New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.
Stripped of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more determined as his PA state court appeal continues.
Increased public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!
—Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq.
October 25, 2013
For more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and how to help.
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Two important weeks to support the Iraq War whistleblower
Some dates you just don't forget.
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Three years ago, in October of 2010, WikiLeaks shocked the world when it published the “Iraq War Logs,” a comprehensive database which contained thousands of records detailing abuse and corruption during the war in Iraq. These documents were revealed by Chelsea Manning, who has been sentenced to 35 years at a Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, prison. The documents that Chelsea Manning revealed via WikiLeaks uncovered crimes that were committed by both the Iraqi government and the U.S. military with the knowledge of top Pentagon officials.
They describe how thousands of innocent Iraqis were targeted for their religious or political beliefs, then detained and tortured in prisons operated by the Iraqi government. These same documents reveal acts in which U.S. soldiers abused and killed Iraqi civilians, and have yet to be held accountable. The documents even revealed to the public how U.S. forces helped teach the Iraqi military interrogation methods that have been banned by the UN as torture.
For the sake of the millions of civilians and the thousands of soldiers who have suffered in this unnecessary war, we ask that you remember the date that the public gained access to this information and take action to support Chelsea and her goal of bringing transparency to government. You can do this by contributing a letter to the official application for clemency that is being sent to Convening Authority Major General Jeffrey S. Buchanan. He is one of two people with the power to free Private Manning now, along with President Obama. There is precedent for convening authorities to reduce or eliminate the sentences of soldiers in cases where they have been convinced that the court martial did not deliver justice.
Given the numerous injustices in Private Manning’s case, we believe that Major General Buchanan should demonstrate leniency: Manning was imprisoned for three years before trial (including one year of solitary confinement); motives of conscience were not considered as an important factor by the judge; shockingly, the prosecution was even allowed to change their charge sheet after presenting their case.
Please follow these guidelines to write a letter. If you have already done so, please encourage at least three of your friends to do the same.
For those looking to take further action, we encourage you to organize a letter-writing party, which you can register on the Events Section of our website. All letters should be scanned electronically and PDF versions should be sent to nathan@bradleymanning.org by November 1.
As we remember the tragedy of the Iraq War, in many ways made clearer by the release of the war logs themselves, we must seize this opportunity to show support for PVT Manning and her work to bring much-needed transparency to international relations. Only through working together with adequate information can people of the world prevent history from repeating.
Thank you for your support.
Help us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Please sign the NEW petition for Lynne Stewart.
Your signature will send a letter to Bureau of Prisons Director Samuels and to Attorney General Holder requesting that they expedite Lynne Stewart’s current application for compassionate release. The NEW petition is at https://www.change.org/petitions/new-petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-support-compassionate-release
Your signature will send a letter to Bureau of Prisons Director Samuels and to Attorney General Holder requesting that they expedite Lynne Stewart’s current application for compassionate release. The NEW petition is at https://www.change.org/petitions/new-petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-support-compassionate-release
Free Lynne Stewart: Support Compassionate Release
http://www.change.org/petitions/free-lynne-stewart-support-compassionate-release
Renowned defense
attorney Lynne Stewart, unjustly charged and convicted for the “crime”
of providing her client with a fearless defense, is dying of cancer
while imprisoned in the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, Texas.
Your action now can lead to her freedom so that she
may live out her remaining days with the comfort and joy of her family
and those closest to her, including her devoted husband Ralph Poynter,
many children, grandchildren, a great grandchild and lifelong friends.
The conservative medical prognosis by the
oncologist contracted by the prison is that Lynne Stewart has but
16-months to live. Breast cancer, in remission prior to her
imprisonment, reached Stage Four more than a year ago, emerging in her
lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs.
Despite repeated courses of chemotherapy, cancer
advances in her lungs, resistant to treatment. Compounding her dire
condition, Lynne Stewart’s white blood cell count dropped so low that
she has been isolated in a prison hospital room since April 2013 to
reduce risk of generalized infection.
Under the 1984 Sentencing Act, upon a prisoner’s
request, the Bureau of Prisons can file a motion with the Court to
reduce sentences “for extraordinary and compelling reasons,” life
threatening illness foremost among these.
Lynne Stewart’s recent re-application for
compassionate release meets all the criteria specified in guidelines
issued by the Bureau of Prisons in August 2013.
These “new guidelines” followed a searing report
and testimony before Congress by the Department of Justice’s Inspector
General Michael Horowitz. His findings corroborated a definitive report
by Human Rights Watch. Inspector General Horowitz excoriated the Federal
Bureau of Prisons for the restrictive crippling of the compassionate
release program. In a 20-year period, the Bureau had released a scant
492 persons – an average of 24 a year out of a population that exceeds
220,000.
Over 30,000 people of conscience from all walks of
life in the United States and internationally took action to free Lynne
Stewart following her first application for compassionate release in
April of this year.
Among those who raised their voices are former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark – who was co-counsel in the case that led
to Lynne Stewart’s imprisonment, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former
President of the United Nations General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto
Brockmann, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ed Asner,
Daniel Berrigan, Liz McAllister Berrigan, Richard Falk, Daniel Ellsberg,
Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, Dick Gregory, Alice Walker and Bianca
Jagger.
They along with thousands of individuals and
organizations, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the
National Lawyers Guild and Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, directed
letters, phone calls and public declarations to the Federal Bureau of
Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. and to Attorney General Eric H.
Holder, Jr.
Dick Gregory has refused all solid food since April
4 and his remarkable moral witness will not end until Lynne Stewart is
released.
We call upon all to amplify this outpouring of
support. We ask all within our reach to convey to Bureau of Prisons
Director Samuels his obligation to approve Lynne Stewart’s application
and instruct the federal attorney to file the requisite motion for Lynne
Stewart’s compassionate release.
Please sign this new petition and
reach out to others to sign. The letter below will be sent on your
behalf via email to Charles E. Samuels, Jr., Director of the Federal
Bureau of Prisons and to Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Telephone
calls also can be made to the Bureau of Prisons:
(202) 307-3250/3262.
http://www.change.org/petitions/free-lynne-stewart-support-compassionate-release
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504-054Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
or via:
www.lynnestewart.org
What you can do:
Demand Compassionate Release for Lynne Now!
Write and call:
President Obama
The White House
Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500
(202) 456-1111
Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
(202) 353-1555
Charles E. Samuels, Jr.
Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First Street, NW
Washington, DC 20534
(202) 307-3250/3262
Write to Lynne Stewart:
Lynne Stewart #53504-054
Unit 2N, Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
Write to Lynne Stewart Defense Committee at:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information: 718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. ARTICLES IN FULL
B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
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A. ARTICLES IN FULL
(Unless otherwise noted)
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1) Activists Feel Powerful Wrath as Russia Guards Its Arctic Claims
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW — Gizem Akhan, 24, was about to begin her final year studying the culinary arts at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. Tomasz Dziemianczuk, 36, took a vacation from his job as a cultural adviser at the University of Gdansk in Poland that has now unexpectedly turned into an unpaid leave of absence.
Dmitri Litvinov, 51, is a veteran activist who as a child spent four years in Siberian exile after his father, Pavel, took part in the Red Square protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
“I didn’t expect my son to get in their clutch,” the elder Mr. Litvinov said in a telephone interview from Irvington, N.Y., where he settled to teach physics in nearby Tarrytown after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
Dmitri Litvinov and the others are just three of the 30 people aboard a Greenpeace International ship, the Arctic Sunrise, who are now confined in separate cells in the far northern city of Murmansk after staging a high-seas protest last month against oil exploration in the Arctic. All face criminal charges that could result in years in prison as a result of having grossly underestimated Russia’s readiness to assert — and even expand — its sovereignty in a region potentially rich with natural resources.
The vigorous legal response by the authorities, including the seizure of the ship itself, appears to have caught Greenpeace off guard and left the crew’s families and friends worried that the consequences of what the activists considered a peaceful protest could prove much graver than any expected when they set out.
“Naturally, every time Gizem sets out on a protest I feel anxious,” Ms. Akhan’s mother, Tulay, said in written responses delivered through Greenpeace. “I’m a mother, and most of the time she doesn’t even tell us she is participating. I’ve known the risks but couldn’t have foreseen that we would come face to face with such injustice.”
Critics of the government of President Vladimir V. Putin have added the crew of the Arctic Sunrise to a catalog of prisoners here who have faced politically motivated or disproportionate punishment for challenging the state. Among them are the former oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the punk performers of Pussy Riot and the protesters awaiting trial more than a year after violence broke out on the day of Mr. Putin’s inauguration last year.
But there is one crucial difference: Most of those who were aboard the Arctic Sunrise are foreigners.
They hail from 18 nations. Two of them, Denis Sinyakov of Russia and Kieron Bryan of Britain, are freelance journalists who joined the crew to chronicle the ship’s voyage, which began in Amsterdam and ended on Sept. 19 when Russian border guards borne by helicopters descended on the ship in the Pechora Sea.
Alexandra Harris of Britain, 27, was on her first trip to the Arctic. Camila Speziale, 21, of Argentina, was on her first trip at sea. Others were veteran Greenpeace activists, including the American captain, Peter Willcox, who was skipper of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 when French secret service agents bombed it at dockside in Auckland, New Zealand, leading to the drowning of a photographer, Fernando Pereira.
The activists knew the protest was risky. Two of them, Sini Saarela of Finland and Marco Weber of Switzerland, tried to scale the offshore oil platform in the Pechora Sea owned by Russia’s state energy giant, Gazprom.
They plunged into the icy waters after guards sprayed water from fire hoses and fired warning shots, and they were plucked from the sea by a Russian coast guard ship and held as “guests.” The next day, Sept. 19, however, the Arctic Sunrise was seized by border guards in international waters.
Greenpeace staged a similar but more successful protest in the summer of 2012. In that instance, activists, including Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, scaled the same platform and unfurled a banner. After several hours, they departed, and the Russian authorities did not pursue any charges.
The authorities have shown little sign of leniency since the ship’s seizure, despite an international campaign by Greenpeace to draw attention to the prosecutions and even an appeal from Italy’s oil giant Eni, a partner of Gazprom, to show clemency for the crew, which includes an Italian, Cristian D’Alessandro.
The prosecution of the Arctic Sunrise crew has punctuated Mr. Putin’s warnings that he would not tolerate any infringement on Russia’s development in the Arctic. The region has become a focus of political and economic strategy for the Kremlin as its natural resources have become more accessible because of the warming climate.
When the government of the Netherlands, where Greenpeace International is based, filed an appeal to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to have the ship and crew released, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it would not recognize the tribunal’s jurisdiction, citing the country’s sovereignty. The tribunal has scheduled a hearing on the Dutch claim anyway, but unless Russia seeks a compromise that would free the prisoners, the crew could be detained for months awaiting trial.
Greenpeace’s activists and their cause have not found much sympathy in Russia, their fate shaped in part by hostile coverage on state-owned or state-controlled television. The main state network, Channel One, recently broadcast an analysis that suggested that Greenpeace’s protest had been orchestrated by powerful backers with economic incentives to undermine Gazprom.
After their formal arrest on Sept. 24, the crew members appeared one by one in court and were charged with piracy and ordered held at least until Nov. 24. One by one their appeals for bail were denied. Last week, the regional investigative committee reduced the charges to hooliganism, a crime that nonetheless carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison.
The committee raised the possibility of new charges against some crew members that could result in longer sentences upon conviction.
According to Greenpeace and relatives, the prisoners have not been mistreated in the detention center where they are now held, next to Murmansk’s morgue. They have had access to lawyers and diplomats from their respective countries. They are allowed care packages delivered by Greenpeace, occasional phone calls and sporadic visits from those relatives who can make it to Murmansk. The captain and chief engineer were taken to visit and inspect the Arctic Sunrise, now moored in Murmansk’s port.
Conditions, though, are grim.
In letters or phone calls to their families, they have described small, unheated cells, unappetizing meals and Russian cellmates who smoke relentlessly. They spend 23 hours a day in their cells, with only an hour of exercise a day in an enclosed courtyard and the periodic visits with lawyers or trips to court for a hearing. “It’s very cold now,” Ms. Harris, the activist from Britain on her first Greenpeace operation in the Arctic, wrote in a letter to her parents and brother that was widely cited in the British press: “It snowed last night. The blizzard blew my very poorly insulated window open and I had to sleep wearing my hat.”
She went on to express a measure of resolve, saying she practiced yoga in her cell and tapped on the wall to the music piped in, but she also wrote of uncertainty in a confinement that she compared to slowly dying.
“I heard that from December Murmansk is dark for six weeks,” she wrote. “God, I hope I’m out by then.”
Reporting was contributed by Andrew Roth and Patrick Reevell from Moscow, Ceylan Yeginsu from Istanbul, and Joanna Berendt from Warsaw.
