The Children of Japan's Fukushima Battle an Invisible Enemy

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/22478-the-children-of-japans-fukushima-battle-an-invisible-enemy

Hanai and Lies report: "Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it's like to play outside - fear of radiation has kept them indoors for much of their short lives."

A girl opens the door of a teacher's staff room at the Emporium kindergarten in Koriyama, west of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Fukushima prefecture February 28, 2014. (photo: Reuters/Toru Hanai)

The Children of Japan's Fukushima Battle an Invisible Enemy

By Toru Hanai, Elaine Lies, Reuters
10 March 14

Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, barely know what it's like to play outside - fear of radiation has kept them indoors for much of their short lives.
Though the strict safety limits for outdoor activity set after multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011 have now been eased, parental worries and ingrained habit mean many children still stay inside.

And the impact, three years on, is now starting to show, with children experiencing falling strength, lack of coordination - some cannot even ride a bicycle - and emotional issues like shorter tempers, officials and educators say.

"There are children who are very fearful. They ask before they eat anything, 'does this have radiation in it?' and we have to tell them it's okay to eat," said Mitsuhiro Hiraguri, director of the Emporium Kindergarten in Koriyama, some 55 km (35 miles) west of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

"But some really, really want to play outside. They say they want to play in the sandbox and make mud pies. We have to tell them no, I'm sorry. Play in the sandbox inside instead."

Following the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami, a series of explosions and meltdowns caused the world's worst nuclear accident for 25 years, spewing radiation over a swathe of Fukushima, an agricultural area long known for its rice, beef and peaches.

A 30-km radius around the plant was declared a no-go zone, forcing 160,000 people from homes where some had lived for generations. Other areas, where the radiation was not so critically high, took steps such as replacing the earth in parks and school playgrounds, decontaminating public spaces like sidewalks, and limiting children's outdoor play time.

"There are children in the disaster-stricken areas who are going to turn three tomorrow," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday. He told a nationally televised news conference he wanted to invite as many of them as possible to the 2020 Olympics, when they will be fourth-graders, as a "symbol of reconstruction."
Any such revival looks a long way off.

"AVOID TOUCHING THE OUTSIDE AIR"

Koriyama recommended shortly after the disaster that children up to two years old not spend more than 15 minutes outside each day. Those aged 3 to 5 should limit their outdoor time to 30 minutes or less.

These limits were lifted last October, but many kindergartens and nursery schools continue to adhere to the limits, in line with the wishes of worried parents.
One mother at an indoor Koriyama playground was overheard telling her child: "Try to avoid touching the outside air".

Even three-year-olds know the word "radiation".
Though thyroid cancer in children was linked to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, the United Nations said last May that cancer rates were not expected to rise after Fukushima.

Radiation levels around the Emporium Kindergarten in Koriyama were now down around 0.12-0.14 microsieverts per hour, from 3.1 to 3.7 right after the quake, said Hiraguri.

This works out to be lower than Japan's safety level of 1,000 microsieverts a year, but levels can vary widely and at random, keeping many parents nervous about any outdoor play.

"I try to keep from going out and from opening the window," said 34-year-old Ayumi Kaneta, who has three sons. "I buy food from areas away from Fukushima. This is our normal life now."

CHILD STRESS ON RISE

But this lack of outdoor play is having a detrimental effect on Koriyama's children, both physical and mentally.

"Compared to before the disaster, you can certainly see a fall in the results of physical strength and ability tests - things like grip strength, running and throwing balls," said Toshiaki Yabe, an official with the Koriyama city government.

An annual survey by the Fukushima prefecture Board of Education found that children in Fukushima weighed more than the national average in virtually every age group.
Five-year-olds were roughly 500 gm (1 lb) heavier, while the weight difference grew to 1 kg for six-year-old boys. Boys of 11 were nearly 3 kg heavier.

Hiraguri said that stress was showing up in an increase of scuffles, arguments and even sudden nosebleeds among the children, as well as more subtle effects.

"There's a lot more children who aren't all that alert in their response to things. They aren't motivated to do anything," he said.
Koriyama has removed decontaminated earth in public places, sometimes more than once, and work to replace all playground equipment in public parks should finish soon.

Yabe, at Koriyama city hall, said parental attitudes towards the risk of radiation may be slowly shifting.
"These days, instead of hearing from parents that they're worried about radiation, we're hearing that they're more worried because their kids don't get outside," he said.

But Hiraguri said things are still hard.

"I do sometimes wonder if it's really all right to keep children in Fukushima. But there are those who can't leave, and I feel strongly that I must do all I can for them."

© 2014 Reader Supported News

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

US Border Agents Intentionally Stepped in Front of Moving Vehicles to Justify Shooting at Them

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/22354-us-border-agents-intentionally-stepped-in-front-of-moving-vehicles-to-justify-shooting-at-them

Hsieh reports: "he Los Angeles Times obtained an internal review of US Border Patrol's use-of-force policies, which US Customs and Border Protection has refused to release publicly (members of Congress have seen a summary)."

US Border Patrol agents ride ATVs along the US-Mexico border. (photo: Reuters/Mike Blake)
US Border Agents Intentionally Stepped in Front of Moving Vehicles to Justify Shooting at Them
By Steven Hsieh, The Nation
02 March 14

The Los Angeles Times obtained an internal review of US Border Patrol’s use-of-force policies, which US Customs and Border Protection has refused to release publicly (members of Congress have seen a summary). While the Times did not offer the report in full, the paper did publish previously unseen snippets that portray a law enforcement agency operating under loose use-of-force standards and little accountability.
The review was completed in February 2013 by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit that develops best practices for law enforcement use-of-force policies. It examined sixty-seven use-of-force incidents by federal border agents near the US-Mexico border that resulted in nineteen deaths.
Here are some key findings of the review, revealed by the Times Thursday:
• Border Patrol agents have intentionally and unnecessarily stepped in front of moving cars to justify using deadly force against vehicle occupants.
• Agents have shot in frustration across the US-Mexico border at rock throwers when simply moving away was an option.
• Border Patrol demonstrates a “lack of diligence” in investigating incidents in which US agents fire their weapons.
• It’s questionable whether Border Patrol “consistently and thoroughly reviews” incidents in which agents use deadly force.

The report is especially scathing in its critique of agents who’ve stood in front of moving vehicles, recommending that they “get out of the way…as opposed to intentionally assuming a position in front of such vehicles.” The authors add:

It should be recognized that a half-ounce (200-grain) bullet is unlikely to stop a 4,000-pound moving vehicle, and if the driver…is disabled by a bullet, the vehicle will become a totally unguided threat… Obviously, shooting at a moving vehicle can pose a risk to bystanders including other agents.
The report recommends that Border Patrol bar agents from shooting at vehicles unless their lives are threatened and also from firing at rock throwers. An internal response by Border Patrol, also obtained by the Los Angeles Times, rejected both these recommendations. The agency said a ban on shooting at rock throwers would endanger agents because they work “in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover and egress is not an option,” and that a ban on shooting vehicles would empower drug smugglers to run over agents. The response echoes statements made by Border Patrol chief Mike Fisher in November.

At least twenty-one people have been killed by Border Patrol agents working on the US-Mexico border since 2010. In 2012, agents shot at a 16-year-old boy multiple times in the back, killing him. The latest fatality happened this month, when a border agent near San Diego shot and killed an undocumented migrant for throwing rocks, one of which struck the agent in the head. In all these cases, it’s unknown as to whether any of the agents involved were disciplined, as CBP does not make that information public.

© 2014 Reader Supported News

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Remembering and Learning from Fukushima

Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Remembering and Learning from Fukushima
H. Patricia Hynes
Saturday, March 1, 2014

The media moved on, some time ago, from Fukushima and left most of us in the dark about this worsening nuclear tragedy, as if there is little more to mourn and no more lessons to learn.

Three years ago on March 11, the Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami devastated northeast Japan, killing and injuring more than 20,000 people and crippling the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant. Three of the plant's six reactors suffered hazardous core meltdowns and hydrogen gas explosions, releasing radionuclides into the air, soil and Pacific Ocean. More than 300,000 people were eventually evacuated from the region and remain today "nuclear refugees," living with the same trauma, fear, sense of displacement, and loss of livelihood and social roots as war refugees. A few thousand residents, who have been allowed to return to their town, Odaka, find themselves alive in a dying region: "People don't believe it is safe to visit here. They won't believe our produce, our livestock, our fish are safe..." reported one rueful resident.

