amber Parrish Bauer, SF Labor Council, 415 440-4809
Endorsers forming San Francisco Labor Council & San Mateo County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, Veterans for Peace, Chap.162, East Bay, Single Payer Now, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Independent Living Resource Center, San Francisco, Jobs with Justice, MoveOn.org, SF Living Wage Coalition, U.S.Labor Against War , Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice, State Council, Peace & Freedom Party, ANSWER
Thanks to Nicholas Brown for this extremely educational 15-minute video presentation exposing fraudulent claims that we of the 99% must pay for deficits created by the 1%.
The video was produced especially to promote the December 2, 2011 Day of Action but it remains valuable as long as cuts to critical social programs remain on the table.
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No Cuts Dec 2 Protest Internet.mp4
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B-JN5ssZOKunNzI0NWQ1YmUtNzgxNS00MzgxLWEzODQtNWFhMGFmMDhmOTQ5&hl=en_US&pli=1
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....
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OCCUPY SF HOUSING: MASS DAY OF ACTION SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3
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!
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Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression and Berkeley Copwatch present a community forum and video showing:
Silencing The Witnesses:
Government Attacks on the Right To Observe
Saturday, December 3, 2011, 2:00 p.m.
Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street (between Broadway & Telegraph)
Oakland, California 94612
Recent protests have drawn incredibly violent responses from police agencies. Tear gas, flash bang grenades, bean bag rounds and overwhelming force has been documented by civilian journalists across the country at Occupy protests.
Meanwhile, on a daily basis, people who attempt to document police abuse are increasingly being targeted for their efforts to bring human rights violations to light. In response to new legislation and outright assaults, activists are waging a national struggle to keep copwatching safe and legal. Join us for an update of where the right to record stands, how the government is suppressing evidence of brutality and how we can defend our first amendment rights right here in the Bay Area.
· Video Updates will include footage from civilian monitors
· Wheelchair accessible
· There is a $5-$10 suggested donation
· Refreshments will be provided
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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
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CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Against the wars of occupation; Against the interference in the internal affairs of countries; In defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations
Algiers, Algeria -- December 3-5, 2011
Ever since the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops in 2001, under the pretext of the "War on Terror," and of Iraq in 2003, in the name of a so-called "struggle for democracy," imperialist governments, under the leadership of the U.S. government, have implemented a strategy based on international wars of occupation and plunder. This strategy has also included widespread interference in the internal affairs of nations, the astronomic growth of war budgets, the assault on democratic rights, and the massive cuts in social spending -- particularly in Europe and the United States.
Today, the governments of the imperialist powers -- specifically the U.S., French, British and Italian governments -- have opened a new front in the war; this time in the Maghreb region of Northern Africa. (*)
A new step has been taken with the further implementation of the U.S. government's Greater Middle East Plan, which was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003 at the time of the launching of the war of occupation and looting of Iraq. It's a plan that aims to dismantle nations along ethnic, religious and communitarian lines -- from Pakistan to Mauritania.
At the very moment when the Tunisian and Egyptian workers and peoples are struggling to exercise their full sovereignty by means of democracy, Libya is descending into chaos after a foreign military intervention under the aegis of NATO -- an intervention that threatens its territorial integrity.
By this means, all the countries of the Maghreb region are now facing threats to their integrity. But this is not all: The implications for the SAHEL countries (parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) and, more generally, for sub-Saharan Africa are incalculable. This is because the conflict has gone way beyond the Libyan borders in terms of the movement of weapons -- including heavy weapons massively distributed among Libyan civilians and armed terrorist groups who have openly displayed them in the aftermath of the foreign military intervention.
This is not to mention the devastating effects on the economies of these countries, especially when combined with the massive return of hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been working in Libya, as well as more than one million Libyan refugees, mostly in Tunisia.
In reality, through the foreign military intervention in Libya, the U.S., French, British and Italian imperialists seek to terrorize all the peoples of the region and the world.
No political party genuinely committed to the sovereignty of nations and to democracy can condone, under whatever pretext whatsoever, the imperialist war of occupation and plunder in Libya. No labor organization faithful to the traditions of the international labor movement can condone such a war. That is why we the undersigned reject another war on our African continent -- a continent that is already bloodied and torn apart by so-called ethnic conflicts, which are really nothing but the result of foreign plunder of the continent's natural resources, the repayment of foreign debt, and the various manipulations that result therewith.
We reject any foreign military presence in any form whatsoever in our region of the Maghreb, elsewhere across Northern Africa, and, more generally, on our continent of Africa.
We reject any and all attacks upon sovereign nations.
We reject the foreign looting of the riches and resources of the peoples of the Maghreb and of Africa as a whole. Taking control over these resources -- including through the installation of foreign military bases, starting with AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) -- is the real objective of the war of occupation in Libya, under the auspices of NATO. This is what's really at stake.
We denounce the imperialist designs of the governments that are racing to grab the reconstruction deals for the infrastructure of Libya, destroyed by NATO air strikes - another stake of the war.
We deny the imperialist governments, NATO and the mongers of war and chaos the right to decide the fate of the peoples of the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and all peoples of the world.
We affirm that because there can be no popular sovereignty without national sovereignty, from the standpoint of democracy it is up to sovereign peoples -- and up to them alone -- to define their present and their future without external interference and foreign military intervention.
We call upon organizations and parties around the world and in our own country that oppose the imperialist wars to join us in supporting and participating in an Emergency International Conference in Algiers on December 3-5, 2011, against the wars of occupation, against the interference in the internal affairs of countries, and in defense of the integrity and sovereignty of nations. (**)
signed/
A. Sidi Said
General Secretary
General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
Louisa Hanoune
General Secretary
Workers Party of Algeria (PT)
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(*) The five countries that make up the Maghreb region are Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.
(**) For more information about the conference or how you can get involved, please contact the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples in Paris at
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Howard Petrick's "Rambo" -- an anti-VietNam War GI activist tells his story at the Marsh Theater in Berkeley--UNTIL DECEMBER 10
[This is a great show. I'm going for the second time this Friday. Great lessons for the movement today!...bw]
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon
in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years"
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley.
The story begins as Petrick reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford.
A twenty-year-old anti-war activist in 1966 when he was drafted into the Army, Pvt. Petrick was a model soldier except when the subject of Vietnam came up. At that point, he missed no opportunity to make his opinions known to his fellow GIs and anyone else who would listen. His activities helped ignite an antiwar movement in the barracks and led to a confrontation with the brass. Calls from the Pentagon! Threats of treason! By the time it was all over, Petrick, who never backed down, had become something of a celebrity. He even had a song written about him and was the subject of an article in the New York Times. From the ass-scratching first cook to the frustrated Military Intelligence officer, Petrick brings over twenty characters to life in this autobiographical solo piece.
"If Westmoreland can give a political partisan speech to the Press Club in New York City supporting the war, then I should be able to speak in uniform opposing the war." - Howard Petrick quoted in the Texas Observer in 1967.
It's a comedy that keeps hope alive. Here are more kudos for the show:
"Petrick made headlines as a GI for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, and he's turned his experiences into a deftly crafted solo show." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
His "aw shucks" attitude had me right there with him every step of the way, rooting for my new hero. Please don't miss this true tale. - Jenny Revue (Winnipeg)
"His ear for dialogue...is superb." - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
"It's an engaging tale, often funny...Petrick's writing is strong...valuable as a piece of history in a time when for much of the population, Vietnam is just a vague, long-ago event." - Fresno Bee
"This is an important piece of history - from the common man's point of view." - Victoria Fringe
"A must see!" - The Plank (Vancouver)
Howard Petrick has studied solo performance with David Ford, Ann Randolph, James Donlon, Mark Kenward and Leonard Pitt. He has performed at FronteraFest, The Marsh, Words First, City Solo, San Francisco Theater Festival, Solo Sundays, Tell it on Tuesday, the Fresno Rogue Festival and Fringe Festivals in Boulder, Chicago, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.howardpetrick.com
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Occupy Oakland Calls for TOTAL WEST COAST PORT SHUTDOWN ON 12/12
Posted by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-oakland-calls-total-west-coast-port-shutdow/
Support Occupy Call for Dec. 12 Coast Shutdown
Occupy Movement and Ports Workers:
SAME STRUGGLE, SAME FIGHT!
NOVEMBER 28 - On November 2, some 30,000 demonstrators marched on the Port of Oakland, shutting it down on the evening shift in response to a call by Occupy Oakland for a "general strike." One of the declared aims of the powerful march was to show solidarity with longshore workers facing a vicious union-busting attack by the EGT grain conglomerate in Longview, Washington. ILWU officials had scuttled calls by some rank and file longshoremen in the hiring hall that morning to stop work all day.
Now several Occupy groups have issued a call for a West Coast Port Blockade for Dec. 12. Once again they are highlighting the attack on the Longview ILWU, as well as that on the port truckers' union organizing drive in Los Angeles/Long Beach, by the notorious anti-union SSA, majority-owned by Goldman Sachs. The Wall Street banksters and PMA are also pushing a robotics contract provision to cut longshore jobs to the bone in the largest port in the country. Occupy Seattle aims to shut down the port to protest Democrat governor Gregoire's budget cuts.
Waterfront workers from Longview to Long Beach and beyond are facing a frontal attack threatening the future of our jobs and our unions. What's needed to defeat these employer assaults is a solid union action, shutting down the Coast. The call by the populist Occupy movement to blockade ports should be welcomed as supplementary support for labor's struggle. President McEllrath, on Oct. 5 publicized his "solidarity with Occupy Wall Street" statement. But now, the ILWU International officers are contradicting themselves, undermining unity with Occupy and saying the union wants nothing to do with the Dec. 12 blockade.
This is more than a ritual CYA declaration. The voice of the maritime bosses, the Journal of Commerce, (23 November) noted that the union leaders were making clear that they were hostile to the Occupy initiative. The ILWU Coast Committee issued a Nov. 21 memo slamming "outside groups intent on driving their own agendas." The next day it followed up with a press statement "clarifying" its stand on "third-party protests." These shameful statements go against the grain of ILWU's militant record of solidarity actions and don't represent the rank and file's sentiments. ILWU is bottom up not top down.
The Coast Committee said that a community demonstration or picket is not a picket line, as defined by the longshore contract. This flies in the face of "ILWU's 10 Guiding Principles", which say:
"Unions have to accept the fact that the solidarity of labor stands above all else, including even the socalled sanctity of the contract."
Occupy's enemies, EGT and SSA, are ILWU's enemies too.
The ILWU Story, Six Decades of Militant Unionism and The Dispatcher document ILWU's proud history of longshore workers honoring community pickets. For example, here are some community demonstrations or pickets honored by ILWU:
1) 1970's-1980's community pickets in San Francisco opposed apartheid. In 1984, Local 10 longshoremen themselves refused to unload a ship from South Africa without need for a community picket. Mandela applauded that action which sparked the antiapartheid movement.
2) In 1998, in a stunning example of international labor solidarity with Australian wharfies, LA longshoremen respected a labor/community picket and forced the scab ship, Columbia Canada, to return to Australia to be loaded by MUA union workers.
3) 3) In 2003, at the start of the Iraq War anti-war protesters blocked the gates of war profiteers SSA and APL at the port of Oakland. Longshoremen standing by on the safety clause in the contract were hit by police fire. An unprecedented lawsuit against the OPD by Local 10 was won by the union. Our legal brief documented a history of police violence against longshoremen going back to the Big Strike of 1934 when two strikers were shot in the back and killed by police.
4) Now the International turns its back on our history. We have to ask: Why would the Coast Committee place longshore workers in harms way by directing them to standby on safety if there is a large demonstration at the terminal gate when the danger to port workers is not from the protesters but the police? (Just look at the Longview longshore workers who have been beaten and pepper sprayed.) And why would the Coast Committee be concerned about a lawsuit against the union when all of these labor and community pickets were initiated by the ranks, not by the officers? Bottom up not top down!
Their memo and statement underline that any port shutdown will come from the rank and file over the opposition of the International officers. It wouldn't be the first time. Last April 4, Local 10 shut down Bay Area ports in solidarity with Wisconsin workers, and a year ago it held a stop-work rally for justice for Oscar Grant, protesting the police killing of an innocent young black man. We welcomed community support for these mobilizations.
Their memo and statement reek of lawyers' arguments that accept anti-labor laws as gospel. They talk of "the union's internal democratic process." So, has the membership been asked to vote on shutting down the ports over the EGT attack? What about refusing to load or unload STX and Itochu ships, part of the EGT consortium along with the grain conglomerate Bunge? The truth is the union leadership has done everything to prevent democratic rank-and-file decision-making and action. Is there a secret plan?!
1) The Coast Committee tried to gag Longview Local 21's president Dan Coffman, by preventing him from talking to the press, but the local prevailed in their fight to allow him to speak.
2) The Coast Committee has blocked any kind of democratic forum to discuss the most important ILWU struggle in decades, whether it be a dual area meeting of the rank and file in Washington and Oregon or a Coast Caucus, representing longshoremen from all West Coast ports.
3) They've tried to thwart Local 21 members from going to other locals to give information and gain support. Now they try to stop ILWU from linking up with the populist Occupy movement.
4) The Coast Committee has exerted pressure on the small Local 21 to follow their orders or face losing the union's financial support for fines and legal costs approaching $2,000,000, they say.
The ILWU has a long history of standing up to the employing class and organizing solidarity actions, often despite the International officers' positions. This is a source of pride for our membership and the ILWU is admired by other unions for its courageous stands. Longshoremen, as always, need to link up now with other port workers, truckers, machinists, warehousemen and the Occupy movement in a fight against the port bosses for our jobs and our unions, regardless of what the union tops put out.