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2) F.D.A. Finds 12% of U.S. Spice Imports Contaminated
By GARDINER HARRIS
NEW DELHI — About 12 percent of spices brought to the United States are contaminated with insect parts, whole insects, rodent hairs and other things, according to an analysis of spice imports by federal food authorities.
The finding released on Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration is part of a comprehensive look at the safety of spice imports that has been years in the making. The federal authorities also found that nearly 7 percent of spice imports examined by federal inspectors were contaminated with salmonella, a toxic bacteria that can cause severe illness in humans.
The shares of imported spices contaminated with insect parts and salmonella were twice those found in other types of imported food, federal food officials said.
The agency’s findings “are a wake-up call” to spice producers, said Jane M. Van Doren, a food and spice official at the F.D.A. “It means: ‘Hey, you haven’t solved the problems.’ ”
The agency called spice contamination “a systemic challenge” and said most of the insects found in spices were the kinds that thrive in warehouses and other storage facilities, suggesting that the industry’s problems result not from poor harvesting practices but poor storage and processing.
John Hallagan, a spokesman for the American Spice Trade Association, said Wednesday that he had not seen the report, so he could not comment on it. But spice manufacturers have argued in the past that food manufacturers often treat imported spices before marketing them, so F.D.A. findings of contamination levels in its import screening program do not mean that spices sold to consumers are dangerous.
F.D.A. inspectors have found that some spices that claim to have been treated are contaminated nonetheless. And the high levels of filth from insects and rodents is a problem that is not easily resolved because, unlike with salmonella contamination, simply cooking or heating the spices will not rid the products of the problem. Insects can also be a source of salmonella contamination.
What share of the nearly 1.2 million annual salmonella illnesses in the United States result from contaminated spices is unclear, officials said. Fewer than 2,000 people had their illnesses definitively tied to contaminated spices from 1973 to 2010, and most people eat spices in small quantities. But people often fail to remember eating spices when asked what foods might have sickened them, so problems related to spices could be seriously underreported, officials said.
Recent legislation in the United States grants the F.D.A. the power to refuse entry of foods that the agency even suspects might be contaminated — strong leverage to demand changes in harvesting, handling and manufacturing practices in foreign countries.
Spice imports from Mexico and India have been found to have the highest rate of contamination. Nearly one-quarter of the spices, oils and food colorings used in the United States comes from India, according to the F.D.A.
The F.D.A. commissioner, Margaret A. Hamburg, had intended to visit India this fall and meet with spice industry officials to discuss the agency’s concerns about spice safety, but the government shutdown delayed her plans, she said. Indian spice officials are offering incentives to get farmers to change some traditional harvest and handling practices that could lead to contamination.
Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the F.D.A., said that the spice industry needs to clean up poor storage practices, a difficult effort. “There is no magic wand for any of the problem we’re addressing,” Mr. Taylor said.
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3) Jobless Rate in Europe Stays at Record
By JACK EWING
FRANKFURT — The number of people out of work in the euro zone rose slightly in September, according to official data published Thursday, showing that signs of renewed economic growth have not yet filtered through to the labor market.
The jobless rate itself was 12.2 percent last month, a record high and the same as the figure for August, which was revised upward. But the absolute number of jobless people in the 17 countries in the euro area rose by 60,000 from a total of about 19.5 million, according to Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency.
Eurostat revised the figure reported for August to 12.2 percent from 12 percent.
The numbers may come as a disappointment after recent data fed hopes that the euro zone was slowly emerging from a downturn that effectively began in 2009. Spain, one of the countries hit hardest by the euro zone debt crisis, returned to growth in the third quarter after a recession that lasted more than two years.
There also have been signs that the European car industry, a major source of jobs, is recovering from its worst sales in two decades. On Wednesday, the Italian carmaker Fiat reported its first increase in European sales since 2010.
The euro zone as a whole emerged from recession in the second quarter, but the rebound was weak and output in the region was still lower than it was in 2008. Economists have been watching for any signs that the economic upswing has staying power.
The euro zone unemployment rate had stopped rising in recent months, but there had been no sign of a decrease from 12 percent, or 19.2 million people. Employment is typically one of the last components of the economy to respond in an upturn, because companies tend to wait to hire people until they are sure business is really getting better. That is especially true in Europe, where regulations make it difficult to fire workers once they are no longer needed.
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4) When Insurers Drop Policies: Three Stories
By KATIE THOMAS and REED ABELSON
Charles Nance, Dean Wright and Julie Tyrrell are getting dropped — forced out of their existing health insurance plans — and landing smack in the middle of the uproar over President Obama’s health care law.
One expects to pay more. One expects to pay less. And one is just trying to figure it all out.
Each, in a different way, represents the relatively small part of America that the Obama administration did not talk about while campaigning for the Affordable Care Act: people who have health insurance that they like, but who will be unable to keep it under the law.
Now that new insurance marketplaces are opening, insurance companies are canceling millions of individual plans that fail to meet minimum standards. The dropped plans have become the political talking point of the moment — and, according to many Republicans, a symbol of the president’s flawed ambitions.
Mr. Obama says that people will be better off in the long run with more robust coverage.
Yet the individual stories add up to a more complicated tale.
Mr. Nance, who did not like the president’s plan to begin with, is angry.
He and his wife recently received a notice informing them that they could no longer keep their existing plan. Their insurance company offered an alternative that would cost twice as much.
“I don’t think it’s fair at all,” said Mr. Nance, 57, a home inspector in suburban St. Louis.
Mr. Wright received a similar notice. But to his surprise, he will pay less by going through a state insurance exchange.
“It’s a pretty good deal,” said Mr. Wright, 63, a retired editor who lives in Birch Bay, Wash. He said he will save about $100 a month, although his new plan will not cover out-of-network care.
And like many, Ms. Tyrrell is still trying to navigate the new landscape. Her existing plan will be dropped next year, she said, and her insurance company is raising prices by nearly 18 percent.
But she is unsure if she qualifies for federal subsidies because she has had trouble logging on to the problem-plagued government website, HealthCare.gov.
“There’s so little information now,” said Ms. Tyrrell, 54, a freelance writer in Phoenix.
The Affordable Care Act was signed into law by Mr. Obama in 2010. Since then he has assured Americans: “If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”
But it is happening. It is unclear how many of the estimated 10 million to 12 million people who have individual insurance plans, as opposed to the vast majority who have insurance through their employers, might see their plans discontinued.
Individual plans are typically renewed annually and, even before the law, such plans were usually subject to changes in rates or coverage. Discontinuing plans affect a small minority of Americans, and some people will be grandfathered in.
Those in plans that have remained essentially unchanged since the law’s passage can keep their coverage even if it does not meet the new standards, which include coverage for things like prescription drugs, maternity care and even pediatric dental care.
But because of the transitory nature of the market — individual insurance often serves as a bridge between jobs, or as a stopgap until government programs like Medicare or Medicaid kick in — many customers have changed plans or bought new coverage since the law was passed.
Insurance executives are frustrated. They say they want to keep as many customers as they can and are reluctant to turn away business. And they want to sell as many new policies as they can that comply with the law.
“We’re not terminating their coverage,” said Jon Urbanek, a senior executive at Florida Blue. Many other insurance executives are reluctant to speak publicly, given the politics and public attention. Privately, many say that technical problems with the federal website have made people anxious about switching plans.
“They are not able to piece together a complete story right now, and that’s adding to the confusion,” one executive said.
Some insurers are offering to renew existing coverage before 2014. But some people must find an alternative. And some insurers are telling their existing customers about the plans that most closely resemble their current coverage, providing examples of plans that cost about the same or have similar features.
Supporters of the law are quick to note that the individual insurance market was an unforgiving place, favoring the healthy with reasonable rates while excluding older people or those with existing medical conditions. Plans must now offer more comprehensive coverage, and insurers must take all comers. Insurers must also charge everyone, healthy or otherwise, the same rates.
Still, many people were surprised by how the law could affect them. Some said they felt betrayed, given that the president pledged that people could keep their insurance plans.
Mr. Nance was surprised that the new law would affect his family, since they had been paying for their own insurance for 11 years. His plan carries a deductible of $3,000 and a premium of about $500 a month. He said that he and his wife were in good health and that their coverage had met their needs.
Mr. Nance learned in September that his existing plan would end on Dec. 31 because it did not comply with the new law. His insurer, Anthem BlueCross BlueShield, offered a replacement plan that would cost nearly twice as much and come with an annual deductible of close to $12,000.
“It’s not affordable, and it’s not better than what I had in any way, shape or form,” Mr. Nance said. He said he does not qualify for federal subsidies, and has had difficulty signing onto the online marketplace to evaluate his options. For now, he has purchased a one-year plan through United Healthcare that is similar in price and features to his existing plan.
In Arizona, Ms. Tyrrell is struggling to figure out her options. For years she dealt with annual rate increases and the fear that her coverage would be canceled.
“It’s a frightening situation,” Ms. Tyrrell said. She recently learned that she had rheumatoid arthritis, and when that happened, she said, “I thought, I have lost every bit of bargaining that I possibly had.”
Ms. Tyrrell is not sure what she will do, but, despite the problems, she generally supports the law. “We have to start somewhere,” she said.
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5) In Shadows, Hints of a Life and Even a Job for Snowden
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW — On very rare occasions, almost always at night, Edward J. Snowden leaves his secret, guarded residence here, somewhere, in Russia. He is always under close protection. He spends his days learning the language and reading. He recently finished “Crime and Punishment.”
Accompanying him is Sarah Harrison, a British activist working with WikiLeaks. With far less attention, she appears to have found herself trapped in the same furtive limbo of temporary asylum that the Russian government granted Mr. Snowden three months ago: safe from prosecution, perhaps, but far from living freely, or at least openly.
Andrei Soldatov, a journalist who has written extensively about the security services, said that the F.S.B., the domestic successor to the Soviet-era intelligence service, clearly controlled the circumstances of Mr. Snowden’s life now, protecting him and also circumscribing his activities, even if not directly controlling him.
“He’s actually surrounded by these people,” said Mr. Soldatov, who, with Irina Borogan, wrote a history of the new Russian security services, “The New Nobility.”
Hints of his life nonetheless flitter in and out of the public eye. On Thursday, his lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, said that Mr. Snowden had agreed to take a job with one of the country’s major Internet companies, beginning Friday. Mr. Kucherena would not disclose the company or any other details, and he declined to discuss Mr. Snowden’s life in exile “because the level of threat from the U.S. government structures is still very high,” he said in a telephone interview.
At the same time, a news agency believed to have contacts within Russia’s security services, Life News, published a photograph that it said showed Mr. Snowden on a cruise on the Moscow River beside the Kremlin.
A previous, far less convincing photo showed a man resembling him pushing a cart of groceries in what appeared to be a shopping center parking lot. A spokeswoman for Life News said that both pictures had been submitted through its website, and that the senders were paid 100,000 rubles, or slightly under $3,000.
Mr. Soldatov and others cautioned that the hints themselves could be attempts at misdirection or even propaganda, creating the impression of a happy, open asylum. The security services now protecting Mr. Snowden, he said, might not even try to question him soon on what he knows — perhaps the greatest worry of American officials — but rather simply let him live in such circumstances and become increasingly dependent on them.
“He’s free, but he’s not completely free,” said Ray McGovern, a former C.I.A. official and a member of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, which met with Mr. Snowden three weeks ago in his only verified public appearance since he received asylum on July 31. Even those who attended were not exactly sure where the meeting took place, having been driven in a van with darkened windows.
The possibility that Mr. Snowden might work openly here could not be verified, though the conditions of his asylum would in theory allow it, and some experts doubted the notion, given Mr. Snowden’s evident desire to keep a low profile. Other claims about Mr. Snowden’s surreptitious life here — his whereabouts, his social activities, even his dating — are unsubstantiated. Nonetheless, interviews with those who have met with him here have provided some clues to an unintended life in exile in a country that was not his intended destination when he fled the United States.
On the day that Russia’s migration agency granted him a one-year temporary asylum, he was publicly offered a job by the founder of Russia’s most prominent social network, VKontakte, who said his expertise would help protect the personal data of the site’s users. A spokesman for the company, Georgy Lubushkin, declined to comment, and a technology site, Digit.ru, quoted the company’s technical director, Nikolai Durov, as saying he was not aware that Mr. Snowden had accepted a job.
Two other prominent Internet companies here, Yandex and Mail.ru, said that Mr. Snowden was not working for them.
“The job offer rumors have been floating around out there,” said Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department official, who attended the meeting with Mr. Snowden last month. In a telephone interview on Thursday, she expressed doubt that he had taken a job. “When I met with Snowden, his priorities were learning Russian, acclimating to his new home and helping be involved in surveillance reform.”