So difficult has been their fate that, by late 2013, 1,600 nuclear refugees had died of insufficient medical services, exhaustion of relocating, suicide and, likely, heartbreak. Over 35 percent of some 38,000 Fukushima children examined have cysts or nodules on their thyroids, as compared to 1 percent of a control group of Japanese children. In a callous move to keep schools open in Fukushima, the Japanese government raised the "permissible" level of radiation for children. Japanese children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously allowed, a level comparable to the yearly limit for German workers.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive water from the site have emptied and continue to leak via groundwater into the Pacific Ocean at the rate of 400 tons per day. Radioactive cesium, a carcinogen that bioaccumulates in animal, fish and human tissue, has been found throughout mainland Japan, in fish off the coast of Fukushima (thus closing that industry), and in large migratory fish such as Bluefin tuna off the coast of California. A plume of radioactive water from Fukushima is expected to reach the West Coast of the U.S. in early 2014. Tragically, there is no solution in sight to trapping and treating the cesium-, tritium- and strontium-contaminated groundwater before it reaches the Pacific Ocean. "The situation at the reactor site is progressively deteriorating, not stabilizing," stated an international group of experts in their urgent appeal for international action to Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon.

In the wake of this $US 250 billion disaster, Japan closed all of its 54 nuclear power plants. An extraordinary (and embattled) act in a country dependent on nuclear energy for 1/3 of its electricity and planning to achieve 50 percent nuclear-powered electricity by 2030, a country that had lulled its citizens into complacency with nuclear safety myths. Naoto Kan, Prime Minister at the time of the Fukushima meltdown, has since rejected nuclear power saying "there is no [other industrial] accident or disaster that would affect 50 million people" like a nuclear accident. An unprecedented anti-nuclear citizen movement ignited in Japan after Fukushima and has persisted, with a strong majority of the population opposing nuclear power, in the face of the current conservative and militaristic government's determination to restart the offline nuclear power plants.

Scrapping nuclear power has palpably sped the transition to efficiency and renewable energy. In 2012 Fukushima Prefecture signed an agreement to build the country's largest solar park, and in 2013 Fukushima announced plans to build the world's largest offshore wind farm -both part of the prefecture's plan to generate 100 percent of its electricity using renewable sources by 2040.

As for the United States, we have enough resource capacity to power the United States with solar and wind. Wind energy in the Great Plains and solar energy in the Southwest could meet current electrical energy needs more than a dozen times over, and this estimate does not include the capacity of offshore wind. Critically acclaimed studies, among them one conducted by researchers Jacobson of Stanford and Delucchi of University of California, Davis, have laid out a roadmap for energy policy in the next two to four decades, using solely a mix of energy efficiency, wind, water and solar technologies.

The age of renewables will arrive when fossil fuels and nuclear power decline irreversibly, predicted German economist and renewable energy pioneer Hermann Scheer, stimulating renewables to increase irreversibly. Germany,a leader in renewable energy, has chosen a non-nuclear path to the future. The key to this age of renewables is political will forged by the will of the people-a struggle reinforced by Fukushima that ensues today in Japan and worldwide.

[Pat Hynes is a retired Professor of Environmental Health and directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts http://traprock.org/ [1] ]

Source URL: https://portside.org/2014-03-01/remembering-and-learning-fukushima
Links:
[1] http://traprock.org/

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Hundreds of Students Arrested Outside White House at Keystone XL Pipeline Protest

Hundreds of Students Arrested Outside White House at Keystone XL Pipeline Protest
By John Light

Loudly denouncing the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, about 1,000 people — most of them students — marched from Georgetown to the White House Sunday. Once there, hundreds fastened themselves to the fence outside the White House, while hundreds more stood with them, waiting to be arrested. By the end of the day, roughly 400 had been taken into custody.

Their message for President Obama: Our demographic helped vote you into office, and we oppose the pipeline. Do you stand with your constituents, or do you stand with the fossil fuel industry and its legion of lobbyists?

“The president is the decision-maker. The ball’s in his court. We really have to make it clear to him that it’s his decision — and if he makes that decision, that’s on his shoulders,” said Brian Thompson, who traveled to DC from the University of Vermont.

The protest came within a month of two controversial State Department reports on the TransCanada pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast every day. The first report found that regardless of whether the US government allows the pipeline to be constructed, Canada’s tar sands oil will be extracted and burnt, and, thus, the pipeline itself will not significantly hasten climate change. The second report found no conflict of interest in the first, even though the contractor who prepared it had previously done work for TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline.

The protest — called “XL Dissent” — was organized by students at a number of colleges with support from environmental and activism groups, including Bill McKibben’s 350.org, the Energy Action Coalition and DC Action Lab. Many of the student groups that traveled to the protest originally formed to encourage their school administrations to divest from fossil fuels, another rallying issue for 350.org.

“I think the movement has done a really amazing job bringing together activists and environmentalists from all over the country,” said University of Pennsylvania student Emily Belshaw, who marched in DC holding a large, papier mâché Mother Earth designed by Spiral Q puppet theater in Philadelphia. “In the next couple months I’d like to see a continuing bond throughout the country between environmentalists at colleges, bringing youth together.”The turnout at the protest surprised even the event’s organizers. “This is way more than we expected at the beginning. It spiraled beyond anything we could have imagined,” said Aly Johnson-Kurts, a Vermont coordinator with 350.org who is taking time off from Smith College. Over 80 colleges from 42 states, from Louisiana to Maine, were represented. A separate, West Coast demonstration — “XL Dissent West” — took place in San Francisco on Monday: About 100 people — mostly students from Bay Area schools — attempted to occupy the State Department building in San Francisco, but guards locked the doors before most of them were able to enter. Nine students managed to get in, and were arrested after occupying the building for about an hour.

The marchers gathered on Georgetown University’s campus and marched from there through a sleepy residential neighborhood, pausing outside Secretary of State John Kerry’s house and then continuing toward the White House through wide commercial avenues, blocking traffic on their way. Once there, students used plastic zip ties to strap themselves to the fence outside the president’s mansion. Others, lacking zip ties, stood with them, leaning against the fence. About 30 students spread out a large, black piece of plastic — an “oil spill” — on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the fence, and lay down in it. Reporters and photographers from an array of media organizations — Politico, Reuters, The Washington Post — jotted notes and snapped photos.Belshaw chose not to get arrested, because she needed to accompany the Earth puppet at all times.

As police gave a series of warnings to clear the area or be arrested, students chanted, urging Obama to reject the pipeline, and sang songs, many of them harkening back to the civil rights movement and other social movements of the previous century — “This Little Light of Mine,” “We Shall Overcome.” After five warnings, police officers and SWAT team members began arresting students.

The mood was, for the most part, genial. “We love you,” students chanted to the officers, who in some cases checked that the students had ID cards before cuffing them. One officer brought a student a jacket, another shook hands with a protestor waiting to be arrested.
But the arrests took four hours, during which time the temperature dropped and it started to sleet — the cusp of the storm that paralyzed DC Monday — as students continued to chant their message for Obama.

“I hope Obama will reject the Keystone pipeline, and set a precedent for rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure projects on the basis of climate,” said Johnson-Kurts. “This is our future we’re talking about, and it’s on the line with every fossil fuel project that he approves.”

Brian Thompson, from University of Vermont, and Sydney Katz, a student at Hampshire College, wore yellow shirts at the DC action showing a blazing sun and reading, “As the heat rises, so do we!” The two knew each other from growing up in Oakland, Calif., where months of drought followed recently by days of rain and mudslides may be evidence of the planet’s increasingly extreme climate. “It’s all connected — the drought in California, the flooding in England,” said Thompson. “It’s all part of the big picture.”

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/hundreds-students-arrested-outside-white-house-keystone-xl-pipeline-protest-1394031460. All rights are reserved.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Celebrating International Women’s Day with the Women of Gaza, Not in Gaza, but in Cairo

Celebrating International Women’s Day with the Women of Gaza, Not in Gaza, but in Cairo

By Ann Wright

Five years ago in March, 2009, only two months after the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza, I was on an international delegation of sixty women organized by CODEPINK who traveled to Gaza for International Women’s Day. That week in Gaza, we met with women where their homes used to be before they were destroyed by the Israeli attack that killed 1,450, wounded 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless. We also met with women in 13 community centers throughout the country, to listen to their stories of life under attack and under siege.

Five years later, I joined an international delegation of 100 women from 7 countries to travel to Gaza in solidarity with the women of Gaza for International Women’s Day. Women of Gaza are over 50 percent of the 1.7 million people who live in tiny Gaza. As they care for their families, they face extreme circumstances with daily attacks from the Israeli military, lack of electricity and water, environmental disasters of sewage flooding into the streets, and a lack of basic necessities. Hundreds of tunnels under the border with Egypt that previously brought food and supplies denied by the Israelis in their land blockade of Gaza, have been destroyed by the Government of Egypt, reportedly to prevent weapons smuggling by militant groups. Travel in and out of Gaza through the Egyptian border for medical treatment, education and family visits to relatives around the world has become even more difficult have in the past. The Egyptian border with Gaza now has been closed for 28 consecutive days and was only opened once in February for a number of pilgrims to Mecca to return.

Palestinians who have never been charged with a crime, never seen the inside of a court are now treated as convicted prisoners in the “open air prison” called Gaza--- the walls on all sides of the prison, the Israeli land and sea blockades on three sides and the Egyptian blockade on one side, are closing tighter and tighter.
It is because of those conditions in the lives of the women of Gaza that our delegation wanted to join them to show our concern and solidarity as women - to let them know we have not forgotten them.