The Longview workers are more than thankful for the support they have already received in their fight - our fight - against EGT. Speaking at a labor rally before a Nov. 19 march called by Occupy Oakland, Local 21 president Dan Coffman said, referring to the awesome Nov. 2 march that shut down the port in Oakland, "You cannot believe what you did for the inspiration of my union members who've been on the picket line for 6 months!"
The ILWU must support the Occupy move to shut down West Coast ports on Dec. 12. Most importantly, we must show the power of workers when the ship arrives in Longview days later to load scab grain at the EGT terminal. The call must go out: PORT WORKERS: SHUT DOWN ALL U.S. PORTS !!
Transport Workers Solidarity Committee (www.transportworkers.org) For more info: SWoods510@aol.com Labor donated
-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.
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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
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January 1st 2012 March and Speak-Out in memory
of Oscar Grant and all victims of police terror
*********OGC REPORT*********
On Sunday, November 27, 2011 the Occupy Oakland General Assembly approved by
99% the proposal below for a January 1st 2012 March and Speak-Out in memory
of Oscar Grant and all victims of police terror. The working group will
have its first meeting on Wednesday November 30th at 8:00 p.m. at San
Francisco Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland. *Please join us!!!*
PROPOSAL
*
The Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression,
Bring the Ruckus, and the Raider Nation Collective propose that the Occupy
Oakland General Assembly support, participate in, and help to organize a
march and Speak Out on January 1, 2012 from Oscar Grant Plaza to the
Fruitvale BART station to memorialize and protest the BART Police murder of
fellow worker Oscar Grant and all victims of police violence and state
terrorism.
By approving this proposal, the assembly will be mandated to form a working
group set with the task of mobilizing a broad section of working class
people from East, West, and North Oakland by the way of hand-to-hand
flyering, canvassing neighborhoods, and having conversations that
prioritize the struggles against police brutality, police profiling, and
imprisonment.
We are also asking this Assembly to stand up, through this proposed Speak
Out, against the Oakland Police Department's daily violent, repression of
working class, low-income of communities of color through curfews, gang
injunctions and loitering laws, in addition to outright murder by police.
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UNAC Conference: March 23-25, 2012
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
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NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.
In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.
We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:
Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.
During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.
Our demands are simple:
That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and
That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.
The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.
In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.
The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.
We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.
How you can help:
1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.
2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.
3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com
4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.
4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!
Formore info: www.CANG8.org or email us at cangate2012@gmail.com
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Noriko Nagata, War Resister
40 years ago, in Tokyo, Noriko Nagata lost her life in war resistance, but her teaching and her example will never die.
http://animoto.com/play/dBfkOwderAeAfrusKecLSQ
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Mic Check Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Jmqo1yQag
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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
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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
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THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
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Occupy With Aloha -- Makana -- The Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M07v8N_eU&feature=channel_video_title
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
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Rafeef Ziadah - 'Shades of anger', London, 12.11.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vFJE93LTI
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News: Massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Fukuoka Nov. 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_xKEWuj1I&feature=player_embedded
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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
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Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
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quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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ALL COLORS (Occupy LA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zh6hDQC8I
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#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
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
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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
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, René González, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing René and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow René Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of René Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
-- take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
-- ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
Courage to Resist needs your support
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) The Famine Next Time
By SAMUEL LOEWENBERG
November 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinion/sunday/in-kenya-famines-lessons.html
2) A Family's Billions, Artfully Sheltered
"By donating his art to his private foundation, Mr. Lauder has qualified for deductions worth tens-of-millions of dollars in federal income taxes over the years, savings that help defray the hundreds of millions he has spent creating one of New York City's cultural gems. ...The tax burden on the nation's superelite has steadily declined in recent decades, according to a sliver of data released annually by the I.R.S. The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available. ...Still, the family's tax planning was effective enough that after Estée Lauder died in 2004, she passed down nearly $4 billion to her heirs, according to tax experts who studied the case and estimated that the estate was taxed at an effective rate of 16 percent - about a third of the top estate tax rate at the time."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
November 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/estee-lauder-heirs-tax-strategies-typify-advantages-for-wealthy.html?hp
3) Greeks Balk at Paying Steep New Property Tax
"But in its latest push to raise cash, the Greek government sent him a new $372 real estate tax bill, incorporated into his October electric statement. Mr. Chatzis says he is being asked to choose between lights and paying for his wife's medicines, since he cannot afford both on his $720-a-month pension.'This is how we are treated,' he said recently, his face a mixture of fury and despair. 'I have nothing left to give. I will not be paying it.'"
By SUZANNE DALEY
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/europe/greeks-balk-at-paying-new-property-tax.html?scp=1&sq=Greeks%20Balk%20at%20Paying%20Steep%20New%20Property%20Tax&st=cse
4) A New Urgency to the Problem of Storing Nuclear Waste
By KATE GALBRAITH
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/energy-environment/a-new-urgency-to-the-problem-of-storing-nuclear-waste.html?ref=world
5) Police Break Up Nuclear Protest of Thousands
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/europe/german-police-clear-thousands-at-nuclear-protest.html?ref=world
6) L.A. Police Make Arrests Before Withdrawing at Occupy Protest
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/occupy-philadelphia-and-occupy-la-face-eviction.html?ref=us
7) Julian Assange: Internet Has Become 'Surveillance Machine'
By Agence France-Presse
November 28, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/8626-julian-assange-internet-has-become-surveillance-machine
8) Metamorphosis Time for Occupy Wall Street; Witnessing the Eviction of Occupy Philly
By Rob Kall
November 28, 2011
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Metamorphosis-Time-for-Occ-by-Rob-Kall-111128-959.html
9) Britain Braces for Large Strike [Wednesday, November 30...bw]
By SARAH LYALL
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/europe/britain-braces-for-large-strike.html?ref=world
10) As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Blacks Are Hit Hardest
"A study by the Brookings Institution in 2007 found that fewer than one-third of blacks born to middle-class parents went on to earn incomes greater than their parents, compared with more than two-thirds of whites from the same income bracket. The foreclosure crisis also wiped out a large part of a generation of black homeowners."
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/as-public-sector-sheds-jobs-black-americans-are-hit-hard.html?ref=us
11) Amid Protests by Students and Others, CUNY Trustees Vote to Raise Tuition
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/nyregion/cuny-board-approves-tuition-increases.html?ref=nyregion
12) Millions of British Public Sector Workers Take to the Streets in Historic General Strike
DemocracyNow!
November 30, 2011
http://www.democracynow.org/
13) Police Clear Occupy Encampments in Two Cities
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/us/occupy-los-angeles-philadelphia-camps-cleared-by-police.html?hp
14) Lines Grow Long for Free School Meals, Thanks to Economy
[Not only are our kids not going to earn nearly as much as their parents, they are now starving...BW]
By SAM DILLON
November 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/education/surge-in-free-school-lunches-reflects-economic-crisis.html?hp
15) Britons Strike as Government Extends Austerity Measures
By JULIA WERDIGIER and ALAN COWELL
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/world/europe/great-britain-strike-austerity-measures.html?ref=world
16) Iraq Would Accept U.S. Soldiers as Trainers
[Trainers/Advisers: Where have we heard this before? Hint: Kennedy, Vietnam?!?!?...bw]
By MARK LANDLER
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/world/middleeast/iraq-would-accept-us-soldiers-as-trainers.html?ref=world
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1) The Famine Next Time
By SAMUEL LOEWENBERG
November 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinion/sunday/in-kenya-famines-lessons.html
Cambridge, Mass.
THIS past summer I came across a camel that had lost its hump. After a long journey in search of pasture, the beast was swaying beside a brackish well, its ribs and hip bones showing. The hump hung flaccid off its back like a deflated balloon.
I was in northern Kenya, which is suffering through the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in 60 years. The toll of deprivation is everywhere. In the village of Kursin, emaciated livestock are collapsing in the middle of town; the local headmaster, Ismael Ali, told me they've "had a problem with dead carcasses around the school." Attendance dropped sharply since the beginning of the year, as many families left the parched region with their flocks, some even crossing into war-torn Somalia in search of food.
American attention to the hunger crisis has focused on the dire conditions of Somalis, but they account for just about a third of the 13 million people affected. According to the United Nations, hunger afflicts 4.5 million people in Ethiopia and 3.75 million people in Kenya, which has about half of Ethiopia's population. An estimated half a million Kenyan children and pregnant or breast-feeding women suffer acute malnutrition.
The drought has been mounting for a year, but it wasn't until the crisis peaked over the summer that the news media and most international donors took notice. It's a familiar cycle: first come the news media pictures of emaciated infants, followed by conferences on how to do better next time, visits from top-level government officials and large financial commitments from international organizations and even donors like China and the Ikea Foundation. The United States Agency for International Development and the Ad Council have even begun a celebrity public service campaign with the actors Uma Thurman and Josh Hartnett.
This is good news; the assistance is badly needed. Yet the mismatch in timing raises a question that bedevils aid agencies. Unlike earthquakes or hurricanes, droughts and food price increases take time to develop, and the resulting hunger crises are forecast well in advance. From water harvesting to livestock support to cash assistance, there are a plethora of steps that could have significantly ameliorated the current crisis. Why weren't they taken?
This year's drought followed two failed rainy seasons, leaving farmers and herders fragile. When coupled with skyrocketing food and fuel prices, catastrophe loomed. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, financed by U.S.A.I.D., anticipated it as early as August 2010, and by January the American ambassador to Kenya had declared a disaster and called for urgent assistance.
Although the United States began stockpiling emergency food in the region, that wasn't enough. On June 7, the warning network announced, "This is the most severe food security emergency in the world today, and the current humanitarian response is inadequate to prevent further deterioration." At that time, there were 7 million people in jeopardy. Now, the number is 13 million.
A common misconception is that hunger crises are about a lack of food. Yet there is food in Kenya and Ethiopia, and even in many parts of Somalia. The real issue is poverty. The people affected are poor to begin with; when things turned bad, they had no recourse. In April the World Bank reported that 44 million people worldwide were pushed over the edge by skyrocketing food prices.
Such a perspective is largely missing in our food-aid program. It's like a health insurance system that waits until someone has a full-blown illness before he or she can get treatment. By the end of June, with the crisis in full swing, the United States had committed a total of about $64 million to Kenya, much of it in the form of food supplies (this doesn't include relief for the Somali refugees). But food aid loses at least half of its value, according to the Government Accountability Office, because we ship actual food instead of sending cash for local purchase, like most countries. And only $5 million was allocated to agriculture, nutrition, water and sanitation - about $1.33 per hungry person - things that would have helped people during lean times.
Blame politics. Medium- and long-term planning is often the first thing to be cut from an aid budget. After the food price crisis of 2008, when hunger riots erupted around the globe, President Obama got the Group of 8 to promise $22 billion for agricultural development and food security. But many of those commitments have not been met. Meanwhile, this summer Congressional Republicans voted to cut the foreign food aid budget by a third, and more cuts are planned.
And, of course, there is the matter of optics: donors want to see dead babies before they provide significant assistance, one frustrated aid worker told me.
Blame also lies with the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments. In the northern district of Wajir, for instance, by July the central government provided only about half the food assistance that local governments requested, while Ethiopia, according to the BBC, misused aid for political purposes. It is an old story: sending emergency aid is clumsy, and often fraught with problems. As I was leaving a village that depended entirely on delivered water, I passed the water truck the villagers were waiting for, broken down by the side of the road.
Aid officials say they realize that prevention is better than reaction. "We know how to do this," Rajiv Shah, the head of U.S.A.I.D., told me during a trip he made in July to Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp. "It is one-tenth the cost to provide effective agricultural support and help communities gain food security than it is to provide food aid at a time of famine."
Our shortsighted response also highlights a misunderstanding about foreign assistance and prevention. "We are not investing in relatively obvious solutions," said Christopher Barrett, an expert on food aid at Cornell University. Those mundane but vital interventions include shoring up the water supply and helping to bolster markets and transportation so that economies continue during lean times. The best assistance, people in Wajir told me, would be a decent road to the south, which would cheapen imports and give them a market for their animals.
DRIVING through Wajir's sandy, arid landscape, we turned the corner to an amazing sight: a green oasis - a farm, a greenhouse, a well, a water pump, a windmill. Running around were the first happy, healthy-looking children I had seen. This is the Kutulo Farm, a women's cooperative in Wagberi, where they grow kale, cabbage and peppers. They received money for the well from the European Union, but otherwise have done everything on their own. They would like to expand, said Adey Issack, one of the founders, but have no access to credit.
Programs like the Kutulo Farm are significantly cheaper to start and maintain than sending mounds of food aid at the last minute, in large part because they leverage the skills and knowledge of local residents to do the work. The current crisis is a painful demonstration of how well such an approach works: those few communities that received small, well-designed assistance are weathering the drought relatively well.
While recent rain has eased the pressure, much of it will be lost because of a lack of water-collection facilities. And experts warn that so many in Kenya are weakened and destitute that the cycle is expected to start up again in May. In other words, droughts cannot be stopped. But the economics that link drought and famine can be upended, so that next time, the people of Wajir, and dozens of countries around the world, might be able to avoid untold, and unnecessary, suffering.
Samuel Loewenberg is a Nieman Foundation global health reporting fellow at Harvard. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provided a travel grant for the reporting of this essay.
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2) A Family's Billions, Artfully Sheltered
"By donating his art to his private foundation, Mr. Lauder has qualified for deductions worth tens-of-millions of dollars in federal income taxes over the years, savings that help defray the hundreds of millions he has spent creating one of New York City's cultural gems. ...The tax burden on the nation's superelite has steadily declined in recent decades, according to a sliver of data released annually by the I.R.S. The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available. ...Still, the family's tax planning was effective enough that after Estée Lauder died in 2004, she passed down nearly $4 billion to her heirs, according to tax experts who studied the case and estimated that the estate was taxed at an effective rate of 16 percent - about a third of the top estate tax rate at the time."