Aside from Mr. Kucherena, a bearish man who has handled many prominent cases here, Mr. Snowden’s main conduit to the world and the efforts to challenge the extent of American eavesdropping has been Ms. Harrison, a trusted lieutenant of WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange.
She arrived with Mr. Snowden on a flight from Hong Kong in June that left them unintentionally stranded in a transit zone at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. When Mr. Snowden received permission to stay in Russia, despite intense American pressure, she was photographed with him as they left the airport and climbed into a taxi, headed for the underground existence they have since managed to maintain.
It was through Ms. Harrison and WikiLeaks that the members of the Sam Adams Associates organized their meeting with Mr. Snowden — possibly, though not certainly, here in Moscow — to present an award to him for his leaks.
In an interview with The New York Times conducted by encrypted email and published two weeks ago, Mr. Snowden declined to discuss his life here, except to say that he had not taken any of the secret National Security Agency documents with him to Russia, that he was not under the control of the Russian government, and that he was free to move about.
It seems clear that he has access to the Internet, said Mr. McGovern, the former C.I.A. official, because Mr. Snowden was “thoroughly informed” about the debate he had started, including testimony by officials on Capitol Hill trying to explain the operations that his disclosures have unveiled. “He’s in touch with folks through Sarah Harrison,” Mr. McGovern said.
Mr. Soldatov said that Mr. Snowden’s life in Russia reminded him not so much of the defectors from the West who in Soviet times disappeared into lonely lives of isolation and alcohol, but of the more recent example of the 10 “sleeper spies” exposed by the United States in 2010 and expelled to Russia. They were honored on their return and given medals, and one young woman, Anna Chapman, was celebrated as much for her looks as for her spy craft.
For all the attention at the time, though, the other spies slipped incognito back into the furtive world for which they had spent their lives training.
“When the F.S.B. actually got him, they started to handle it their own way,” Mr. Soldatov said of Mr. Snowden’s situation now. “This is the way the security services operate all the time.”
Those who have seen him in Russia say Mr. Snowden appears aware of the gravity of the situation he has created, but also at peace with his choice to disclose secrets.
His father, Lon Snowden, who visited him recently, said he was working “to try to normalize his life.” His son, he said, had no interest in writing a book or otherwise seeking monetary gain from the disclosures. He said he did not know if his son would soon begin working, as Mr. Kucherena said.
“He is safe, secure and happy,” the elder Mr. Snowden said, “and committed to the choice he made.”
Even so, he said he knew very little about his son’s life in Russia and would not discuss what he did know in detail. “The story isn’t really about him at this point,” he said.
Andrew Roth and Nikolay Khalip contributed reporting.
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6) Court Blocks Stop-and-Frisk Changes for New York Police
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
A federal appeals court on Thursday halted a sweeping set of changes to the New York Police Department’s practice of stopping and frisking people on the street, and, in strikingly personal terms, criticized the trial judge’s conduct and removed her from the case.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, “ran afoul” of the judiciary’s code of conduct by compromising the “appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation.” The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed nearly six years ago.
The ruling effectively puts off a battery of changes that Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had ordered for the Police Department. It postpones the operations of the monitor who was asked to oversee reforms of the stop-and-frisk practices, which Judge Scheindlin had said violated the constitutional rights of minorities.
The appeals court’s action was an unexpected twist to what has been a long-running fight over the tactics, a centerpiece of the city’s crime-fighting strategy.
The use of police stops has been widely cited by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as a crucial tool in helping drive the number of murders and major crimes in the city to historic lows. The police say the practice has saved the lives of thousands of young black and Hispanic men by removing guns from the streets and suppressing violence.
But Judge Scheindlin ruled in August that the Police Department not only had violated the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, but had also violated the 14th Amendment by resorting to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as the number of police stops soared in minority communities over the last decade.
The police, Judge Scheindlin found, were routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”
Lawyers for the city had gone to the Second Circuit to ask for a stay of Judge Scheindlin’s ruling and of the court-ordered mandates. In granting the stay, the circuit went beyond what the city had requested and unexpectedly ordered that the stop-and-frisk lawsuit, known as the Floyd case, be randomly reassigned.
The new judge, John Koeltl, was instructed to put off “all proceedings and otherwise await further action” from the panel. The appeals court has not yet taken up whether Judge Scheindlin’s decision reached the correct constitutional conclusion regarding the police tactics.
“We intimate no view on the substance or merits of the pending appeals,” the two-page order stated.
The panel set a schedule for the appeals process that extends into 2014, after Mr. Bloomberg leaves office. The judicial stay leaves open the question as to how the next mayor will approach the appeal, and whether he will accept or challenge the court-ordered mandates.
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor, whom recent polls have shown to be far ahead of his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the decision.
“We have to end the overuse of stop-and-frisk, and any delay only means a continued and unnecessary rift between our police and the people they protect,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.
Mr. Lhota applauded the ruling. “As I have said all along, Judge Scheindlin’s biased conduct corrupted the case,” he said in a statement, adding that the next mayor “absolutely must continue this appeal.”
Lawyers involved in the lawsuit said they would appeal the panel’s decision, which put off a number of changes Judge Scheindlin had ordered. Those included installing an outside lawyer to monitor the Police Department’s compliance with the Constitution and directing some officers to wear cameras in a pilot program to record their street interactions, and holding community meetings to solicit public comments on reforming the department’s tactics.
One civil rights lawyer who brought the stop-and-frisk case, Jonathan C. Moore, said the Second Circuit’s criticism was misplaced, and expressed shock that the panel would remove Judge Scheindlin.
“I think it’s a travesty of justice for this panel of the Second Circuit to take this case away from a judge who worked very hard for the last five years to resolve very important, serious issues involving the civil rights of the residents of New York,” Mr. Moore said.
The city’s police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, characterized the ruling as “an important decision for all New Yorkers.”
“I have always been — and certainly I haven’t been alone — concerned about the partiality of Judge Scheindlin,” he said.
In its ruling, the panel of three judges — John M. Walker Jr, José A. Cabranes and Barrington D. Parker — criticized Judge Scheindlin for granting media interviews and for making public statements while the case was pending before her, including articles in The New Yorker and by The Associated Press. In criticizing the judge for bringing the stop-and-frisk case under her purview, the three-judge panel also cited an article by The New York Times in a footnote.
At issue is the related-case rule, which allows lawyers to steer similar lawsuits before the same judge. But the Second Circuit said Judge Scheindlin had improperly applied that rule, citing her comments in 2007 to civil-rights lawyers who sought to reopen a long-settled stop-and-frisk lawsuit. If “you got proof of inappropriate racial profiling in a good constitutional case, why don’t you bring a lawsuit?” she said, according to a transcript quoted in the order on Thursday. “You can certainly mark it as related.”
Not long after her remarks, the lawyers did in fact file the Floyd lawsuit.
Judge Scheindlin issued a statement late Thursday explaining her use of the related-case rule, suggesting that encouraging the plaintiffs to file a new action made procedural sense.
She added that in her interviews with the media, she had avoided talking about the Floyd case. “Some of the reporters used quotes from written opinions in Floyd that gave the appearance that I had commented on the case,” the judge said. “However, a careful reading of each interview will reveal that no such comments were made.”
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7) In Reversal, Court Allows Texas Law on Abortion
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Only three days after a federal judge blocked a new Texas law that threatened to shut down many of the state’s abortion
clinics, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in
New Orleans, reversed the decision, saying the rule should take effect
while the case is argued in the months to come.
Abortion clinic owners and women’s health advocates said the decision would have catastrophic effects because as many as 13 of the 36 clinics providing abortions in the state would have to stop doing so immediately, forcing women in large swaths of Texas to travel several hours on at least two days to obtain abortions.
The clinics forced to halt abortions have been unable to satisfy a new requirement, part of a broader anti-abortion law adopted in July, that doctors performing the procedure must have formal admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic.
Greg Abbott, the state attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor next year, filed an emergency appeal to the three-judge circuit court on Monday asking it to overrule the lower court. He said in a statement Thursday, “This unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women.”
Gov. Rick Perry, who has said he hopes to abolish abortion in Texas, said in a statement, “Today’s decision affirms our right to protect both the unborn and the health of the women of Texas.”
In blocking the requirement on Monday, Judge Lee Yeakel of United States District Court in Austin accepted the argument of the clinics, and many doctors and national medical associations, that requiring admitting privileges had no bearing on safety because in the rare event of an emergency, patients will be rushed to the nearest hospital and treated the same way regardless.
The requirement is likely to be unconstitutional, he declared, because it is “without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.”
But the appeals panel found just the opposite: that the rule is likely to be constitutional because it serves a legitimate state interest in regulating doctors and does not impose an “undue burden” on the right to abortion.
The appeals court said that the admitting privilege rule might “increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions.”
But it cited a Supreme Court statement in an earlier abortion case that if a regulation serves a valid purpose, the fact that it has “the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate it.”
In Texas and other states, especially in smaller cities and rural areas, abortion clinics often use visiting doctors who may be highly qualified but do not meet the rules of local hospitals for admitting privileges. Many hospitals, for example, grant privileges only to doctors who admit a certain number of patients a year, while emergency hospitalizations after abortions are rare.
Some hospitals are unwilling to make formal arrangements with abortion providers because of religious reasons or because they fear protests.
The challenge to the admitting privilege rule was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinic owners in Texas. They were apparently surprised by the sudden turn and warned of dire consequences.
“We believe there are currently 36 health centers in Texas that provide abortions, and one-third will be forced to stop those services tomorrow,” Amanda Harrington, a spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said on Thursday.
Four of 13 Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas have not been able to find doctors with local admitting privileges and will halt abortions immediately, but they will remain open to provide other women’s services, Ms. Harrington said. Some other private clinics may shut down, mostly in West and South Texas.
Courts in Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota and Wisconsin have temporarily blocked similar admitting-privilege requirements as unconstitutional obstacles. With Thursday’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit, it appeared likely that the issue will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court, part of the continuing battles over how much states may restrict the right to abortion granted by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Abortion clinic owners and women’s health advocates said the decision would have catastrophic effects because as many as 13 of the 36 clinics providing abortions in the state would have to stop doing so immediately, forcing women in large swaths of Texas to travel several hours on at least two days to obtain abortions.
The clinics forced to halt abortions have been unable to satisfy a new requirement, part of a broader anti-abortion law adopted in July, that doctors performing the procedure must have formal admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic.
Greg Abbott, the state attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor next year, filed an emergency appeal to the three-judge circuit court on Monday asking it to overrule the lower court. He said in a statement Thursday, “This unanimous decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women.”
Gov. Rick Perry, who has said he hopes to abolish abortion in Texas, said in a statement, “Today’s decision affirms our right to protect both the unborn and the health of the women of Texas.”
In blocking the requirement on Monday, Judge Lee Yeakel of United States District Court in Austin accepted the argument of the clinics, and many doctors and national medical associations, that requiring admitting privileges had no bearing on safety because in the rare event of an emergency, patients will be rushed to the nearest hospital and treated the same way regardless.
The requirement is likely to be unconstitutional, he declared, because it is “without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.”
But the appeals panel found just the opposite: that the rule is likely to be constitutional because it serves a legitimate state interest in regulating doctors and does not impose an “undue burden” on the right to abortion.
The appeals court said that the admitting privilege rule might “increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions.”
But it cited a Supreme Court statement in an earlier abortion case that if a regulation serves a valid purpose, the fact that it has “the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate it.”
In Texas and other states, especially in smaller cities and rural areas, abortion clinics often use visiting doctors who may be highly qualified but do not meet the rules of local hospitals for admitting privileges. Many hospitals, for example, grant privileges only to doctors who admit a certain number of patients a year, while emergency hospitalizations after abortions are rare.
Some hospitals are unwilling to make formal arrangements with abortion providers because of religious reasons or because they fear protests.
The challenge to the admitting privilege rule was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinic owners in Texas. They were apparently surprised by the sudden turn and warned of dire consequences.
“We believe there are currently 36 health centers in Texas that provide abortions, and one-third will be forced to stop those services tomorrow,” Amanda Harrington, a spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said on Thursday.
Four of 13 Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas have not been able to find doctors with local admitting privileges and will halt abortions immediately, but they will remain open to provide other women’s services, Ms. Harrington said. Some other private clinics may shut down, mostly in West and South Texas.
Courts in Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota and Wisconsin have temporarily blocked similar admitting-privilege requirements as unconstitutional obstacles. With Thursday’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit, it appeared likely that the issue will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court, part of the continuing battles over how much states may restrict the right to abortion granted by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
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8) As Cuts to Food Stamps Take Effect, More Trims to Benefits Are Expected
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Starting Friday, millions of Americans receiving food stamps will be required to get by with less government assistance every month, a move that not only will cost them money they use to feed their families but is expected to slightly dampen economic growth as well.
Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, popularly referred to as food stamps, reflect the lapse of a temporary increase created by the administration’s stimulus program in 2009. They are slated to go into effect separately from continuing negotiations over renewal of the federal farm support program, which looks likely to further cut funds for food stamps, which this fiscal year are expected to come to about $76.4 billion.
The Republican-controlled House version of the farm bill proposes cutting $39 billion from the program over the next decade; the Democratic-controlled Senate would cut $4 billion over the same period.
The food stamp cuts scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1 will reduce spending by $5 billion in the 2014 fiscal year, and another $6 billion over the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. They are expected to shave 0.2 percentage point from annualized consumption growth in the fourth quarter of 2013 and trim an estimated 0.1 percentage point off the annual growth rate of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to estimates by Michael Feroli, the chief United States economist at JPMorgan Chase. Those drags may seem small, but right now projections for gains in fourth-quarter gross domestic product hover around an annual rate of just 2 percent.
“This could potentially affect consumption of food as well as nonfood items, as individuals may maintain the same food intake but reduce spending on other items,” Mr. Feroli said.
The amount that beneficiaries will lose depends on the size of the family. For a family of four receiving the maximum amount, monthly benefits will fall to $632 from $668, or a decline of $36, according to the Agriculture Department. The maximum benefits for a single adult would fall to $189 from $200, or by $11.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were increased in 2009 as part of a suite of measures intended to support struggling workers and stimulate the economy in the wake of the financial crisis. The maximum monthly amount received per food stamp beneficiary rose by 13.6 percent at the time.
Food stamp caseloads have swollen in the last few years: In fiscal year 2007, before the recession began, there were about 26 million people receiving food stamps. As of this past July, the most recent month of data available, there were nearly 48 million, representing about a seventh of the American population. The increase has been attributed to more people losing their jobs and needing food assistance; government efforts to increase usage by families that did not know they were eligible; and to a lesser extent, policy changes in some states that relaxed eligibility requirements, according to Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research organization.
The 2009 increase in maximum monthly food stamp benefits was designed to be temporary. But as with other stimulus measures or social safety programs that received temporary increases during or after the recession — like the payroll tax holiday, or extended unemployment benefits — advocates have been fighting to push expiration off longer.
These arguments are made on the grounds of both compassion and the fragility of the recovery. Measures that grant more spending power to lower-income people generally have strong effects throughout the economy because the money is spent immediately and then re-spent. Moody’s Analytics has estimated that every additional dollar spent on food stamps generates about $1.74 in economic activity.
The payroll tax holiday was renewed once, before it was finally allowed to lapse in January. Similarly, unemployment benefits to jobless workers for longer than the normal maximum of 26 weeks have been extended repeatedly, although the maximum duration of benefits has fallen from a peak of 99 weeks to 73 weeks. The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, financed by the federal government for states that meet certain unemployment and state benefit thresholds, is scheduled to end Jan. 1.
The recent fiscal showdown in Washington make further extensions less likely. And the end of these emergency unemployment benefits could create a further drag on the economy.
The so-called food stamp cliff “may be more of a sidewalk curb,” Mr. Feroli wrote in an email. “The bigger cliff, which I’m surprised people aren’t talking about, is emergency unemployment benefits Jan. 1.” That, he estimated, could shave 0.4 percentage point off growth in the first quarter next year.
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9) Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Climate
change will pose sharp risks to the world’s food supply in coming
decades, potentially undermining crop production and driving up prices
at a time when the demand for food is expected to soar, scientists have
found.
In a departure from an earlier assessment, the scientists concluded that rising temperatures will have some beneficial effects on crops in some places, but that globally they will make it harder for crops to thrive — perhaps reducing production over all by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century, compared with what it would be without climate change.
And, the scientists say, they are already seeing the harmful effects in some regions.
The warnings come in a leaked draft of a report under development by a United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The document is not final and could change before it is released in March.
The report also finds other sweeping impacts from climate change already occurring across the planet, and warns that these are likely to intensify as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise. The scientists describe a natural world in turmoil as plants and animals colonize new areas to escape rising temperatures, and warn that many could become extinct.
The warning on the food supply is the sharpest in tone the panel has issued. Its previous report, in 2007, was more hopeful. While it did warn of risks and potential losses in output, particularly in the tropics, that report found that gains in production at higher latitudes would most likely offset the losses and ensure an adequate global supply.
The new tone reflects a large body of research in recent years that has shown how sensitive crops appear to be to heat waves. The recent work also challenges previous assumptions about how much food production could increase in coming decades because of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The gas, though it is the main reason for global warming, also acts as a kind of fertilizer for plants.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the principal scientific body charged with reviewing and assessing climate science, then issuing reports about the risks to the world’s governments. Its main reports come out every five to six years. The group won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore, in 2007 for its efforts.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent every year to reduce emissions in response to past findings from the group, though many analysts have said these efforts are so far inadequate to head off drastic climatic changes later in the century.
On the food supply, the new report finds that benefits from global warming may be seen in some areas, like northern lands that are now marginal for food production. But it adds that over all, global warming could reduce agricultural production by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century.
During that period, demand is expected to rise as much as 14 percent each decade, the report found, as the world population is projected to grow to 9.6 billion in 2050, from 7.2 billion today, according to the United Nations, and as many of those people in developing countries acquire the money to eat richer diets.
Any shortfall would lead to rising food prices that would hit the world’s poor hardest, as has already occurred from price increases of recent years. Research has found that climate change, particularly severe heat waves, was a factor in those price spikes.
The agricultural risks “are greatest for tropical countries, given projected impacts that exceed adaptive capacity and higher poverty rates compared with temperate regions,” the draft report finds.
If the report proves to be correct about the effect on crops from climate change, global food demand might have to be met — if it can be met — by putting new land into production. That could entail chopping down large areas of forest, an action that would only accelerate climate change by sending substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the air from the destruction of trees.
The report finds that efforts to adapt to climate change have already begun in many countries. President Obama signed an executive order on Friday to step up such efforts in the United States. But these efforts remain inadequate compared with the risks, the report says, and far more intensive — and expensive — adaptation plans are likely to be required in the future.
The document also finds that it is not too late for cuts in emissions to have a strong impact on the future risks of climate change, though the costs would be incurred in the next few decades and the main benefits would probably be seen in the late 21st century and beyond.
The leak of the new draft occurred on a blog hostile to the intergovernmental panel. In a brief interview, a spokesman for the panel, Jonathan Lynn, did not dispute the authenticity of the document.
“It’s a work in progress,” Mr. Lynn said. “It’s likely to change.”
Several scientists involved in drafting the document declined on Friday to speak publicly about it. In the Internet era, the group’s efforts to keep its drafts secret are proving to be a failure, and some of the scientists involved have called for a drafting process open to the public.
A report about the physical science of climate change leaked in August, then underwent only modest changes before its final release in Stockholm in late September. The new report covers the impact of climate change, efforts to adapt to it, and the vulnerability of human and natural systems.
A third report, analyzing potential ways to limit the rise of greenhouse gases, is due for release in Berlin in April.
In a departure from an earlier assessment, the scientists concluded that rising temperatures will have some beneficial effects on crops in some places, but that globally they will make it harder for crops to thrive — perhaps reducing production over all by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century, compared with what it would be without climate change.
And, the scientists say, they are already seeing the harmful effects in some regions.
The warnings come in a leaked draft of a report under development by a United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The document is not final and could change before it is released in March.
The report also finds other sweeping impacts from climate change already occurring across the planet, and warns that these are likely to intensify as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise. The scientists describe a natural world in turmoil as plants and animals colonize new areas to escape rising temperatures, and warn that many could become extinct.
The warning on the food supply is the sharpest in tone the panel has issued. Its previous report, in 2007, was more hopeful. While it did warn of risks and potential losses in output, particularly in the tropics, that report found that gains in production at higher latitudes would most likely offset the losses and ensure an adequate global supply.
The new tone reflects a large body of research in recent years that has shown how sensitive crops appear to be to heat waves. The recent work also challenges previous assumptions about how much food production could increase in coming decades because of higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The gas, though it is the main reason for global warming, also acts as a kind of fertilizer for plants.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the principal scientific body charged with reviewing and assessing climate science, then issuing reports about the risks to the world’s governments. Its main reports come out every five to six years. The group won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore, in 2007 for its efforts.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent every year to reduce emissions in response to past findings from the group, though many analysts have said these efforts are so far inadequate to head off drastic climatic changes later in the century.
On the food supply, the new report finds that benefits from global warming may be seen in some areas, like northern lands that are now marginal for food production. But it adds that over all, global warming could reduce agricultural production by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century.
During that period, demand is expected to rise as much as 14 percent each decade, the report found, as the world population is projected to grow to 9.6 billion in 2050, from 7.2 billion today, according to the United Nations, and as many of those people in developing countries acquire the money to eat richer diets.
Any shortfall would lead to rising food prices that would hit the world’s poor hardest, as has already occurred from price increases of recent years. Research has found that climate change, particularly severe heat waves, was a factor in those price spikes.
The agricultural risks “are greatest for tropical countries, given projected impacts that exceed adaptive capacity and higher poverty rates compared with temperate regions,” the draft report finds.
If the report proves to be correct about the effect on crops from climate change, global food demand might have to be met — if it can be met — by putting new land into production. That could entail chopping down large areas of forest, an action that would only accelerate climate change by sending substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the air from the destruction of trees.
The report finds that efforts to adapt to climate change have already begun in many countries. President Obama signed an executive order on Friday to step up such efforts in the United States. But these efforts remain inadequate compared with the risks, the report says, and far more intensive — and expensive — adaptation plans are likely to be required in the future.
The document also finds that it is not too late for cuts in emissions to have a strong impact on the future risks of climate change, though the costs would be incurred in the next few decades and the main benefits would probably be seen in the late 21st century and beyond.
The leak of the new draft occurred on a blog hostile to the intergovernmental panel. In a brief interview, a spokesman for the panel, Jonathan Lynn, did not dispute the authenticity of the document.
“It’s a work in progress,” Mr. Lynn said. “It’s likely to change.”
Several scientists involved in drafting the document declined on Friday to speak publicly about it. In the Internet era, the group’s efforts to keep its drafts secret are proving to be a failure, and some of the scientists involved have called for a drafting process open to the public.
A report about the physical science of climate change leaked in August, then underwent only modest changes before its final release in Stockholm in late September. The new report covers the impact of climate change, efforts to adapt to it, and the vulnerability of human and natural systems.
A third report, analyzing potential ways to limit the rise of greenhouse gases, is due for release in Berlin in April.
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10) Parole Is Granted in a 1995 Killing Investigated by a Brooklyn Detective
By FRANCES ROBLES
A man convicted of shooting and killing a 4-year-old girl nearly 20 years ago in Brooklyn was granted parole this week after doubts were raised about the tactics used by the detective who interrogated him.
That detective, Louis Scarcella, is the focus of a continuing investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which reopened 50 of his trial convictions after it was revealed that he might have helped frame an innocent man and used the same witness over and over again.
The New York State Board of Parole decided to release Sundhe Moses, 37, after his lawyers documented flaws in his prosecution in the child’s killing — a sharp departure for the board, which historically required inmates to admit guilt and express remorse to be set free.
The decision was the first time since the district attorney’s review of the 50 cases commenced in May that a defendant investigated by Mr. Scarcella, who is retired, had been ordered released.
“I’m forgiving, but I’m also angry,” Mr. Moses said on Friday by phone from Bare Hill Correctional Facility in Malone, near the Canadian border. “I lost a lot of time in prison.”
Mr. Moses was convicted of the August 1995 killing of Shamone Johnson, who died when a group of armed men seeking revenge for the death of a friend known as “Killer Ben” opened fire on a playground in a Brownsville public housing complex.
When he testified at his 1997 murder trial, Mr. Moses said one detective wrote the confession while Mr. Scarcella used physical abuse to get him to sign it.
Over the years, other inmates had made similar claims about Mr. Scarcella, which he has denied. One inmate, David Ranta, was released in March after 23 years in prison when the district attorney’s office documented a series of problems with the detective’s work. The office’s Conviction Integrity Unit later opened its review of the 50 cases.
Mr. Moses enlisted lawyers to take up his case after reading an investigation of Mr. Scarcella in The New York Times earlier this year. A 26-year-old junior lawyer, Leah M. Busby, tracked down witnesses on the inmate’s behalf.
The parole board made its decision after a key witness to the playground shooting recanted. The witness, Sharron Ivory, told Ms. Busby, and then investigators from the district attorney’s office, that detectives had coached him on which person to pick out. Mr. Ivory was also able to demonstrate that in the months before the trial, he had amended his account of the killing to coincide with details that the police provided, such as the kind of gun an assailant had used.