Today, on International Women’s Day, 16 of our 100 delegates are celebrating International Women’s Day in Cairo, Egypt, not Gaza. However, 62 of our delegates were refused entry into Egypt by immigration authorities and are sending their greetings from their home countries of France, Belgium, the United States, Algeria, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia. Twenty-two of the 100 initial delegates decided at the last minute not fly to Egypt, including Djamila
Bouhired, the 79-year-old Algerian independence icon.

Our message on International Women’s Day to the women of Gaza is:
We, the International Women's Delegation to Gaza, greet you on International Women's Day.

Although we can never know your suffering as you feel it, we hold you in our hearts, and pledge to you our continuing, ever-deepening solidarity. We will tell your story to all who will listen.

We will tell your story to our Parliamentary and Congressional representatives so they can better understand the injustice they support and the suffering they cause by the billions of dollars they send to Israel and Egypt.
Our sisters who were not allowed even to enter Egypt have a strong additional motive for solidarity.

We celebrate International Women's Day in different parts of the world, but our hearts and our perseverance in the struggle make us one.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/celebrating-international-women-s-day-women-gaza-not-gaza-cairo-1394373433. All rights are reserved.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Why We Need Whistleblowers

Why We Need Whistleblowers
By Heather Akers-Healy

After last year’s Edward Snowden leaks, governments went into damage control, peddling out narratives to undermine his personal motivations, and his tactical decision to copy and release the documents to the press. One of the most common false narratives is that there was a proper channel whereby Snowden could have reported problems and made changes - as if the NSA is open to criticism. When Snowden was working at the CIA, he was brushed off by a superior when he tried to report an issue.
It also presumes that oversight receives adequate information to understand and make policy decisions about one of the most secretive groups in the world. Such oversight doesn’t really exist, given Rep. Mike Rogers’s refusal to share information about NSA programs with Congress, and National Intelligence Director James Clapper making misleading statements under oath.

The most damning narrative accuses Snowden of being a traitor and violating “his oath to keep the NSA’s secrets" (as opposed to what some would believe to be a greater oath to uphold the constitution as the supreme law of the land). Snowden was forced to take the actions he did because there seems to be no consistent legal process by which intelligence organizations like the NSA can actually be made to reveal information to the public about potentially law-breaking practices. These agencies undermine the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) - one of the few tools we have regarding the release of information to the public, to the point that many feel it is practically useless.

I launched what would become Project SpyLighter last year to gain information through FOIA requests on products and services provided to the NSA by their contractors. Since then, around sixty FOIA requests have been submitted to the NSA and other agencies. Since the project began, very few requests have been fulfilled, and none to satisfactory completion. The NSA has delayed its response and denied fee waivers, and is seemingly unable to find information in their own files that we know exists. It’s also become apparent that the NSA doesn’t organize their files in a manner which makes it easy for FOIA officers to retrieve information. This is a rejection letter in response to a FOIA request for information on contracts regarding keywords related to exploits:

Information pertaining to contract and acquisition data is not typically stored or retrievable using keywords or “technology and related services” information. A search for overly broad keywords such as "CNO" and "computer network attack" would be tantamount to conducting a manual search through thousands of folders and then reading each document in order to determine whether the document pertains to a contract.

In any reasonable large-scale electronic document management system designed for the quick retrieval of information, documents will be indexed and searchable by keyword, and search results will contain a title, date, description of the document type and the name of the author. In a paper file, contracts will be separated from other documents. (I make these assertions as someone who has worked both as a paralegal and a file clerk dealing with large, complex filing systems containing tens of thousands of documents.) It is unthinkable that an organization with the NSA’s significant resources and technological capabilities would not be able to find information about their own contracts related to exploits.

Jason Leopold has also filed many recent requests to the NSA. Earlier this month he received a response from the NSA denying the expedited release of documents related to a program called DISHFIRE because the NSA had already publicly discussed the program and did not consider it urgent enough to make the requested documents public. The same day he received this response, he received another letter saying that the NSA could neither confirm nor deny the existence of this program it had acknowledged in the media and in its previous letter to Leopold. He intends to appeal, and may add this to his growing list of lawsuits against agencies that balk at releasing documents.

In the contest for epic FOIA appeals the Electronic Frontier Foundation surely wins the prize for taking lawsuits to the next level. Among many other suits resulting from unfulfilled FOIA requests, in August 2012 they sued the Department of Justice for copies of opinions and orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). They then filed a motion directly with FISC which ultimately led to the release of a decision declaring that some parts of the NSA’s surveillance activities were illegal.

If it’s assumed that the NSA and DOJ are the only agencies pulling stunts to avoid releasing documents by FOIA, an article came out February 10 from the AP showing that the Department of Defense actually destroyed photographs of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse after receiving a FOIA request for them. This is the kind of behavior that creates conspiracy theories.

The practice of obfuscating or delaying the release of information is rampant across all levels of government, but particularly in defense and intelligence agencies. Journalists and public interest groups frequently spend years fighting for documents. Lawsuits take time, effort and money. It’s likely the average citizen FOIA requester will get discouraged by such obstacles and abandon their quest.

It is in this environment of extreme secrecy and withholding information that is in the public interest that Snowden made his decision to copy the NSA documents and release them to journalists. While we do have tools such as FOIA, they are frequently ineffective in obtaining information from agencies bent on keeping their activities secret. We absolutely need whistleblowers such as Snowden, with inside access and fewer barriers, in order to better understand the activities of our own government. We need to protect them and the journalists who bravely take up the cause of shedding light in dark places.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/why-we-need-whistleblowers-1394375564. All rights are reserved.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Vigil to commemorate Fukushima 33rd & N. Charles St. 3/11 at 5:30 PM/Fast for Fukushima

Vigil to say "No Drone Research at JHU" each Tuesday at 34th & North Charles Sts. Join this ongoing vigil. At the next vigil on Mar. 11, however there will be a commemoration of Fukushima from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. The tragic nuclear accident occurred March 11, 2011. Call Max at 410-366-1637.

Fasting for Fukushima on Third Anniversary
Harvey Wasserman, Jill Stein and David Swanson

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/09/fasting-fukushima-third-anniversary/

Fasting can be a way of mourning, of cleansing, of meditation, of focus.
On Tuesday, March 11, the third anniversary of the beginning of the disaster at Fukushima, we will abstain from food from dawn to dusk. Our purpose is tied to the atomic disaster that continues to threaten life on Earth.

The three melt-downs, four explosions, scattered fuel rods and continual gusher of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima have torn a deadly hole in the fabric of our ability to survive on this planet.

Its corporate perpetrators were repeatedly warned by tens of thousands of citizen activists not to build these reactors in an earthquake zone that has been washed by tsunamis. Not only did they build them, they took down a natural 85-foot-high sea wall in the process that might have greatly lessened the damage of the tsunami that did come.

The disaster that has struck Fukushima has much about it that’s unique. But it’s just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is the global atomic reactor industry.
There are other reactor sites threatened by earthquakes and tsunamis. Among them is Diablo Canyon, whose two reactors could be turned to rubble by the multiple fault lines that surround it, spewing radiation that would irradiate California’s Central Valley and send a lethal cloud across the U.S.

There are other reactors threatened by suicidal siting, such as the triple reactor complex at South Carolina’s Oconee, downriver from a dam whose failure could send also send a wall of water into multiple cores.

Throughout the world more than 400 rust bucket reactors are aging dangerously, riddled with operator error, shoddy construction, leaky cooling systems, least-cost corner cutting and official lies.

In all cases, the revolution in renewables has made them economically obsolete. The long-dead hype of a failed “too cheap to meter” technology has been buried by a Solartopian vision, a green-powered Earth in the process of being born.

What would speed that process most is the rapid shutdown of a these old-tech dinosaurs that do nothing but cost us money and harm our planet and our health.
For decades we were told commercial reactors could not explode. But five have done just that.

The industry said that radiation releases could do no harm at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during the atmospheric bomb tests, with medical x-rays, with atomic waste storage, at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and of course at the next major melt-down and the one after that and the one after that.

The automatic industry response is always the same: “not enough radiation has escaped to harm anyone.” Push a button, no matter what the disaster, no matter where the radiation goes and how little anybody knows about it, that’s what they say now, and will say yet again each time another nuke bites the radioactive dust.
So today we live in fear not only of what’s happening at Fukushima, but of what is all-too-certain to come next.

This must finally stop. If we are to have an economic, ecological or biological future on this planet, all atomic reactor construction must halt, and all operating reactors must be phased out as fast as possible.

To honor this vision, we won’t eat from dawn to dusk on March 11.

It’s a small, symbolic step. But one we feel is worth taking. Feel free to join us!

Visit EcoWatch’s FUKUSHIMA page for more related news on this topic.
——–
Harvey Wasserman edits NukeFree.org and wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.