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
November 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/estee-lauder-heirs-tax-strategies-typify-advantages-for-wealthy.html?hp
As he stood in the opulent marble foyer of a Fifth Avenue mansion late last month, greeting the coterie of prominent guests arriving at his private art gallery, Ronald S. Lauder was doing more than just being a gracious host.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Neue Galerie, Mr. Lauder's museum of Austrian and German art, he exhibited many of the treasures of a personal collection valued at more than $1 billion, including works by Van Gogh, Cézanne and Matisse, and a Klimt portrait he bought five years ago for $135 million.
Yet for Mr. Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder fortune whose net worth is estimated at more than $3.1 billion, the evening went beyond social and cultural significance. As is often the case with his activities, just beneath the surface was a shrewd use of the United States tax code. By donating his art to his private foundation, Mr. Lauder has qualified for deductions worth tens of millions of dollars in federal income taxes over the years, savings that help defray the hundreds of millions he has spent creating one of New York City's cultural gems.
The charitable deductions generated by Mr. Lauder - whose donations have aided causes as varied as hospitals and efforts to rebuild Jewish identity in Eastern Europe - are just one facet of a sophisticated tax strategy used to preserve a fortune that Forbes magazine says makes him the world's 362nd wealthiest person. From offshore havens to a tax-sheltering stock deal so audacious that Congress later enacted a law forbidding the tactic, Mr. Lauder has for decades aggressively taken advantage of tax breaks that are useful only for the most affluent.
The debate over whether to reduce tax shelters and preferences for the rich is one of the most volatile in Washington and will move to the presidential campaign, now that repeated attempts in Congress to strike a grand bargain over spending cuts and an overhaul of the tax code have failed.
A handful of billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates have joined Democrats in calling for an elimination of the breaks, saying that the current system adds to the budget deficit, contributes to the widening income gap between the richest and the rest of society, and shifts the tax burden onto small businesses and the middle class. Republicans have resisted, saying the tax increases on the wealthy would harm the economy and cost jobs.
An examination of public documents involving Mr. Lauder's companies, investments and charities offers a glimpse of the wide array of legal options for the world's wealthiest citizens to avoid taxes both at home and abroad.
His vast holdings - which include hundreds of millions in stock, one of the world's largest private collections of medieval armor, homes in Washington, D.C., and on Park Avenue as well as oceanfront mansions in Palm Beach and the Hamptons - are organized in a labyrinth of trusts, limited liability corporations and holding companies, some of which his lawyers acknowledge are intended for tax purposes. The cable television network he built in Central Europe, CME Enterprises, maintains an official headquarters in the tax haven of Bermuda, where it does not operate any stations.
And earlier this year, Mr. Lauder used his stake in the family business, Estée Lauder Companies, to create a tax shelter to avoid as much as $10 million in federal income tax for years. In June, regulatory filings show, Mr. Lauder entered into a sophisticated contract to sell $72 million of stock to an investment bank in 2014 at a price of about 75 percent of its current value in exchange for cash now. The transaction, known as a variable prepaid forward, minimizes potential losses for shareholders and gives them access to cash. But because the I.R.S. does not classify this as a sale, it allows investors like Mr. Lauder to defer paying taxes for years.
It was a common tax reduction strategy for chief executives and wealthy shareholders a decade ago, but in 2006 the I.R.S. said it appeared to be an abusive tax shelter and issued tighter restrictions to regulate the practice. That ruling was enough to persuade most wealthy taxpayers to abandon the technique, according to tax lawyers and records at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Advisers to Mr. Lauder maintain that his deal "was made in compliance with published I.R.S. guidance on these types of transactions and was fully reported as required by S.E.C. rules," said his spokesman, Gary Lewi.
In theory, Mr. Lauder is scheduled to pay taxes on the $72 million when the shares are actually delivered in 2014. But tax experts say wealthy taxpayers can use other accounting techniques to further defer their payment.
The tax burden on the nation's superelite has steadily declined in recent decades, according to a sliver of data released annually by the I.R.S. The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, representing the top 0.000258 percent, fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available.
When Mr. Lauder ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for mayor of New York and released his tax return to the public, he reported paying 30 percent in total federal, state and city taxes on about $30 million in income in 1988. At the time, his net worth was estimated at nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
Mr. Lauder's more recent tax returns remain private, and he declined to make them available for this article.
The Family Fortune
Mr. Lauder, now 67, was born into a storied American fortune. His mother, Estée Lauder, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, began selling homemade beauty creams at a few New York City hair salons in the 1940s and built her product line into a multibillion-dollar global empire.
As the son of a fabulously wealthy fashion icon, Mr. Lauder developed aristocratic tastes - and grand aspirations - at an early age. He summered in Vienna as a boy, developing a passion for Austrian art and medieval armor. At age 13, he bought his first Schiele with money from his bar mitzvah. Mr. Lauder grew so enthralled by politics as a young man that he told friends he dreamed of becoming the first Jewish president of the United States.
After studying in Brussels and Paris and at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the family business in 1964 and served in a variety of limited roles. While his older brother Leonard rose to become Estée Lauder's chief executive, Ronald engaged in a variety of pursuits: becoming a major Republican fund-raiser; serving a rocky tenure as ambassador to Austria; running for mayor, an unsuccessful bid in which he spent $363 for each vote he received; and starting an assortment of business ventures in Eastern Europe, one of which went bankrupt during the technology bubble.
While the family's wealth was created by hard work and ingenuity, it was bolstered by aggressive tax planning, a skill that has become Ronald Lauder's specialty. When Mr. Lauder's father, Joseph, died in 1983, family members fought the I.R.S. for more than a decade to reduce their estate tax. The dispute involved a block of shares bequeathed to the family - the estate valued it at $29 million, while the I.R.S. placed it at $89.5 million. A panel of judges ultimately decided on $50 million, a decision that saved the estate more than $20 million in taxes.
Estée Lauder Companies went public in 1995, and Ronald Lauder and his mother cashed in hundreds of millions of dollars in stock but managed to sidestep paying tens of millions in federal capital gains taxes by using a hedging technique known as shorting against the box.
Together, Mr. Lauder and his mother borrowed 13.8 million shares of company stock from relatives and sold them to the public during the offering at $26 a share. Selling borrowed shares in this way is referred to as a short position. Since the Lauders retained their own shares, the maneuver allowed them to have a neutral position in the stock, not subject to price swings. Under I.R.S. rules at the time, they avoided paying as much as $95 million in capital gains taxes that might otherwise have been due had they sold their own shares.
Such transactions allowed investors to cash in their shareholdings without paying taxes. But the Lauders' use of the technique was so aggressive that Congress enacted a law afterward that limited the length of the tax deferral. And the Lauders eventually paid tens of millions in stock from the transaction.
Still, the family's tax planning was effective enough that after Estée Lauder died in 2004, she passed down nearly $4 billion to her heirs, according to tax experts who studied the case and estimated that the estate was taxed at an effective rate of 16 percent - about a third of the top estate tax rate at the time.
Ronald Lauder has not been a director of the company since 2009, but he still serves as the president of its Clinique Laboratories subdivision. He also sublets a full floor of office space from Estée Lauder, on the 42nd story of the General Motors Building in Manhattan, which serves as the hub for the matrix of foundations, investment funds, partnerships and trusts used to control his businesses and personal finances.
His stake in Estée Lauder Companies, according to regulatory filings, is valued at more than $600 million. Nearly $400 million of that stock is pledged to secure various lines of credit. Many financial planners consider it imprudent for principal shareholders in a company to borrow against their stock. But it remains a popular way for wealthy taxpayers to get cash out of their holdings without selling and paying taxes.
There is a certain irony that Mr. Lauder has used $72 million worth of his Estée Lauder shares to carry out his latest state-of-the-art tax reduction tactic. These contracts emerged as a popular tool about a decade ago and were developed by accountants and tax planners after Congress closed down the loophole on the Estée Lauder public offering. The I.R.S. began cracking down on these contracts in 2008, and has pursued a prominent case against the billionaire Philip Anschutz, who used one to avoid more than $140 million in federal taxes.
Whether or not the I.R.S. agrees with Mr. Lauder's contention that his contract is legitimate, some tax policy experts say the deal illustrates how the wealthy take advantage of the system.
"There's real truth to the idea that the tax code for the 1 percent is different from the tax code for the 99 percent," said Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of Colorado. "Any taxpayer lucky enough to have appreciated property is usually put to a choice: cash out and pay some tax, or hold the property and risk the vagaries of the market. Only the truly rich can use derivatives to get the best of both worlds - lots of cash and very little risk."
While Mr. Lauder's stock holdings in publicly traded companies show some of his tactics, much of his wealth is harder to examine because it is controlled by a maze of privately held trusts and companies. Court documents, S.E.C. filings and property tax records spotlight a few of the more ordinary tax breaks used by affluent people.
Significant portions of his inherited stock are held in family trusts, which reduce the ultimate estate tax. Mr. Lauder and his wife have also established their own family trusts, allowing them to bequeath their wealth to their heirs with minimal taxes.
Other trusts and partnerships control his real estate properties in Palm Beach and the Hamptons and at 740 Park Avenue, a building that was once home to John D. Rockefeller, and is known as one of the world's wealthiest apartment buildings.
United States tax law allows taxpayers to deduct mortgage interest on one's homes up to $1.1 million in debt. Households with more than $1 million in income claimed more than $27 billion in such deductions from 2006 to '09, according to a report this month by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who said some wealthy taxpayers even deducted mortgage interest on their yachts.
And there is no limit on the amount of property taxes that can be deducted from federal income. So Mr. Lauder is entitled to deduct the $400,000 he pays annually on his Palm Beach mansion as well as what he pays on his home on Park Avenue and his holdings in the Hamptons.
"This welfare for the well-off - costing billions of dollars a year - is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, and i.o.u.'s to be paid off by future generations," said Senator Coburn, a Republican, who has called for limits on tax breaks for high earners.
Mr. Lauder deducts property taxes on all of his holdings, his spokesman said. Mr. Lauder declined to say how much that reduced his federal taxes, but said he did not receive tax benefits in some years because of the alternative minimum tax and other limits.
Charity and Tax Breaks
A week before the opening at the Neue Galerie last month, Mr. Lauder appeared at another gala, 40 blocks south, at the New York Public Library, to receive the Carnegie Foundation's Medal of Philanthropy.
The program honored people who have given profusely to charities, including Mr. Lauder's brother Leonard and his wife, Evelyn (who died Nov. 12), whose causes include the Whitney Museum and the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness.
Ronald Lauder and his wife, Jo Carole, were honored for a variety of contributions: the work of their joint foundation supporting hospitals, rebuilding monuments and refurbishing American embassies around the world - more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the last five years, according to his spokesman.
The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation has donated tens of millions of dollars to rebuild Jewish communities devastated by the Holocaust and communist rule. Mr. Lauder has also given to a variety of Jewish and Israeli organizations, including the World Jewish Congress, where he has served as president since 2007. Richard Parsons, the former Time Warner chairman, presented the award, calling Mr. Lauder and his wife two of "the nation's pre-eminent supporters of the arts and civic causes."
Mr. Lauder said his life was changed 25 years ago when he visited a kindergarten in Austria and met a classroom full of Jewish children who were refugees from Russia. Still, he said he found it odd to be referred to as a philanthropist.
"I did what I wanted to do," he said. "What I thought was right."
A Passion for Art
In the United States, Mr. Lauder has focused on what he calls his greatest passion - art.
In 1976, at age 32, his generous donations helped him become the youngest trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He later served as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art and remains an honorary chairman. He has donated and lent artwork to an assortment of museums. Part of his collection of lavishly decorated ceremonial armor is on display at the Met, in a gallery named for him.
As all art collectors may, Mr. Lauder is entitled to deduct the full market value of artworks donated to museums. (For years, Mr. Lauder availed himself of a quirk in the tax code that allowed donors to take a deduction for donating a portion of an artwork, without actually turning over the art. That break, known as fractional donation, was eliminated in 2006.) The tax code also allows artwork in offices to be deducted as a business expense.
Unlike some wealthy collectors who are criticized for using tax breaks to underwrite private collections that offer little access to the public, Mr. Lauder is widely praised for making his artwork a community asset.
The Neue Galerie, created by Mr. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, who died in 1996, in a mansion once owned by Cornelia Vanderbilt, offers public viewing of an exquisite collection, worth more than $200 million even before Mr. Lauder added dozens of pieces for its 10th anniversary.
Sheldon Cohen, a former I.R.S. commissioner, said that when used as intended, the tax code's breaks for art collectors balance private interests with the public good.
"If an art collector makes significant contributions, and the public actually gets access to the works they are donating, then the major thing the collector gets is prestige and social status," said Mr. Cohen, now a lawyer in Washington.
At times, Mr. Lauder's efforts to enhance his art collection have coincided with tax avoidance techniques.
In 2006, three months after he agreed to pay $135 million, a record at the time, for the Klimt painting "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," Mr. Lauder sold a $190 million stake in his broadcast network CME.
When asked about the sale, Mr. Lauder's spokesman said the proceeds were taxable in the United States at the full capital gains rate. Even then, though, CME's complex corporate structure - it operates in Central Europe, is organized as a Netherlands holding company, keeps its headquarters in Bermuda and routed the $190 million sale through two Cayman Island companies - allowed Mr. Lauder to minimize taxes in countries outside the United States where it does business.
Some tax reform advocates say that it is unfair that the wealthiest can subsidize their lifestyles using myriad offshore maneuvers and complex accounting strategies.