“I sent in a notarized affidavit with an apology to this man for lying on him and for helping a dirty cop taking this man’s life from him,” Mr. Ivory, who is in prison in connection with an unrelated homicide, wrote to the parole board. His recantation was especially valuable because the victim was his cousin.
Ms. Busby also sent the board an affidavit declaring Mr. Moses’ innocence that was signed by one of the men who had participated in the crime but had been acquitted. Because of the acquittal, that defendant cannot be retried.
Lawyers say preparing a parole application based on a claim of innocence is risky, because parole boards want to see inmates say they are sorry. A defendant who lacks remorse is considered more likely to commit other crimes. Indeed, a guilty person who pretends to be remorseful is more likely to be released than a person who says he did not do it, said Daniel S. Medwed, a Northeastern University professor who has studied the issue.
“It is grounded in the 19th-century quasi-religious belief that you have to come to Jesus and admit your sins to be saved,” Professor Medwed said. “Therefore, a prisoner who claims innocence has no real reason for doing it. It’s going to hurt you more than help you.”
The parole board has, in isolated instances, granted parole to inmates who claimed innocence, suggesting a growing acknowledgment of the possibility of wrongful convictions, Professor Medwed said.
At his first parole hearing two years ago, Mr. Moses accepted responsibility for the crime and apologized. He recently said he decided to change his testimony because he finally had something tangible that could give credence to his allegations of misconduct.
“Saying ‘I’m not going to admit to something I did not do’ and tell the truth is the glamorous thing and the moral thing, because you want to believe the truth will prevail,” Mr. Moses said. “But what’s going to get you home? I wrestled with that so bad.”
Mr. Moses had a hearing before the board on Tuesday and received notice on Thursday that his parole had been granted. The board’s letter to him stated that the commissioners came to the decision because of his interview with the board and a review of the case record, he said.
“I was so happy when I talked to Sunny, and when I talked to his mother is when I started to cry,” Ms. Busby said. “She has been praying for this for a long, long time. This has just killed her.”
Ms. Busby’s employer, Ronald L. Kuby, said the parole board’s decision was highly unusual, particularly in a high-profile case involving an innocent child victim.
Mr. Kuby said he and Ms. Busby would wait for the results of the district attorney’s investigation of Mr. Scarcella’s cases before deciding whether to take the innocence claim to court.
The prosecutor who tried the case, now a top lawyer in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, sent a letter to the parole board opposing Mr. Moses’ release.
“While this conviction is in fact under review, there is no reason to grant the inmate’s present application for parole release,” wrote the prosecutor, Lance Ogiste, who is now counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes.
“It should be noted that the detective who the inmate claims coerced his confession was not one of the detectives to whom the confession was made.”
He attached a transcript of Mr. Moses’ 2011 parole hearing, when he told the board he was guilty.
Arlene Brown, the victim’s foster mother, also said she remained convinced of Mr. Moses’ guilt, because he lived in Fort Greene, where the gang that committed the killing was from.
“If he wants to carry that blood on his hands, he has to live with it,” Ms. Brown said. “What goes around comes around. If he murdered God’s child, in due time he will get his. God will take care of him.” Mr. Moses is expected home by early December.
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11) Snowden Asks U.S. to Stop Treating Him Like a Traitor
By ALISON SMALE
BERLIN — Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American security contractor granted temporary asylum by Russia, has appealed to Washington to stop treating him like a traitor for revealing that the United States has been eavesdropping on its allies, a German politician who met with Mr. Snowden said on Friday.
Mr. Snowden made his appeal in a letter that was carried to Berlin by Hans-Christian Ströbele, a veteran member of the Green Party in the German Parliament. Mr. Ströbele said he and two journalists for German news outlets met with Mr. Snowden and a person described as his assistant — probably his British aide, Sarah Harrison — at an undisclosed location in or near Moscow on Thursday for almost three hours.
Mr. Ströbele had gone to Moscow to explore whether Mr. Snowden could or would testify before a planned parliamentary inquiry into the eavesdropping. Any arrangements for Mr. Snowden to testify would require significant legal maneuvering, as it seemed unlikely that he would travel to Germany for fear of extradition to the United States.
In his letter, Mr. Snowden, 30, also appealed for clemency. He said his disclosures about American intelligence activity at home and abroad, which he called “systematic violations of law by my government that created a moral duty to act,” have had positive effects.
Yet “my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense,” Mr. Snowden wrote. “However, speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.”
Mr. Ströbele, 74, is a seasoned left-wing defense lawyer and the longest-serving member of the parliamentary committee that oversees German intelligence. At a packed news conference after his return to Berlin, he said he was contacted about going to Moscow late last week after the German government said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone might have been tapped by American intelligence agents. He declined to elaborate, but said he has had no dealings with the Russian authorities or the German Embassy in Moscow.
He deftly parried requests to reveal more, while appealing to the governments and citizens of Germany, France and the United States to stop treating Mr. Snowden as a criminal.
Instead, Mr. Ströbele said, echoing an opinion gaining support here, Germany should thank Mr. Snowden. After ARD, the premier German television network, reported on Thursday night about the Moscow visit, it broadcast a commentary arguing that Germany should show gratitude for his exposure of United States intelligence practices.
Mr. Ströbele said he had found Mr. Snowden lucid and well informed. He said he had been told that Mr. Snowden was allowed to go shopping, but Mr. Ströbele declined to reveal any other details about Mr. Snowden’s routine.
News about the visit to Moscow eclipsed a number of interviews given on Thursday by the American ambassador, John B. Emerson, who tried to assuage German fears that the United States Embassy in Berlin was the center for monitoring Ms. Merkel and other well-placed Germans.
Mr. Emerson, who arrived in Berlin two months ago and is a strong proponent of a landmark American and European trade deal under negotiation, was summoned to the German Foreign Ministry last week after Berlin’s suspicions about eavesdropping on Ms. Merkel were made public. The action was unprecedented in post-World War II relations between the United States and Germany.
Ms. Merkel, while palpably angry in appearances last week, has made no direct statements since, quietly sending two senior advisers to Washington this week to begin re-establishing the trust she said had been breached.
Mr. Ströbele’s news conference yielded moments of humor as well. At one point, his cellphone rang. He pulled it out, looked at it and asked cheerfully, “Does anybody know the chancellor’s number?” Asked to speculate about which intelligence services might have monitored his trip to Moscow, he said with a smile, “I assume that they are all interested.”
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12) Twitter Helps Revive a Seedy San Francisco Neighborhood
By KRISTINA SHEVORY
November 1, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/business/twitter-helps-revive-a-seedy-san-francisco-neighborhood.html?ref=us
SAN FRANCISCO — The middle stretch of Market Street here has befuddled mayors, investors and entrepreneurs for decades.
Studded with check-cashing joints, strip clubs and dollar stores, the seven-block strip known as the Mid-Market had resisted cleanup efforts and resolutely remained the same: a seedy place to visit day or night. Even the area’s community groups said they were fearful.
Mid-Market is home to some of the highest vacancy rates in the city for office or retail, despite its proximity to City Hall, which is a few blocks away.
So it seemed implausible that a young company, heralded as one of the technology industry’s next big things, would want to make its headquarters in Mid-Market. But in April 2011, that young company, Twitter, dispelled rumors that it was leaving San Francisco for a nearby city suburb and instead announced it was relocating to Mid-Market. In June 2012, it moved in.
Twitter leased space from Shorenstein Properties, a real estate firm based in San Francisco, known for its blue-chip office towers in the Financial District here. Shorenstein bought an 11-story building in 2011 fronting Mid-Market that had been vacant for five years. For them, it made sense to buy the undervalued Art Deco landmark built in 1937, which had some of the most spacious floor plans in the city at a time when office space was tight. Twitter signed a lease until 2021 for 295,000 square feet in the building and could expand that as its work force grows. “In our gut, we believed if we changed it, they would come. We thought it would be a real catalyst for the neighborhood,” said Charles W. Malet, chief investment officer for Shorenstein Properties.
Now 15 other companies, like Spotify, Square and Yammer, emboldened by Twitter’s move and a city tax incentive that largely exempts them from city payroll taxes if they relocate to the Mid-Market, have committed to take 1.3 million square feet in the area, which the city has renamed Central Market. Apartment towers with 5,500 units are in the works, and arts groups, chefs, retailers and even a venture capital firm have taken up residence.
“You had a once vacant and blighted area that is now a gravitational center for some of the most innovative companies in the world,” said Todd Rufo, director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
Not to be outdone, the rest of San Francisco is in the middle of an impressive building boom. Developers are building office towers downtown for the first time in five years, many confident enough to build without signed leases for the space. Other buildings are undergoing extensive renovation. Branches of technology companies, old and new, like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, are expanding or moving to the city and now make up more than half of demand for office space. (During the tech bubble in the late 1990s, tech accounted for only a quarter of demand.)
“People tend to build when they can lease and make money,” said Meade N. Boutwell, a senior vice president at commercial real estate brokerage C.B.R.E. in San Francisco.
In 2013, San Francisco became the second-most-expensive city in the country, behind New York, in which to rent office space. Rents rose from to $53.84 per square foot from $46.12 in the third quarter, according to C.B.R.E. Vacancy levels stand at 8.2 percent, down from 9.7 percent the same time last year. Four years ago, it was 15 percent.
Rob Speyer, co-chief executive officer of Tishman Speyer, a big real estate developer based in New York, said, “San Francisco has led the U.S. commercial real estate market out of the financial crisis.”
Tishman Speyer is betting heavily on the city by starting construction on two speculative office buildings with debt-free financing. After buying a parking lot in an area called South of Market, or SoMa, the firm began building the city’s first speculative office tower since the recession.
Nearly 18 months into construction, Neustar, a data analytics company, agreed to lease four of the building’s 10 floors to consolidate its Bay Area offices.
“This is a strategic decision for 10 years, not three,” said Mark F. Bregman, Neustar’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.
Tishman Speyer is also gambling on another former parking lot, where a 26-story office tower is taking shape and should open in two years. No leases have been signed yet, but Mr. Speyer said the decision “took less courage than others.”
Mr. Speyer added: “There were literally no construction starts, vacancy was dropping into the low single digits and rents were increasing 30 percent a year. It was obvious to us the market could support not just one but several buildings.”
The emphasis on San Francisco signifies how Silicon Valley, an area extending south from just below San Francisco to San Jose, Calif., no longer has a grip on technology companies. About 18 months ago, tech companies started moving or expanding here to be closer to their employees.
Venture capitalists, traditionally sequestered in the valley to be close to start-ups and entrepreneurs, are also setting up outposts in San Francisco. Some of the biggest, like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, have opened offices here to give them a place to incubate their seed companies and to hold events to meet new ones.
Christina Lee, a marketing and communications partner at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, Calif., said “the partnership is more active in the city than in the last four decades.”
The tax incentive offered by the city gives companies moving to the Mid-Market neighborhood a break from paying the city’s 1.5 percent payroll tax for six years on employees hired after its move. Before the city passed the incentive, it was estimated Twitter would save about $22 million over six years. The city would not provide updated savings figures, saying it was confidential information.
The city also now offers all companies a tax break on stock options when they are exercised. And now that Twitter is poised to issue its initial public offering next Wednesday, some analysts have estimated that San Francisco could lose millions of dollars more in revenue if Twitter’s employees begin cashing in their options.
Karen Wickre, a spokeswoman for Twitter, defended the tax breaks the company had received. “The mayor and board of supervisors realized the existing tax structure taxed job creation, so to keep start-ups like ours in the city, they created a limited exemption for the Mid-Market zone,” she said. “The tax exemption was certainly a factor, but so was the chance to stay in the city in a landmark building.”
Although the payroll tax break gets much credit for drawing companies to the neighborhood, its spacious buildings also attracted companies at a time when the vacancy rate in SoMa, where many of the tech companies have opened offices, is 3 to 4 percent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, the real estate services company.
So the Mid-Market area began to look attractive to developers. TMG Partners and DivcoWest, San Francisco real estate firms, bought a 16-story 354,000-square-foot government building in 2011 a block away from Twitter’s new office. Even though it is outside the payroll tax exclusion zone, the company renovated it for leasing. Dolby Laboratories, the audio company, agreed to purchase it for $110 million in 2012.
“People look at that and say, ‘What a deal,’ but we saw a transitioning neighborhood and foresaw it taking off in three to five years, not two,” said Matt Field, a managing director at TMG Partners. With 700 employees scattered in three aging rental buildings in San Francisco, Dolby needed a central building and did not want to leave the city where it was founded. Very few buildings were large enough and could be renovated for laboratories.
“You really have to be looking forward if you’re buying this building in this neighborhood. We’re buying for the future,” said Lewis Chew, chief financial officer for Dolby.
Across the street from Twitter, Crescent Heights, a Miami developer, is erecting a 754-unit apartment complex that is the biggest of the new residential developments in the neighborhood. Its first 26-story tower opened last month, and a second building, with 37 stories, will open next year.