Jill Stein was the Green Party’s 2012 Presidential candidate. She is now organizing for Earth Day to May Day, a wave of action for People, Planet and Peace over Profit, at GlobalClimateConvergence.org.

David Swanson is working to organize a movement to end war at WorldBeyondWar.org. His books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org and works for rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and Facebook.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Fasting for Fukushima on Third Anniversary

Fasting for Fukushima on Third Anniversary
Harvey Wasserman, Jill Stein and David Swanson

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/09/fasting-fukushima-third-anniversary/

Fasting can be a way of mourning, of cleansing, of meditation, of focus.

On Tuesday, March 11, the third anniversary of the beginning of the disaster at Fukushima, we will abstain from food from dawn to dusk. Our purpose is tied to the atomic disaster that continues to threaten life on Earth.
The three melt-downs, four explosions, scattered fuel rods and continual gusher of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean at Fukushima have torn a deadly hole in the fabric of our ability to survive on this planet.

Its corporate perpetrators were repeatedly warned by tens of thousands of citizen activists not to build these reactors in an earthquake zone that has been washed by tsunamis. Not only did they build them, they took down a natural 85-foot-high sea wall in the process that might have greatly lessened the damage of the tsunami that did come.

The disaster that has struck Fukushima has much about it that’s unique. But it’s just the tip of the radioactive iceberg that is the global atomic reactor industry.

There are other reactor sites threatened by earthquakes and tsunamis. Among them is Diablo Canyon, whose two reactors could be turned to rubble by the multiple fault lines that surround it, spewing radiation that would irradiate California’s Central Valley and send a lethal cloud across the U.S.

There are other reactors threatened by suicidal siting, such as the triple reactor complex at South Carolina’s Oconee, downriver from a dam whose failure could send also send a wall of water into multiple cores.
Throughout the world more than 400 rust bucket reactors are aging dangerously, riddled with operator error, shoddy construction, leaky cooling systems, least-cost corner cutting and official lies.

In all cases, the revolution in renewables has made them economically obsolete. The long-dead hype of a failed “too cheap to meter” technology has been buried by a Solartopian vision, a green-powered Earth in the process of being born.

What would speed that process most is the rapid shutdown of a these old-tech dinosaurs that do nothing but cost us money and harm our planet and our health.
For decades we were told commercial reactors could not explode. But five have done just that.

The industry said that radiation releases could do no harm at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during the atmospheric bomb tests, with medical x-rays, with atomic waste storage, at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and of course at the next major melt-down and the one after that and the one after that.

The automatic industry response is always the same: “not enough radiation has escaped to harm anyone.” Push a button, no matter what the disaster, no matter where the radiation goes and how little anybody knows about it, that’s what they say now, and will say yet again each time another nuke bites the radioactive dust.
So today we live in fear not only of what’s happening at Fukushima, but of what is all-too-certain to come next.

This must finally stop. If we are to have an economic, ecological or biological future on this planet, all atomic reactor construction must halt, and all operating reactors must be phased out as fast as possible.

To honor this vision, we won’t eat from dawn to dusk on March 11.

It’s a small, symbolic step. But one we feel is worth taking. Feel free to join us!

Visit EcoWatch’s FUKUSHIMA page for more related news on this topic.
——–
Harvey Wasserman edits NukeFree.org and wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.

Jill Stein was the Green Party’s 2012 Presidential candidate. She is now organizing for Earth Day to May Day, a wave of action for People, Planet and Peace over Profit, at GlobalClimateConvergence.org.

David Swanson is working to organize a movement to end war at WorldBeyondWar.org. His books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org and works for rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and Facebook.

Baltimore Activist Alert - March 8, 2014

48] Report back from Medea – Mar. 8
49] 35th Annual Baltimore Archdiocese Parish Social Ministry Convocation – Mar. 8
50] Get out the vote for Andy Shallal -- Mar. 8 & 16
51] Vigil to protest CIA drone strikes – Mar. 8
52] Olney Peace vigil – Mar. 8
53] Cove Point hearing – Mar. 8
54] West Chester, PA demo – Mar. 8
55] Remember the break-in at the Media FBI office – Mar. 8
56] Understanding Violent Extremism – Mar. 8
57] Rock, Rap & Speak out against Poverty, Prison & War – Mar. 8
58] L'Arche Greater Washington, D.C. – Mar. 8
59] John Bach, Harvard University’s Quaker Chaplain – Mar. 8
60] One Women’s Chronicle of Two Decades of Work in Guatemala – Mar. 8
61] Amplifying Voices for Peace -- Mar. 8
----


48] – Medea Benjamin returned on the night of March 5 from a harrowing trip to Egypt where she was detained at the airport, beaten, and deported by the authorities. Though they gave no reason for their actions; this was quite clearly done to prevent Medea from joining an international delegation of women going through Egypt to Gaza for International Women's Day. She sustained a dislocated shoulder with a torn ligament from the terrible assault.

Join Medea and the rest of CODEPINK DC for a report back and discussion on Egypt's role in ensuring that Gaza remains the largest open-air prison in the world, and help give Medea a warm welcome home. The event will take place on Fri., Mar. 7 at Busboys and Poets, 5 & K Sts from 8 to 10 PM. RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/1427139534191719/!

49] – On Sat., Mar. 8 from 8:15 AM to 3:30 PM, enjoy the 35th Annual Baltimore Archdiocese Parish Social Ministry Convocation – Care for the Earth and Poor at Seton Keough High School, 1201 Caton Ave., Baltimore 21227. The keynote speaker is Jacek Orzechowski, OFM. The cost is $10, which includes lunch. You must pre-register to be guaranteed lunch and to ensure that the correct workshops will be repeated. Contact Carol Palmer at 410.261.6780 / cpalmer@cc-md.org.

50] – Andy Shallal, owner of Busboys and Poets restaurants, is running for Mayor of DC in the Democratic primary on April 1. Andy has been a major supporter of PDA over the years, serving on its national Advisory Board, providing a place for monthly meetings in Virginia and many, many events in his D.C. restaurants, and making personal financial contributions. He is the most progressive candidate for Mayor of D.C. and will provide great leadership with his balance of business acumen and his great passion for policies and programs that help ordinary people and fight discrimination of all sorts. Canvass for him on Sat., Mar. 8 from 10 AM to 1 PM. RSVP at //docs.google.com/forms/d/1riR9oACDqA6cOKQL4AVRGPzLBlYP3FruwKmFZ2ZAwPQ/viewform.

Join a phone banking party at the home of Sarah Stott and Howard Jennings on Sun., Mar. 16 from 6:30 to 9 PM, followed by pizza (Dutch treat). The address will be provided to all who RSVP. Bring your cell phone and a laptop if you have one for direct data entry. RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CGBqR_UBim0UZTWROGvIYa-UbGInhirxndhNy8OiWwo/viewform. Come to a fundraiser at the home of Mar and Lynn Raskin. RSVP at http://www.andy4dc.com/marc_raskin_s_event_for_andy_shallal. Go to www.Andy4DC.com for other volunteer activities.

51] – On Sat., Mar. 8 from 10 to 11:30 AM, PROTEST US KILLER DRONES at CIA Headquarters, 900 block of Dolley Madison Blvd., Langley, Virginia. Oppose CIA & US Military drones used in extrajudicial killings. US killer drone strikes are illegal, immoral, and must stop now! The protest is supported by Pax Christi Metro DC, Northern Virginians for Peace & Justice, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker of DC, Code Pink, Nova Catholic Community, Peace & International Outreach Committee of Langley Hill Friends, Washington Peace Center, Peace Action Montgomery, Little Friends for Peace, Maryland United for Peace & Justice.

52] – Friends House, 17715 Meeting House Rd., Sandy Spring, MD 20860, hosts a peace vigil every Saturday, 10:30 to 11:30 AM, on the corner of Rt. 108 and Georgia Ave. [Route 97] in Olney, MD. The next vigil is Mar. 8. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.

53] – Each Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM, Chester County Peace Movement holds a peace vigil in West Chester in front of the Chester County Courthouse, High & Market Sts. Go to www.ccpeace.org. Email ccpeacemovement@aol.com.

54] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., Mar. 8. Look for the blue banner with the message, "Seek Peace and Pursue It.--Psalms 34:14." The vigil lasts one hour and is silent except when one responds to the occasional questions. Go to http://www.quaker.org/langleyhill/seekpeace.htm or email seekpeacevigil@yahoo.com.

55] – Meet-Up in Media, PA for a Walk & Rally to Celebrate Democracy, Civil Liberties, and Dissent at noon on Sat., Mar. 8 at the Delaware County Courthouse, Front Street & Veterans Square, Media, PA 19063. It is just across from the County Court Apartment Building, which housed the Media FBI in 1971, as well as the Media Draft Board/Selective Service Office which drafted young men to fight and die in the Vietnam War. Celebrate the anniversary (March 8, 1971) of the historic Media FBI Break-In and the release of secret files exposing the FBI’s COINTELPRO program of assaults on dissent and civil liberties. The identities of the participants and the details of the Media FBI Break-In were for forty-three years unknown until the recent publication of the book, THE BURGLARY, by Betty Medsger. Celebrate democracy, civil liberties, and dissent (all under threat!). Honor today's truth-sayers and whistle-blowers, like NSA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, and imprisoned Pvt. Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks. The celebration is organized by the Brandywine Peace Community (founded in Media, PA, spring of 1976.