"It's admirable when people back their charitable impulses up with donations," said Scott Klinger, tax policy director of the group Business for Shared Prosperity. "But the tax code shouldn't allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes."
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3) Greeks Balk at Paying Steep New Property Tax
"But in its latest push to raise cash, the Greek government sent him a new $372 real estate tax bill, incorporated into his October electric statement. Mr. Chatzis says he is being asked to choose between lights and paying for his wife's medicines, since he cannot afford both on his $720-a-month pension.'This is how we are treated,' he said recently, his face a mixture of fury and despair. 'I have nothing left to give. I will not be paying it.'"
By SUZANNE DALEY
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/europe/greeks-balk-at-paying-new-property-tax.html?scp=1&sq=Greeks%20Balk%20at%20Paying%20Steep%20New%20Property%20Tax&st=cse
NEA IONIA, Greece - Ioannis Chatzis is 86 and lives in a tiny, single room, surviving on a pension that is just enough to pay for food and care for his bedridden wife.
But in its latest push to raise cash, the Greek government sent him a new $372 real estate tax bill, incorporated into his October electric statement.
Mr. Chatzis says he is being asked to choose between lights and paying for his wife's medicines, since he cannot afford both on his $720-a-month pension.
"This is how we are treated," he said recently, his face a mixture of fury and despair. "I have nothing left to give. I will not be paying it."
Mr. Chatzis is far from alone in that vow, and it is not certain that the Greek government will do anything about the tax rebels.
As the first due dates approach on the Greek government's novel idea of linking electricity to tax payments, a growing resentment is settling over many parts of this country - one that some local officials believe could even shake its political stability.
Already there are pockets of resistance popping up in dozens of areas, including this northern suburb of Athens, where Mayor Iraklis Gotsis has promised to fight the tax bills in court. He has also organized a group of electricians willing to reconnect - illegally - anyone who is cut off. "This thing on top of all the other taxes and salary cuts has made people snap," Mr. Gotsis said recently. "It is the drop that made the glass full."
Many Greeks consider the new tax, which makes no exceptions for the unemployed or the elderly and is much higher than any real estate tax they have paid before, to be one more sign of the tough austerity measures they are suffering under as a requirement for European aid. European finance ministers will meet Tuesday to decide whether to release the next $10.6 billion allotment to the Greek government.
In the past, most Greeks paid real estate taxes when they bought, sold or inherited property. They also paid comparatively small yearly taxes to municipalities. Someone in Mr. Chatzis's circumstances might have paid less than $133 a year in total. Now he will have to pay an additional $373 this year and the next.
In September, under pressure to come up with $2.6 billion to close a budget gap, and losing the battle against tax cheats, Greek officials settled on the idea of linking a new real estate tax to bills from the government-owned power company.
The new tax, which they say they will levy again next year, is based on square footage, the age of the building and the average value of a neighborhood, and has nothing to do with the taxpayer's income.
But lately, even the government seems to be having second thoughts about the tax. Last week, the power company announced that it would send out cutoff notices, but said that it would hold back on taking any such measures until the government had considered the circumstances of the affected families. Meanwhile, union workers occupied the power company's billing center, preventing any new bills from going out. Some Greeks just do not believe that the government will ever have the nerve to cut power to thousands of homes. They say it will be yet another change of course, as is so often the case here. Deadlines are set and then rescinded. Tough tax laws are put forth and then amnesties are offered.
"I honestly don't believe they will do this," said Pantelis Ksiridakis, the mayor of a wealthier suburb, who described the policy as a form of blackmail that may work for the rich, but is crushing to the poor. "They are pushing people to the limit with this."
"This is a tax that nobody expected, and they are demanding cash. No structured payments," he added.
In Nea Ionia, Mayor Gotsis has offered to have municipal lawyers defend those who cannot, or will not, pay the tax; about 1,000 residents have come forward so far.
Most, he said, fall into the first category. Greece's creditors, he said, forget that large numbers of Greeks, even if they have evaded taxes at the margins, are not wealthy. About 25 percent of the small stores in Nea Ionia have closed in the last two years, hit hard by the country's deepening recession and rising unemployment rate.
Vangelis Avlonitis is one of the electricians who has volunteered to restore power, if the mayor asks him to. His shop is not far from Town Hall and is decorated these days with the neon signs he made for his customers before their shops went out of business.
Mr. Avlonitis says he is barely scraping by himself. But for others it is much worse. One neighbor stopped by last week and told him her pension was $440 a month and her tax bill was $480.
"This is ridiculous," he said, pointing out a ladder he had bought in case the power company cut the electricity at the poles.
Not everyone in this suburb is refusing to pay. Some say they will find the money because they believe their country is in trouble. One man, who declined to give his name, said he, too, had lost his business - a snack shop - last year. But he is surviving on the income from a few properties he owns and will pay the new tax.
"We have to help the state," he said. "The tax is unfair. We are not the first ones who should be paying. The ones who have Swiss bank accounts should be paying. But that is still how things are here."
The Greek government has struggled to improve tax collection. At first, officials were optimistic that they could capture at least a portion of an estimated $27 billion in unpaid taxes each year.
Various experts have put Greece's shadow economy at about 25 percent of its gross domestic product, compared with less than 8 percent for the United States.
But last year, Greek officials collected even less than the year before. Some of the decline in revenues resulted from the decline in the economy. But some new tax collection strategies - incentives to collect receipts so that fewer business could work off the books, for instance - backfired and actually reduced people's tax bills.
And the state seemed to make little progress in getting the scofflaws to pay. Some 70 percent of the tax collected came from salaried employees and retirees, who have little way to hide their income. Meanwhile, 7 out of 10 self-employed workers, including doctors, dentists, engineers, accountants, taxi drivers and small business owners, indicated on their tax forms that they had made less than $16,000 a year, a figure that most experts find laughable.
The Greek Public Power Corporation recently announced that of the 86,000 bills that came due recently - a tiny fraction of the 5.5 million households in Greece - 73 percent had been paid. Its press release struck an optimistic tone, suggesting the rate of payment was similar to the usual rate.
But critics point out that such a percentage means that the government could be facing the prospect of tens of thousands of shut-offs in the middle of winter.
Some of the rebellious pushback has bordered on the humorous. For instance, the Health Ministry in downtown Athens was in the dark for four hours last week, courtesy of the power company's union workers.
Since government ministries owe the power company $180 million, the union argues, why shouldn't they suffer cutoffs?
There are also half a dozen legal protests pending. And a YouTube video describing how to reconnect your electricity if you get cut off has gone viral.
In Nea Ionia recently, Mr. Chatzis, sitting near an electric heater at a friend's hardware store, was fretting about the tax bill and remembering the years he spent as a prisoner in World War II after resisting the Axis occupation of his country. "Now it seems like the fascists are back again," he said of the pressure on Greece to raise more revenue and narrow its budget deficit. "What did we fight for?"
Dimitris Bounias and Nikolas Leontopoulos contributed reporting.
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4) A New Urgency to the Problem of Storing Nuclear Waste
By KATE GALBRAITH
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/energy-environment/a-new-urgency-to-the-problem-of-storing-nuclear-waste.html?ref=world
AUSTIN, TEXAS - The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, earlier this year caused many countries to rethink their appetite for nuclear power. It is also, in subtler ways, altering the fraught discussion of what to do with nuclear plants' wastes.
A prime example is Germany, which decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022 after the partial reactor meltdowns at Fukushima. That decision is making it easier for Germans to have a calm and focused discussion about a permanent disposal site for the plants' wastes, analysts say.
Previously, opponents of nuclear power worried that backing a permanent solution for the wastes would make it easier for nuclear power plants to continue to exist, according to Michael Sailer, the chief executive at the Öko-Institut in Berlin, a research and consulting group focused on sustainability.
Anti-nuclear politicians, he said, felt that if they came out in favor of a permanent disposal site, "they support pro-nuclear people because they solve the waste problem.".
Protests over waste storage are a long tradition for Germany, and they continue. In recent days, anti-nuclear activists in both France and Germany clashed with the police as a train carrying waste made its way toward a facility in Germany. The waste had originated in Germany and been reprocessed in France and was returning to Germany for storage.
Even so, Germany is now moving forward on the waste issue. Earlier this month, leaders from around Germany met to discuss a permanent disposal solution. They agreed to study a number of potential sites around the country, according to Mr. Sailer, and eventually to make a scientifically based decision about which sites to proceed with.
This development, Mr. Sailer said, represents a "huge" advance over earlier efforts.
Other countries are also looking at waste in new ways in the post-Fukushima world. Right now, worldwide, most spent fuel waste is stored on the site of the facility that produced it, in spent-fuel pools and, after it eventually cools, dry casks. Experts say dispersed storage is expensive and that central storage would be more secure.
Few countries , apart from Sweden and Finland, have moved forward on centralized disposal sites, deep in the earth, designed to hold the waste permanently.
France is evaluating a permanent disposal site for spent fuel , near the remote northeastern village of Bure. The country gets roughly three-quarters of its power from nuclear plants and reprocesses its fuel, a technique that reduces the quantity of waste but is expensive and also creates plutonium, which can be used in nuclear weapons.
Japan also hopes to choose a site and build a geological disposal facility in the coming decades.
Meanwhile, every aspect of nuclear power in Japan - including waste storage - has been turned upside down by the Fukushima disaster in March, which followed a giant earthquake and tsunami. As a result of the accident, Japan has "doubled or tripled" the amount of non-spent fuel and high-level waste, according to Murray Jennex, a nuclear expert at San Diego State University. Even things like the building that houses the turbine are contaminated, he noted.
"So that's really increased their demand for storage, and I'm not sure what they're going to do with it," Dr. Jennex said.
Japan is also considering what to do with the contaminated soil in the area affected by the plant.
Experts say the post-Fukushima spotlight on all aspects of nuclear safety will affect discussions of how, as well as where, to store waste.
"I think people will re-examine whether or not there's a better way to safely store the spent fuel," said Dale Klein, an associate director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas who is a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The United States has long contemplated a permanent disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that plan has been stymied, perhaps permanently, by the politics of local opposition. Nevada has an early presidential primary, and this autumn several Republican presidential candidates, appearing at a debate in Las Vegas, denounced proposals to use the site. The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, also opposes using Yucca Mountain.
Mr. Klein, who expressed disappointment that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "did not have an opportunity" to assess whether Yucca Mountain was safe, also said that Fukushima was causing "a lot of utilities and their regulators" to weigh the pros and cons of moving sooner to dry-cask storage, because of the perception that an emergency could cause spent-fuel pools to leak.
Some countries are starting to address the waste disposal issue simply because they cannot put it off much longer. This is true of Britain, where "it's just gone on for so long, and there's so much of it," said Ian Hore-Lacy, the head of communications for the World Nuclear Association, which is based in London.
Dr. Jennex of San Diego State said that in the United States, and to some extent around the world, "our reactors are getting pretty full, in terms of what they can store on site."
In Germany, the new dialogue could ease pressures on the village of Gorleben, beside the Elbe River in northern Germany. Some waste has been stored there on an interim basis for years, leading to protests. (The train that nuclear opponents tried to block last week was headed to Gorleben.)
The area around Gorleben contains a salt dome formation that Germany has long eyed as a potential permanent waste repository. Now, however, German officials will consider more sites.
The planned closing of all German nuclear plants has opened up some "political space" needed to consider a waste-disposal solution, said R. Andreas Kraemer, the director of the nonprofit Ecologic Institute in Berlin.
"For the time being, however, much radioactive waste remains on the sites of nuclear power plants, which have not been designed for the purpose," Mr. Kraemer said in an e-mail.
"The risks of storing nuclear waste on power plant sites have become clearer from the sequence of events in Fukushima, and the safety and security concerns associated with current storage are adding pressure to find a permanent solution in the form of a national nuclear waste depository."
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5) Police Break Up Nuclear Protest of Thousands
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/europe/german-police-clear-thousands-at-nuclear-protest.html?ref=world
BERLIN (AP) - German police officers cleared a sit-in of thousands of protesters trying to block a train carrying nuclear waste and temporarily detained 1,300 people on Sunday, officials said.
Hundreds of officers started removing protesters from the rails near Dannenberg in northern Germany in the morning, said a police spokesman, Stefan Kühm-Stoltz. Those who resisted were detained at the site for several hours, but all were released by late afternoon.
The police put the number of protesters at 3,500, while organizers said 5,000 people had occupied the tracks, the final stretch for the train. Trucks were to take the shipment, which was reprocessed in France, the remaining 12 miles to a storage site in the town of Gorleben.
Activists say the waste containers and the temporary storage site are not safe.
The police also clashed with two groups of protesters who hurled stones and fireworks.
Sixteen officers were injured, bringing the total since Friday to 51, the police said.
According to activists, about 150 people were injured as the police broke up some protests with tear gas and batons, the German news agency DAPD reported.
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6) L.A. Police Make Arrests Before Withdrawing at Occupy Protest
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/occupy-philadelphia-and-occupy-la-face-eviction.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - At least four people were arrested here early Monday during a confrontation with hundreds of Occupy protesters blocking downtown streets around City Hall, but the police withdrew without moving to break up the city's 2-month-old encampment.
Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa had set a Monday morning deadline for protesters to clear their tents and other possessions from the camp, which is on the grounds of City Hall.
The police would not say when they might move on the encampment of several hundred people, but on Monday, a police department spokesman said the goal Monday morning had been focused solely on allowing downtown traffic to move unimpeded.
"As we've said before, this isn't sustainable long term, but for now our focus was just getting people off the street, which we did peacefully," said Andrew Smith, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
P. J. Davenport, a protester, said both sides had behaved reasonably, which prevented the sort of violent outbreak that has accompanied similar exchanges in recent weeks between Occupy demonstrators and the authorities in Oakland, New York and elsewhere.