After Twitter announced it was moving to the area, the developer scrapped its original plans and tailored the apartments for the tech workers who would be employed nearby. Residents of NEMA, short for New Market, as the development is called, will have amenities like a saltwater pool, landscaped terraces, valet parking and dog-walking services.
“We wanted to participate even more in the renaissance of the area. We wanted to set an example and provide the most creative offerings,” said Bruce Menin, principal at Crescent Heights.
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13) That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts
By AZAM AHMED
ISLAM
QALA, Afghanistan — The addicts stalk the streets of this border post
like hollowed-out skeletons, hair matted by filth and eyes glassy. The
villages that hug the roads are veritable zombie towns, where families
of men, women and children hide their addiction within barren mud
compounds.
“Sometimes I feel it is better to die than live like this,” said Haidar, 30, seated on the floor of his living room beside a small tin of sugarlike powder.
His family, a wife and young children, bore the gaunt faces of addiction as well.
In western Herat Province, held up as an island of stability and progress in Afghanistan, this forlorn border town is instead a showcase for an intensifying crisis: Long the global leader in opium production, Afghanistan has now also become one of the world’s most addicted societies.
The number of drug users in Afghanistan is estimated to be as high as 1.6 million, or about 5.3 percent of the population, among the highest rates in the world. Nationwide, one in 10 urban households has at least one drug user, according to a recent report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In the city of Herat, it is one in five.
From 2005 to 2009, the use of opiates doubled, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, putting Afghanistan on par with Russia and Iran, and the number of heroin users jumped more than 140 percent. Most drug experts think the rate of drug use has only increased since then.
In a country troubled by adversity, from its long-running war to rampant corruption, drug addiction ranks low among national priorities. Government funding for treatment and outreach is less than $4 million a year. There are just under 28,000 formal treatment slots available nationwide, officials say, and such programs rely heavily on roughly $12 million a year in extra international funding for treatment.
The focus of the international community and the Afghan government has instead been on reducing opium production. Since the beginning of the war in 2001, the Americans have spent more than $6 billion to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, including eradication and alternative crop subsidies. The effort has struggled, and in many areas eradication efforts have been unofficially abandoned as too costly in terms of lost public support for government.
In the last two years, opium cultivation has increased to the highest level since 2008, as global demand and prices remain robust.
The sheer volume of supply has fueled domestic demand, a phenomenon the United Nations drug czar in Afghanistan refers to as “the Coca-Cola effect,” after the company’s market-saturation tactics.
Cementing the status quo is a lack of treatment options, like methadone substitution, or a holistic plan to address the crisis.
“This is a tsunami for our country,” said Dr. Ahmad Fawad Osmani, the director of drug demand reduction for the Ministry of Public Health. “The only thing our drug production has brought us is one million drug users.”
While it has grown far worse in the past few years, the drug crisis in Afghanistan is not new. International health officials caught on early to the problem, which in some measure stemmed from the traditional use of opium for medication.
In fact, one of the earliest challenges Afghan security forces had to surmount was a public image as a band of opium-addled thieves.
The problem, while more controlled, still exists: Just last month, the nation’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, fired 65 employees after discovering they were addicted to opium.
In rural areas, the problem is expected to be worse. In some villages, the rate of drug use is as high as 30 percent of the population, based on hair, urine and saliva samples taken by the authors of the urban study. And drugs not traditionally in wide use here, including crystal methamphetamine, are now figuring in the problem as well.
Perhaps nowhere in Afghanistan presents a bleaker picture of addiction than Herat Province. Widely held up as a success story, the province enjoys a booming economy, a relatively progressive society and a vibrant capital free of the trash-strewn streets and waterways that choke most large Afghan cities.
But beneath the surface, Herat is contending with the country’s most serious drug addiction problem.
The head of the counternarcotics ministry in Herat says there are 60,000 to 70,000 addicts in the province, though some health officials figure the number is closer to 100,000. In the capital, roughly 8 percent of the population uses drugs, the new international report found.
The addiction crisis brings with it all manner of problems, including crime and public health concerns. A 2010 report by Johns Hopkins University found that about 18 percent of intravenous drug users in the provincial capital were infected with H.I.V., compared with just 3 percent in Kabul.
Long a staging area for men who work as day laborers in Iran, Islam Qala is now also a frequent waypoint for addicts returning to Herat. Most of the men say they picked up their habits while in Iran. The authorities there, struggling to deal with a widespread drug crisis of their own, are quick to banish Afghan addicts back across the border by the thousands, and the deported people stream back into Islam Qala six days a week.
In Herat’s capital, addicts fill the streets and parks, begging from pedestrians and motorists with relentless persistence. Pockets of the city have been transformed into junkie ghettos, like Kamar Kulagh, a roadside slum of sandbags, rocks and rags.
On a recent day, the faint outline of figures crawled through the bleached landscape, situated to the side of a highway on the northern edge of the city. Broken glass covered the hillside leading down to the encampment.
A makeshift lounge constructed of a discarded truck grill and broken toilet seats offered respite from the sun. The smell of feces wafted through the air.
Azim Niazi, 30, shuffled through the village clutching two bags bulging with empty bottles, recycling them to pay for a drug habit that he said he had picked up as a laborer in Iran.
Wahid Ahmad, 27, who said he had been living there since he was deported from Iran two years ago, joined him.
The two began discussing the death that morning of one of the camp residents, a man they knew only as Reza.
“This is the third day someone has died here,” Mr. Ahmad said, listing the illnesses that plague residents of the camp. He paused, reflecting for a moment as the whir of traffic raced by above. Bloodshot eyes crouched within his gaunt face.
The pair walked deeper into the camp to check on Reza’s body, stretched out in a stone den with a yellowed plastic roof. Reza lay on his back, the bottom of his gray shalwar pulled over his emaciated face. Flies buzzed in and out of the hovel. A heavy perfume masked the decay.
“His friend will die tomorrow,” said Mr. Niazi, pointing to a man, a skeleton cloaked in skin, lying in a sliver of shade nearby.
A man strolled past, carting his 2-year-old daughter in his arms.
Though many of the addicts in Herat came by way of Iran and Islam Qala, others decided to stay nearer the border — or are simply unable to make their own way anymore.
Substance abuse has taken root in the local community too, infecting entire villages around Islam Qala, including young children hooked by secondhand opium smoke.
“The entire region is addicted, whole villages,” said Arbah Shahabuddin, an elder in Islam Qala. “If you take off your shoes, the addicts will steal them.”
To demonstrate the devastation, Mr. Shahabuddin, a homeopathic doctor, offered a tour of the drug villages.
A maze of dirt roads divides the homes, which sit behind high mud walls. Mr. Shahabuddin pointed to the new construction peeking over the walls of select compounds: smugglers’ homes.
“Anyone here that looks clean is a smuggler,” he explained.
House to house, Mr. Shahabuddin went, dragging families from their compounds into the blinding daylight to tell their stories. They stood startled, somewhat incoherent and mostly debilitated by addiction.
At one home, a woman answered the door and ran to collect her husband, Dad Mohammad, who was getting high. Mr. Mohammad, 35, said he had been using heroin for the past seven years. “It’s very easy to find heroin here,” he said.
His wife, Bibi Gul, standing in the doorway of their home, complained that her husband beat her every day and took money from their children to feed his addiction.
Mr. Mohammad, wearing a woolen hat in the midday heat, stared into the distance, smiling.
“Sometimes I feel it is better to die than live like this,” said Haidar, 30, seated on the floor of his living room beside a small tin of sugarlike powder.
His family, a wife and young children, bore the gaunt faces of addiction as well.
In western Herat Province, held up as an island of stability and progress in Afghanistan, this forlorn border town is instead a showcase for an intensifying crisis: Long the global leader in opium production, Afghanistan has now also become one of the world’s most addicted societies.
The number of drug users in Afghanistan is estimated to be as high as 1.6 million, or about 5.3 percent of the population, among the highest rates in the world. Nationwide, one in 10 urban households has at least one drug user, according to a recent report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In the city of Herat, it is one in five.
From 2005 to 2009, the use of opiates doubled, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, putting Afghanistan on par with Russia and Iran, and the number of heroin users jumped more than 140 percent. Most drug experts think the rate of drug use has only increased since then.
In a country troubled by adversity, from its long-running war to rampant corruption, drug addiction ranks low among national priorities. Government funding for treatment and outreach is less than $4 million a year. There are just under 28,000 formal treatment slots available nationwide, officials say, and such programs rely heavily on roughly $12 million a year in extra international funding for treatment.
The focus of the international community and the Afghan government has instead been on reducing opium production. Since the beginning of the war in 2001, the Americans have spent more than $6 billion to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, including eradication and alternative crop subsidies. The effort has struggled, and in many areas eradication efforts have been unofficially abandoned as too costly in terms of lost public support for government.
In the last two years, opium cultivation has increased to the highest level since 2008, as global demand and prices remain robust.
The sheer volume of supply has fueled domestic demand, a phenomenon the United Nations drug czar in Afghanistan refers to as “the Coca-Cola effect,” after the company’s market-saturation tactics.
Cementing the status quo is a lack of treatment options, like methadone substitution, or a holistic plan to address the crisis.
“This is a tsunami for our country,” said Dr. Ahmad Fawad Osmani, the director of drug demand reduction for the Ministry of Public Health. “The only thing our drug production has brought us is one million drug users.”
While it has grown far worse in the past few years, the drug crisis in Afghanistan is not new. International health officials caught on early to the problem, which in some measure stemmed from the traditional use of opium for medication.
In fact, one of the earliest challenges Afghan security forces had to surmount was a public image as a band of opium-addled thieves.
The problem, while more controlled, still exists: Just last month, the nation’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, fired 65 employees after discovering they were addicted to opium.
In rural areas, the problem is expected to be worse. In some villages, the rate of drug use is as high as 30 percent of the population, based on hair, urine and saliva samples taken by the authors of the urban study. And drugs not traditionally in wide use here, including crystal methamphetamine, are now figuring in the problem as well.
Perhaps nowhere in Afghanistan presents a bleaker picture of addiction than Herat Province. Widely held up as a success story, the province enjoys a booming economy, a relatively progressive society and a vibrant capital free of the trash-strewn streets and waterways that choke most large Afghan cities.
But beneath the surface, Herat is contending with the country’s most serious drug addiction problem.
The head of the counternarcotics ministry in Herat says there are 60,000 to 70,000 addicts in the province, though some health officials figure the number is closer to 100,000. In the capital, roughly 8 percent of the population uses drugs, the new international report found.
The addiction crisis brings with it all manner of problems, including crime and public health concerns. A 2010 report by Johns Hopkins University found that about 18 percent of intravenous drug users in the provincial capital were infected with H.I.V., compared with just 3 percent in Kabul.
Long a staging area for men who work as day laborers in Iran, Islam Qala is now also a frequent waypoint for addicts returning to Herat. Most of the men say they picked up their habits while in Iran. The authorities there, struggling to deal with a widespread drug crisis of their own, are quick to banish Afghan addicts back across the border by the thousands, and the deported people stream back into Islam Qala six days a week.
In Herat’s capital, addicts fill the streets and parks, begging from pedestrians and motorists with relentless persistence. Pockets of the city have been transformed into junkie ghettos, like Kamar Kulagh, a roadside slum of sandbags, rocks and rags.
On a recent day, the faint outline of figures crawled through the bleached landscape, situated to the side of a highway on the northern edge of the city. Broken glass covered the hillside leading down to the encampment.
A makeshift lounge constructed of a discarded truck grill and broken toilet seats offered respite from the sun. The smell of feces wafted through the air.
Azim Niazi, 30, shuffled through the village clutching two bags bulging with empty bottles, recycling them to pay for a drug habit that he said he had picked up as a laborer in Iran.
Wahid Ahmad, 27, who said he had been living there since he was deported from Iran two years ago, joined him.
The two began discussing the death that morning of one of the camp residents, a man they knew only as Reza.
“This is the third day someone has died here,” Mr. Ahmad said, listing the illnesses that plague residents of the camp. He paused, reflecting for a moment as the whir of traffic raced by above. Bloodshot eyes crouched within his gaunt face.
The pair walked deeper into the camp to check on Reza’s body, stretched out in a stone den with a yellowed plastic roof. Reza lay on his back, the bottom of his gray shalwar pulled over his emaciated face. Flies buzzed in and out of the hovel. A heavy perfume masked the decay.
“His friend will die tomorrow,” said Mr. Niazi, pointing to a man, a skeleton cloaked in skin, lying in a sliver of shade nearby.
A man strolled past, carting his 2-year-old daughter in his arms.
Though many of the addicts in Herat came by way of Iran and Islam Qala, others decided to stay nearer the border — or are simply unable to make their own way anymore.