Participate in whistle-blowing (& other noise-making) during a walk through Media and back to the Courthouse. Music will be performed by Tom Mullian. There will be speakers from various peace and justice groups. Bring whistle (and other noise-makers.

56] – There is an FCWG Event, Understanding Violent Extremism, on Sat., Mar. 8 from 1 to 4 PM at the Islamic Center of Maryland (ICM), Library Room, 19411 Woodfield Rd., Gaithersburg 20879. Go to http://origin.library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1102382248246-586/fcwg+understanding+violent+extremism.pdf. Did you know that 42% of homegrown terror plots have some nexus to Maryland and Delaware? Come interact with a distinguished panel of speakers who will cover violent extremist threats ranging from white supremacist groups to Al Qaeda inspired terrorists. Among the speakers will be two FBI agents. RSVP at fcwg2013@gmail.com.

57] – On Sat., Mar. 8, International Women’s Day, attend Rock, Rap & Speak out against Poverty, Prison & War from 1:30 to 6:30 PM at Tabernacle United Church, 3700 Chestnut St., Philadelphia. Hear Legendary Spoken Word Artist Ursula Rucker, and many local musicians. Also catch the speak out from prisoner family members, welfare rights and anti-war activists and others. Enjoy a video commemoration of the March 8, 1971 FBI Burglary. Childcare, children’s activities and refreshments will be provided. Tickets are available at door from $10 to $20 (more if you can, less if you can't). All proceeds go to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund & Medical School of Dr. Aristide, and prisoner family groups. Contact Global Women's Strike/Phila at 215-848-1120 or www.globalwomenstrike.net.

58] – On Sat., Mar. 8 at 2:30 PM at Marymount University, Reinsch Library Auditorium, 2807 N Glebe Road, Arlington, VA 22207, join L'Arche Greater Washington, D.C. for a bazaar; then from 3:30 to 5:30 PM, there will be a talent show with a pizza party. The suggested donation is $10. To RSVP for the pizza party, contact Bethany Keener at 202.507.1328 (call or text) or bethanykeener@larche-gwdc.org.
59] – John Bach, Harvard University’s Quaker chaplain, will speak on "Faith, and Resistance Within the Empire: the Beloved Community's Response" on Sat., Mar. 8 at 5:30 PM at the Friends Meeting of Washington, Meeting Room, 2111 Florida Ave. NW, WDC. The event is hosted by Friends Meeting of Washington Peace & Social Concerns Committee. Contact Malachy Kilbride at malachykilbride@yahoo.com.

60] – Hope and Action: One Women’s Chronicle of Two Decades of Work in Guatemala is an International Women’s Day Potluck Fundraiser on Sat., Mar. 8 from 6 to 8:30 PM at Howard Community College, Duncan Hall, Room 100, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia 21044. Funds raised will go towards an Education Building Annex. Barbara Lorraine Fenske will share an update on the women of Unidas Para Vivir Mejor [United for a Better Life]. Contact Linda Wiley at 410-730-4630 or boblinwiley@verizon.net. Bring a dish to share, and buy some of the crafts.

The women of UPAVIM need your support. If you cannot attend, you can still make a donation by sending a check made out to UPAVIM. Please mail it to: HoCoFoLA, PO Box 94, Columbia, MD 21045. In honor of Pete Seeger, there will be a sing-along segment led by folk singer and story teller Alan Klein. Learn how UPAVIM projects have transformed the community through Education, Healthcare, Nutrition, and Selling of Crafts. Come and listen to this exciting presentation and support UPAVIM by buying beautiful handmade fair trade gifts!

61] – At the Takoma Park Community Center, 7500 Maple Ave., Takoma Park on Sat., Mar. 8 at 8 PM, enjoy Amplifying Voices for Peace, a Heartbeat Concert (featuring Israeli and Palestinian Youth Musicians directed by Aaron Shneyer. Admission is $20 for adults, and $10 for youth. Special donors get reserved seating for $100. A discussion with the artists will follow. The event is sponsored by Am-Kolel, Jewish Islamic Dialogue Society and the Middle East Peace Working Group. Call 301-349-2799 for reservations. Email info@am-kolel.org.

To be continued.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

What's happening in Venezuela, my view from within

Lisa Sullivan
Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 8:33 AM

What's happening in Venezuela, my view from within

Greetings friends and thanks to so many for writing to ask that I share my perspective of what is happening in Venezuela. Your solidarity and your desire for the facts is heartening.

I was actually in Guatemala leading an SOA WATCH delegation when the recent crisis erupted here. I have only been back in Venezuela for four days. But, in that time I have discovered the huge discrepancy between what I see taking place here and what the international media is reporting.

Below please find my reflections. Sorry for the length, but the situation is complex and the stakes are high.

Please share this with others. Best to all, abrazos, Lisa

Pray for Venezuela....to remain a sovereign nation
by Lisa Sullivan
Barquisimeto, Venezuela February 28, 2014

I was in Guatemala when my computer flooded with news that Venezuela – my home for almost three decades - was apparently on the brink of civil war. Messages poured into my inbox calling to "pray for Venezuela".

I had just returned from the Mayan Ixil community of Cocop to meet with survivors of a massacre there. The 58 victims of Cocop were among 1700 Ixils murdered by the army, and among 200,000 victims of Guatemala's civil war. In the town's small cemetery, Jacinto said I'd like to introduce you to my parents. His hand swept to two tombs. As he shared the story of how the army gunned down nine family members, his body trembled and tears fell. He was thirteen at the time. I'm so sorry, he apologized for his tears, it still hurts so much.

Back at the hotel, I turned on my computer to read that two Venezuelan students and a government supporter had been gunned down at a demonstration in Caracas. There were "only" three victims (at that point, more were to come). Not 200,000. But, having just embraced Jacinto's sobbing body thirty years after his parents' massacre, I knew that the pain of one loss is enough to rip apart your world forever. For the families of the Venezuelan victims, it makes no difference if their loved one shared their fate with two or with 199,999 others. Their pain is just as real, as should be our solidarity.

But, still, I couldn't help but wonder. Where was all that same heart-felt international out pour of concern when 200,000 people were being massacred in Guatemala? What international media was inviting the world to pray for Guatemala? Was the world’s silence due to the fact that the victims were indigenous? Was it because we were the ones training the killers? Can lack of twitter and internet in those years really explain all that media silence, so different from today's media's cry to pray for Venezuela?

I delved into news about Venezuela on my computer. Every article seemed to reshuffle the same dozen words or so: chaos, civil war, 54% inflation, crime, exit Maduro, government responsibility, peaceful students, Lopez, Harvard business graduate, toilet paper. Soon it became clear that the call to pray for Venezuela was code for a call for regime change.

Most news sources referred to social media messages and images as their source. Interestingly, some blasted photos showed "Caraquenos" wearing turtle necks and jackets and sweaters, where the average temperature this time of year is about 80 degrees. Others showed rather Asian faces among chaos. Woops, it turns out those images are of repression in Chile and an earthquake in Japan. But still, pray for Venezuela!

The media hype grew daily and my inbox flooded with questions of what was happening in my adopted country. I braced for my return on February 24th, wondering if even the flight would be cancelled.

Arriving in the Caracas airport Monday morning I found - to my great surprise - a stunningly normal Caracas. Buses, metro, pedestrians, traffic all moved at their normal hectic pace. Streets were filled with school children and office workers; shops,banks and restaurants were open and bustling. After hours of traversing various zones of the city with errands and seeing absolutely nothing amiss, I opened my email in the evening to messages such as: Lisa, how are you getting by? We've heard that the roads in Caracas are completely blocked. Maybe my plane had delivered me to a twilight zone Venezuela.

The next day I continued on to my home city of Barquisimeto. Ditto the scenes in Caracas, absolutely nothing amiss. I turned to the tv to see if the national picture was more bleak. The government was hosting a peace conference, being shown on all stations.

I sat transfixed for four hours as President Maduro listened to the Papal Nuncio, leaders from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic faiths; the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the owner of Venezuela's biggest industry - Polar, leaders of opposition parties, mayors on both sides of the political divide, media moguls and opposition journalists. All shared from the heart their concerns about the economy and crime and their desire to see Venezuela not fall to chaos. One by one they expressed disdain for the violent road blocks and affirmed Venezuela's constitution. Maduro took notes and committed to many of their concrete suggestions. I went to bed hopeful that such diverse political sectors could dialogue and outline steps for change.