"It wasn't in their best interest to come in when there are thousands here," she said of the police. "They knew that, and we knew that. They've done an exceedingly good job with this all along."
The four arrests were for failure to disperse, the police said.
After the midnight deadline passed, officers clad in riot gear approached City Hall from three directions, moving slowly toward the Occupy camp.
Protesters spilled out into streets, greeting approaching officers by shouting inches from their faces.
"People are suffering!" demonstrators screamed. "We're fighting for you! It's a shame you have to be part of bureaucracy of hypocrisy!"
The city's deadline appeared to have brought out far more protesters than on a typical Sunday night, but many of them departed soon after the police arrived.
And the police, despite taking out their batons on at least one occasion during a night of close confrontation, took pains to be conciliatory.
"Thank you so much for being here," a voice from inside a police department truck blared over its loudspeakers as the vehicle moved along Spring Street at 1:30 a.m. "We are so glad it is peaceful, and we really need you to cooperate by getting off the streets."
But nobody moved.
About an hour later, Bob Green, a police commander, tried again, telling protesters blocking streets that he wanted to avoid confrontation.
"What I don't want to do is start arresting folks tonight," he said. "I don't intend to enforce the eviction order tonight, but if I am forced to I will. We simply need to clear the streets."
Later, just before the first arrests were made, officers announced over a loudspeaker: "Ladies and gentlemen, the L.A.P.D. needs to clear the street. It is not our intent to clear the park at this time. You have 5 minutes to disperse."
One protester, Carlos Marroquin, said that many people had joined the Occupy camp for the first time Sunday and had "let their enthusiasm spill over into the streets."
Other protesters, however, tried to rally people to remain in intersections, fearing that if they gave in their demonstration would be put down by force when there would be fewer protesters to confront the police.
"We're better off holding our ground and forcing their hand tonight while there are all these people here," Daniel Dominguez said. "Otherwise we'll have no idea when they're going to raid us, and we could just be a few people then."
In center city Philadelphia on Sunday, hundreds gathered outside City Hall in a show of solidarity ahead of a city-imposed deadline to clear a campsite there by 5 p.m. The protesters braced for a police sweep, but it did not take place immediately after the deadline, surprising few.
"I think most people imagine that this is going to happen when we least expect it," said Khadijah White, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student who helps facilitate Occupy Philadelphia meetings.
Many tents remained at the site, though some protesters said they had removed their other valuables ahead of time. Protesters - including many who do not actually camp out around the clock, but who sympathize with those who do - indicated that they would stay at the campsite well into the night on Sunday. Some said they planned to sit down and resist efforts by the police to remove them from Dilworth Plaza, where the protesters have stayed in Philadelphia since Oct. 6.
By 11 p.m. on Sunday, the crowd had thinned a bit, but the calm remained, The Associated Press reported. A police presence was heavier than usual but no orders to leave had been issued.
The city said on Friday that the protesters had to move to make way for an imminent construction project on the plaza. It has approved a part-time demonstration permit across the street but has banned tents or overnight activity there.
Sean Collins Walsh contributed reporting from Philadelphia, and Brian Stelter and Timothy Williams contributed from New York.
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7) Julian Assange: Internet Has Become 'Surveillance Machine'
By Agence France-Presse
November 28, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/367-wikileaks/8626-julian-assange-internet-has-become-surveillance-machine
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the mainstream media, Washington, banks and the Internet itself as he addressed journalists in Hong Kong on Monday via videolink from house arrest in England.
Fresh from accepting a top award for journalism from the prestigious Walkley Foundation in his native Australia on Sunday, Assange spoke to the News World Summit in Hong Kong before keeping a regular appointment with the police.
He defended his right to call himself a journalist and said WikiLeaks' next "battle" would be to ensure that the Internet does not turn into a vast surveillance tool for governments and corporations.
"Of course I'm a goddamn journalist," he responded with affected frustration when a moderator of the conference asked if he was a member of the profession.
He said his written record spoke for itself and argued that the only reason people kept asking him if he was a journalist was because the United States' government wanted to silence him.
"The United States government does not want legal protection for us," he said, referring to a US Justice Department investigation into his whistle-blower website for releasing secret diplomatic and military documents.
The former hacker criticised journalists and the mainstream media for becoming too cosy with the powerful and secretive organisations they were supposed to be holding to account.
In a 40-minute address, he also accused credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard of illegally cutting WikiLeaks off from funding under a secret deal with the White House.
"Issues that should be decided in open court are being decided in back rooms in Washington," he said.
The Internet itself had become "the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen," Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online.
"It's not an age of transparency at all ... the amount of secret information is more than ever before," he said, adding that information flows in but is not flowing out of governments and other powerful organisations.
"I see that really is our big battle. The technology gives and the technology takes away," he added.
The anti-secrecy activist then help up a handwritten sign from an aide telling him to "stop" talking or he would be late for a mandatory appointment with police.
Assange, 40, is under house arrest in England pending the outcome of a Swedish extradition request over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two women. He says he is the victim of a smear campaign.
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8) Metamorphosis Time for Occupy Wall Street; Witnessing the Eviction of Occupy Philly
By Rob Kall
November 28, 2011
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Metamorphosis-Time-for-Occ-by-Rob-Kall-111128-959.html
I witnessed the waning of Occupy Philly's encampment, but also saw what looks to me like a pattern of energy and development that suggests that occupy evictions will lead to a Metamorphosis of the Occupy Movement to something that not only walks but flies, that is more beautiful, more powerful than anything we have seen so far.
I spent 11 hours at Occupy Philly last night, from 6:00 PM through 5:00 PM, staying in solidarity as a journalist, with OEN colleague Cheryl Biren, there to report the threatened eviction of the occupiers from the occupied territory at Dilworth Plaza, at the foot of Philly's city hall.
I've been to the Occupy Philly encampment many times, to donate food or clothing, to interview members of different working groups, and sometimes just to be there and soak in the vibes of courageous, mostly young people, mostly out of work, participating in the embryonic emergence of a revolutionary new movement.
Last night, things were very different. The place felt and looked like a ghost town as I walked through the now familiar "neighborhoods" of this occupy village.
Fairly confident that the police would not move into action at the 5 PM time when the permit for Occupy Philly expired, I arrived at 6 PM. A quick walk around the circumference of Occupy Philly revealed that many, many tents, large and small had already been removed. The biggest resource tents were gone, assumedly with supplies and food.
When I first arrived, there were about 300 people, in a large crowd, at the front of the Plaza. There were more police than usual-- plain-clothes and uniformed. There were also a slew of local news vans, the ones with the big antennas on the top.
I'd headed down to Occupy Philly with the intention to cover what was happening as a journalist, but knowing that across the US, journalists have been arrested along with the protesters and occupiers they were covering. So I stopped on the way at an automatic teller machine and withdrew $200, in case I needed bail. You never know.
Once I arrived and started finding and talking with the people I'd met, interviewed on my radio station and hung with, it seemed pretty clear that the police were expected to wait out the occupiers and wait for attrition to wear them down. It was working. Already, many of the homeless occupiers had moved to Port Richmond. The number of tents on the plaza was already way down. By midnight, there were about 100 people grouped together on the steps where those who were going to resist eviction had resolved to stay. The food working group was handing out all kinds of food and beverages. The safety and medic working groups were there in strong numbers. People were singing, playing drums, literally celebrating.
A contingent of supporting occupiers from Occupy Wall Street, Zucotti Park New York joined the crowd and started dancing, playing drums and singing, really raising the energy of the group. They exultantly spoke of how beautiful it was, that Occupy Philly could go out celebrating, dancing and that they hadn't had a chance to do that at Zuccotti Park.
Occupy Philly people raised questions. Should they be putting themselves at risk for noise violations? The crowd voted to keep it going. They were going to be arrested anyway. Cheryl speculated observed that it would be ironic if, after all the time the occupiers had spent sleeping in tents, occupying the site, they were arrested for making noise, instead of engaging in the civil resistance of holding their ground.
One plainclothes cop was clearly heard saying he wanted to "arrest the bastards now." But another officer had told me it wasn't happening tonight. I've had enough experience with these police misleading activists so I didn't buy it. It seemed that, if the police were going to do arrests at Occupy Philly, it would be in the wee hours of the morning, enough before dawn so arrests and cleanup would not affect business traffic in the nearby vicinity. So we resolved to stay until 5:00 AM, since any later, it would affect morning traffic.
The police shift change was coming at 3:00 AM. We speculated that then, with double the number of police present, that might be when the eviction might be initiated. The time came and went quietly.
By 4:00 AM, there were under 50 occupiers visible at the Plaza. Some had gone off into nearby tents. Some were sleeping out on or in front of the steps. It seemed that this time might be when the police would come, but no. Things were very quiet. We had reports from LA from our correspondent, Linda Milazzo, that there were thousands of people supporting the Occupy LA encampment.
During my 11 hours at Occupy Philly (Cheryl Biren arrived at least two hours earlier) I learned that there were plans for a gathering a Rittenhouse Square for the following day, to reconnoiter, gather people and make plans, and then, the following day to meet in Kensington. We'd seen people packing and moving possessions and supplies.
My take is that the police will probably move in and start the evictions in the next day or two, perhaps when the occupiers are at the meetings away from the Dilworth Plaza, or perhaps, in the middle of the night Tuesday or Wednesday morning, when it is likely the numbers will be even lower. That's the way police departments trying to keep a low profile are doing it.
Once they clear the Plaza, it will be mostly closed for construction, unlike Zuccotti Park where it was re-opened, but tents and back-packs were banned.
This eviction process has hit many of the biggest Occupy Wall Street locations. I don't think it forebodes the end of the movement. Rather, it signifies a new stage that will emerge. Think of it as similar to a caterpillar going into a cocoon. The activity seems to cease. Time passes, and then, an incredible, magical metamorphosis occurs and a butterfly or moth emerges, ready to fly instead of walk.
There were many signs at Occupy Philly stating "the movement is an idea that cannot be evicted." If you've seen caterpillar cocoons, you know how dingy and grey they can look. You don't see the incredible transformation happening inside. I am certain that the Occupy movement is going through a metamorphosis stage-- one that will shock and amaze the world-- one that will take the movement to a higher, soaring level.
I know because I've gotten to know the people who make up the movement. I've seen their energy, their integrity, their passion and believe in a future that they will grasp and intentionally transform. They will do it as Occupy Philly faced the end of the encampment phase of their journey-- joyfully dancing, singing taking care of each other. One might look at the eviction of Occupy Philly through attrition as a sad or negative event. I saw something very different-- an energy, hope and intensity that will continue to shine, continue to give hope to the millions of 99 percenters who are being screwed by corporations, disavowed and betrayed by legislators and abused by police.
I have to give Philly's mayor Nutter and the leadership of the Philadelphia police department credit for avoiding violence and treating the occupiers better than most other cities.
I'm sure in the next day or two, Occupy Philly, the encampment will be gone. I do not mourn the loss of a caterpillar gone to cocoon. I will not mourn the loss of the old Occupy Philly. One member of their legal team mentioned an exciting idea-- flash Occupations... tents placed for a short time, with people occupying-- on the lawns of billionaires, in the high rises of the biggest corporate offenders. It made me think of the fake cardboard TVs you sometimes see in furniture stores. They could do the same thing with tents. Flash Occupations is just one idea. The movement will grow and mature and diversify, as the Is Occupy Wall Street Fetishizing of The Public Square fades and transforms. These are interesting times, worthy of your participation.
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9) Britain Braces for Large Strike [Wednesday, November 30...bw]
By SARAH LYALL
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/europe/britain-braces-for-large-strike.html?ref=world
Britain is gearing up for its largest strike in more than 30 years, with as many as two million teachers, health-care workers, local government employees and border agents expected to walk off the job on Wednesday to protest a government plan that would require them to work longer and contribute more to their pensions. Some 90 percent of the country's schools are expected to close, local services will be severely curtailed, non-essential medical procedures face possible cancellation, and international passengers arriving at Heathrow Airport have been warned to expect delays of up to 12 hours in immigration halls. At least one airline, Etihad Airways, has already canceled flights; others are urging passengers not arrive on Wednesday and offering to let them change their reservations free of charge.
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10) As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Blacks Are Hit Hardest
"A study by the Brookings Institution in 2007 found that fewer than one-third of blacks born to middle-class parents went on to earn incomes greater than their parents, compared with more than two-thirds of whites from the same income bracket. The foreclosure crisis also wiped out a large part of a generation of black homeowners."
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/as-public-sector-sheds-jobs-black-americans-are-hit-hard.html?ref=us
Don Buckley lost his job driving a Chicago Transit Authority bus almost two years ago and has been looking for work ever since, even as other municipal bus drivers around the country are being laid off.
At 34, Mr. Buckley, his two daughters and his fiancée have moved into the basement of his mother's house. He has had to delay his marriage, and his entire savings, $27,000, is gone. "I was the kind of person who put away for a rainy day," he said recently. "It's flooding now."
Mr. Buckley is one of tens of thousands of once solidly middle-class African-American government workers - bus drivers in Chicago, police officers and firefighters in Cleveland, nurses and doctors in Florida - who have been laid off since the recession ended in June 2009. Such job losses have blunted gains made in employment and wealth during the previous decade and undermined the stability of neighborhoods where there are now fewer black professionals who own homes or who get up every morning to go to work.
Though the recession and continuing economic downturn have been devastating to the American middle class as a whole, the two and a half years since the declared end of the recession have been singularly harmful to middle-class blacks in terms of layoffs and unemployment, according to economists and recent government data. About one in five black workers have public-sector jobs, and African-American workers are one-third more likely than white ones to be employed in the public sector.
"The reliance on these jobs has provided African-Americans a path upward," said Robert H. Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida, and the author of a book on race and labor. "But it is also a vulnerability."