Substance abuse has taken root in the local community too, infecting entire villages around Islam Qala, including young children hooked by secondhand opium smoke.
“The entire region is addicted, whole villages,” said Arbah Shahabuddin, an elder in Islam Qala. “If you take off your shoes, the addicts will steal them.”
To demonstrate the devastation, Mr. Shahabuddin, a homeopathic doctor, offered a tour of the drug villages.
A maze of dirt roads divides the homes, which sit behind high mud walls. Mr. Shahabuddin pointed to the new construction peeking over the walls of select compounds: smugglers’ homes.
“Anyone here that looks clean is a smuggler,” he explained.
House to house, Mr. Shahabuddin went, dragging families from their compounds into the blinding daylight to tell their stories. They stood startled, somewhat incoherent and mostly debilitated by addiction.
At one home, a woman answered the door and ran to collect her husband, Dad Mohammad, who was getting high. Mr. Mohammad, 35, said he had been using heroin for the past seven years. “It’s very easy to find heroin here,” he said.
His wife, Bibi Gul, standing in the doorway of their home, complained that her husband beat her every day and took money from their children to feed his addiction.
Mr. Mohammad, wearing a woolen hat in the midday heat, stared into the distance, smiling.
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14) The Cellblocks’ Amazon.com
By ALAN FEUER
November 1, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/sendapackage-bills-itself-as-new-yorks-inmate-superstore.html?ref=nyregion
A couple of weeks ago, a street team from Sendapackage.com was standing on a sidewalk near Columbus Circle in Manhattan talking with a dozen women about to board a charter bus that would take them upstate to visit their relatives in prison. It was 10 p.m. and many of the women huddled in the darkness were toting sleepy children; most were also burdened with plastic bags of Pop Tarts, pretzels, cookies and potato chips — junk food unavailable to men behind bars.
The team from Sendapackage, which could be thought of as prison’s version of Amazon.com, was handing out glossy catalogs offering New York’s 50,000 inmates hundreds of items for purchase and delivery: soft drinks, cigarettes, canned ravioli, cotton hoodies and — perhaps most popular of all — music on cassette tape, the only format that corrections regulations will allow.
“We’ve got same-day shipping and a 10 percent discount on first-time orders,” the team’s coordinator, Zerimar Ramirez (or Mr. Z), was telling the group. As some of the women flipped with interest through the product line, a video crew stood ready if any of them cared to go on camera and provide a testimonial.
Though it might surprise many who have no experience with prison, sending packages to loved ones doing time can be, as thousands of local families know, a Kafkaesque process. Beyond the hassle of going to several stores to assemble a package, and then having to take it to the post office or UPS, is navigating a welter of rules governing what is allowable.
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision publishes a list, currently more than 20 pages long, of who can send what, and how, and what is permitted and what is not. Food cannot contain poppy seeds; emery boards must be “nonmetallic”; boxer shorts and briefs must be of a solid color only.
“I thought there had to be a better way,” said Chris Barrett, Sendapackage’s founder, who seems to have discovered that way on the Internet. The items that Mr. Barrett’s service sells online (as well as through its catalog) have all been chosen in advance to adhere to the extensive directives put in place for gifts by the corrections department. His selection is comprehensive and diverse enough that the company bills itself as “New York’s inmate superstore.”
In a city that appears more and more to be colonized by corporate-funded start-ups, Sendapackage, which is two years old, has an exceptionally personal creation myth. The idea came to Mr. Barrett in 2008, not long after his younger brother, Robert Maffei, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for a murder in Brooklyn. When he was 19, Mr. Maffei killed a man after firing a pistol from a moving car. After he was put away, Mr. Barrett, who had himself served six years on a mob-related gun charge, tried to send him some deodorant and a package of salami at the Sullivan Correctional Facility, in Fallsburg.
Mr. Barrett was unaware that the items had been made with alcohol, which is forbidden inside prison. As he recounts the story, a guard disposed of his well-intentioned gifts as soon as they arrived.
“Eventually I started hearing that other people — wives and moms who didn’t know the rules, who didn’t have time to go shopping — were having the same problem,” Mr. Barrett said. “I began to sense there was a need here, a real need.”
Though he had worked in marketing and been a nightclub co-owner after his release from prison, Mr. Barrett at that point had no experience as a digital entrepreneur. So he took a year, he said, pricing items, building a website and developing relationships with vendors — “Everything we needed,” he explained, “to pitch the idea.”
In late 2010, after several months of looking for an angel, he finally persuaded a Brooklyn businessman to fund his nascent venture with a personal check for $1.5 million.
Within six months, Mr. Barrett had rented space in a warehouse in the Bronx and quickly filled its shelves with basic items: brushed-twill baseball caps, cans of Beefaroni. As time went by, he added to his inventory, gradually expanding into watches, gummi bears, stereo headphones and exfoliating moisturizing creams.
Last year, he struck what was his biggest and most promising deal to date, persuading Universal Records to produce, on cassette, a line of new music popular with inmates. Compact discs are not allowed in prison because they can be broken into shivs. But arguing that he had access to an audience that was literally captive, Mr. Barrett persuaded Universal to manufacture a limited supply of R&B and hip-hop tapes, in an exclusive arrangement, provided that he bought them on consignment and in bulk.
“No one makes cassette tapes anymore,” Mr. Barrett said, still sounding vaguely amazed. “I’m probably the only guy on the planet with Kanye West’s new album on tape.”
Judging by the letters he has received, Mr. Barrett, who is slim of build and 40, has managed to transform himself into something like the R. H. Macy of the state prison system.
“While looking through your catalog, a couple of things caught my eye,” one customer, in the Downstate Correctional Facility, wrote. “Your prices, which are very reasonable, and your wide selection of things, such as sneakers, boots, headsets, blankets, winter coats, thermals, books, TVs, radios, beard trimmers and cosmetics.”
Even the state corrections department, an agency not known for its entrepreneurial spirit, has quietly supported Mr. Barrett’s efforts. Declining to comment specifically on Sendapackage, Tom Mailey, a department spokesman, said, “From our point of view, any vendor that is compliant with the rules and regulations and directives regarding packages will work for us.”
On an ordinary day, Sendapackage handles up to 40 orders. About a third are placed online by relatives on the outside; most of the rest arrive from inside prisons by telephone or mail.
Mr. Barrett said the average order was usually in the neighborhood of $110. With seven employees, he currently serves all of New York’s 58 state prisons, and he would like to expand into neighboring Pennsylvania and into states like Texas and California, which have very large numbers of inmates. After paying for its inventory, Sendapackage earns about $800,000 a year, Mr. Barrett said. He said he was simply waiting to accrue sufficient capital to grow.
“We’re not making a killing yet,” he said. “But we’re getting there.”
While some might be squeamish about having a criminal customer base, Mr. Barrett, perhaps because of his own incarceration, offers the same kinds of promotions and perks that businesses whose clients are on the outside use: He offers inmates a 10 percent discount on orders near their birthdays, for example (“Thank you for the generous gift certificate!” another customer wrote), and he donates 5 percent of his profits to a charity called In Arm’s Reach, which gives assistance to children with incarcerated parents.
Using his connections to the hip-hop world, made through his nightclubs and the cassette-tape deal, Mr. Barrett also hosts parties for his clients’ families, including one last Thanksgiving at which the local rapper Jadakiss appeared.
“It’s a tough experience when somebody you love goes away,” said Mr. Ramirez, the street-team coordinator who once served as the head of security at the Griffin, Mr. Barrett’s nightclub in the meatpacking district. “So on top of everything else, we try to do a few events every year that are fun.”
As far as business models go, Sendapackage’s is more or less recession-proof, and as Mr. Barrett noted, its target demographic is extremely loyal.
“I’ve never seen a business,” he said, “where you can get and keep a customer for as long as we keep ours.”
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15) Wealth in the USA
What Americans don't know and don't understand is quite an obstacle to progress.
http://www.alternet.org/media/americas-information-inequality-least-shocking-its-economic-inequality?paging=off¤t_page=1
If you think the widening chasm between the rich and the rest spells trouble for American democracy, have a look at the growing gulf between the information-rich and-poor.
Earlier this year, a Harvard economist’s jaw-dropping study of American’s beliefs about the distribution of American wealth became a viral video. Now a new Pew study of the distribution of American news consumption is just as flabbergasting.
According to the Harvard study, most people believe that the top 20 percent of the country owns about half the nation’s wealth, and that the lower 60 percent combined, including the 20 percent in the middle, have only about 20 percent of the wealth. A whopping 92 percent of Americans think this is out of whack; in the ideal distribution, they said, the lower 60 percent would have about half of the wealth, with the middle 20 percent of the people owning 20 percent of the wealth.
What’s astonishing about this is how wrong Americans are about reality. In fact, the bottom 80 percent owns only seven percent of the nation’s wealth, and the top one percent hold more of the country’s wealth—40 percent—than nine-out-of-ten people think the top 20 percent should have. The top ten percent of earners take home half the income of the country; in 2012, the top one percent earned more than a fifth of U.S. income—the highest share since the government began collecting the data a century ago.
But America’s information inequality is at least as shocking as its economic inequality.
Pew sliced the TV news audience into thirds: heavy, medium and light. In my Jeffersonian fantasy, that distribution would look like a bell curve; in fact, it looks like a cliff. Heavy viewers watch a little over two hours of TV news a day, but medium viewers barely watch a quarter of an hour and light viewers average only two minutes a day. The top third of the country does 88 percent of the day’s TV news viewing; the middle third watches only ten percent of the total time; the bottom third sees just two percent of the minutes of news consumed. Two-thirds of Americans live in an information underclass as journalistically impoverished as the minuscule bazillionaire class is triumphant. This month, the Pew Research Journalism Project reported how Americans get their news at home. If you think it’s from the Internet, you’ll be surprised that the 38 percent of us who access news at home on a desktop or laptop spend an average of only 90 seconds a day getting news online. America’s dominant news source is television, and the disparity between heavy viewers of TV news and everyone else is as startling as the gap between the plutocrats and the people.
As for those heavy news viewers, says Pew, “There is no news junkie like a cable junkie.” A heavy local news viewer watches about 22 minutes of it a day at home, and a heavy network news viewer watches about 32 minutes a day. But a heavy cable news consumer averages 72 minutes of it a day. The gap between heavy, medium and light cable news viewers is especially stark. If you’re reading this, you’re probably in that 72-minutes-of-cable-news-a-day class. But medium cable news viewers see barely more than three minutes of it a day, and light cable news viewers see about 12 seconds of it a day. In other words, either you live in the country that watches more than an hour of Blitzer, O’Reilly, Maddow, et al, a day—or in the country that watches virtually none of them at all.
If you want to know where this is heading, consider another cheery piece of Pew research. Americans 67 to 84 years old spend 84 minutes a day watching, reading or listening to the news. Boomers (48 to 66) are close behind, at 77 minutes a day. But Gen Xers (33 to 47) spend 66 minutes, and Millennials (18 to 31) spend only 46 minutes a day. The kids are tuning out. I love it that 43 percent of “The Colbert Report” audience, and 39 percent of “The Daily Show” viewers, are 18 to 29 years old; the young audiences of those fake news shows get real news from them. But fewer than a million-and-a-half Americans under 50 are watching them.
Much has been made of the ideological news bubbles we live in, where we see the world exclusively through Fox-colored lenses, or filters manufactured only by MSNBC or CNN. The Pew study upends this belief. It’s true that about one-quarter of American adults watch only Fox News, another quarter watch only CNN and 15 percent watch only MSNBC. But 28 percent of Fox News viewers also watch MSNBC, and 34 percent of MSNBC viewers watch Fox. More than half of MSNBC viewers, and nearly half of Fox viewers, watch CNN, and of CNN’s viewers, about four-out-of-ten also watch Fox, and four-out-of-ten also watch MSNBC.
It’s encouraging that our self-segregation into polarized news ghettos is a bit of a myth. But whatever joy there is in that finding is blunted by the disparity between people who watch a lot of news and people who watch almost none of it, and by the trend toward an even deeper division ahead. The danger democracy faces isn’t so much that different segments of our country inhabit alternative realities constructed from different data delivered by different news sources. It’s that a minority of the country watches a fair amount of news, and a majority may as well be living on the moon.
Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear professor of entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
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16) Clemency for Snowden? U.S. Officials Say No
By BRIAN KNOWLTON November 3, 2013 http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/clemency-for-snowden-u-s-officials-say-no/?ref=us
If Edward J. Snowden believes he deserves clemency for his disclosures of classified government documents because they provoked an important public debate about the reach of American spying, he has failed to sway the White House and at least two key members of Congress.
The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, gave sharply negative answers on Sunday when asked whether they believed Mr. Snowden had made a case for clemency.