But, the titles from international reports the next morning screamed: Failure of dialogue in Venezuela! In spite of an impressive collection of politically diverse leaders, the darlings of the international mainstream media did not show up at the conference. Then, I began to realize this: the media wants Venezuela to look like it's falling apart. They are doing everything they can to portray that image.

Nostalgia sweeps over me. Is this February 2014 or April 2002? Déja vu: opposition protests, government supporters defending public institutions, shots to the head, dead on both sides, media images "proving" government responsibility, U.S. questions the government's legitimacy. Then..........a coup

Even the two current media darlings: Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado were key players in 2002, signing the coup degree and participating in a violent round up of government leaders. Couldn't the opposition have least changed the cast this time?

One thing repeated again and again at the peace conference was: we are not Colombia. While our neighbor to the west has lost tens of thousands of citizens to political violence in recent decades, Venezuela has achieved enormous social change, peacefully, via the ballot box. It is one of Latin America's nations with the smallest legacy of political violence.

The media is correct to report that Venezuela's inflation is much too high. But, do they report this: Statistically, Venezuela is the most economically equal society in all of Latin America. Statistically, it has blasted poverty to pieces more than any other country in the hemisphere. That is the news that the international media never reports. I just turned on my computer this morning to a Bloomberg report,and found commentators lamenting "all that poverty". "People are standing in line for bread". "Poor Venezuela". As solid proof, one commenator mentioned that a few years ago he had a Venezuelan graduate student whose doctor parents could not put up with all that poverty and had to move to Miami.

Do these commentators ever wonder why the road blocks they fixated on are only found in the wealthier areas of the country? Why are the people from the populous barrios not streaming down to join them, but instead, making plans for the beach this Carnaval weekend? Here are some clues, obtained not from 30 words lifted from other articles, but from 30 years lived in this land.

When I built my home in a rural area outside Sanare 17 years ago, my neighbors were barely eking out a subsistence, digging for potatoes and herding goats and sheep. The only school in town was an elementary school, and three days of five the teachers didn't show up. People lived with 2, 3, 4 generations in one small mud house. None had a vehicle more modern than a horse. If you got sick, you had to walk 8 miles to town and get in line at 3 am to maybe be seen the next day at the hospital.

Today, that same community has an elementary and secondary school, and a free university that functions on the weekends. Every evening it has adult classes. I have neighbors who are now doctors, lawyers and teachers. Their younger siblings see absolutely zero barriers to being whatever they desire in life. There are 18 new homes in my enclave, double the amount before, with the approximately the same population. The homes were built by the community council, and have indoor bathrooms and tile roofs and ceramic kitchens, never dreamed of before. Ever since my clunker of a jeep broke down it is my compadre who gives me rides in his. A friend who came from the states to visit was surprised to find neighbors pleasantly plump. For every year of the revolution, she said, I think that everyone has gained a kilo.

Oh, and if you are sick, you can get free medical attention a half a mile down the road, at a clinic staffed by Cuban doctors and Venezuelan medical students from my community. But, I shouldn't go there, that's a sore spot for those from the US reading this.

These same stories could be told a thousand times, ten thousand times in Venezuela. If only journalists would actually come to Venezuela and leave their 5-stay hotels, maybe they would figure that out and solve the incredible mystery as to why this political project has been re-elected over 14 years and more than a dozen elections, in what Jimmy Carter calls the best electoral system in the world.

I am, however, the first to say that Venezuela is not a perfect country. I tell the many visitors who I receive here that this is an experiment in a world that desperately needs experiments. What doesn't work, we try to fix or throw out.
And, something definitely need to be fixed. Crime is one. Even though I have experienced far worse situations of insecurity and violence in Central America, Venezuela needs to confront this situation head-on. I actually think that President Maduro is doing a much better job than Chavez at this. He has taken concrete steps such as a disarmament program, a national youth program to bring sports and culture massively to the barrios, and more. Actually, crime has been falling in recent years -way too slowly albeit. I have been the one here, burying young people from the barrio where I work, and several years ago, this tragedy reached its peak. It must come down to zero, and it is correct to demand more attention from the government on this issue.

Another thing that must change is the shortages of basic good. But be careful in loosely pointing fingers. Indeed, it is the government's fault, but also it's private industry's fault and it's also my fault.

Check out my pantry. Like most of my friends, it has a few more quantities of things than needed. In my case: 20 kilos of corn flour, 10 large packages of toilet paper, and 5 kilos of coffee. Sometimes my companero calls to say he'll be late, he's in a line. What for I ask? Not sure, he responds, but probably something essential. As I open the door for him to bring in the 4 liters of oil I see my neighbor balancing a bag stuffed with sacks of sugar.

Sugar and oil aside, the issue at hand is that people had been killed in Venezuela because of political violence in the past two weeks. The numbers are between 10 and 50, depending on if it "counted" to be a victim if you died because you couldn't make it through a road block to the hospital. There lies blame for the deaths on both sides. Government security forces firing into the crowd, protesters setting national guard on fire with molotov cocktails, razor wire placed by protesters to protect their blockage decapitating unsuspecting motorcyclist, and so on and so forth.
That must stop and all of us in Venezuela must contribute. The government should continue to detain and investigate security forces who have responded with violence. Radical forces of the opposition must take down road blocks that create havoc for their own neighbors. And, the international media should be called out for its efforts to promote and misrepresent the current reality in Venezuela. Surprisingly, even the business leaders at the peace conference reiterated: we can solve this. We don't need outside intervention to so do. My guess is that they would rather do business in this socialist nation where people eat and buy much more than they did in the decades of the neo-liberal economic model.

My recent trip to Guatemala was only the most recent of visits to 18 Latin American countries in the past six years. I have met with hundreds of family members of the dead, disappeared, tortured and massacred, most at the hands of government forces, many of them trained and financed by the United States. Their tears could fill oceans. I have hugged too many Jacintos.

But, Venezuela is unique among them. Why? Because Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. Venezuela is a prize for whoever's greedy hands reach here, with the justification of regime change, crisis, humanitarian aid. But Venezuela is also a prize to me because of its orange-flowering bucare trees, a prize to my companero because of its Afro-Venezuelan tambores, a prize to my children because they grew up under its mango trees eating its arepas and avocados, a prize to my neighbors because they begin every morning with coffee grown by their own hands. Venezuela is a prize to each and every Venezuelan.

Yes, pray for Venezuela. Pray that there will be no more bloodshed. Pray that the people of Venezuela may continue their peaceful political tradition of finding solutions to real problems and differences. Pray (and act) that they be allowed to continue to determine their own destiny. Pray that Venezuela may remain a sovereign nation.

####

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

44 Years a Prisoner: The Case of Eddie Conway

44 Years a Prisoner: The Case of Eddie Conway
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/44_years_a_prisoner_the_case_of_eddie_conway_20140305/

Posted on Mar 5, 2014
By Amy Goodman

Marshall “Eddie” Conway walked free from prison this week, just one month shy of 44 years behind bars. He was convicted of the April 1970 killing of a Baltimore police officer. Conway has always maintained his innocence. At the time of his arrest and trial, he was a prominent member of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, the militant black-rights organization that was the principal focus of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s illegal “counterintelligence program.” The FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, surveilled and infiltrated Black Panther chapters from coast to coast, disrupting their organizing activities, often with violence.

The prosecution alleged Conway was behind the fatal shooting of Baltimore police officer Donald Sager. The case hinged on the testimony of a police officer and a jailhouse informant, who claimed Conway described the crime while they were sharing a cell. Former Baltimore NAACP President Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, a longtime supporter of Conway’s, told The Baltimore Sun: “This was when the COINTEL program was at its height. ... They did not have a witness who saw him there. They had no fingerprints or evidence there. They basically convicted him on the basis of what we now call an informant.” A global movement grew calling for Conway’s release. In 2001, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution asking the Maryland governor to pardon him.
Conway’s arrest happened a full year before a group of anti-war activists broke into the FBI field office in Media, Pa., and took thousands of pages of classified FBI documents and released them to the press. The word “COINTELPRO” was exposed for the first time.

One of Conway’s attorneys for more than 20 years, Bob Boyle, explained: “Mr. Conway’s trial took place in January of 1971. The break-in at the office in Media, Pennsylvania, which led to the disclosures concerning COINTELPRO, did not occur until April of 1971. So Eddie went to trial at a time when COINTELPRO was still active and the jury did not know that there was this campaign to neutralize the leadership and the organization of the Black Panther Party.”

It was in this environment that the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party was created. Conway had been in the U.S. Army in Germany and was bound for Vietnam. Then, in the summer of 1967, he saw a photo of the riots in Newark, N.J. He told me, “They put armored personnel carriers in the center of the black community, and they pointed .50 caliber machine guns at about 25 or 30 black women standing on a corner ... something was wrong with that picture, and I could probably come home and help join some efforts to reform that.”

He joined the NAACP, and he joined CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality). He continued: “I looked at all the different organizations, and the Black Panther Party represented at least a serious attempt to start feeding the children, to start educating the population, to start organizing health care and stuff like that. So I joined and started working with them.”