A study by the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California this spring concluded, "Any analysis of the impact to society of additional layoffs in the public sector as a strategy to address the fiscal crisis should take into account the disproportionate impact the reductions in government employment have on the black community."
Jobless rates among blacks have consistently been about double those of whites. In October, the black unemployment rate was 15.1 percent, compared with 8 percent for whites. Last summer, the black unemployment rate hit 16.7 percent, its highest level since 1984.
Economists say there are probably a variety of reasons for the racial gap, including generally lower educational levels for African-Americans, continuing discrimination and the fact that many live in areas that have been slow to recover economically.
Though the precise number of African-Americans who have lost public-sector jobs nationally since 2009 is unclear, observers say the current situation in Chicago is typical. There, nearly two-thirds of 212 city employees facing layoffs are black, according to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union.
The central role played by government employment in black communities is hard to overstate. African-Americans in the public sector earn 25 percent more than other black workers, and the jobs have long been regarded as respectable, stable work for college graduates, allowing many to buy homes, send children to private colleges and achieve other markers of middle-class life that were otherwise closed to them.
Blacks have relied on government jobs in large numbers since at least Reconstruction, when the United States Postal Service hired freed slaves. The relationship continued through a century during which racial discrimination barred blacks from many private-sector jobs, and carried over into the 1960s when government was vastly expanded to provide more services, like bus lines to new suburbs, additional public hospitals and schools, and more.
But during the past year, while the private sector has added 1.6 million jobs, state and local governments have shed at least 142,000 positions, according to the Labor Department. Those losses are in addition to 200,000 public-sector jobs lost in 2010 and more than 500,000 since the start of the recession.
The layoffs are only the latest piece of bad news for the nation's struggling black middle class.
A study by the Brookings Institution in 2007 found that fewer than one-third of blacks born to middle-class parents went on to earn incomes greater than their parents, compared with more than two-thirds of whites from the same income bracket. The foreclosure crisis also wiped out a large part of a generation of black homeowners.
The layoffs are not expected to end any time soon. The United States Postal Service, where about 25 percent of employees are black, is considering eliminating 220,000 positions in order to stay solvent, and areas with large black populations - from urban Detroit to rural Jefferson County, Miss. - are struggling with budget problems that could also lead to mass layoffs.
The postal cuts alone - which would amount to more than one-third of the work force - would be a blow both economically and psychologically, employees say.
Pamela Sparks, 49, a 25-year Postal Service veteran in Baltimore, has a brother who is a letter carrier and a sister who is a sales associate at the Postal Service. Her father is a retired station manager.
"With our whole family working for the Post Office, it would be hard to help each other out because we'd all be out of work," Ms. Sparks said. "It has afforded us a lot of things we needed to survive really, but this is one of the drawbacks."
In Michigan, Valerie Kindle, 61, who was laid off in April as a state government employee, said the loss of her $50,000-a-year job with benefits had caused her to put off retirement. Instead, she is looking for work. Two relatives have also lost state government jobs recently.
"There hasn't been one family member who hasn't been touched by a layoff," Ms. Kindle said. "We are losing the bulk of our middle class. I was much better off than my parents, and I'm feeling my children will not be as well off as I was. There's not as much government work and not as many manufacturing jobs. It's just going down so wrong for us. When I think about it I get frightened, so I try not to think about it."
Mr. Buckley, the unemployed Chicago bus driver who now lives in his mother's basement, said his mother, a Postal Service employee, had grown tired of him "eating up all her food."
"She's ready for me to get up out of here," he said. In the meantime, Mr. Buckley says his life has drifted into the tedium of looking for decent-paying jobs that do not exist.
"I was living the American dream - my version of the American dream," he said of his $23.76-an-hour job. "Then it crumbled. They get you used to having things and then they take them away, and you realize how lucky you were."
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11) Amid Protests by Students and Others, CUNY Trustees Vote to Raise Tuition
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
November 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/nyregion/cuny-board-approves-tuition-increases.html?ref=nyregion
With a raucous protest outside summoning all of the volume, but not the violence, of a similar clash last week, City University trustees approved on Monday a series of $300 annual tuition increases that will extend through 2015.
The first of those increases, to $5,130, already took effect this year. The board's 15-to-1 vote will raise tuition for undergraduates at CUNY's four-year colleges to $6,330 in 2015-16, with about $500 a year in additional fees. The State University system's trustees recently approved a set of parallel increases.
Hundreds of students at Baruch College in Manhattan took to the street outside the building where the board met, chanting "Abolish the board of trustees" and "CUNY must be free," banging drums and waving signs, and protesting that students could not afford an increase that will reach 31 percent over five years.
They were joined by a large contingent of professors and scattered supporters from labor unions and other groups.
Anticipating the protest, Baruch had canceled Monday classes in the building after 3 p.m., and prohibited routine foot traffic in and out.
Last week, the board's hearing on the proposed tuition increases drew a similar response. Protesters scuffled with university security forces and New York police officers, and 15 were arrested. The Police Department said that three people were arrested in the demonstration on Monday.
Inside, on the 14th floor of Baruch's William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus Building, the trustees and the CUNY chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, said they had little choice but to raise tuition, to compensate for sharply lowered support from the state in recent years.
Dr. Goldstein said the increase was intended, in part, for "the protection of our faculty and staff from the kinds of layoffs that other public higher education systems have experienced in recent years," which he said would be unavoidable otherwise. He also said he would ask an outside expert, as yet unidentified, to review the handling of the demonstration last week.
Protesters insisted either that CUNY has the money in its budget to avoid raising tuition, or that it had not pushed back hard enough against lawmakers in Albany who reduced state support. Many cast their arguments in terms of race or class, arguing that the trustees were out of touch with the student body, which is heavily made up of low-income and minority students.
"The board of trustees are mostly successful business people, and they're basically trying to run a public institution as a business, which it is not," said Jamie Yancovitz, 23, a student at CUNY's Graduate Center in Manhattan. "They don't get what it's like for us."
Barbara Bowen, president of the university's Professional Staff Congress, called the increases "a failed budget strategy," adding that "a long-term plan for state and city investment would make much more sense."
About 100 people were allowed into the board meeting, and at least one was escorted out after disrupting the session.
CUNY will remain far less expensive than most public university systems around the country, which average $8,240 in tuition and fees in 2011, according to the College Board. The contrast with other schools in the Northeast is especially stark; tuition and fees run to $6,306 or more this year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, $8,874 at the University of Connecticut, and $12,755 at Rutgers.
In addition, university officials said that by using both state and federal aid, 44 percent of CUNY undergraduates paid no tuition at all. The trustees approved $5 million in new aid to offset the tuition increase for the poorest students.
CUNY did not charge tuition until the 1970s. Since the mid-1990s, it has raised its prices much less quickly than the typical university, public or private.
Tuition at both CUNY and SUNY must be approved by the State Legislature, and until recently, lawmakers were loath to approve increases. As a result, both systems sometimes went years without raising tuition, followed by sudden increases of up to 30 percent.
Last summer, the Legislature and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo enacted a law that allows the public universities to raise tuition by $300 a year for five years.
Alice Speri contributed reporting.
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12) Millions of British Public Sector Workers Take to the Streets in Historic General Strike
DemocracyNow!
November 30, 2011
http://www.democracynow.org/
In Britain, up to two million workers have marched in the streets during the largest mass protest in generations. Teachers, hospital staff, garbage collectors, firefighters and border guards are participating in a 24-hour strike organized by a coalition of 30 trade unions. About a thousand demonstrations and rallies are being held across the country. Public sector workers say proposed pension "reforms" will force them pay more and work for longer before they can retire. We go to London to speak with Richard Seymour, who writes of Britain's most popular blogs, "Lenin's Tomb." Seymour examines how the Murdoch-owned conservative press has shaped coverage of workers' rights even as it faces fallout from the latest developments in the phone hacking scandal. "Rupert Murdoch's ideological power, his ability to project an image of these strikes as unnecessary, as militant, as aggressive and belligerent and so on and so forth, comes from his economic power, and he spent decades building that up in the U.K.," Seymour notes. He also discusses how the U.K. has withdrawn diplomatic staff from Iran after protesters upset over newly implemented sanctions stormed the British Embassy in Tehran, overrunning the diplomatic buildings, chanting "Death to Britain."
AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman with Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much, Amy, and welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world. In Britain, 2 million workers are in the streets today participating in the largest mass protest in generations. Teachers, hospital staff, garbage collectors, firefighters, and border guards are participating in the 24-hour strike. A coalition of 30 trade unions have organized approximately 1000 demonstrations and rallies across the country. Picket lines are anticipated to spring up around public buildings and hospitals during the day. On Monday, airlines said they were were cutting flights into the London Heathrow Europe's busiest airport because of fears of long delays and overcrowding due to the strike. The airport workers are part of the approximately 2 million public sector workers opposed to reforms that unions say will force them to pay more for their pensions and work for longer before they retire. Paul Cottrell of the University and College Union explained why he supports the strike.
PAUL COTTRELL: Well, the fact is that the public sector workers have already made a big contribution. For example, at the moment, most of them have had a wage freeze for several years while the cost of living has been increasing. Also, the government has already reduced the value of their pensions. So, we feel that if there is an argument for the public sector making any contribution, as there is for the private sector and for the rich in society, we feel that our members have done their bit and enough is enough.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned the strike as irresponsible and urged unions to continue talking as negotiations on pensions run until the end of the year. The Conservative led coalition government also said reform is needed as people are living longer and public service pensions are unaffordable. Yesterday, the British government announced another dose of austerity. Finance Minister George Osborne said pay raises for public sector workers, already under a two-year freeze, would be capped at 1% from 2013, while job losses would shoot up to 710,000 from an original estimate of 400,000. For more we go, right now, to London to speak with Richard Seymour, one of Britain's most popular bloggers. His blog is called, Lenin's Tomb. Richard, welcome to Democracy Now!. This is the largest mass protest in generations. Talk about its significance.
RICHARD SEYMOUR: Right, well, first of all, the important thing to recognize is that Britain is not like the continent. We don't have strikes like this on a regular basis. France does, Greece does, Britain doesn't. This is the largest strike in British history since 1926, which was a general strike. So, that is the significance of this and it means it will have a much greater political impact in the United Kingdom than it would have in its continental counterparts. The other thing is that, a year ago, things looked very different. If you go back to the summer of 2010, you find a very somber mood among trade unionists. There was an invitation to David Cameron, even, to speak at the Trade Union Congress. There was no talk of mass strikes taking place. But, the deal in which David Cameron was coming to speak at Congress was scuppered due to the anger of ordinary rank and file trade unionists. Subsequently, the Congress itself was a very angry affair in which trade union leaders felt pressured to actually organize some sort of response to the cuts. In October, I think, they came up with the idea of having a March, a big trade union march by March 26. At the time, it was seen as too little, too late. But, in the interim, very importantly, there was the student movement, and the student movement just came out of nowhere. It flew up like a rocket, proverbially, and basically, made a huge amount of difference in terms of the arguments that were going on within the trade union movement because it cut away at some of the pessimism and despair that ordinary people felt that they couldn't challenge these cuts. So when the march actually happened, it was one of the largest trade union marches and British history. It was 500,000 strong, it represented every sector of the British working-class movement. And when trade union and leaders like Mark Serwotka of the PCS Union, Civil Service Union, stood up and said, if we can march together, we can strike together, people listened and applauded. I think, I believe his speech was one of the most popular of the day. And that was the basis for the pressure to have this sort of strike action.
On June 30th, there was a large scale strike held by some of the smaller, more militant unions, that are not affiliated to Labor Party. And that put--the success of that strike on that day--put more pressure on the leaders of the larger unions, which are affiliated to the Labor Party and which have consequently been far more reluctant to call strike action. That's how we got where we are today, and that's the significance of this. The other thing, of course, is the fact that the government hasn't really been negotiating. In fact, it seems to have been remarkably insouciant about the possibilities of provoking opposition. You mentioned in your report the escalation of the austerity measures that are being proposed. In addition to the wage cuts, they're talking about transforming wage bargaining fundamentally by making it responsible to regional wage market conditions. That means that basically, if you're a public sector worker in Manchester you'll probably find your wages much lower than they are in London. And the ostensible rationale for this is to make things easier for the private sector, because they say that at the moment, high public sector wages crowds out cut the private sector. So, this is a fairly drastic restructuring, all in all of the whole British economy. And I have to be honest, the last time this was done it was by an administration, Thatcher administration, which was far more aware of the possible dangers of tempting its opponents, provoking its opponents. That Government came to power and adopted a strategy of salami-slicing its opponents. Starting by taking on the weaker unions, conceding to the larger unions at first, racking up a number of defeats inflicted on the weaker unions, and only then going after one of the stronger unions, known colloquially as the big battalions of the labor movement. And only then did they take on the miners and the print workers and defeat them. So, this Government seems to be walking into this fight really without much of a sign of care. But it may be complacency.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Richard Seymour, can you say little about how this strike has affected the position of the Labor Party? You mentioned earlier how they've been responding to unions. How have their positions changed, if at all, in response to the strike?
RICHARD SEYMOUR: Well, the first thing to say is that the Labor Party has never--at least the Labor leadership has never supported strikes. So, it would be a rare departure if they decided they were going to support this one. However, very noticeably they have changed their tone. At the conference, at the Labor Party conference, after Ed Miliband was elected as the leader, he made a very big show of saying that the public would not support these strikes and he wouldn't have any trouble with them, either. Recently, it's been a very different story. You've started to see senior labor figures such as Alan Johnson who is--used to be a minister. He's a very prominent right-wing member of the Labor Party, in many ways a Blairite. But, he said that the unions had every right to strike over this. If they couldn't strike over an issue as important as this, then what could they strike over? Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor felt compelled to express his huge sympathy with the strikers in an interview with The Independent on Sunday. And Ed Miliband, although he adopted a fairly basic tone, typically saying that both sides should get around the table and saying that strikes are a sign of failure and therefore he could never support one, nonetheless, he did say something different. He didn't blame the strikers as such, he blamed the government. He mainly put the blame for the situation on the government.