“He was trusted; he stripped our system; he had an opportunity – if what he was, was a whistle-blower – to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say I have some information,” Ms. Feinstein said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” But “that didn’t happen.”
“He’s done this enormous disservice to our country,” she added, “and I think the answer is no clemency.”
Mr. Rogers was equally adamant.
“No, I don’t see any reason” to grant clemency, he said on the same program. “I wouldn’t do that. He needs to come back and own up. We can have those conversations, if he believes there are vulnerabilities he’d like to disclose.”
Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser, said on the ABC program “This Week” that there had been no consideration of clemency, and that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States to face charges.
Mr. Snowden’s argument – made in a “Manifesto for the Truth” published on Sunday by the German news magazine Der Spiegel and in a letter to American officials handed to a leftist German politician who met with Mr. Snowden in Moscow – was that he has started a useful debate about whether American spies are overreaching with the help of enormously powerful technology and should be reined in.
Federal prosecutors have charged Mr. Snowden with theft and with two violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. But Mr. Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia, has denied any treasonous intent, saying he disclosed secrets to the news media, not to hostile foreign powers, and did so to push for reform.
“Instead of causing damage, the usefulness of the new public knowledge for society is now clear because reforms to politics, supervision and laws are being suggested,” he wrote in Der Spiegel. “Citizens have to fight against the suppression of information about affairs of essential importance for the public. Those who speak the truth are not committing a crime.”
Indeed, Ms. Feinstein is among those who have raised the question of overreach by the National Security Agency and the need for possible reform, particularly after reports that the agency had long monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
Ms. Feinstein said on Sunday that she strongly supported a White House review to consider a more appropriate framework for intelligence operations. She wants her committee to conduct its own review.
Tapping the private phones of close allies, she said, “has much more political liability than probably intelligence viability, and I think we ought to look at it carefully. I believe the president is doing that.”
As to the question of whether President Obama could have been unaware of such phone monitoring – and whether the Europeans who have expressed outrage over National Security Agency espionage could have been truly surprised that such high-level spying goes on – Mr. Rogers replied: “I think there’s going to be some Best Actor Awards coming out of the White House this year, and Best Supporting Actor Awards coming out of the European Union.”
He said that fundamentally, the security agency was doing the work it had been created to do, a belief that Ms. Feinstein said she largely shared.
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B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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The Bay Area Battle in
Transport: Workers Face Employer Onslaught
No More Defeats Like
Wisconsin
Business Unionism vs.
Class Struggle Unionism
Meeting:
November 10 (Sunday)
2:00 PM
At: California Nurses
Association 2000 Franklin/20th St.
Oakland
2000 Franklin/20th
St., Oakland
(Near BART 20th Street Station)
Although BART workers
marched through downtown Oakland in August and October chanting "Strike, strike,
strike!", union officials shackled them with a concessionary contract.
Why did BART workers settle
for a concessionary contract after fighting for four months — striking twice, staging
militant mass rallies in downtown Oakland, and inspiring AC Transit bus drivers
and mechanics to twice vote down concessionary contracts — each time
overwhelmingly?
Why did BART workers vote so
resoundingly to approve the concessionary contract (more than 85% of those
voting voted "Yes")? Was this the best they could do? How could they
have won a better contract?
Why didn't BART union
leaders mobilize the rank and file (for example, through democratically elected
strike committees?) Why wasn't there a joint strike committee of the BART
unions (ATU 1555, SEIU 1021, and AFSCME 3993) and the AC Transit union (ATU
192)? Why did ATU 192 president Yvonne Williams denounce a joint strike of AC
Transit workers and BART workers as "Armageddon?"
Why did BART and AC Transit
union officials put their faith in Democratic politicians rather than reaching
out aggressively to labor and the community? Why did ATU 1555 leaders call on
Jerry Brown to invoke a 60-day cooling-off period to suspend the right to
strike? How can we defend the right to strike for transit workers, when
Democratic state politicians are drafting legislation to make such strikes
illegal?
Why did ILWU officials turn
their backs on their union's militant history and direct their members to cross
a picket line of port truckers and community supporters? How can ILWU members
reclaim the solidarity their union badly needs. Longshoremen are locked out at
two northwest ports. Scabs are doing their work. And negotiations for the
ILWU's master contract for all West Coast ports is just around the bend.
Has the labor movement lost
its class struggle moorings? In its heyday unions fought for the unemployed and
underemployed, for immigrant workers and youth, against racism and home
foreclosures. What can be done to ignite such struggle today, forge real
solidarity, and beat the bosses' barrage of union busting? Come hear speakers
involved in these worker struggles:
George Figueroa- Strike
Coordinator of the successful July BART strike for ATU Local 1555*, now being
victimized by BART.
A Member ATU Local
192*
A Port trucker
organizer*
Clarence Thomas- Co-Chair of the
Million Worker March, Executive Board member of ILWU 10
(*for identification
purposes only)
This forum is organized by
the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee (www.transportworkers.org)
labor donated
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Sign the Petition to Pardon Pvt. Chelsea Manning
Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Pvt. Manning
Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.
We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.
As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets--crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name. Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.
“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the [Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,” Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”
Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:
- Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.
- Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.
- Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.
- Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.
Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the U.S., or that the releases resulted in any casualties.
Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law. She has been:
- Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.
- Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.
- Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.
- Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.
We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.
Sign the petition.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition
Help us continue to cover 100%
of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
http://ymlp.com/z6o05l
COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
http://bradleymanning.org
Write to Pvt. Manning:
PVT Bradley E Manning
89289
1300 N Warehouse Rd
Ft Leavenworth KS 66027-2304
USA
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SAVE CCSF!
Two campaigns that need funds – Please donate!
Cartoon by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman
DOE CAMPAIGN
We are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!
LEGAL CAMPAIGN
Save CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office, Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.
PLEASE HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent to:
Save CCSF Coalition
2132 Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or you may donate online: http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns2132 Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"
American Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.
Sign the petition:
https://www.aclu.org/secure/ca-hunger-strike?emsrc=Nat_Appeal_AutologinEnabled&emissue=criminal_justice&emtype=petition&ms=eml_130719_acluaction_cahungerstrike&af=k%2FxKX1cIRdoonPVmvnAfAit8jzOCulLOnCX4AAFljff%2B%2BVOdOHNe6CKwl7glWQSjSakzXt53zF%2FodPf00T3rRHlglO3tjEA6DcMSLJRlTbfVBHAizX6uOxoSy5%2FbP93EBFj5xi6Lwm3RWHjmDOZDARHLBSl1rqTr07kLhONZrnU1UIIgPs0P%2FXQ%2BJL3reyE8%2BoiI1nlfPZPBVhbfYxUzMQ%3D%3D&etname=130719+CA+prisoners+hunger+strike&etjid=946739
In California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The Prince."
Gabriel Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the last 16 years:
“Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”
That’s why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic conditions.
California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of prisoners.
Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.
Solitary is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions. Here’s why:
The majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for violent prisoners)
Even for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time reintegrating into society.
And to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished. But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.
Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.
Our criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly. The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.
Thank you,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team
P.S. The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They are:
-End group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address individual rule violations
-Abolish the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or release from solitary
-End long-term solitary confinement
-Provide adequate and nutritious food
-Expand or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates
Sources
“Solitary - and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October 18, 2011
"Stop Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
What you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop & Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990
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Egypt: The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I
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Wealth Inequality in America
[This is a must see to believe video...bw]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM
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Read the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.
March 1, 2013
Alternet
The statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7
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Call for a Compassionate Release for Lynne Stewart:
Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2001
White House President Obama: 202-456-1414
Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels: 202-307-3198 ext 3
Urgent: Please sign the petition for compassionate release for Lynne Stewart
http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2
For more information, go to http://www.lynnestewart.org
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504-054
??Federal Medical Center, Carswell
PO Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
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You Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters
Posted 1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Occupy Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists – please click here to support the NLG.
We strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number (888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy. This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.
You Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement Encounters
What Rights Do I Have?
Whether or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your political activities.
Standing Up For Free Speech
The government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a "subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.
What if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?
What if an agent or police officer comes to the door?
Do not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions. Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future. Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.
Do I have to answer questions?
You have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you reside.
Do I have to give my name?
As above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name could in some circumstances be a crime.
Do I need a lawyer?
You have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.
If I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have something to hide?
Anything you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights and refusing to answer questions.
Can agents search my home or office?
You do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of your workspace without your permission.
What if agents have a search warrant?
If you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes, including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first. (Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant is present.)
Do I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?
No. If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.
What if I speak to government agents anyway?
Even if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.
What if the police stop me on the street?
Ask if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not consent to a search of your bags or other property.
What if police or agents stop me in my car?
Keep your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance. You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one has to answer any questions.
What if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?
Write down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as possible.
What if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer their questions?
A grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.
What if I receive a grand jury subpoena?
Grand jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping ("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense attorney immediately.
The government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and disruption, discouraging continued activism.
Federal grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries, testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony, should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in your testimony.
Frequently prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.
In front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.
What if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?
If you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare instances you may face criminal contempt charges.
What If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the purposes of this pamphlet.
? Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.
? Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney. If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be barred from returning.
Based on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.
Do I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or signing any DHS papers?
Yes. You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you a list of free or low cost legal service providers.
Should I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?
If you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be. Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.
Am I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?
If you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider refusing to talk to the agent at all.
If I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?
Yes. In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief for you.
Can I call my consulate if I am arrested?
Yes. Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the right to refuse help from your consulate.
What happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing is over?
You could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.
What should I do if I want to contact DHS?
Always talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of your options to you.
What Are My Rights at Airports?
IMPORTANT NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches, detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion, sex or ethnicity.
If I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop and search me?
Yes. Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.
Can my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?
Yes. Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.
If I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get off the plane?
The pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.
What If I Am Under 18?
Do I have to answer questions?
No. Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.
What if I am detained?
If you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no cost.
Do I have the right to express political views at school?
Public school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.
Can my backpack or locker be searched?
School officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property, but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.
Disclaimer
This booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.
NLG National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI
888-NLG-ECOL
(888-654-3265)
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Free Mumia NOW!
Prisonradio.org
Write to Mumia:
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein
August 21, 2011 (917) 689-4009
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO
LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!
FREE MUMIA NOW!
www.FreeMumia.com
http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s
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"A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against
Censorship" book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
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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-herm\
an-wallace
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Write to Bradley
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
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=2071005093\
21891
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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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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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. 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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Exceptional art from the streets of Oakland:
Oakland Street Dancing
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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded
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On Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of Black Liberation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded
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Fukushima Never Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU
"Fukushima, Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the Japanese government.
This is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.
The government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and then
when the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.
It also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new plants and government subsidies. This film breaks
the information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and around the world that Fukushima is over.
Production Of Labor Video Project
P.O. Box 720027
San Francisco, CA 94172
www.laborvideo.org
lvpsf@laborvideo.org
For information on obtaining the video go to:
www.fukushimaneveragain.com
(415)282-1908
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1000 year of war through the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share
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Anatomy of a Massacre - Afganistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded
Afghans accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder
To see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
Follow us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)
The recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in
mystery. But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report
confronts the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.
"They came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common
amongst the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations
that Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced
"one man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious
that despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising
alarm. "How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have
weapon accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the
questions the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however
is very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which
means relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my
hands on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."
A Film By SBS
Distributed By Journeyman Pictures
April 2012
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Photo of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\
ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp
SPD Security Cams.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded
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Kids being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate locations" in
Terror Drills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ
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Private prisons,
a recession resistant investment opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg
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Attack Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With
"Thought Crimes"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w
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Common forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related
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Organizing and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman
http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html
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Rep News 12: Yes We Kony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8
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The New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488
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Japan One Year Later
http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/
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The CIA's Heart Attack Gun
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\
un-.html
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The Invisible American Workforce
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison
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Labor Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U
For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.
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The Battle of Oakland
by brandon jourdan plus
http://vimeo.com/36256273
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Officers Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces
By ANDY NEWMAN
February 1, 2012, 10:56 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\
pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion
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This is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!
Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political
strategy
behind the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black
and Brown people in the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded
If you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to watch this
video and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community
as a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing
voters.
This speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,
2012.
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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...
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
Release Bradley Manning
Almost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)
Written by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded
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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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School police increasingly arresting American students?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded
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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
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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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We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY
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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at
GM that began December 30, 1936:
According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip
isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was
Roosevelt who saved the day!):
"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support
of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National
Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were
pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers
alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress
of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
- Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight
at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the
strike was really won!
'With babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
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HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
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ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
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ILWU Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of
Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank
and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and
the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
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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-add\
s-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
*---------*
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
*---------*
THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
*---------*
Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest
were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
*----*
Quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
*----*
WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown
Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
*---------*
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
*---------*
#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of
Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
*---------*
#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
*---------*
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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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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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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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