What Conway didn’t know was that the Baltimore chapter of the Panthers was actually created by a police infiltrator. Conway became suspicious of one of the local Black Panther leaders. He told me: “There was a defense captain named Warren Hart, he worked for the National Security Agency. ... I was instrumental in exposing him after a lengthy investigation, and he fled the country.” Not long after exposing the agent, Conway was arrested for the charges that ultimately landed him in prison for close to 44 years.

He led an exemplary life behind bars, movingly detailed in his memoir, “Marshall Law.” He told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour about Maryland’s prisons: “There was a tremendous amount of young men in prison, and because there wasn’t anything constructive to do, there was a tremendous amount of violence. So I started off first trying to, one, change that violence thing, and then, two, find things that could help enhance the prisoner’s life.” He co-founded Friend of a Friend, a prison mentoring program affiliated with the American Friends Service Committee, to help the youngest and most vulnerable prisoners adapt and better survive the brutal prison system.

Eddie Conway will turn 68 in April. After 44 years behind bars, you would think he would never want to set foot in a prison again. But that is not Eddie Conway. For his future, he says: “I’m going to continue to work with the Friend of a Friend organization. I think we’ve saved a lot of lives. I think we can save a lot more.”

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

The Great U-Turn

Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
The Great U-Turn

http://robertreich.org/post/78784064729

Robert Reich
:
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Robert Reich's blog

Do you recall a time in America when the income of a single school teacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family?
I remember. My father (who just celebrated his 100th birthday) earned enough for the rest of us to live comfortably. We weren’t rich but never felt poor, and our standard of living rose steadily through the 1950s and 1960s.

That used to be the norm. For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled. (Over the last thirty years, by contrast, the size of the economy doubled again but the earnings of the typical American went nowhere.)

In that earlier period, more than a third of all workers belonged to a trade union — giving average workers the bargaining power necessary to get a large and growing share of the large and growing economic pie. (Now, fewer than 7 percent [1] of private-sector workers are unionized.)

Then, CEO pay then averaged about 20 times the pay of their typical worker (now it’s over 200 times [2]).

In those years, the richest 1 percent took home 9 to 10 percent of total income (today the top 1 percent gets more than 20 percent [3]).

Then, the tax rate on highest-income Americans never fell below 70 percent; under Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, it was 91 percent [4]. (Today the top tax rate is 39.6 percent.)

In those decades, tax revenues from the wealthy and the growing middle class were used to build the largest infrastructure project in our history, the Interstate Highway system. And to build the world’s largest and best system of free public education, and dramatically expand public higher education. (Since then, our infrastructure has been collapsing from deferred maintenance, our public schools have deteriorated, and higher education has become unaffordable to many.)

We didn’t stop there. We enacted the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to extend prosperity and participation to African-Americans; Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care to the poor and reduce poverty among America’s seniors; and the Environmental Protection Act to help save our planet.

And we made sure banking was boring.

It was a virtuous cycle. As the economy grew, we prospered together. And that broad-based prosperity enabled us to invest in our future, creating more and better jobs and a higher standard of living.

Then came the great U-turn, and for the last thirty years we’ve been heading in the opposite direction.

Why?

Some blame globalization and the loss of America’s manufacturing core. Others point to new technologies that replaced routine jobs with automated machinery, software, and robotics.

But if these were the culprits, they only raise a deeper question: Why didn’t we share the gains from globalization and technological advances more broadly? Why didn’t we invest them in superb schools, higher skills, a world-class infrastructure?
Others blame Ronald Reagan’s worship of the so-called “free market,” supply-side economics, and deregulation. But if these were responsible, why did we cling to these ideas for so long? Why are so many people still clinging to them?

Some others believe Americans became greedier and more selfish. But if that’s the explanation, why did our national character change so dramatically?
Perhaps the real problem is we forgot what we once achieved together.

The collective erasure of the memory of that prior system of broad-based prosperity is due partly to the failure of my generation to retain and pass on the values on which that system was based. It can also be understood as the greatest propaganda victory radical conservatism ever won.

We must restore our recollection. In seeking to repair what is broken, we don’t have to emulate another nation. We have only to emulate what we once had.
That we once achieved broad-based prosperity means we can achieve it again — not exactly the same way, of course, but in a new way fit for the twenty-first century and for future generations of Americans.

America’s great U-turn can be reversed. It is worth the fight.

Source URL: https://portside.org/2014-03-08/great-u-turn

Links:
[1] http://robertreich.org/post/www.bls.gov.news,release/union2.nr0.htm
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/ceo-pay-1-795-to-1-multiple-of-workers-skirts-the-law-as-sec-delays.html
[3] http://www.nber.org/papers/w11955
[4] http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-hisory-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Pesticides Destroy Bees’ Ability to Carry Pollen, Protein

Pesticides Destroy Bees’ Ability to Carry Pollen, Protein
By Elizabeth Renter

Pollen, though irritating come spring time, is crucial to the health of bees. And bees are crucial to the health of plants, and therefore humans. But research shows commonly-used pesticides are destroying bees’ ability to carry pollen, their only source of protein and truly their life’s work.

According to The Guardian, the research comes during a two-year ban on the pesticides in question in the European Union. The ban includes three neonicotinoids, the most popular pesticides in the entire world. Temporarily banned because of their risk to bee populations, experts are calling for a permanent ban and one that encompasses the globe.

But experts aren’t the only ones voicing concerns. Just recently, it was announced that thousands of individuals are going to swarm Lowe’s and Home Deport in protest, demanding that the stores stop selling chemicals linked to bee destruction.
The research from Professor Dave Goulson and his colleagues with the University of Sussex reveals the use of these toxic formulas actually halves the pollen collection abilities of bees.

“Pollen is the only source of protein that bees have, and it is vital for rearing their young,” said Goulson. “Collecting it is fiddly, slow work for the bees and intoxicated bees become much worse at it. Without much pollen, nests will inevitably struggle.”

More than 75% of the world’s crops require pollination by insects. Bees remain the biggest pollinators, but bee populations are falling, and neonicotinoids are one part of the problem.

Published in the journal Ecotoxicology, the study found that bees exposed to neonicotinoids brought back pollen on only 40% of their journeys from home. Those who hadn’t been exposed came back with pollen 63% of the time. Further, those exposed to the pesticides carried an estimated 31% less than those who weren’t.

“This work adds another piece to the jigsaw,” said Hanna Feltham, another researcher on the project. “Even near-infinitesimal doses of these neurotoxins seem to be enough to mess up the ability of bees to gather food. Given the vital importance of bumblebees as pollinators, this is surely a cause for concern.”

For their part, the pesticide industry says studies like this are not worthwhile because they don’t accurately replicate field conditions. They say bees in these studies are exposed to higher levels of pesticides than those in the wild, suggesting there might be a “safe” level of exposure.

While it’s true that field studies are needed, where bees forage naturally and are not force-fed solutions laced with neonicotinoids, the analysis from those who make their millions off these pesticides is far from trustworthy.

This article was published at NationofChange at:

http://www.nationofchange.org/pesticides-destroy-bees-ability-carry-pollen-protein-1394374747. All rights are reserved.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Attacks on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Backfire

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22217-attacks-on-boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-backfire

Attacks on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Backfire
Sunday, 09 March 2014 00:00 By Sam Gilbert, Truthout | Report

(Photo: Kate Ausburn / Flickr)

While the movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions does not yet have widespread US public support, proposed reactionary legislation against it has given the campaign exposure that it otherwise was unlikely to achieve.

In December, the American Studies Association (ASA) answered the call from Palestinian civil society and endorsed the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, a milestone for the controversial Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which has only recently begun to make inroads in the United States.

The Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanction campaign began in 2005 to put political and economic pressure on Israel to end its violation of human rights and meet its obligations under international law. The nonviolent movement seeks to end the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, recognize the rights and equality of Arab-Palestinian living inside Israel and respect the right of return for Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora as guaranteed under UN resolution 194.
Speaking at a press conference in Ramallah last week, Omar Barghouti, founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, spoke about the recent successes. "The movement has really reached a tipping point. We're seeing a massive and accelerating growth of the BDS movement over the last couple of months; this has led to analysis in the pro-Israel establishment that BDS has become a strategic threat to Israel's regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid."

The 5,000 member ASA is the third major US academic association - along with the Asian American (AASA) and Native American and Indigenous Studies associations (NAISA) - to endorse the academic boycott over the past year. The boycott itself does not inhibit dialog or cooperation between individual United States and Israeli academics, but instead compels its members not to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions seen as complicit in the violation of human rights and international law.

"It is widely acknowledged that Israeli academic institutions are deeply embedded in the system of oppression and domination practiced by the Israeli state," Samia M. Al-Botmeh , a Palestinian professor from Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine, told Truthout. "Israeli universities and research institutions cooperate closely with the security-military establishment through research and teaching activities. Israeli universities have never dissociated themselves from the occupation regime, despite the more than four decades of the systematic stifling of Palestinian education."