Now, the problem for the Labor Party is this, they know that if they were in government, they would be doing many of the same policies because they don't have a coherent alternative growth strategy to the Tories. They believe essentially the same thing. You've got to cut the deficit in order to restore the confidence of the financial sector. You've got to privatize at a much more rapid rate, and you've got to gradually cut public spending in quite a systematic and structural way. And because they believe those things, it's very difficult for them to criticize the Tories on any issue of principle. For that reason the only real criticism that they have been able to come up with is the fact that the Tories have not negotiated properly. And their argument is that if they were in power they would negotiate better and secure an agreement and we wouldn't see all these strikes. But, essentially they've been negotiating to impose a version of what the Tories are actually proposing. So, they're in a weak position, because that means that they can't capitalize on the quite widespread dissatisfaction with the government that exists at the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk for a minute about the media that has covered this? It goes to the issue of the phone hacking scandal as well, because there hasn't been a lot in the news lately about the Murdoch empire. But in Britain, of course, it's all over. The latest news, The Guardian reporting the London Metropolitan Police are investigating whether private detectives are working for News Corp., hacked into the computers of government officials responsible for Northern Ireland. The study alleges detectives working for News International, News Corp's U.K. publishing arm hacked into the computer of Peter Hain, a military police officer and the former Northern Ireland Secretary, and those of other Northern Ireland agents containing--the computers containing sensitive intelligence information. And of course there's more revelations about this as well that came out in a British parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday. Paul McMullen, a former Deputy Features Editor at the now shuddered News of the World admitted he and colleagues hacked into people's phones, paid police officers for tips, also said he hid in the unmarked vans outside people's houses, stole confidential documents, went through celebrity garbage cans, lied about his identity in pursuit of a story. Talk about all of the latest with this.
RICHARD SEYMOUR: Well, it is quite a list that's building up. The Murdoch press represents a faction of hard right political and economic power in the United Kingdom. You can see the way in which this works. We've never really seen it laid out to this extent before. But, you can see the way that this works on a cultural level, in terms of how they bully and bribe and cajole celebrities, at a political level in terms of the way they form relationships with with senior government ministers, but at the same time develop certain channels through which they can blackmail them or in some way threaten them with exposure. We've seen that they've developed relationships with the Metropolitan Police and even with members of the judiciary. In fact, I think you would find that Lord Levison, who's the one running this inquiry, has himself been quite close to the Murdoch clan. So, there is a network of class power there. And what I would want to say about that is that this really was built up. I mean, Rupert Murdoch's ideological power, his ability to project an image of these strikes as unnecessary, as militant, as aggressive and belligerent and so on and so forth, comes from his economic power, and he spent decades building that up in the UK. He started by buying popular Social Democratic papers like The sun, for example, had previously been a trade union paper called the Daily Harold--boarded it up, kept it as a letter supporting paper for a while. And then, when he had turned it into a popular newspaper, he turned it also into Thatcherite newspaper. I think you find the same pattern with his media acquisitions in the United States. For example, Fox. He started out by putting popular content out such as The Simpsons, and then when he'd acquired the market, he started pushing, very hard, this hard right news agenda. That's how Murdoch does it. What's really happening now is that these revelations are dealing a quite devastating blow to his economic and commercial power, and thus potentially his ideological power in the United Kingdom.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That may well be true, Richard, what you say, but in terms of criminal prosecution or charges being pressed against Murdoch or any of the senior people who were involved in the phone hacking scandal, it doesn't seem that that that's happened.
RICHARD SEYMOUR: No, indeed. But then, I don't think that was planned or expected. That probably is a bit more likely on your side of the Atlantic. The fact of the matter is, public inquiries have a historic function as a kind of therapy for the ruling class in the United Kingdom. It's to slow down the pace of revelations and bring it under a manageable process. At the end of it, they'll propose some recommendations, policy recommendations, which may or may not be taken up by the government. But it's not a process which is leading necessarily to prosecutions. Of course, that all depends on what comes out, how will the Murdoch's can defend themselves. But, yes, you're right, so far, no sign of very senior people, at least, being sent to jail.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, this latest news out of Iran, the British government withdrawing a portion of the diplomatic staff after Iranian protesters--not clear who they were--stormed the British Embassy in Tehran, overrunning the diplomatic buildings, chanting "Death to Britain." Richard Seymour?
RICHARD SEYMOUR: I think that we have to understand this in the context of the geopolitics. There are elements in the British government that really went to a war with Iran. That's come out recently with the connections between Liam Fox who was the Defense Minister and a very hard right, neoconservative, atlanticist, pro-Israel, and a fellow called Adam Werritty, who was a friend of his and who coordinated among all these atlanticist and pro-Zionist organizations. It seems that they were lobbying quite hard for an attack on Iran, and I think quite clear that there are elements within the government who would like to escalate some sort of situation. The constant application of pressure--recently the publication of harsher sanctions-is, I think, is intended to provoke a certain sort of gestures from Iran. I'm not sure that these riots had anything to do the Iranian government, but I'm saying that the British government is spoiling for a fight. It does seem very strange that would be the case, because after Iraq it would seem like a suicidal gamble. But, they do seem to be urgently seeking to have a fight with somebody,and I think Iran is the candidate.
AMY GOODMAN: Richard Seymour, I want to thank you for being with us. One of Britain's most popular bloggers, based in London, blogs at Lenin's Tomb. He is author of The Liberal Defense of Murder and The Meaning of David Cameron. This is Democracy Now!. When we come back, we're going to Occupy L.A. and Occupy Philadelphia. In L.A., more than a thousand riot police dismantled the encampment there.
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13) Police Clear Occupy Encampments in Two Cities
By JENNIFER MEDINA
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/us/occupy-los-angeles-philadelphia-camps-cleared-by-police.html?hp
LOS ANGELES - The police broke up large Occupy encampments in Los Angeles and Philadelphia early on Wednesday, arresting hundreds of protesters who had been camped out for the past two months.
Around 12:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, scores of police officers raided the Occupy camp that had been set up in a park around City Hall, leading most of the protesters to scramble out of their tents and gather in large groups in the surrounding streets.
When the raid ended several hours later, the police said they had arrested about 200 people. But as dawn approached, officers fired bean bag rounds to try to coax down some protesters who had climbed trees. It was not immediately clear if their actions caused injuries.
After much of the park around City Hall had been cleared of what had grown into a colorful - if sometimes squalid - camp of several hundred tents, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa told reporters that he was proud of the way the police had performed, in particular employing force only as a last resort.
"I said that here in L.A. we'd chart a different path, and we did," he said. "In my life, I have never seen a more professional, restrained police force." The police department here, with a longstanding reputation for its use of aggressive tactics, said there had been only two episodes that had involved "minor force" and that the protesters had handled themselves admirably.
Some 1,400 officers had been called in for the operation, more than for any event since the Democratic National Convention in 2000, the authorities said.
But while the police and city officials said the raid had been conducted as peacefully as possible, some protesters said they had watched officers throw demonstrators to the ground and beat back people with batons.
On Wednesday in Philadelphia, police officers raided the city's nearly two-month-old encampment at Dilworth Plaza, adjacent to City Hall, at about 1 a.m. - more than two days after a city-imposed deadline for the protesters to leave. A police spokeswoman said that at least 50 people had been arrested and that three officers had sustained minor injuries.
City officials, which until the past week or so, had a cordial relationship with the demonstrators - even supplying them with electricity - said they wanted them to move so that the city could embark on a long-planned construction project at the plaza.
As was the case in Los Angeles, once officers arrived in force Wednesday, the protesters took to the streets. The police trailed them for hours, seeking to avoid confrontations, but eventually called in mounted units to help cordon off demonstrators.
"We followed them around Center City all night long and finally arrested some of them," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey told reporters.
Mr. Villaraigosa in Los Angeles had also given protesters a Monday deadline, but city officials said they had given demonstrators extra time to leave to avoid making arrests. That strategy appeared to have worked, as the camp, by Wednesday morning, had shrunk to about 250 tents, roughly half of what it was at its peak, the police said.
But the protesters who remained appeared to be far more angry and agitated then they had been two days earlier.
Richard Finefrock, 45, who said he had been living at the camp for one month, said the police had not been as careful as they might have been. Several witnesses said they carelessly dismantled tents, tearing them and breaking the poles that held them up.
"A lot of people got trampled, a lot of people got hurt, but basically they were saying, 'You're leaving' and they got us out," he said.
By 3 a.m. the area around City Hall was generally quiet - the camp had mostly been cleared and the police were focusing on a few protesters who had climbed up trees.
The park itself was a sea of collapsed tents and litter. Several protesters who had linked arms in a circle were being carried out by officers.
Mr. Villaraigosa arrived just as the last protesters were being evicted.
"We have taken a measured approach to enforcing the park closure because we have wanted to give people every opportunity to leave peacefully," he said.
At moments, the differences in the cultures of the protesters and the police were drawn so sharply as to be comedic.
At one point, a young man told a riot police officer: "If you give me a hug, I will leave right now."
They officer responded: "Are you serious?"
"Yes," the protester said.
The exchange continued, but the officer walked away without giving a hug.
Another protester, who had been watching, said to the officer, "He's offering you a hug to leave right now, how can you do that?"
Afterward, when asked his name, the man who had asked for a hug said: "My name is 'Occupy.' "
Ian Lovett contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Brian Stelter and Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 30, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of one of the protesters in Los Angeles. It is Richard Finefrock, not Finefrocl.
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14) Lines Grow Long for Free School Meals, Thanks to Economy
[Not only are our kids not going to earn nearly as much as their parents, they are now starving...BW]
By SAM DILLON
November 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/education/surge-in-free-school-lunches-reflects-economic-crisis.html?hp
Millions of American schoolchildren are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their families for the decades-old safety-net program.
The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the meals program. Eleven states, including Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee, had four-year increases of 25 percent or more, huge shifts in a vast program long characterized by incremental growth.
The Agriculture Department has not yet released data for September and October.
"These are very large increases and a direct reflection of the hardships American families are facing," said Benjamin Senauer, a University of Minnesota economist who studies the meals program, adding that the surge had happened so quickly "that people like myself who do research are struggling to keep up with it."
In Sylva, N.C., layoffs at lumber and paper mills have driven hundreds of new students into the free lunch program. In Las Vegas, where the collapse of the construction industry has caused hardship, 15,000 additional students joined the subsidized lunch program this fall. In Rochester, unemployed engineers and technicians have signed up their children after the downsizing of Kodak and other companies forced them from their jobs. Many of these formerly middle-income parents have pleaded with school officials to keep their enrollment a secret.
Students in families with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty level - or $29,055 for a family of four - are eligible for free school meals. Children in a four-member household with income up to $41,348 qualify for a subsidized lunch priced at 40 cents.
Among the first to call attention to the increases were Department of Education officials who use subsidized lunch rates as a poverty indicator in federal testing. This month, in releasing results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, they noted that the proportion of the nation's fourth graders enrolled in the lunch program had climbed to 52 percent from 49 percent in 2009, crossing a symbolic watershed.
In the Rockdale County Schools in Conyers, Ga., east of Atlanta, the percentage of students receiving subsidized lunches increased to 63 percent this year from 46 percent in 2006.
"We're seeing people who were never eligible before, never had a need," said Peggy Lawrence, director of school nutrition.
One of those is Sheila Dawson, a Wal-Mart saleswoman whose husband lost his job as the manager of a Waffle House last year, reducing their income by $45,000. "We're doing whatever we can to save money," said Ms. Dawson, who has a 15-year-old daughter. "We buy clothes at the thrift store, we see fewer movies and this year my daughter qualifies for reduced-price lunch."
She added, "I feel like: 'Hey, we were paying taxes all these years. This is what they were for.' "
Although the troubled economy is the main factor in the increases, experts said, some growth at the margins has resulted from a new way of qualifying students for the subsidized meals, known as direct certification. In 2004, Congress required the nation's 17,000 school districts to match student enrollment lists against records of local food-stamp agencies, directly enrolling those who receive food stamps for the meals program. The number of districts doing so has been rising - as have the number of school-age children in families eligible for food stamps, to 14 million in 2010-11 from 12 million in 2009-10.
"The concern of those of us involved in the direct certification effort is how to help all these districts deal with the exploding caseload of kids eligible for the meals," said Kevin Conway, a project director at Mathematica Policy Research, a co-author of an October report to Congress on direct certification.
Congress passed the National School Lunch Act in 1946 to support commodity prices after World War II by reducing farm surpluses while providing food to schoolchildren. By 1970, the program was providing 22 million lunches on an average day, about a fifth of them subsidized. Since then, the subsidized portion has grown while paid lunches have declined, but not since 1972 have so many additional children become eligible for free lunches as in fiscal year 2010, 1.3 million. Today it is a $10.8 billion program providing 32 million lunches, 21 million of which are free or at reduced price.
All 50 states have shown increases, according to Agriculture Department data. In Florida, which has 2.6 million public school students, an additional 265,000 students have become eligible for subsidies since 2007, with increases in virtually every district.
"Growth has been across the board," said Mark Eggers, the Florida Department of Education official who oversees the lunch program.
In Tennessee, the number of students receiving subsidized meals has grown 37 percent since 2007.
"When a factory closes, our school districts see a big increase," said Sarah White, the state director of school nutrition.
In Las Vegas, with 13.6 percent unemployment, the enrollment of thousands of new students in the subsidized lunch program forced the Clark County district to add an extra shift at the football field-size central kitchen, said Virginia Beck, an assistant director at the school food service.
In Roseville, Minn., an inner-ring St. Paul suburb, the proportion of subsidized lunch students rose to 44 percent this fall from 29 percent in 2006-7, according to Dr. Senauer, the economist. "There's a lot of hurt in the suburbs," he said. "It's the new face of poverty."
In New York, the Gates Chili school district west of Rochester has lost 700 students since 2007-8, as many families have fled the area after mass layoffs. But over those same four years, the subsidized lunch program has added 125 mouths, many of them belonging to the children of Kodak and Xerox managers and technicians who once assumed they had a lifetime job, said Debbi Beauvais, district supervisor of the meals program.
"Parents signing up children say, 'I never thought a program like this would apply to me and my kids,' " Ms. Beauvais said.
Many large urban school districts have for years been dominated by students poor enough to qualify for subsidized lunches. In Dallas, Newark and Chicago, for instance, about 85 percent of students are eligible, and most schools also offer free breakfasts. Now, some places have added free supper programs, fearing that needy students otherwise will go to bed hungry.
One is the Hickman Mills C-1 district in a threadbare Kansas City, Mo., neighborhood where a Home Depot, a shopping mall and a string of grocery stores have closed.
Ten years ago, 48 percent of its students qualified for subsidized lunches. By 2007, that proportion had increased to 73 percent, said Leah Schmidt, the district's nutrition director. Last year, when it hit 80 percent, the district started feeding 700 students a third meal, paid for by the state, each afternoon when classes end.
"This is the neediest period I've seen in my 20-year career," Ms. Schmidt said.
Robbie Brown and Kimberley McGee contributed reporting.
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15) Britons Strike as Government Extends Austerity Measures
By JULIA WERDIGIER and ALAN COWELL
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/world/europe/great-britain-strike-austerity-measures.html?ref=world
LONDON - Public sector workers on Wednesday began Britain's biggest strike in a generation to protest austerity measures, a day after the British government said that it was falling behind with its deficit-reduction plan and that the measures would drag on for two more years.
Courts, schools, hospitals, airports and government offices could all be hit by the strike, which has come to be seen as an emblem of resistance to government plans to squeeze public-sector pensions and cut government spending to reduce debt.
"We are here to defend our pensions," Alistair Cunningham, who works for the British Treasury, said as he joined other strikers at a protest rally along The Strand in central London, one of hundreds of demonstrations across the land. "All we want to defend is what is in our contractual right. The crisis was caused by bankers and the public services are an easy target."
Education authorities across Britain said thousands of schools had closed because teachers were on strike, and many parents had taken a day off from work to look after children.
The stoppage was billed as the most extensive in decades, mirroring the turmoil in the debt-plagued euro zone across the English Channel and offering a reminder of the potential social and political impact of the financial crisis seizing much of Europe. While Britain is not part of the single European currency, it is a member of the European Union and relies on the continent for much of its trade.
The chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said on Tuesday that because of the slowdown in the euro zone, British economic growth this year and next would be slower than forecast in March and "debt will not fall as fast as we'd hoped."
He added that Britain could avoid a recession next year only if the euro zone found a solution to its crisis.
"We'll do whatever we can to protect Britain from this debt storm," Mr. Osborne told a packed Parliament. "If the rest of Europe heads into a recession, it may be hard to avoid one here in the U.K."
News reports on Wednesday spoke of picket lines being set up outside public buildings while workers planned rallies and demonstrations across Britain. Some of the first workers to strike were in Liverpool, where tunnels under the River Mersey were closed. But the overall level of participation remained unclear.
Some routes into London, normally clogged with commuter traffic and cars ferrying children to school, were virtually deserted as the strike began.
Medical officials said up to 60,000 nonurgent hospital procedures - from surgery to outpatient visits - were postponed because of the strike. But airport operators said that two Britain's two biggest airports - Heathrow and Gatwick near London - were functioning with relatively little delay because many border service personnel had not joined the strike and were being assisted by other government officials to inspect the passports of arriving passengers.
The airports had been an early focus of worries that travelers could be delayed by up to 12 hours.
"Immigration queues are currently at normal levels," BAA, the leading airport operator, said. In addition to drafting in support staff, the operator had also asked airlines to restrict the number of passengers booked on flights.
"However, there still remains a possibility for delays for arriving passengers later in the day," BAA said.
The company operating Eurostar, the high-speed train using the Channel tunnel, had urged passengers to be prepared for delays. But, by midmorning, a Eurostar spokeswoman said, "everything is fine, with no delays or cancellations."
At the weekly parliamentary session devoted to questions to the prime minister, the strike provoked fierce exchanges between Prime Minister David Cameron and the Labour opposition leader, Ed Miliband, who accused the government of secretly welcoming the walkout.
"I don't want to see any strikes," Mr. Cameron said. "I don't want to see our schools closed. I don't want to see problems on our borders."
He called the strike "something of a damp squib," but acknowledged that it had forced the closure of 60 percent of British schools. He also said that "less than a third" of civil service employees were on strike.
Mr. Miliband said that the prime minister's economic policies to deal with debt had not worked. "The truth is: his plan has failed, and he is making working families pay the price."
Union leaders have said that more than two million people, including teachers and other government employees, are expected to go on strike, according to the Trades Union Congress.
In Parliament on Tuesday, Mr. Osborne called on the unions to reconsider the strike action and return to the negotiating table, asking why they were "putting jobs at risk."
"Call off the strike," he said.
But Len McCluskey, general secretary of the trade union Unite, criticized Mr. Osborne's economic strategy and compared him to "a pilot who has put his plane into a tailspin and is now wrestling desperately with the controls as the aircraft rapidly loses height."
The government said British households, which are already squeezed by higher food and electricity prices, would have to endure an additional two years of austerity measures, now until 2017. The economy is growing slower than forecast, hurting chancellor Osborne's initial 2010 plan to eliminate the budget deficit within five years.
It would also require Britain to borrow an additional £111 billion, or $172 billion, through 2015, a step Mr. Osborne was eager to avoid. The austerity measures would now drag on far beyond the next general election, currently scheduled for 2015.
The British economy will grow 0.9 percent this year, less than the 1.7 percent predicted earlier, and 0.7 percent next year, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast Tuesday. The agency predicted that the economy would then pick up and grow 2.1 percent in 2013. Debt as a share of gross domestic product would peak at 78 percent in the fiscal year ending in 2015, higher than the 71 percent initially predicted.
Amid fierce criticism from the opposition Labour Party, Mr. Osborne said Tuesday that he would stick to his austerity plan, which includes more than 600,000 job cuts in the public sector and other spending curbs, but that it would still take longer for the debt load to shrink.
Because of that, the government said it would cap pay increases for public sector workers at 1 percent for two years after the end of the current pay freeze.
The step was part of a small set of measures presented Tuesday, which also includes an increase in a bank tax, to generate extra revenue to invest in infrastructure projects and to fight youth unemployment.
But it added to the anger of workers' representatives, who said the government was now not only "raiding" pensions but wages as well.
Howard Archer, chief economist for Britain at IHS Global Insight, said Mr. Osborne lacked the room to maneuver to offer any investments or tax cuts that could help the economic recovery.
"The economy is staring recession in the face again; he has no money to spend and events in the euro zone pose major downside risks over which he has no control," Mr. Archer said.
But Mr. Osborne argued that an early adoption of the deficit plan last year helped Britain to keep its borrowing costs low and avoid problems faced by Greece or Italy, where borrowing costs became unsustainable.
Unlike the United States or the members of the euro zone, Britain already has a far-reaching austerity plan along with interest rates at record-low levels. It also has its own currency, which helps keep British exports to the euro zone relatively inexpensive.
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16) Iraq Would Accept U.S. Soldiers as Trainers
[Trainers/Advisers: Where have we heard this before? Hint: Kennedy, Vietnam?!?!?...bw]
By MARK LANDLER
November 30, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/world/middleeast/iraq-would-accept-us-soldiers-as-trainers.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister indicated on Wednesday that he was open to the eventual return of American troops as trainers, underscoring that the United States is likely to be involved in this country's security even after the last soldiers depart in the coming weeks.
"No doubt, the U.S. forces have a role in providing training of Iraqi forces," said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki after meeting Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is here to mark the withdrawal and to inaugurate a new phase in ties between the United States and Iraq.
Mr. Maliki insisted that Iraq could provide for its internal security. And he made much of Iraq's desire to build a relationship with the United States as a sovereign country, dealing with Washington on the basis of national interest and "mutual respect."
But his comments suggested that for all the solemn pageantry of a long war ending, there is likely to be considerable continuity in the security relationship between the United States and Iraq, as it struggles to contain terrorist attacks by insurgent groups.
Mr. Biden reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a "robust security relationship," adding that it was up to the Iraqis to decide "what you think that relationship should be." He and Mr. Maliki agreed to set up a committee to plan security cooperation.
"We will continue our discussions with your government over the substance of our security arrangements, including areas of training, intelligence and counterterrorism," he said.
The inability of the United States and Iraq to agree on legal immunity for American troops led to President Obama's announcement that the last soldiers would depart the country next month. The Pentagon had been negotiating to leave in place a residual force of between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers to help train Iraqi forces.
But administration officials have suggested that once the withdrawal was complete - a politically significant milestone in the United States and Iraq - the two sides could negotiate the return of American troops for training purposes.
There are now only 13,000 American soldiers left in Iraq and their ranks are dwindling by 500 a day, though the United States will leave a vestigial force as liaison officers and to guard the embassy in Baghdad. The military is shipping out its equipment and turning over crucial installations.
Mr. Biden repeatedly portrayed the withdrawal as evidence that the United States keeps its promises. "In the neighborhood I'm from," he said, "a promise made is a promise kept."
Still, with both countries eager to turn the page, much of Wednesday's meetings were devoted to other concerns like trade, energy and agriculture investment and visas for exchange students. Mr. Biden laid out a civilian partnership that he promised would draw American companies to Iraq and send Iraqis to American universities.
"We are embarking on a new path together, a new phase in this relationship," he said, as he sat next to Mr. Maliki beneath glittering chandeliers at the governmental palace.
To underscore the emphasis on nonmilitary engagement, Mr. Biden singled out two officials in his 15-member delegation, Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Daniel B. Poneman, the deputy secretary of energy.
Mr. Maliki, who was flanked by members of his cabinet and other officials, said he hoped that American companies would pour into Iraq with the same vigor as American troops once did.
But in a telling moment that spoke to Iraq's challenges, Mr. Maliki declared, "We are looking forward to the future of Iraq, which is going to be built on the outcome of this meeting."
Mr. Biden, who was standing next to him, gently demurred, saying, "To suggest that the future of Iraq rests on our personal relationship, I think gives us too much credit." The "success of Iraq will rest upon the vision of you and the civilian leadership," he said.
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17) #OccupyWallSt Roundup, Day 74
By JILLIAN DUNHAM
November 30, 2011, 2:12 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/occupywallst-roundup-day-74-2/?ref=nyregion
Protesters gathered in Madison Square Park to meet arriving delegates from the aerospace and defense industries to a conference hosted in part by Credit Suisse bank. A rally to protest "war profiteers" is planned for 4:30 p.m. in the park. [NBC New York]
A large strike by public sector workers in London closed 2,000 schools and restricted ambulance service. Demonstrators are protesting Britain's austerity measures, which the government said would extend for two more years as deficit-reduction efforts stagnate. [BBC, New York Times]
An estimated 1,200 police officers cleared the large Occupy encampment in Los Angeles, arresting 200 people. Protesters in Philadelphia were also cleared from a park next to City Hall. [New York Times]
Police evictions across the country seem to have increased support from religious groups for Occupy Wall Street, according to a pastor at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, which has hosted protesters. [Washington Post]
Three City Council members, including two who were arrested during Occupy protests in New York, introduced a resolution Tuesday condemning "divisive economic and social realities facing our nation" and calling for support of Occupy Wall Street. [City Room]
Greg Fox, "perhaps the best percussionist in the city," did not join the drum circle at Zuccotti Park, but he did work in its kitchen. [Village Voice]
The first of two national bond-buying days were held in Italy, after a private citizen, Giuliano Melani, called for Italians to show their patriotism by picking up national debt (at 7.2 percent). [Financial Times]
Occupy Wall Street uses Facebook to promote its message and publicize events. But will it approve of the company's possible $100 billion initial public offering? [Speakeasy]
Student protesters in New York played a video and interrupted a question-and-answer session with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly on Tuesday during a class taught by former Mayor David N. Dinkins at Columbia University. [Bwog]
Occupy protests on college campuses are complicating efforts to recruit students to Wall Street. Teaching financial markets at this time is "a little like teaching R.O.T.C. during the Vietnam War," said Robert J. Shiller, an economics professor at Yale. [DealBook]
A Darien resident invited Occupy Wall Street protesters to "come here to where the wealthy do live and strike up a conversation." Protesters demonstrated last month outside the New Canaan home of Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, even after he expressed sympathy for the movement. [Daily Stamford, Forbes]
Occupy Wall Street gave a writing assignment to anyone wishing to contribute to the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (538 pages and growing). [GalleyCat, People's Library]
Protesters are closing in on their goal of raising $10,000 to publish 100,000 copies of the People's Declaration, a summary of Occupy Wall Street grievances composed at a General Assembly at Zuccotti Park. [Kickstarter]
On Thursday, protesters will demonstrate in Zuccotti Park to commemorate World AIDS Day and demand a tax to pay for treatment and services for people with H.I.V.
Creative protesters plan to Occupy Broadway with a 24-hour performance somewhere around Times Square on Friday at 6 p.m. [NYCGA]
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