The ASA's endorsement of the boycott served not only as an indictment of Israeli universities' complicity in state human rights violations, but also as a message to the US government, which provides military and other support to Israel. A statement on the ASA's website also points to the "documented impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian scholars and students."

For years, the BDS movement remained on the margins of US public discourse as criticism of Israeli policies was considered taboo. However, recent events indicate a growing space to speak out against the occupation.

As NYU professor Maria Saldana told Truthout, "It (boycott) signals an intellectual sea change, a demand on our part to be able to express our views about this particular occupation without the threat of retaliation or censorship."

Blowback

The Israeli government retains widespread public support in the United States, and the blowback from the boycott decision has been both predictable and fierce. Since the ASA vote in December, professors supportive of the boycott have received abusive hate mail, while many prominent US politicians, journalist and academics alike have condemned the boycott as anti-Semitic and unfairly singling out Israel.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Harvard president Lawrence Summers described the boycott as "abhorrent," and "anti-Semitic in effect."

Responding to the accusation of anti-Semitism, the US campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel's (USCBI) website made this statement: "The practices of discrimination, occupation, ethnic cleansing, illegal settlement and territorial expansion are not based on Judaism but on the political philosophy of Zionism and on the ultimate claim to the whole territory of 'Greater Israel' (EretzIsrael) that has no basis in international law, political history, or even in most versions of Jewish religious or cultural tradition. . . . Indeed, what is really anti-Semitic is the attempt to identify all Jews with a philosophy that many find abhorrent to the traditions of social justice and universality that Judaism enshrines."

Roz Rothstein, CEO of the pro-Israeli campus group StandWithUS disagrees, telling Truthout, "The boycott is anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent. It promotes a double standard by singling out the only Jewish country in the world, demanding it meet standards not expected of any other nation, defaming it with false accusations and blaming it alone for the lack of peace."

Kēhaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan professor on theboard of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel spoke to Truthout about the question of why Israel, in particular, is the target of BDS. First of all, Kauanui noted, Israel receives $3.3 billion per year in US aid and weapons - supplies it uses in the service of "war crimes and crimes against humanity."

"Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country in the world, and the United States has consistently protected Israel through its Security Council veto power," she added. "And in the United States, Zionists aggressively silence and work to censor (and censure) critical discussions about Israel."

The question of Boycotts

Following the ASA vote, the largest academic group in the nation (American Association of University Professors AAUP) came out strongly against the boycott, stating it constitutes a violation of academic freedom.
Since then, numerous US college presidents and Israeli academics have publicly condemned the action, arguing that the boycott restricts dialog and stifles academic freedom.

Speaking to Truthout, a spokesperson for the Israeli Academic Monitor (IAM), which monitors and exposes anti-Israeli activity on Israeli campuses said, "We take the position of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and some 200 presidents of universities in the United States that reject academic boycott as a violation of academic freedom."

Those endorsing the boycott disagree, arguing that it does nothing to hinder the academic freedom of individual Israeli scholars while increasing dialogue about the plight of Palestinians living under occupation.

As American studies professor Alex Lubin wrote, "The resolution does not prevent Israeli scholars from attending the ASA, nor does it prevent American scholars from working with Israeli scholars or from traveling to Israel. The boycott is a simple statement that does nothing to violate academic freedom - a privilege that only some enjoy in Israel/Palestine - but does very much to raise consciousness about the very real Israeli violations of Palestinian human and academic rights."

Moreover, according to Palestinian professor Samia M. Al-Botmeh, the focus on freedom of access to grants, networks, fellowships and other benefits for Israeli academics obfuscates the fact that Palestinians are routinely denied the most basic of freedoms.
"The privileging of academic freedom above other, more fundamental, rights flies in the face of the idea of universal human rights," Al-Botmeh told Truthout. "How can the academic freedom of a sector of Israeli society be more important than the basic right to a free and dignified life for all Palestinians, academics included?"
Protection of Freedom Law

The debate within the academy over academic freedom has been overshadowed by the introduction of anti-boycott legislation in both New York and Maryland earlier this year. The legislation, which would punish institutions endorsing the boycott, was withdrawn after numerous educators and lawmakers denounced the bills as an assault on academic freedom.

Speaking to this, NYU professor Maria Saldana said to Truthout," It reflects the power of the Zionist lobby in New York and in the state legislature. We had great success in stopping the first legislation, but it has been revised and submitted again."

Earlier this month, Congressmen Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) introduced a similar bill in the House, the "Protect Academic Freedom Act." If passed, the legislation would halt government funding to any American academic institutions that endorses the academic boycott of Israel.

"The Protect Academic Freedom Act represents the first legislation that defends Israel against discriminatory boycotts which impede rather than advance the peace process and that seek to deny Israelis the right to free speech on American campuses" said former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs, expressed his organization's support for the legislation in an email to Truthout.

However, this legislation, which purports to protect academic freedom, has been widely criticized as violating the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech -including the freedom to boycott.

"It's a threat, it's obvious; it's contradictory; they use it to intimidate us," said Saldana. "But it's also a blessing. Because of this legislation, we have had a lot of solidarity from academics at other institutions, individuals who might not support the boycott but nonetheless see this legislation to be just an obvious retaliation and infringement on academic freedom. Furthermore this 'lawfare' has brought exposure to the BDS movement that was previously unimaginable."

Increased Exposure

On February 3, the editorial board at the historically pro-Israel New York Times published an op-ed piece officially condemning the anti-boycott legislation, saying it would have a "chilling effect on academic freedom." Numerous academic associations, lawmakers and university presidents who were unsupportive of the boycott have nonetheless come out against the legislation.

Speaking about this, Omar Barghouti said, "They (congress) did us a favor. The AAUP has condemned the legislation. The New York Times editorial board is saying it is in violation [of] the US Constitution, and the president of Columbia University, who led the struggle against the academic boycott of Israel, has denounced the anti-boycott legislation. This bill is opening a huge alliance for us with US liberals who otherwise would not support BDS."

And while the BDS movement does not yet have widespread public support in the United States, the reactionary legislation has given the academic boycott exposure that it was unlikely to achieve.

As Barghouti said earlier this week in Ramallah, "Trying to suppress freedom of speech in the US, going against a tactic, boycott, which is time-honored and used in civil rights movement in US, from Montgomery bus boycott onward, apartheid movement and so on, is a lost battle."

Shifting Ground

BDS has enjoyed rapid growth over the past few years, and recent developments in the United States have not gone unnoticed in Jerusalem.
Speaking to a group of Jewish Americans in Jerusalem, Prime Minster Netanyahu said that Israel needs to "delegitimize the delegitimizer . . . I think that it is important that the boycotters be exposed for what they are; they are classical anti-Semites in modern garb."

Last week, a special session was held in Jerusalem by top Israeli officials to discuss the allocation of $100,000,000 ($30 million) to combat BDS, a threat that has been moved to the office of strategic affairs, putting the nonviolent boycott in the same company as Iran and other "existential" threats.

As Omar Barghouti said, "The qualitative leaps of the BDS movement in the last couple of months has created a real panic in the Israel government."

According to the Middle East Monitor, the session covered a number of areas where Israel could combat the growing BDS's threat. These include increased legal action against pro-boycott organizations, encouraging anti-boycott legislation in friendly capitals, and ratcheting up the intelligence gathering on pro-BDS people and organizations.

As the head of Palestinian NGO Network said at a press conference in Ramallah last week, "There is a war, no less than a war by the Israeli lobby and the Israeli government against Palestinian NGOs that support the boycott. They're trying to cut off any sources of funding, using 'lawfare' to criminalize support for BDS and suppress freedom of speech."

Speaking to the effect of Israel's response in the United States, UC Riverside professor and USACBI Organizing Collective member David Lloyd told Truthout, "BDS is now [considered] a strategic threat second only to Iran. We can therefore anticipate an even more vicious campaign of suppression in future months which will have a very deleterious effect on conditions of public discourse in this country. But the likelihood is that this kind of repressive blowback will suffer its own blowback. Coercion is not a very effective way of dealing with a non-violent, justice-based movement, betraying the weakness of the arguments rather than the rightness of what BDS opponents have to say."

While pressure mounts on BDS supporters within the United States, Israel and elsewhere, to many, the extreme response is indication of the movement's growing relevance.

As former Palestinian presidential candidate Dr. Mustafa Barghouti told Truthout in Ramallah last week, "We understand that the Israeli severe reaction and anger shows that BDS has been effective. As much as the Africa [apartheid] was stopped by popular non-violent resistance and the BDS movement, we are seeing the same phenomenon in Palestine."

And while the battle will continue to rage in Jerusalem and Washington, some in Palestine are cautiously optimistic.

Tamer, a student from Birzeit University outside of Ramallah, told this reporter, "We see that our struggle is linked to the larger world. From Ramallah, to Tel Aviv to New York. It seems that BDS is become a growing part of this."

Copyright, Truthout.

Sam Gilbert is a journalist based out of Ramallah, Palestine.

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs