OBITUARY: Rosalie Bertell
Distinguished Scientist, Antiwar Activist and Global Research Contributor
Global Research, June 15, 2012
We are sad to announce that Dr. Rosalie Bertell has passed away. Her scientific contributions are outstanding in many regards, pertaining to the impacts of depleted uranium contamination, her work on environmental modification techniques for military use including the HAARP program.
Dr. Rosalie Bertell was founder of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health. According to Rosalie Bertell, pertaining to the Pentagon's HAARP program:
"It would be rash to assume that HAARP is an isolated experiment which would not be expanded. It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere… It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States…The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening…The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer."
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 16, 2012
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
She has been a powerful voice and an inspiration
Dear Friends and Colleagues of Rosalie Bertell,
It is with sadness that I’m writing to inform you that our dear Sister Rosalie died early this morning, June 14, 2012, after a week or so in the hospital with severe respiratory distress due to advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Despite her illness, she remained in good spirits and most interested in all of the works of justice she strove to support throughout her life right to the end. She died very peacefully.
Her funeral Mass will be here at our Motherhouse Chapel on Monday, June 17th at 10 a.m.
We will be remembering all of you as well as Sister Rosalie in our prayers that day, along with all the people who were victims of nuclear disasters and the many other societal ills that were the concerns of her heart and her life’s work at the International Institute of Concern for Public Health.
Sincerely,
Sister Julia
Sister Julia C. Lanigan, GNSH
President, Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart
1750 Quarry Road, Yardley, PA 19067
215-968-4236
Website: www.greynun.org
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
A Review of book by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko, and Alexey Nesterenko
- by Dr. Rosalie Bertell - 2010-02-12
“The prognosis for the world, given this self-destructive and
earth-destructive behavior, is poor. As nuclear powers increase their
own pollution because of distorted military short-term thinking, the
people of their nations give birth to more physically damaged
offspring. These offspring will be less able to cope with the
increasingly hazardous environment. Thus a death process is underway,
even if there is no catastrophic accident or nuclear holocaust. Just
like the individual reactions to personal death, so society reacts to
species death with the typical stages: denial, anger, barter and
finally (hopefully) realism. For those who have reached the fourth
stage there is no more pretense that ‘things are normal,’ or that ‘the
world is enjoying peace,’ or that ‘one must trust the experts.’ The
stance is to attempt to heal the possibly mortal wounds, or to sit
with the dying earth.”
"Early War Crimes of World War III" Dr. Rosalie Bertell, February 1983
https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cws/article/viewFile/11838/10921
Sr. Rosalie Bertell, GNSH
April 4, 1929 - June 14, 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Bertell
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57459567/last-of-his-tortoise-species-lonesome-george-a-galapagos-icon-dies-at-100/
June 24, 2012 9:19 PM
Last-of-his-tortoise-species, Lonesome George, a Galapagos icon, dies at 100
(CBS/AP) QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuadorean officials say that the famed Galapagos giant tortoise Lonesome George has died.
The Galapagos National Park says in a statement that the tortoise estimated to be about 100 years old died Sunday.
Lonesome George was first seen by a Hungarian scientist on the Galapagos island of Pinta in 1972, reports BBC.
He was believed to be the last living member of the Geochelone abigdoni species and had become a symbol of the islands that helped inspire Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution.
Various mates had been provided for Lonesome George over the years in unsuccessful attempts to keep his subspecies alive.
Scientists had said he was not especially old and had expected him to live another few decades at least.
The park said the cause of his death would be investigated.
There are unique tortoises on several of Galapagos' islands, but scientists figured out Lonesome George was likely the last of his kind not long after he was first spotted.
In an article for the Tortoise Trust, Vicki Seal writes:
"Once there were millions of giant tortoises. In the age of the dinosaurs they covered most of the Americas, Europe and Asia. Like other dinosaurs they began to die out when mammals evolved and they were neither clever enough nor fast enough to compete for food.
But three million years ago, the Galapagos Islands burst out of the Pacific Ocean. For centuries these volcanic wastelands were bare. Then seeds carried by birds took root, the birds themselves stayed, and animals arriving on rafts of vegetation carried by ocean currents no longer perished.
Among there animals were the giant tortoises. They landed on 10 of the islands and have become adapted to the conditions of each.
Charles Darwin, visiting the islands in 1835, saw that the tortoises on each island were different although they had obviously descended from a common stock which was now extinct on the mainland. This observation formed part of his world-changing Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection."
© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Killer Drone Attacks Illegal, Counter-Productive
Published on Monday, June 25, 2012 by Common Dreams
Killer Drone Attacks Illegal, Counter-Productive
by Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer
The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected militants; the Obama administration assassinates them. Both practices not only visit more hatred upon the United States; they are also illegal. Our laws and treaties prohibit torture. The Constitution forbids the government from depriving any person of life without due process of law; that is, arrest and fair trial. Yet President Obama has approved the killing of people, many of whom were not even identified before the kill order was given.
Jo Becker and Scott Shane reported in the New York Times that Obama maintains a “kill list.” After consulting with his counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, Obama personally makes the decision to have individuals executed. Brennan was closely identified with torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during the Bush administration. The Times story, based on interviews with three dozen current and former Obama advisers, reports that “Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into U.S. custody” because he doesn’t want to add new prisoners to Guantanamo.
The leak of the kill list angered Republicans, evidently because they believe it demonstrates Obama’s “strength” in foreign policy. Some progressives who do not fully understand the profound illegality of drone attacks find them preferable to the United States’ all out invasions of more countries. We all need to understand that the unlawful precedent the United States is setting with its use of killer drones not only undermines the rule of law; it also will prevent the United States from reasonably objecting when other countries that obtain drone technology develop “kill lists” of persons those countries believe represent threats to them.
On June 15, for the first time, Obama publicly acknowledged that his administration is engaging in “direct action” in Yemen and Somalia. Although the United States is not at war with either country, George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” has morphed into Obama’s “War on Al Qaeda.” Obama’s “war” has been used as an excuse to assassinate anyone anywhere in the world whenever the President gives the order.
But “there is not a distinct entity called Al Qaeda that provides a sound basis for defining and delimiting an authorized use of force,” according to Paul P. Pillar, deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 1997 to 1999. The United States is not at war with Yemen and Somalia. Even if Obama identifies certain people living in Yemen or Somalia as members of Al-Qaeda who are desirous of committing acts of terror against the people of the United States, there is no basis in law for our government to declare war on individuals it considers a threat. The United States has legal means to indict and extradite, both under U.S. and international law.
Since 2004, some 300 drone strikes have been launched in Pakistan. Twenty percent of the resulting deaths are believed to have been civilians. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission says U.S. drone strikes were responsible for at least 957 deaths in Pakistan in 2010.
The Pakistan Human Rights Commission says U.S. drone strikes were responsible for at least 957 deaths in Pakistan in 2010.
In the three and one-half years since Obama took office, between 282 and 585 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. “The CIA’s drone campaign has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or who were attending funerals,” a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism found.
But, according to the Times article, Obama has developed a creative way to count civilian casualties. All military-age men killed in a drone strike zone are considered to be combatants, “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” As a result, Brennan reported last year that not one civilian had been killed during one year of strikes. An administration official recently claimed that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in Pakistan was in the “single digits.” Three former senior intelligence officials told the Times that they couldn’t believe the number could be so low.
Obama, who has been targeting “suspected militants” (called “personality strikes”) in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, even killing U.S. citizens, has authorized expanded drone attacks - whenever there are suspicious “patterns of behavior” at sites controlled by a terrorist group. These are known as “signature strikes.” That means bombs are being dropped on un-identified people who are in an area where suspicious activity has taken place. This goes beyond the illegal practice of “targeted killing.” People are being killed without even being an identified target.
The administration justifies its use of armed drones with reference to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed just days after the September 11 attacks. In the AUMF, Congress authorized force against groups and countries that had supported the terrorist strikes. But Congress rejected the Bush administration’s request for open-ended military authority “to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Deterrence and preemption are exactly what Obama is trying to accomplish by sending robots to kill “suspected militants” or those who happen to be present in an area where suspicious activity has taken place.
Moreover, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, Congress specifically declared, “Nothing in this section is intended to . . . expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [of September 2001].”
Drone attacks also violate well-established principles of international law. A targeted killing is defined as the “intentional, premeditated, and deliberate use of lethal force . . . against a specific individual who is not in the physical custody of the perpetrator,” according to Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions. Targeted or political assassinations – sometimes known as extra-judicial executions – run afoul of the Geneva Conventions, which include willful killing as a grave breach. Grave breaches of Geneva are punishable as war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act.
Christof Heyns, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, expressed grave concern about the targeted killings, saying they may constitute war crimes. He called on the Obama administration to explain how its drone strikes comport with international law, specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals, and whether the State in which the killing takes place has given consent. Heyns further asked for specification of the procedural safeguards in place, if any, to ensure in advance of drone killings that they comply with international law. He also wanted to know what measures the U.S. government takes after any such killing to ensure that its legal and factual analysis was accurate and, if not, the remedial measures it would take, including justice and reparations for victims and their families. Although Heyns’ predecessor made similar requests, Heyns said the United States has not provided a satisfactory response.
Heyns also called on the U.S. government to make public the number of civilians collaterally killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties. Once again, Heyns said the United States has not satisfactorily responded to a prior query for such information.
Likewise, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay recently declared that U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan violate the international law principles of proportionality and distinction. Proportionality means that an attack cannot be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage sought. Distinction requires that the attack be directed only at a legitimate military target.
The United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The ICCPR states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” The Covenant also guarantees those accused of a crime the right to be presumed innocent and to a fair trial by an impartial tribunal. Targeted killings abrogate these rights.
Self defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is a narrow exception to the Charter’s prohibition of the use of force or the threat of force to settle international disputes. Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack. To the extent the United States claims the right to kill suspected terrorists or their allies before they act, there must exist "a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case. Obama’s drone attacks do not meet this standard.
Although he does not use the phrase “War on Terror,” Obama has continued and even extended this policy.
The United States’ resort to ever increasing targeted killings is a direct result of the “War on Terror” the Bush administration declared after 9/11. Bush declared a perpetual war on a tactic and claimed all Al-Qaeda and Taliban are terrorists who may be preemptively killed as a form of self defense, rather than being arrested and tried for criminal acts. Although he does not use the phrase “War on Terror,” Obama has continued and even extended this policy. It is the product of a powerful military industrial complex in the United States which sees the use of force as the first step to resolving disputes rather than a last resort, notwithstanding the strictures of the UN Charter.
This practice sets a dangerous precedent. Heyns opined that “any Government could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives, decide to target and kill an individual on the territory of any State if it considers that said individual constitutes a threat.” Heyns also cited information that indicates “the attacks increasingly fuel protests among the population.” Heyns said the “lack of transparency” and “dangerous precedent” that drone attacks represent “remain of grave concern.”
Drone strikes are also counterproductive. They breed increased resentment against the United States and lead to the recruitment of more terrorists. “Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants,” Becker and Shane wrote in the Times article. They quoted Faisal Shahzad, who, while pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.” Pakistani ambassador Zamir Akram told the Geneva Forum last week that the drone attacks are illegal and violate the sovereignty of Pakistan, “not to mention being counter-productive.” He added, “thousands of innocent people, including women and children, have been murdered in these indiscriminate attacks.”
Becker and Shane noted, “[Obama’s] focus on strikes has made it impossible to forge, for now, the new relationship with the Muslim world that he had envisioned. Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr. Obama became president. Justly or not, drones have become a provocative symbol of American power, running roughshod over national sovereignty and killing innocents.”
Ibrahim Mothana, who wrote an op-ed in the Times titled “How Drones Help Al Qaeda,” agrees. “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair,” Mothana observed.
It is time to halt this dangerous and illegal practice.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, is now available. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com
Jeanne Mirer, who practices labor and employment law in New York, is president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/25-2
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
Killer Drone Attacks Illegal, Counter-Productive
by Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer
The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected militants; the Obama administration assassinates them. Both practices not only visit more hatred upon the United States; they are also illegal. Our laws and treaties prohibit torture. The Constitution forbids the government from depriving any person of life without due process of law; that is, arrest and fair trial. Yet President Obama has approved the killing of people, many of whom were not even identified before the kill order was given.
Jo Becker and Scott Shane reported in the New York Times that Obama maintains a “kill list.” After consulting with his counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, Obama personally makes the decision to have individuals executed. Brennan was closely identified with torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during the Bush administration. The Times story, based on interviews with three dozen current and former Obama advisers, reports that “Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into U.S. custody” because he doesn’t want to add new prisoners to Guantanamo.
The leak of the kill list angered Republicans, evidently because they believe it demonstrates Obama’s “strength” in foreign policy. Some progressives who do not fully understand the profound illegality of drone attacks find them preferable to the United States’ all out invasions of more countries. We all need to understand that the unlawful precedent the United States is setting with its use of killer drones not only undermines the rule of law; it also will prevent the United States from reasonably objecting when other countries that obtain drone technology develop “kill lists” of persons those countries believe represent threats to them.
On June 15, for the first time, Obama publicly acknowledged that his administration is engaging in “direct action” in Yemen and Somalia. Although the United States is not at war with either country, George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” has morphed into Obama’s “War on Al Qaeda.” Obama’s “war” has been used as an excuse to assassinate anyone anywhere in the world whenever the President gives the order.
But “there is not a distinct entity called Al Qaeda that provides a sound basis for defining and delimiting an authorized use of force,” according to Paul P. Pillar, deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from 1997 to 1999. The United States is not at war with Yemen and Somalia. Even if Obama identifies certain people living in Yemen or Somalia as members of Al-Qaeda who are desirous of committing acts of terror against the people of the United States, there is no basis in law for our government to declare war on individuals it considers a threat. The United States has legal means to indict and extradite, both under U.S. and international law.
Since 2004, some 300 drone strikes have been launched in Pakistan. Twenty percent of the resulting deaths are believed to have been civilians. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission says U.S. drone strikes were responsible for at least 957 deaths in Pakistan in 2010.
The Pakistan Human Rights Commission says U.S. drone strikes were responsible for at least 957 deaths in Pakistan in 2010.
In the three and one-half years since Obama took office, between 282 and 585 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. “The CIA’s drone campaign has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or who were attending funerals,” a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism found.
But, according to the Times article, Obama has developed a creative way to count civilian casualties. All military-age men killed in a drone strike zone are considered to be combatants, “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” As a result, Brennan reported last year that not one civilian had been killed during one year of strikes. An administration official recently claimed that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in Pakistan was in the “single digits.” Three former senior intelligence officials told the Times that they couldn’t believe the number could be so low.
Obama, who has been targeting “suspected militants” (called “personality strikes”) in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, even killing U.S. citizens, has authorized expanded drone attacks - whenever there are suspicious “patterns of behavior” at sites controlled by a terrorist group. These are known as “signature strikes.” That means bombs are being dropped on un-identified people who are in an area where suspicious activity has taken place. This goes beyond the illegal practice of “targeted killing.” People are being killed without even being an identified target.
The administration justifies its use of armed drones with reference to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed just days after the September 11 attacks. In the AUMF, Congress authorized force against groups and countries that had supported the terrorist strikes. But Congress rejected the Bush administration’s request for open-ended military authority “to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Deterrence and preemption are exactly what Obama is trying to accomplish by sending robots to kill “suspected militants” or those who happen to be present in an area where suspicious activity has taken place.
Moreover, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, Congress specifically declared, “Nothing in this section is intended to . . . expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [of September 2001].”
Drone attacks also violate well-established principles of international law. A targeted killing is defined as the “intentional, premeditated, and deliberate use of lethal force . . . against a specific individual who is not in the physical custody of the perpetrator,” according to Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions. Targeted or political assassinations – sometimes known as extra-judicial executions – run afoul of the Geneva Conventions, which include willful killing as a grave breach. Grave breaches of Geneva are punishable as war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act.
Christof Heyns, the current UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, expressed grave concern about the targeted killings, saying they may constitute war crimes. He called on the Obama administration to explain how its drone strikes comport with international law, specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals, and whether the State in which the killing takes place has given consent. Heyns further asked for specification of the procedural safeguards in place, if any, to ensure in advance of drone killings that they comply with international law. He also wanted to know what measures the U.S. government takes after any such killing to ensure that its legal and factual analysis was accurate and, if not, the remedial measures it would take, including justice and reparations for victims and their families. Although Heyns’ predecessor made similar requests, Heyns said the United States has not provided a satisfactory response.
Heyns also called on the U.S. government to make public the number of civilians collaterally killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties. Once again, Heyns said the United States has not satisfactorily responded to a prior query for such information.
Likewise, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay recently declared that U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan violate the international law principles of proportionality and distinction. Proportionality means that an attack cannot be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage sought. Distinction requires that the attack be directed only at a legitimate military target.
The United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The ICCPR states: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” The Covenant also guarantees those accused of a crime the right to be presumed innocent and to a fair trial by an impartial tribunal. Targeted killings abrogate these rights.
Self defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is a narrow exception to the Charter’s prohibition of the use of force or the threat of force to settle international disputes. Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack. To the extent the United States claims the right to kill suspected terrorists or their allies before they act, there must exist "a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case. Obama’s drone attacks do not meet this standard.
Although he does not use the phrase “War on Terror,” Obama has continued and even extended this policy.
The United States’ resort to ever increasing targeted killings is a direct result of the “War on Terror” the Bush administration declared after 9/11. Bush declared a perpetual war on a tactic and claimed all Al-Qaeda and Taliban are terrorists who may be preemptively killed as a form of self defense, rather than being arrested and tried for criminal acts. Although he does not use the phrase “War on Terror,” Obama has continued and even extended this policy. It is the product of a powerful military industrial complex in the United States which sees the use of force as the first step to resolving disputes rather than a last resort, notwithstanding the strictures of the UN Charter.
This practice sets a dangerous precedent. Heyns opined that “any Government could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives, decide to target and kill an individual on the territory of any State if it considers that said individual constitutes a threat.” Heyns also cited information that indicates “the attacks increasingly fuel protests among the population.” Heyns said the “lack of transparency” and “dangerous precedent” that drone attacks represent “remain of grave concern.”
Drone strikes are also counterproductive. They breed increased resentment against the United States and lead to the recruitment of more terrorists. “Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants,” Becker and Shane wrote in the Times article. They quoted Faisal Shahzad, who, while pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.” Pakistani ambassador Zamir Akram told the Geneva Forum last week that the drone attacks are illegal and violate the sovereignty of Pakistan, “not to mention being counter-productive.” He added, “thousands of innocent people, including women and children, have been murdered in these indiscriminate attacks.”
Becker and Shane noted, “[Obama’s] focus on strikes has made it impossible to forge, for now, the new relationship with the Muslim world that he had envisioned. Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Mr. Obama became president. Justly or not, drones have become a provocative symbol of American power, running roughshod over national sovereignty and killing innocents.”
Ibrahim Mothana, who wrote an op-ed in the Times titled “How Drones Help Al Qaeda,” agrees. “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants; they are not driven by ideology but rather by a sense of revenge and despair,” Mothana observed.
It is time to halt this dangerous and illegal practice.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, is now available. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com
Jeanne Mirer, who practices labor and employment law in New York, is president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/25-2
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
Bradley Manning lawyers accuse prosecutors of misleading judge
Bradley Manning lawyers accuse prosecutors of misleading judge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/24/bradley-manning-lawyers-accuse-prosecutors
In a motion ahead of Monday's pre-trial hearing, civilian lawyer says prosecutors are still denying defence access to documents
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 June 2012 09.19 EDT
Bradley Manning's lawyers say the prosecution team is keeping important documents from them. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
The US government is deliberately attempting to prevent Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of state secrets, from receiving a fair trial, the soldier's lawyer alleges in new court documents.
David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer, has made his strongest accusations yet about the conduct of the military prosecutors. In motions filed with the military court ahead of a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on Monday, he goes so far as to accuse the government in essence of lying to the court.
Coombs charges the prosecutors with making "an outright misrepresentation" to the court over evidence the defence has been trying for months to gain access to through disclosure.
The dispute relates to an investigation by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Oncix, into the damage caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.
Reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news outlets have suggested that official inquiries into the impact of WikiLeaks concluded that the leaks caused some "pockets" of short-term damage around the world, but that generally its impact had been embarrassing rather than harmful.
Such a finding could prove invaluable to the defence in fighting some of the charges facing Manning or, should he be found guilty, reducing his sentence.
Yet Coombs says the army prosecutors have consistently kept him, and the court, in the dark, thwarting his legal rights to see the evidence.
"It was abundantly clear that Oncix had some form of inquiry into the harm from the leaks – but the government switched definitions around arbitrarily so as to avoid disclosing this discovery to the defence."
On 21 March, the prosecutors told the court that "Oncix has not produced any interim or final damage assessment" into WikiLeaks.
Coombs alleges that this statement was inaccurate – and the government knew it to be inaccurate at the time it made it.
"The defense submits [this] was an outright misrepresentation," he writes.
On 20 April, the government told the court that "Oncix does not have any forensic results or investigative files". Yet a week before that, the prosecutors had handed to the defence documents that clearly showed Oncix had begun to investigate WikiLeaks almost 18 months previously.
"Oncix was collecting information from various agencies in late 2010 to assess what damage, if any, was occasioned by the leaks. So how could it be that
Oncix neither had an investigation nor a damage assessment?" Coombs writes.
The alleged efforts by the US government to avoid fulfilling its obligations to hand over evidence, Coombs says, has had the effect of rendering it impossible for the defence to prepare for the trial which is scheduled to begin in September.
Without access to the information, they cannot identify witnesses, develop questions for those witnesses, prepare a cross-examination strategy and so on.
"There is no way that the defense can adequately prepare its case," Coombs complains.
Most damningly, he alleges that is precisely the army's intention. "The government should not be able to circumvent its discovery obligations for two years, then dump discovery on the defense last-minute, and expect that there will be a fair battle," he says.
"Indeed, the defense believes that this was the intention of the government – to defeat its adversary by adopting untenable litigation positions designed to frustrate discovery."
Manning will make his fourth court appearance at Fort Meade on Monday. If convicted of the 22 counts, which include "aiding the enemy", he could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in military custody.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 09.19 EDT on Sunday 24 June 2012.
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
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/24/bradley-manning-lawyers-accuse-prosecutors
In a motion ahead of Monday's pre-trial hearing, civilian lawyer says prosecutors are still denying defence access to documents
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 June 2012 09.19 EDT
Bradley Manning's lawyers say the prosecution team is keeping important documents from them. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
The US government is deliberately attempting to prevent Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of state secrets, from receiving a fair trial, the soldier's lawyer alleges in new court documents.
David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer, has made his strongest accusations yet about the conduct of the military prosecutors. In motions filed with the military court ahead of a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on Monday, he goes so far as to accuse the government in essence of lying to the court.
Coombs charges the prosecutors with making "an outright misrepresentation" to the court over evidence the defence has been trying for months to gain access to through disclosure.
The dispute relates to an investigation by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Oncix, into the damage caused by the WikiLeaks disclosures of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents.
Reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other news outlets have suggested that official inquiries into the impact of WikiLeaks concluded that the leaks caused some "pockets" of short-term damage around the world, but that generally its impact had been embarrassing rather than harmful.
Such a finding could prove invaluable to the defence in fighting some of the charges facing Manning or, should he be found guilty, reducing his sentence.
Yet Coombs says the army prosecutors have consistently kept him, and the court, in the dark, thwarting his legal rights to see the evidence.
"It was abundantly clear that Oncix had some form of inquiry into the harm from the leaks – but the government switched definitions around arbitrarily so as to avoid disclosing this discovery to the defence."
On 21 March, the prosecutors told the court that "Oncix has not produced any interim or final damage assessment" into WikiLeaks.
Coombs alleges that this statement was inaccurate – and the government knew it to be inaccurate at the time it made it.
"The defense submits [this] was an outright misrepresentation," he writes.
On 20 April, the government told the court that "Oncix does not have any forensic results or investigative files". Yet a week before that, the prosecutors had handed to the defence documents that clearly showed Oncix had begun to investigate WikiLeaks almost 18 months previously.
"Oncix was collecting information from various agencies in late 2010 to assess what damage, if any, was occasioned by the leaks. So how could it be that
Oncix neither had an investigation nor a damage assessment?" Coombs writes.
The alleged efforts by the US government to avoid fulfilling its obligations to hand over evidence, Coombs says, has had the effect of rendering it impossible for the defence to prepare for the trial which is scheduled to begin in September.
Without access to the information, they cannot identify witnesses, develop questions for those witnesses, prepare a cross-examination strategy and so on.
"There is no way that the defense can adequately prepare its case," Coombs complains.
Most damningly, he alleges that is precisely the army's intention. "The government should not be able to circumvent its discovery obligations for two years, then dump discovery on the defense last-minute, and expect that there will be a fair battle," he says.
"Indeed, the defense believes that this was the intention of the government – to defeat its adversary by adopting untenable litigation positions designed to frustrate discovery."
Manning will make his fourth court appearance at Fort Meade on Monday. If convicted of the 22 counts, which include "aiding the enemy", he could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in military custody.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 09.19 EDT on Sunday 24 June 2012.
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
Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Juárez
Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Juárez
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-more-women-in-juarez-mexico.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120624
June 23, 2012
By DAMIEN CAVE
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — First, there were just a few bones and body parts, found in a valley beyond the sprawl of this wild city. At least four women had been killed and dumped, the authorities said. Then, in the same area, investigators made another discovery early this year: a dozen more dead women and girls.
Most disappeared in 2009 and 2010, and when last seen alive many were teenagers, good students with bright smiles of possibility. In death, however, they have become apparitions.
Idalí Juache’s mother still insists her daughter is missing, though the police linked her DNA to cranial fragments in the valley’s grave. Elvira González said she felt what seemed like her daughter’s spirit at home, before finding out she had been dumped in the grave.
“I never believed this was how she would be brought back to us,” Ms. González said, fighting tears in her modest kitchen. “I always believed she’d be given back to us alive.”
Ciudad Juárez became infamous for a wave of attacks beginning in the 1990s that left hundreds of women dead over the course of a decade.
International attention moved on, but the killings have continued, with a second wave even larger than the first. Even as overall violence here declines, new clusters of slain women are continually being discovered.
Roughly 60 women and girls have been killed here so far this year; at least 100 have been reported missing over the past two years. And though the death toll for women so far this year is on track to fall below the high of 304 in 2010, state officials say there have already been more women killed in 2012 than in any year of the earlier so-called femicide era.
This time, though, the response has been underwhelming. “People haven’t reacted with the same force as before,” said Gustavo de la Rosa, a human rights investigator for Chihuahua State. “They think it’s natural.”
Mexican authorities have made promises to prioritize cases like these for years, and in the wake of international pressure, prosecutors now argue that more of the killings are being solved. But arrests and convictions are exceedingly rare. For the victims found in the mass grave in the Juárez Valley, even the most basic details were still a mystery months later: forensic teams said they were not even sure how many women were buried there.
To many, these women are now part of what looks like a slaughter with peaks and valleys, but no end. In the state office opened a few years ago to investigate violence against women, desks are perpetually covered with stomach-turning case files.
“It’s a more vulnerable group,” said Hector Hawley, the forensics investigator charged with documenting the crime scenes of most of the women killed in Ciudad Juárez. “These are not people we expect to see killed.”
Mr. Hawley has been working murder cases since 2003. He started specializing in women in recent years, and in his view, the stunning tally of women killed is mostly caused by the increased local involvement in gangs and drugs; and jealous men. Often, both gangs and jealousy come together in a single case.
He opened a file on his computer showing one of the 18 women killed in April. Photographs showed that she had been dumped in a public street, and found around 8 a.m. “She was stabbed 63 times,” Mr. Hawley said. Her pink shirt, featuring an image of a heart, was stained with blood. Based on the number of stab wounds, he said, “The killer had to be on drugs.”
He opened another file, showing a woman, shot dead, at the bottom of a garbage pile. “She was pregnant,” he said. “We think she owed her bosses money for something, drugs maybe.”
He clicked through several other cases showing women young and old, mostly shot and killed at close range. He and two investigators in his office said they did not have any specific information about the women found in the mass grave, but they warned against seeing their deaths as the product of a single cause. “In Juárez, there’s everything,” Mr. Hawley said. “There are jealous husbands, jealous fathers-in-law, there are women killing women.”
A government committee found a similar array of causes for the earlier wave of killings. After surveying 155 killings out of 340 documented between 1993 and 2003, the committee found that roughly half were prompted by motives like domestic violence, robbery and gang wars, while a little more than a third involved sexual assault.
Victims’ advocates, however, argue that the killings of the women found in the valley fall on the more bizarre end of the spectrum. Francisca Galván, a lawyer who has been working with the parents of missing girls, said that Ms. González’s daughter, Perla, 15, was last seen downtown talking to a middle-aged man around lunchtime. Several other girls from the grave, along with some still missing, have also disappeared from locations nearby, Ms. Galván said.
All were around the same age and several looked very similar: posters hanging all over the city show that they had long, straight dark hair and skinny frames. “The authorities, they don’t want to see the truth,” Ms. Galván said. “Life here just has so little value.”
Her own theories run the gamut: maybe the girls were targeted for organ theft, maybe the killers arrived as part of the surge in deportations that has sent thousands of immigrant criminals to Ciudad Juárez from the United States. Though it is unclear if the victims had been raped, she added, maybe the killings started as sexual assaults.
American officials in El Paso said they were shaking their heads, too; when drug gangs are involved in high-profile killings, paid informers usually call with tips. But not in the case of the Juárez Valley grave.
For the parents, grief has been compounded by the authorities, who, in the parents’ view, have done far too little explaining. Several mothers of missing girls said that prosecutors had refused to let them visit the morgue, even as officials offered up conflicting tallies for how many female bodies were held there. “They’re liars,” said Norma Laguna Cabra, Idalí’s mother.
Ms. González said that one state investigator even claimed to speak to the spirit of her missing daughter. She said he came to her house after the grave was found but before the identifications were announced. After lingering in Perla’s room, he told her she wanted to give her a message: “I’m on my way.”
“Tell me where you are — where should we look for you?” Ms. González said she shouted. But it was no use: “I can’t say,” came the reply from the investigator.
Two weeks later, the authorities told Ms. González that Perla was dead. A deeply religious woman, she said she had concluded that the message — whether real or fake — could only have come from the devil because it increased her pain.
“Here, the only one who gives us justice and obedience to the law is God,” she said. “And there’s no escaping.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-more-women-in-juarez-mexico.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120624
June 23, 2012
By DAMIEN CAVE
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — First, there were just a few bones and body parts, found in a valley beyond the sprawl of this wild city. At least four women had been killed and dumped, the authorities said. Then, in the same area, investigators made another discovery early this year: a dozen more dead women and girls.
Most disappeared in 2009 and 2010, and when last seen alive many were teenagers, good students with bright smiles of possibility. In death, however, they have become apparitions.
Idalí Juache’s mother still insists her daughter is missing, though the police linked her DNA to cranial fragments in the valley’s grave. Elvira González said she felt what seemed like her daughter’s spirit at home, before finding out she had been dumped in the grave.
“I never believed this was how she would be brought back to us,” Ms. González said, fighting tears in her modest kitchen. “I always believed she’d be given back to us alive.”
Ciudad Juárez became infamous for a wave of attacks beginning in the 1990s that left hundreds of women dead over the course of a decade.
International attention moved on, but the killings have continued, with a second wave even larger than the first. Even as overall violence here declines, new clusters of slain women are continually being discovered.
Roughly 60 women and girls have been killed here so far this year; at least 100 have been reported missing over the past two years. And though the death toll for women so far this year is on track to fall below the high of 304 in 2010, state officials say there have already been more women killed in 2012 than in any year of the earlier so-called femicide era.
This time, though, the response has been underwhelming. “People haven’t reacted with the same force as before,” said Gustavo de la Rosa, a human rights investigator for Chihuahua State. “They think it’s natural.”
Mexican authorities have made promises to prioritize cases like these for years, and in the wake of international pressure, prosecutors now argue that more of the killings are being solved. But arrests and convictions are exceedingly rare. For the victims found in the mass grave in the Juárez Valley, even the most basic details were still a mystery months later: forensic teams said they were not even sure how many women were buried there.
To many, these women are now part of what looks like a slaughter with peaks and valleys, but no end. In the state office opened a few years ago to investigate violence against women, desks are perpetually covered with stomach-turning case files.
“It’s a more vulnerable group,” said Hector Hawley, the forensics investigator charged with documenting the crime scenes of most of the women killed in Ciudad Juárez. “These are not people we expect to see killed.”
Mr. Hawley has been working murder cases since 2003. He started specializing in women in recent years, and in his view, the stunning tally of women killed is mostly caused by the increased local involvement in gangs and drugs; and jealous men. Often, both gangs and jealousy come together in a single case.
He opened a file on his computer showing one of the 18 women killed in April. Photographs showed that she had been dumped in a public street, and found around 8 a.m. “She was stabbed 63 times,” Mr. Hawley said. Her pink shirt, featuring an image of a heart, was stained with blood. Based on the number of stab wounds, he said, “The killer had to be on drugs.”
He opened another file, showing a woman, shot dead, at the bottom of a garbage pile. “She was pregnant,” he said. “We think she owed her bosses money for something, drugs maybe.”
He clicked through several other cases showing women young and old, mostly shot and killed at close range. He and two investigators in his office said they did not have any specific information about the women found in the mass grave, but they warned against seeing their deaths as the product of a single cause. “In Juárez, there’s everything,” Mr. Hawley said. “There are jealous husbands, jealous fathers-in-law, there are women killing women.”
A government committee found a similar array of causes for the earlier wave of killings. After surveying 155 killings out of 340 documented between 1993 and 2003, the committee found that roughly half were prompted by motives like domestic violence, robbery and gang wars, while a little more than a third involved sexual assault.
Victims’ advocates, however, argue that the killings of the women found in the valley fall on the more bizarre end of the spectrum. Francisca Galván, a lawyer who has been working with the parents of missing girls, said that Ms. González’s daughter, Perla, 15, was last seen downtown talking to a middle-aged man around lunchtime. Several other girls from the grave, along with some still missing, have also disappeared from locations nearby, Ms. Galván said.
All were around the same age and several looked very similar: posters hanging all over the city show that they had long, straight dark hair and skinny frames. “The authorities, they don’t want to see the truth,” Ms. Galván said. “Life here just has so little value.”
Her own theories run the gamut: maybe the girls were targeted for organ theft, maybe the killers arrived as part of the surge in deportations that has sent thousands of immigrant criminals to Ciudad Juárez from the United States. Though it is unclear if the victims had been raped, she added, maybe the killings started as sexual assaults.
American officials in El Paso said they were shaking their heads, too; when drug gangs are involved in high-profile killings, paid informers usually call with tips. But not in the case of the Juárez Valley grave.
For the parents, grief has been compounded by the authorities, who, in the parents’ view, have done far too little explaining. Several mothers of missing girls said that prosecutors had refused to let them visit the morgue, even as officials offered up conflicting tallies for how many female bodies were held there. “They’re liars,” said Norma Laguna Cabra, Idalí’s mother.
Ms. González said that one state investigator even claimed to speak to the spirit of her missing daughter. She said he came to her house after the grave was found but before the identifications were announced. After lingering in Perla’s room, he told her she wanted to give her a message: “I’m on my way.”
“Tell me where you are — where should we look for you?” Ms. González said she shouted. But it was no use: “I can’t say,” came the reply from the investigator.
Two weeks later, the authorities told Ms. González that Perla was dead. A deeply religious woman, she said she had concluded that the message — whether real or fake — could only have come from the devil because it increased her pain.
“Here, the only one who gives us justice and obedience to the law is God,” she said. “And there’s no escaping.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
A Weapon We Can’t Control
A Weapon We Can’t Control
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/stuxnet-will-come-back-to-haunt-us.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120625
June 24, 2012
By MISHA GLENNY
London
THE decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility late in George W. Bush’s presidency marked a significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the Internet. Washington has begun to cross the Rubicon. If it continues, contemporary warfare will change fundamentally as we move into hazardous and uncharted territory.
It is one thing to write viruses and lock them away safely for future use should circumstances dictate it. It is quite another to deploy them in peacetime. Stuxnet has effectively fired the starting gun in a new arms race that is very likely to lead to the spread of similar and still more powerful offensive cyberweaponry across the Internet. Unlike nuclear or chemical weapons, however, countries are developing cyberweapons outside any regulatory framework.
There is no international treaty or agreement restricting the use of cyberweapons, which can do anything from controlling an individual laptop to disrupting an entire country’s critical telecommunications or banking infrastructure. It is in the United States’ interest to push for one before the monster it has unleashed comes home to roost.
Stuxnet was originally deployed with the specific aim of infecting the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran. This required sneaking a memory stick into the plant to introduce the virus to its private and secure “offline” network. But despite Natanz’s isolation, Stuxnet somehow escaped into the cyberwild, eventually affecting hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide.
This is one of the frightening dangers of an uncontrolled arms race in cyberspace; once released, virus developers generally lose control of their inventions, which will inevitably seek out and attack the networks of innocent parties. Moreover, all countries that possess an offensive cyber capability will be tempted to use it now that the first shot has been fired.
Until recent revelations by The New York Times’s David E. Sanger, there was no definitive proof that America was behind Stuxnet. Now computer security experts have found a clear link between its creators and a newly discovered virus called Flame, which transforms infected computers into multipurpose espionage tools and has infected machines across the Middle East.
The United States has long been a commendable leader in combating the spread of malicious computer code, known as malware, that pranksters, criminals, intelligence services and terrorist organizations have been using to further their own ends. But by introducing such pernicious viruses as Stuxnet and Flame, America has severely undermined its moral and political credibility.
Flame circulated on the Web for at least four years and evaded detection by the big antivirus operators like McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky Labs and F-Secure — companies that are vital to ensuring that law-abiding consumers can go about their business on the Web unmolested by the army of malware writers, who release nasty computer code onto the Internet to steal our money, data, intellectual property or identities. But senior industry figures have now expressed deep worries about the state-sponsored release of the most potent malware ever seen.
During the cold war, countries’ chief assets were missiles with nuclear warheads. Generally their number and location was common knowledge, as was the damage they could inflict and how long it would take them to inflict it.
Advanced cyberwar is different: a country’s assets lie as much in the weaknesses of enemy computer defenses as in the power of the weapons it possesses. So in order to assess one’s own capability, there is a strong temptation to penetrate the enemy’s systems before a conflict erupts. It is no good trying to hit them once hostilities have broken out; they will be prepared and there’s a risk that they already will have infected your systems. Once the logic of cyberwarfare takes hold, it is worryingly pre-emptive and can lead to the uncontrolled spread of malware.
Until now, America has been reluctant to discuss regulation of the Internet with Russia and China. Washington believes any moves toward a treaty might undermine its presumed superiority in the field of cyberweaponry and robotics. And it fears that Moscow and Beijing would exploit a global regulation of military activity on the Web, in order to justify and further strengthen the powerful tools they already use to restrict their citizens’ freedom on the Net. The United States must now consider entering into discussions, anathema though they may be, with the world’s major powers about the rules governing the Internet as a military domain.
Any agreement should regulate only military uses of the Internet and should specifically avoid any clauses that might affect private or commercial use of the Web. Nobody can halt the worldwide rush to create cyberweapons, but a treaty could prevent their deployment in peacetime and allow for a collective response to countries or organizations that violate it.
Technical superiority is not written in stone, and the United States is arguably more dependent on networked computer systems than any other country in the world. Washington must halt the spiral toward an arms race, which, in the long term, it is not guaranteed to win.
Misha Glenny, a visiting professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, is the author of “DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/stuxnet-will-come-back-to-haunt-us.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120625
June 24, 2012
By MISHA GLENNY
London
THE decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility late in George W. Bush’s presidency marked a significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the Internet. Washington has begun to cross the Rubicon. If it continues, contemporary warfare will change fundamentally as we move into hazardous and uncharted territory.
It is one thing to write viruses and lock them away safely for future use should circumstances dictate it. It is quite another to deploy them in peacetime. Stuxnet has effectively fired the starting gun in a new arms race that is very likely to lead to the spread of similar and still more powerful offensive cyberweaponry across the Internet. Unlike nuclear or chemical weapons, however, countries are developing cyberweapons outside any regulatory framework.
There is no international treaty or agreement restricting the use of cyberweapons, which can do anything from controlling an individual laptop to disrupting an entire country’s critical telecommunications or banking infrastructure. It is in the United States’ interest to push for one before the monster it has unleashed comes home to roost.
Stuxnet was originally deployed with the specific aim of infecting the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran. This required sneaking a memory stick into the plant to introduce the virus to its private and secure “offline” network. But despite Natanz’s isolation, Stuxnet somehow escaped into the cyberwild, eventually affecting hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide.
This is one of the frightening dangers of an uncontrolled arms race in cyberspace; once released, virus developers generally lose control of their inventions, which will inevitably seek out and attack the networks of innocent parties. Moreover, all countries that possess an offensive cyber capability will be tempted to use it now that the first shot has been fired.
Until recent revelations by The New York Times’s David E. Sanger, there was no definitive proof that America was behind Stuxnet. Now computer security experts have found a clear link between its creators and a newly discovered virus called Flame, which transforms infected computers into multipurpose espionage tools and has infected machines across the Middle East.
The United States has long been a commendable leader in combating the spread of malicious computer code, known as malware, that pranksters, criminals, intelligence services and terrorist organizations have been using to further their own ends. But by introducing such pernicious viruses as Stuxnet and Flame, America has severely undermined its moral and political credibility.
Flame circulated on the Web for at least four years and evaded detection by the big antivirus operators like McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky Labs and F-Secure — companies that are vital to ensuring that law-abiding consumers can go about their business on the Web unmolested by the army of malware writers, who release nasty computer code onto the Internet to steal our money, data, intellectual property or identities. But senior industry figures have now expressed deep worries about the state-sponsored release of the most potent malware ever seen.
During the cold war, countries’ chief assets were missiles with nuclear warheads. Generally their number and location was common knowledge, as was the damage they could inflict and how long it would take them to inflict it.
Advanced cyberwar is different: a country’s assets lie as much in the weaknesses of enemy computer defenses as in the power of the weapons it possesses. So in order to assess one’s own capability, there is a strong temptation to penetrate the enemy’s systems before a conflict erupts. It is no good trying to hit them once hostilities have broken out; they will be prepared and there’s a risk that they already will have infected your systems. Once the logic of cyberwarfare takes hold, it is worryingly pre-emptive and can lead to the uncontrolled spread of malware.
Until now, America has been reluctant to discuss regulation of the Internet with Russia and China. Washington believes any moves toward a treaty might undermine its presumed superiority in the field of cyberweaponry and robotics. And it fears that Moscow and Beijing would exploit a global regulation of military activity on the Web, in order to justify and further strengthen the powerful tools they already use to restrict their citizens’ freedom on the Net. The United States must now consider entering into discussions, anathema though they may be, with the world’s major powers about the rules governing the Internet as a military domain.
Any agreement should regulate only military uses of the Internet and should specifically avoid any clauses that might affect private or commercial use of the Web. Nobody can halt the worldwide rush to create cyberweapons, but a treaty could prevent their deployment in peacetime and allow for a collective response to countries or organizations that violate it.
Technical superiority is not written in stone, and the United States is arguably more dependent on networked computer systems than any other country in the world. Washington must halt the spiral toward an arms race, which, in the long term, it is not guaranteed to win.
Misha Glenny, a visiting professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, is the author of “DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You.”
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
Baltimore Activist Alert - Part 2
36] Save POST OFFICE – June 25 - 28
37] Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog – June 25
38] Missile Offense – June 25
39] Marc Steiner on WEAA – June 25 – 28
40] Protest the death penalty – June 25
41] Film THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND – June 25
42] Book on New Jewish Agenda -- June 25
43] Pledge/Fund Our Communities meeting – June 25
44] The bible & nonviolence – June 26 - 30
45] Dream Act Graduation – June 26
46] Vigil against torture/film screening – June 26
47] War Is Not the Answer – June 26
48] Film THE PRICE OF SUGAR – June 26
49] Journey of Hope -- June 26
50] Learn sordid details of the Penn family -- June 26
51] Film "Hunger Hits Home" -- June 26
52] Humane Society book sale continues
53] Trial of anti-death penalty activists – June 27
-----
36] – Join a hunger strike from Mon., June 25 through Thurs., June 28 in D.C. and Frederick to SAVE THE POST OFFICE. Contact Malgo Schmidt, Occupy Frederick, at 301-698-0688 or MRZATA@hotmail.com.
37] – On Mon., June 25 from noon to 1:15 PM, hear Trevor Findlay, Center for International Governance Innovation, and Chantal De Jonge Oudraat, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute North America, report on the launch of Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog: Strengthening and Reform of the IAEA, at the Stimson Center, 1111 19th St., 12th Floor, WDC. RSVP to Kevin Dias at kdias@cigionline.org.
38] – On Mon., June 25 from 12:30 to 1:30 PM, hear Frank Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy, who will address "On Missile Defense and European Security" at the American Security Project, 1100 New York Ave. NW, Suite 710W, Conference Room E, WDC. RSVP at events@americansecurityproject.org.
39] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 7 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org.
40] – There is usually a vigil to abolish the death penalty every Monday from 5 to 6 PM, outside the prison complex and across the street from Maryland’s Super Max Prison, at the corner of Madison Ave. and Fallsway in Baltimore. Maryland’s death row was moved out of Baltimore, but it was decided to continue the vigil. The next one is scheduled for Mon., June 25. Call 410-366-1637.
41] – It is the Peace House Movie Night, and the film on Mon., June 25 at 7 PM is “The Weather Underground.” It will be shown at Occupy Peace House, 1233 12th St. NW. Thirty years ago, a group of young radicals called The Weathermen announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went underground during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they felt symbolized "the real violence" that the U.S. government and capitalist power were wreaking throughout the world. From pitched battles with police on Chicago's city streets, to bombing the U.S. Capitol building, to breaking acid-guru Timothy Leary out of prison, this carefully organized clandestine network attempted to incite a national revolution, while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history. One of the top documentaries of the year, this award-winning film interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the incredible story of "The Weather Underground." As former members reflect candidly about the idealistic passion that drove them to "bring the war home," they paint a compelling portrait of troubled and revolutionary times, with unexpected and often striking connections to the current world situation. Go to http://youtu.be/LV7GSff4fIA.
42] – Be at the D.C. Book Release for “Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda” on Mon., June 25 at 7 PM at the Washington DC JCC 1529 16th St NW – Library. Call (202-518-9400.
43] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings now take place at Max’s residence. The next meeting takes place on June 25. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions.
The proposed agenda will include reports on arranging a meeting with Dutch Ruppersberger, a letter to Obama about drones, the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration, the need for poets to read on August 9 and a July 4 demo at the NSA. Let Max know of any additional agenda items.
44] – From Tues., June 26 through Sat., June 30, enjoy A Week with Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson - “Come Out, My People!” God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond. Are you struggling with how you can be a faithful follower of Jesus amidst injustice? Is your faith community wondering what role it has in today’s world, one marked by empire and propped up by imperial religion? Guess what? The people whose stories are found in the Bible faced a similar situation – perhaps in a way that could be helpful for you to explore.
Wes Howard-Brook documents this struggle in his most recent book “Come Out, My People!” God’s Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond. This in-depth study tells the story of two competing religious visions—not Judaism and Christianity but the religion of creation and the religion of empire. The book traces the argument over who God is and what it means to be God’s people across the entire canon. Though Jesus was killed by the upholders of empire, his resurrection marks the divine vindication of the religion of creation—and thus those who follow his path can accept no violence or domination toward people or creation in his name. They will make daily presentations at the Church of the Savior Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009.
45] – Attend a DREAM Act Graduation on Tues., June 26 from 10 AM to 7 PM at Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 212 East Capitol St. NE. In just 22 days over 400 DREAM Act supporters will be gathering in Washington D.C. This year the event will focus on working hard to highlight the plight of DREAMers as well as the need for not only legislation, but also executive action by the president. Register, enjoy lunch and be at the graduation from noon to 2 PM. Afterwards march to the Capitol, do lobbying, debrief and participate in a social gathering. RSVP at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFJ5N2hZQk9MZ3FHV05VMXNNczgtT1E6MA#gid=0. Email info@theniya.org.
46] – There will also be a film screening on Tues., June 26, as part of the 2012 campaign against torture, of Martha Davis’ documentary “Doctors of the Dark Side” at the E Street Cinema, 11th and E Sts. at 6 PM to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The documentary looks at the roles of physicians and psychologists in abusive interrogations of detainees during the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts.
This screening will be preceded by a vigil at the US Navy Memorial, 8th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. from 4:30 to 5:30 PM. Go to www.bordc.org or email info@bordc.org or call 413-582-0110. Visit http://refugemediaproject.org/blog/2012/06/08/more-events-in-june-2012-2/
47] – There is a vigil to say "War Is Not the Answer" each Tuesday since September 11, 2001 at 4806 York Road. Join this ongoing vigil. The next vigil is June 26 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
48] – See a screening, hosted by Baltimore Food and Faith, as part of a summer film series, "The Price of Sugar" on Tues., June 26 from 7 to 9 PM at the Govans Presbyterian Church, 5828 York Road. Call 410-435-9188.
49] – On Tues., June 26 at 7 PM, the Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing continues at the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, 310 Tulip Ave. in Takoma Park. . Speakers include Bill Pelke, murder victim's family member and co-founder, Journey of Hope, Thomas Ruffin, Jr., lawyer for Troy Davis; Maryland Del. Heather Mizeur, and Maryland Sen. Jamie Raskin (invited). The event is sponsored by Maryland Coalition for Justice and Progressive Change; Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing; and Amnesty International. Contact marylandcoalitionforjustice@gmail.com. Go to www.journeyofhope.org.
50] – On Tues., June 26 at 7 PM @ Red Emma's, 800 St. Paul St. the Bristol Radical History Group presents “The Life & Family of William Penn - 260 Years of Bloody Colonial History.” This talk will cover an analysis of the role of the Penn family and other Quakers in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European expansionism in the North Americas. The Group will argue that the links between the different generations of the Penn family include the English Revolution in the 17th century and of every important event of British colonial expansionism from the colonization of Ireland, Jamaica and the East Coast of North America. Email info@redemmas.org or call 410-230-0450.
51] – See the film "Hunger Hits Home: Child Hunger in America" on Tues., June 26 from 7 PM at 3222 11th St. NW WDC 20001. Bloombars Indie Move Night presents the documentary, and afterward, there will be networking and conversation with Carina Gervacio, a representative from BrainFood, and Share Our Strength's Community Investment Team and other representatives. The film by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz takes a first-hand look at the crisis of childhood hunger in America. Go to http://www.facebook.com/events/250990561669782/#!/l.php?u=%2Ffriends%2Fedit%2F%3Fsk%3Drequests&h=IAQHAOts8&enc=AZPAG_jUJXm9aN-MDddNU-Ghh9IbilTCExjBOL2WkZ8fruKEhci4P4_P68BtI41tcRCmTEgkL0OQYc_zbkAP5F45nEcmnUIJyWk47a0ysMRh7jPpohSfRgijG2Cocn568MXbcdAuD5hXviatyVlowMB2YmzHw09N87kjVqNq6YX_zv6Ag-1SBfoY-Oj-c_gC9sBT4J14sXoTabjZAsogBh8r.
52] – Baltimore Humane Society Book Drive continues on Wednesdays at 1601 Nicodemus Road. A significant portion of each book's sale price will be donated to the no-kill animal shelter, no matter when the book is sold during the year. Call 410-833-8848. Go to http://baltimorehumane.org
53] – The Trial of 13 Anti-Death Penalty Activists is happening on Wed., June 27 at 9:30 AM in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, 500 Indiana Ave, NW. Trial is scheduled to be in courtroom 220. The activists unfurled a "STOP EXECUTIONS" banner on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on January 17, 2012 - the 35th anniversary of the first modern-era execution in 1977. Come out to support the defendants as they make a stand against the death penalty and try for a win of the First Amendment! While scheduled for 9:30 AM, the trial will begin later in the day. Contact Scott Langley at scott@abolition.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
36] Save POST OFFICE – June 25 - 28
37] Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog – June 25
38] Missile Offense – June 25
39] Marc Steiner on WEAA – June 25 – 28
40] Protest the death penalty – June 25
41] Film THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND – June 25
42] Book on New Jewish Agenda -- June 25
43] Pledge/Fund Our Communities meeting – June 25
44] The bible & nonviolence – June 26 - 30
45] Dream Act Graduation – June 26
46] Vigil against torture/film screening – June 26
47] War Is Not the Answer – June 26
48] Film THE PRICE OF SUGAR – June 26
49] Journey of Hope -- June 26
50] Learn sordid details of the Penn family -- June 26
51] Film "Hunger Hits Home" -- June 26
52] Humane Society book sale continues
53] Trial of anti-death penalty activists – June 27
-----
36] – Join a hunger strike from Mon., June 25 through Thurs., June 28 in D.C. and Frederick to SAVE THE POST OFFICE. Contact Malgo Schmidt, Occupy Frederick, at 301-698-0688 or MRZATA@hotmail.com.
37] – On Mon., June 25 from noon to 1:15 PM, hear Trevor Findlay, Center for International Governance Innovation, and Chantal De Jonge Oudraat, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute North America, report on the launch of Unleashing the Nuclear Watchdog: Strengthening and Reform of the IAEA, at the Stimson Center, 1111 19th St., 12th Floor, WDC. RSVP to Kevin Dias at kdias@cigionline.org.
38] – On Mon., June 25 from 12:30 to 1:30 PM, hear Frank Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy, who will address "On Missile Defense and European Security" at the American Security Project, 1100 New York Ave. NW, Suite 710W, Conference Room E, WDC. RSVP at events@americansecurityproject.org.
39] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 7 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org.
40] – There is usually a vigil to abolish the death penalty every Monday from 5 to 6 PM, outside the prison complex and across the street from Maryland’s Super Max Prison, at the corner of Madison Ave. and Fallsway in Baltimore. Maryland’s death row was moved out of Baltimore, but it was decided to continue the vigil. The next one is scheduled for Mon., June 25. Call 410-366-1637.
41] – It is the Peace House Movie Night, and the film on Mon., June 25 at 7 PM is “The Weather Underground.” It will be shown at Occupy Peace House, 1233 12th St. NW. Thirty years ago, a group of young radicals called The Weathermen announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went underground during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they felt symbolized "the real violence" that the U.S. government and capitalist power were wreaking throughout the world. From pitched battles with police on Chicago's city streets, to bombing the U.S. Capitol building, to breaking acid-guru Timothy Leary out of prison, this carefully organized clandestine network attempted to incite a national revolution, while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history. One of the top documentaries of the year, this award-winning film interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the incredible story of "The Weather Underground." As former members reflect candidly about the idealistic passion that drove them to "bring the war home," they paint a compelling portrait of troubled and revolutionary times, with unexpected and often striking connections to the current world situation. Go to http://youtu.be/LV7GSff4fIA.
42] – Be at the D.C. Book Release for “Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda” on Mon., June 25 at 7 PM at the Washington DC JCC 1529 16th St NW – Library. Call (202-518-9400.
43] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings now take place at Max’s residence. The next meeting takes place on June 25. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions.
The proposed agenda will include reports on arranging a meeting with Dutch Ruppersberger, a letter to Obama about drones, the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration, the need for poets to read on August 9 and a July 4 demo at the NSA. Let Max know of any additional agenda items.
44] – From Tues., June 26 through Sat., June 30, enjoy A Week with Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson - “Come Out, My People!” God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond. Are you struggling with how you can be a faithful follower of Jesus amidst injustice? Is your faith community wondering what role it has in today’s world, one marked by empire and propped up by imperial religion? Guess what? The people whose stories are found in the Bible faced a similar situation – perhaps in a way that could be helpful for you to explore.
Wes Howard-Brook documents this struggle in his most recent book “Come Out, My People!” God’s Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond. This in-depth study tells the story of two competing religious visions—not Judaism and Christianity but the religion of creation and the religion of empire. The book traces the argument over who God is and what it means to be God’s people across the entire canon. Though Jesus was killed by the upholders of empire, his resurrection marks the divine vindication of the religion of creation—and thus those who follow his path can accept no violence or domination toward people or creation in his name. They will make daily presentations at the Church of the Savior Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009.
45] – Attend a DREAM Act Graduation on Tues., June 26 from 10 AM to 7 PM at Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 212 East Capitol St. NE. In just 22 days over 400 DREAM Act supporters will be gathering in Washington D.C. This year the event will focus on working hard to highlight the plight of DREAMers as well as the need for not only legislation, but also executive action by the president. Register, enjoy lunch and be at the graduation from noon to 2 PM. Afterwards march to the Capitol, do lobbying, debrief and participate in a social gathering. RSVP at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFJ5N2hZQk9MZ3FHV05VMXNNczgtT1E6MA#gid=0. Email info@theniya.org.
46] – There will also be a film screening on Tues., June 26, as part of the 2012 campaign against torture, of Martha Davis’ documentary “Doctors of the Dark Side” at the E Street Cinema, 11th and E Sts. at 6 PM to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. The documentary looks at the roles of physicians and psychologists in abusive interrogations of detainees during the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts.
This screening will be preceded by a vigil at the US Navy Memorial, 8th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. from 4:30 to 5:30 PM. Go to www.bordc.org or email info@bordc.org or call 413-582-0110. Visit http://refugemediaproject.org/blog/2012/06/08/more-events-in-june-2012-2/
47] – There is a vigil to say "War Is Not the Answer" each Tuesday since September 11, 2001 at 4806 York Road. Join this ongoing vigil. The next vigil is June 26 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
48] – See a screening, hosted by Baltimore Food and Faith, as part of a summer film series, "The Price of Sugar" on Tues., June 26 from 7 to 9 PM at the Govans Presbyterian Church, 5828 York Road. Call 410-435-9188.
49] – On Tues., June 26 at 7 PM, the Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing continues at the Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, 310 Tulip Ave. in Takoma Park. . Speakers include Bill Pelke, murder victim's family member and co-founder, Journey of Hope, Thomas Ruffin, Jr., lawyer for Troy Davis; Maryland Del. Heather Mizeur, and Maryland Sen. Jamie Raskin (invited). The event is sponsored by Maryland Coalition for Justice and Progressive Change; Journey of Hope...From Violence to Healing; and Amnesty International. Contact marylandcoalitionforjustice@gmail.com. Go to www.journeyofhope.org.
50] – On Tues., June 26 at 7 PM @ Red Emma's, 800 St. Paul St. the Bristol Radical History Group presents “The Life & Family of William Penn - 260 Years of Bloody Colonial History.” This talk will cover an analysis of the role of the Penn family and other Quakers in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and European expansionism in the North Americas. The Group will argue that the links between the different generations of the Penn family include the English Revolution in the 17th century and of every important event of British colonial expansionism from the colonization of Ireland, Jamaica and the East Coast of North America. Email info@redemmas.org or call 410-230-0450.
51] – See the film "Hunger Hits Home: Child Hunger in America" on Tues., June 26 from 7 PM at 3222 11th St. NW WDC 20001. Bloombars Indie Move Night presents the documentary, and afterward, there will be networking and conversation with Carina Gervacio, a representative from BrainFood, and Share Our Strength's Community Investment Team and other representatives. The film by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz takes a first-hand look at the crisis of childhood hunger in America. Go to http://www.facebook.com/events/250990561669782/#!/l.php?u=%2Ffriends%2Fedit%2F%3Fsk%3Drequests&h=IAQHAOts8&enc=AZPAG_jUJXm9aN-MDddNU-Ghh9IbilTCExjBOL2WkZ8fruKEhci4P4_P68BtI41tcRCmTEgkL0OQYc_zbkAP5F45nEcmnUIJyWk47a0ysMRh7jPpohSfRgijG2Cocn568MXbcdAuD5hXviatyVlowMB2YmzHw09N87kjVqNq6YX_zv6Ag-1SBfoY-Oj-c_gC9sBT4J14sXoTabjZAsogBh8r.
52] – Baltimore Humane Society Book Drive continues on Wednesdays at 1601 Nicodemus Road. A significant portion of each book's sale price will be donated to the no-kill animal shelter, no matter when the book is sold during the year. Call 410-833-8848. Go to http://baltimorehumane.org
53] – The Trial of 13 Anti-Death Penalty Activists is happening on Wed., June 27 at 9:30 AM in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, 500 Indiana Ave, NW. Trial is scheduled to be in courtroom 220. The activists unfurled a "STOP EXECUTIONS" banner on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on January 17, 2012 - the 35th anniversary of the first modern-era execution in 1977. Come out to support the defendants as they make a stand against the death penalty and try for a win of the First Amendment! While scheduled for 9:30 AM, the trial will begin later in the day. Contact Scott Langley at scott@abolition.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
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Occupy is Not Dead, Occupy Continues to Work for Justice
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9945-occupy-is-not-dead-occupy-continues-to-work-for-justice
Saturday, 23 June 2012 13:18 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, CounterCurrents.org
News Analysis
(Photo: democapitol / Flickr)The U.S. media has been writing an obituary for Occupy, but in fact Occupy is active all over the country and is just being ignored by the corporate media. This weekly installment of Occupy news highlights families occupying schools in Oakland to prevent their closure, Occupiers across the country working to prevent evictions and foreclosures, Occupiers confronting Jamie Dimon about JPMorgan Chase's foreclosure policies and Occupy SEC asking Dimon some tough questions.
One big news story this week was the United States being called out by the international community for its inhumane behavior. Two United Nations envoys have asked the US to respect the rights of Occupy protesters and to protect them. In their four page letter to Secretary of State Clinton, they describe specific examples of abusive police behavior. The US, which often admonishes countries like Russia, China, Iran and Egypt for the way they treat protesters (while selling them tear gas and other weapons) has not responded. So far, rather than protecting our rights, federal officials secretly coordinated with law enforcement in the occupy crackdowns.
In fact, it also appears that law enforcement in the US has been preying upon vulnerable people in the Occupy Movement and entrapping them. The Cleveland 5 are potentially facing multiple life sentences. A website has been created to support them. Some of the Cleveland 5 are members of Food Not Bombs, a group that will continue to be vital as the Senate voted this week NOT to restore $4.5 billion for food stamps. We will follow the cases in Cleveland and Chicago on October2011.org.
The Occupy Movement will continue despite these challenges. We know that facing the power of concentrated wealth, or the 'Looting Class" as we call them, will not be easy but it is necessary. Recently the corporate media have been claiming that the Occupy Movement is dead. Chris Hedges explains why this obituary is premature and how the Occupy Movement can succeed .
In truth, the Occupy Movement is growing. Occupy Our Homes is saving families from eviction across the country. Even more than that, they are bringing communities together and empowering them to fight for their needs. This week, Deborah Harris, who describes herself as usually being timid, found her voice and used it to confront Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, when he attended a hearing with the Senate Banking Committee. In addition to the visible confrontation at the Senate Banking Committee hearing, Occupy SEC sent a letter to the committee to have the ask Dimon some tough questions. Listen to this week's show on Clearing the FOG to hear interviews with Deborah Harris of DC Occupy Our Homes as well as Jessica Lewis of Baltimore Occupy Our Homes and a reporter explain the corruption that led to the Senate Banking Committee failed to ask Dimon tough questions.
Jamie Dimon was confronted again yesterday by the coalition calling for a Financial Transactions Tax, known as the Robin Hood Tax. Creative confrontations of this type are powerful tools used by nonviolent movements to expose the truth and ostracize those who are responsible for oppression.
Occupy members, students and their families are occupying a public school in Oakland, CA to try and prevent the closure of five schools. Education is key to building a strong movement and taking action to shift power. OWS is holding a Summer Disobedience School. And Freedom Plaza occupant, Roya Brown, took the initiative to create an ongoing Social Forum in her home, Occupy Denver.
In New York, Occupy recently marched to end 'Stop and Frisk'. The ACLU released a new cell phone app that can be used to report Stop and Frisk police activity. Also in New York, those who were arrested for trying to occupy First Trinity Church property after Zuccotti Park was shut down went to court recently. Most of those who were arrested received sentences of community service, but Mark Adams is serving 45 days in jail. You can show support for him through this Tumblr site. If you are interested in posting something on the site, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .'; document.write(''); document.write(addy_text55048); document.write('<\/a>'); //-->\n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In Washington, DC, we are preparing for the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the health care law, the Affordable Care Act [sic]. At stake are the individual mandate, the Medicaid expansion and possibly the fate of the entire ACA. No matter what happens, we know that the ACA leaves tens of millions of people without coverage and tens of millions more with inadequate coverage while still causing health care costs to skyrocket. The majority of people in the US favor national Medicare for all. When the decision is announced we will head to the Supreme Court steps and will call for a simple solution: drop 2 words – "over 65" - from the existing Medicare law and immediately expand de-privatized Medicare to every person. This would provide a real foundation for a health system that can be improved upon. We ask you to join us by holding a solidarity action in your community.
And we ask you to speak out for Julian Assange. You are probably aware that he lost his appeal in the UK and is facing extradition to Sweden where he will likely be jailed, although he hasn't been charged with a crime there, and then sent to the US to face serious charges. Tuesday he went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to seek asylum. The London Police say that this means he has broken his bail terms, but Assange had little choice as his own nation, Australia, refuses to protect his rights. Call the Ecuadorian Embassy and thank them for taking Assange in. Urge them to grant asylum. The number is 202-465-8120 . Please call now as a decision may be imminent.
Upcoming events
June 26: Premiere of "The American Autumn" produced by Dennis Trainor, Jr. at 7 pm in New York. Details are on this Facebook page .
June 30 – July 4: The Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia.
Last week we asked you to support OccuCards. They raised $2,000 and so will produce ten new cards. OccuCards are a great tool for educating about issues. Let them know if you have a subject they can address. We are urging them to create cards that educate about solutions too.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Margaret Flowers
Margaret Flowers MD, is a pediatrician who serves as the Congressional Fellow for Physicians for National Health Program.
Kevin Zeese
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters For Peace and serves on the steering committees of WikiLeaksIsDemocracy.org and the Bradley Manning Support Network.
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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
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9945-occupy-is-not-dead-occupy-continues-to-work-for-justice
Saturday, 23 June 2012 13:18 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, CounterCurrents.org
News Analysis
(Photo: democapitol / Flickr)The U.S. media has been writing an obituary for Occupy, but in fact Occupy is active all over the country and is just being ignored by the corporate media. This weekly installment of Occupy news highlights families occupying schools in Oakland to prevent their closure, Occupiers across the country working to prevent evictions and foreclosures, Occupiers confronting Jamie Dimon about JPMorgan Chase's foreclosure policies and Occupy SEC asking Dimon some tough questions.
One big news story this week was the United States being called out by the international community for its inhumane behavior. Two United Nations envoys have asked the US to respect the rights of Occupy protesters and to protect them. In their four page letter to Secretary of State Clinton, they describe specific examples of abusive police behavior. The US, which often admonishes countries like Russia, China, Iran and Egypt for the way they treat protesters (while selling them tear gas and other weapons) has not responded. So far, rather than protecting our rights, federal officials secretly coordinated with law enforcement in the occupy crackdowns.
In fact, it also appears that law enforcement in the US has been preying upon vulnerable people in the Occupy Movement and entrapping them. The Cleveland 5 are potentially facing multiple life sentences. A website has been created to support them. Some of the Cleveland 5 are members of Food Not Bombs, a group that will continue to be vital as the Senate voted this week NOT to restore $4.5 billion for food stamps. We will follow the cases in Cleveland and Chicago on October2011.org.
The Occupy Movement will continue despite these challenges. We know that facing the power of concentrated wealth, or the 'Looting Class" as we call them, will not be easy but it is necessary. Recently the corporate media have been claiming that the Occupy Movement is dead. Chris Hedges explains why this obituary is premature and how the Occupy Movement can succeed .
In truth, the Occupy Movement is growing. Occupy Our Homes is saving families from eviction across the country. Even more than that, they are bringing communities together and empowering them to fight for their needs. This week, Deborah Harris, who describes herself as usually being timid, found her voice and used it to confront Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, when he attended a hearing with the Senate Banking Committee. In addition to the visible confrontation at the Senate Banking Committee hearing, Occupy SEC sent a letter to the committee to have the ask Dimon some tough questions. Listen to this week's show on Clearing the FOG to hear interviews with Deborah Harris of DC Occupy Our Homes as well as Jessica Lewis of Baltimore Occupy Our Homes and a reporter explain the corruption that led to the Senate Banking Committee failed to ask Dimon tough questions.
Jamie Dimon was confronted again yesterday by the coalition calling for a Financial Transactions Tax, known as the Robin Hood Tax. Creative confrontations of this type are powerful tools used by nonviolent movements to expose the truth and ostracize those who are responsible for oppression.
Occupy members, students and their families are occupying a public school in Oakland, CA to try and prevent the closure of five schools. Education is key to building a strong movement and taking action to shift power. OWS is holding a Summer Disobedience School. And Freedom Plaza occupant, Roya Brown, took the initiative to create an ongoing Social Forum in her home, Occupy Denver.
In New York, Occupy recently marched to end 'Stop and Frisk'. The ACLU released a new cell phone app that can be used to report Stop and Frisk police activity. Also in New York, those who were arrested for trying to occupy First Trinity Church property after Zuccotti Park was shut down went to court recently. Most of those who were arrested received sentences of community service, but Mark Adams is serving 45 days in jail. You can show support for him through this Tumblr site. If you are interested in posting something on the site, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .'; document.write(''); document.write(addy_text55048); document.write('<\/a>'); //-->\n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In Washington, DC, we are preparing for the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the health care law, the Affordable Care Act [sic]. At stake are the individual mandate, the Medicaid expansion and possibly the fate of the entire ACA. No matter what happens, we know that the ACA leaves tens of millions of people without coverage and tens of millions more with inadequate coverage while still causing health care costs to skyrocket. The majority of people in the US favor national Medicare for all. When the decision is announced we will head to the Supreme Court steps and will call for a simple solution: drop 2 words – "over 65" - from the existing Medicare law and immediately expand de-privatized Medicare to every person. This would provide a real foundation for a health system that can be improved upon. We ask you to join us by holding a solidarity action in your community.
And we ask you to speak out for Julian Assange. You are probably aware that he lost his appeal in the UK and is facing extradition to Sweden where he will likely be jailed, although he hasn't been charged with a crime there, and then sent to the US to face serious charges. Tuesday he went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to seek asylum. The London Police say that this means he has broken his bail terms, but Assange had little choice as his own nation, Australia, refuses to protect his rights. Call the Ecuadorian Embassy and thank them for taking Assange in. Urge them to grant asylum. The number is 202-465-8120 . Please call now as a decision may be imminent.
Upcoming events
June 26: Premiere of "The American Autumn" produced by Dennis Trainor, Jr. at 7 pm in New York. Details are on this Facebook page .
June 30 – July 4: The Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia.
Last week we asked you to support OccuCards. They raised $2,000 and so will produce ten new cards. OccuCards are a great tool for educating about issues. Let them know if you have a subject they can address. We are urging them to create cards that educate about solutions too.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Margaret Flowers
Margaret Flowers MD, is a pediatrician who serves as the Congressional Fellow for Physicians for National Health Program.
Kevin Zeese
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters For Peace and serves on the steering committees of WikiLeaksIsDemocracy.org and the Bradley Manning Support Network.
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Occupy and Failure
By Natasha Lennard, The Occupy! Gazette
Op-Ed
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
PASSED! Philadelphia City Council adopts resolution to
redirect military spending to fund our communities
By Jane Dugdale
Op-Ed News
June 22, 2012
http://www.opednews.com/articles/PASSED--Philadelphia-City-by-Jane-Dugdale-120622-114.html
The Philadelphia City Council, by a vote of 15-2,
passed June 21 a resolution "calling on the U.S.
Congress to bring all U.S. troops home from
Afghanistan, to take the funds saved by that action and
by significantly cutting the Pentagon budget, and to
use that money to fund education, public and private
sector family-sustaining job creation, special
protections for military sector workers, environmental
and infrastructure restoration, care for veterans and
their families, and human services that our cities and
states so desperately need."
Introduced by Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez on
April 12 with six other co-sponsors , the resolution
was drafted by the Delaware Valley New Priorities
Network, comprised of dozens of labor, neighborhood,
faith, and peace organizations. The resolution details
the human catastrophe in the City of Philadelphia: a
third of its children live in poverty, more than a
third are hungry, more than 300 veterans are homeless
on any given night; schools and health clinics are
closing; teachers, firefighters and police are losing
their jobs.
According to John Braxton, President of the Faculty and
Staff Federation of the Community College of
Philadelphia and representative of the Delaware Valley
New Priorities Network, "This resolution asks you
[members of Philadelphia City Council] to join the
majority of Americans who favor cutting the military
budget and rebuilding America.''
The City Council of Philadelphia is now on record as
having done just that.
The resolution contrasts the $2 billion shortfall of
the City of Philadelphia over the next five years with
the $5 billion spent on wars by Philadelphians since
2001. The resolution notes the doubling of military
spending in the last decade and that the U.S. military
budget could be cut by 80% and still be the largest in
the world.
The Delaware Valley New Priorities Network is
comprised of: American Federation of State County and
Municipal Employees (District Council 47), and retirees
of same; Brandywine Peace Community, Center for the
Celebration of Creation (Chestnut Hill United Church),
Catholic Peace Fellowship , Faculty and Staff
Federation of Community College of Philadelphia,
Coalition of Labor Union Women, East Mt. Airy
Neighbors, Fight for Philly, Journal of the Working
Class Struggle, Living Water United Church of Christ,
Main Line Peace Action, Mt. Airy Presbyterian Church,
Neighborhood Networks, Pennsylvania Progressive
Democrats of America, Philadelphia Granny Peace
Brigade, Philadelphia National Writers Union,
Philadelphia United for Peace and Justice Delaware
Valley Network Education Committee, Philadelphia Area
Black Radical Congress, Physicians for Social
Responsibility, Temple University Graduate Students
Association, US Labor Against the War, Vets for Peace,
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
______________
Attached photo: Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez,
who successfully introduced the resolution to Redirect
Military Spending to Fund Our Communities, poses
outside Philadelphia City Council Chambers with some of
the members of the Delaware Valley New Priorities
Network, which drafted the resolution, passed by
Philadelphia City Council June 21 by 15-2. From left,
Jane Dugdale, Main Line Peace Action; Councilmember
Quinones-Sanchez; Ben Sears, Philadelphia Federation of
Teachers, retirees; Bob Smith, Brandywine Peace
Community; John Braxton, Faculty and Staff Federation
of Community College of Philadelphia; Ken Heard,
National Writers Union. http://tinyurl.com/6n5u8d9
________
Jane Dugdale facilitates Main Line Peace Action, is an
active member of Central Baptist Church in Wayne, PA.
and a retired public school teacher and a returned
Peace Corps Volunteer (Chile 64-'66).
___________________________________________
redirect military spending to fund our communities
By Jane Dugdale
Op-Ed News
June 22, 2012
http://www.opednews.com/articles/PASSED--Philadelphia-City-by-Jane-Dugdale-120622-114.html
The Philadelphia City Council, by a vote of 15-2,
passed June 21 a resolution "calling on the U.S.
Congress to bring all U.S. troops home from
Afghanistan, to take the funds saved by that action and
by significantly cutting the Pentagon budget, and to
use that money to fund education, public and private
sector family-sustaining job creation, special
protections for military sector workers, environmental
and infrastructure restoration, care for veterans and
their families, and human services that our cities and
states so desperately need."
Introduced by Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez on
April 12 with six other co-sponsors , the resolution
was drafted by the Delaware Valley New Priorities
Network, comprised of dozens of labor, neighborhood,
faith, and peace organizations. The resolution details
the human catastrophe in the City of Philadelphia: a
third of its children live in poverty, more than a
third are hungry, more than 300 veterans are homeless
on any given night; schools and health clinics are
closing; teachers, firefighters and police are losing
their jobs.
According to John Braxton, President of the Faculty and
Staff Federation of the Community College of
Philadelphia and representative of the Delaware Valley
New Priorities Network, "This resolution asks you
[members of Philadelphia City Council] to join the
majority of Americans who favor cutting the military
budget and rebuilding America.''
The City Council of Philadelphia is now on record as
having done just that.
The resolution contrasts the $2 billion shortfall of
the City of Philadelphia over the next five years with
the $5 billion spent on wars by Philadelphians since
2001. The resolution notes the doubling of military
spending in the last decade and that the U.S. military
budget could be cut by 80% and still be the largest in
the world.
The Delaware Valley New Priorities Network is
comprised of: American Federation of State County and
Municipal Employees (District Council 47), and retirees
of same; Brandywine Peace Community, Center for the
Celebration of Creation (Chestnut Hill United Church),
Catholic Peace Fellowship , Faculty and Staff
Federation of Community College of Philadelphia,
Coalition of Labor Union Women, East Mt. Airy
Neighbors, Fight for Philly, Journal of the Working
Class Struggle, Living Water United Church of Christ,
Main Line Peace Action, Mt. Airy Presbyterian Church,
Neighborhood Networks, Pennsylvania Progressive
Democrats of America, Philadelphia Granny Peace
Brigade, Philadelphia National Writers Union,
Philadelphia United for Peace and Justice Delaware
Valley Network Education Committee, Philadelphia Area
Black Radical Congress, Physicians for Social
Responsibility, Temple University Graduate Students
Association, US Labor Against the War, Vets for Peace,
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
______________
Attached photo: Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez,
who successfully introduced the resolution to Redirect
Military Spending to Fund Our Communities, poses
outside Philadelphia City Council Chambers with some of
the members of the Delaware Valley New Priorities
Network, which drafted the resolution, passed by
Philadelphia City Council June 21 by 15-2. From left,
Jane Dugdale, Main Line Peace Action; Councilmember
Quinones-Sanchez; Ben Sears, Philadelphia Federation of
Teachers, retirees; Bob Smith, Brandywine Peace
Community; John Braxton, Faculty and Staff Federation
of Community College of Philadelphia; Ken Heard,
National Writers Union. http://tinyurl.com/6n5u8d9
________
Jane Dugdale facilitates Main Line Peace Action, is an
active member of Central Baptist Church in Wayne, PA.
and a retired public school teacher and a returned
Peace Corps Volunteer (Chile 64-'66).
___________________________________________
Saturday, June 23, 2012
March Against Torture/Justice Department Takes Hit in "War on Whistleblowers"
I will be going to D.C. on Sunday, June 24 to participate in the “March Against Torture, Guantanamo and the NDAA.” Join the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) and the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture (WRRCAT) and a national coalition of groups on Sun., June 24, for a demonstration and march, beginning at 1 PM at the reflecting pool in front of the U.S. Capitol. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
Justice Department Takes Hit in "War on Whistleblowers"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2012
CONTACT: National Whistleblowers Center
Email: contact@whistleblowers.org
Phone: (202) 342-1902
WASHINGTON - June 22 - In a dramatic setback for the U.S. Department of Justice’s “War on Whistleblowers,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today reversed a district court decision that had thrown out the Privacy Act case of former U.S. prosecutor Richard Convertino.
The Privacy Act case, which accused the former Bush Administration of illegally leaking information to smear the reputation of Mr. Convertino, was reinstated by the Appeals Court. The Appeals Court opinion permits Mr. Convertino to continue to conduct discovery in order to learn which current and/or former Justice Department officials violated the Privacy Act with their actions against Mr. Convertino.
Mr. Convertino is a former award-winning prosecutor who led several complex terrorism cases at the Department of Justice. In 2003, Mr. Convertino blew the whistle on former Attorney General Ashcroft’s handling of terrorism prosecutions. Shortly thereafter, high-ranking Justice Department officials retaliated by leaking highly disparaging and untrue information about Mr. Convertino to Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter. In 2004, Mr. Convertino filed a Privacy Act complaint to protect his rights as a whistleblower and sanction the official(s) who illegally leaked the information about him.
Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center and lead counsel for Mr. Convertino, stated:
The Justice Department’s policy of criminally investigating whistleblowers who ‘leak’ information, while at the same time aggressively defending its own ‘leakers,’ is hypocritical. In Mr. Convertino’s case, the Justice Department intentionally leaked information to destroy the reputation of the distinguished prosecutor who had the courage to challenge the Attorney General’s conduct in the ‘War on Terror.’ Moreover, the Justice Department has, for years, aggressively stood in the way of Mr. Convertino’s attempts to discover which official(s) retaliated against him.
The Appeals Court’s decision in Mr. Convertino’s case is a monumental victory for whistleblowers.
The Justice Department’s double standard in the treatment of ‘leakers’ is intolerable. The Attorney General should not protect those who leak information at the government’s request and simultaneously prosecute whistleblowers trying to alert the public about waste, fraud and abuse.
Attorney General Holder must immediately reverse its position in the Convertino case and join with the whistleblower in finding out who violated the Privacy Act and the laws prohibiting retaliation against whistleblowers.
###
Since 1988, the NWC and attorneys associated with it have supported whistleblowers in the courts and before Congress and achieved victories for environmental protection, government contract fraud, nuclear safety and government and corporate accountability.
National Whistleblowers Center Links:
HomePress CenterAction Center
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/06/22-1
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
I will be going to D.C. on Sunday, June 24 to participate in the “March Against Torture, Guantanamo and the NDAA.” Join the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) and the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture (WRRCAT) and a national coalition of groups on Sun., June 24, for a demonstration and march, beginning at 1 PM at the reflecting pool in front of the U.S. Capitol. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
Justice Department Takes Hit in "War on Whistleblowers"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2012
CONTACT: National Whistleblowers Center
Email: contact@whistleblowers.org
Phone: (202) 342-1902
WASHINGTON - June 22 - In a dramatic setback for the U.S. Department of Justice’s “War on Whistleblowers,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today reversed a district court decision that had thrown out the Privacy Act case of former U.S. prosecutor Richard Convertino.
The Privacy Act case, which accused the former Bush Administration of illegally leaking information to smear the reputation of Mr. Convertino, was reinstated by the Appeals Court. The Appeals Court opinion permits Mr. Convertino to continue to conduct discovery in order to learn which current and/or former Justice Department officials violated the Privacy Act with their actions against Mr. Convertino.
Mr. Convertino is a former award-winning prosecutor who led several complex terrorism cases at the Department of Justice. In 2003, Mr. Convertino blew the whistle on former Attorney General Ashcroft’s handling of terrorism prosecutions. Shortly thereafter, high-ranking Justice Department officials retaliated by leaking highly disparaging and untrue information about Mr. Convertino to Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter. In 2004, Mr. Convertino filed a Privacy Act complaint to protect his rights as a whistleblower and sanction the official(s) who illegally leaked the information about him.
Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center and lead counsel for Mr. Convertino, stated:
The Justice Department’s policy of criminally investigating whistleblowers who ‘leak’ information, while at the same time aggressively defending its own ‘leakers,’ is hypocritical. In Mr. Convertino’s case, the Justice Department intentionally leaked information to destroy the reputation of the distinguished prosecutor who had the courage to challenge the Attorney General’s conduct in the ‘War on Terror.’ Moreover, the Justice Department has, for years, aggressively stood in the way of Mr. Convertino’s attempts to discover which official(s) retaliated against him.
The Appeals Court’s decision in Mr. Convertino’s case is a monumental victory for whistleblowers.
The Justice Department’s double standard in the treatment of ‘leakers’ is intolerable. The Attorney General should not protect those who leak information at the government’s request and simultaneously prosecute whistleblowers trying to alert the public about waste, fraud and abuse.
Attorney General Holder must immediately reverse its position in the Convertino case and join with the whistleblower in finding out who violated the Privacy Act and the laws prohibiting retaliation against whistleblowers.
###
Since 1988, the NWC and attorneys associated with it have supported whistleblowers in the courts and before Congress and achieved victories for environmental protection, government contract fraud, nuclear safety and government and corporate accountability.
National Whistleblowers Center Links:
HomePress CenterAction Center
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/06/22-1
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
Bullies on the Bus
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/blow-bullies-on-the-bus.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120623
June 22, 2012
By CHARLES M. BLOW
“Making the Bus Monitor Cry.”
That’s the name of the video. It’s more than 10 minutes long, but if you make it through more than three of them with your eyes not getting misty and your blood not boiling then you are a rock, or at least your heart is.
The video shows Karen Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother and bus monitor in upstate New York, being relentlessly tormented by a group of young boys.
They hurl profanities. One asks for her address because he says he wants to go urinate on her door. Others are more explicit about defiling her.
One boy tells her that she doesn’t have a family because “they all killed themselves because they didn’t want to be near you.” (Her eldest son committed suicide.)
One suggests that if he were to stab her, his knife would go through her “like butter.”
Since the video was posted to YouTube, there has been an outpouring of shock and outrage.
An online campaign set up to raise $5,000 to send Klein on a vacation had raised more than $500,000 by midday Friday, Klein has made the media circuit recounting her ordeal and some of the children have apologized.
But what, if anything, does this say about society at large? Many things one could argue, but, for me, it is a remarkably apt metaphor for this moment in the American discourse in which hostility has been drawn out into the sunlight.
Those boys are us, or at least too many of us: America at its ugliest. It is that part of society that sees the weak and vulnerable as worthy of derision and animus.
This kind of behavior is not isolated to children and school buses and suburban communities. It stretches to the upper reaches of society — our politics and our pulpits and our public squares.
Whether it is a Republican debate audience booing a gay soldier or Rush Limbaugh’s vicious attack on a female Georgetown law student or Newt Gingrich’s salvos at the poor, bullying has become boilerplate. Hiss and taunt. Tease and intimidate. Target your enemies and torture them mercilessly. Maintain primacy through predation.
Traditionally inferior identity roles are registered in a variety of ways. For Klein, she was elderly and female and not thin or rich. For others, it is skin color, country of origin, object of affection or some other accident of birth.
The country is changing, and that change is creating friction: between the traditional ruling classes and emerging ones; between traditional social structures and altered ones; between a long-held vision of an American ideal and growing reality that its time has passed.
And that change is coming with an unrelenting swiftness.
Last month, the Census Bureau reported that for the first time in the country’s history, minority births outnumbered those of whites. And The New York Times recently highlighted a Brookings Institution demographer’s calculations that, “minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010.”
Furthermore, there are now more women in college than men, and a Pew Research Center poll published in April found that, “in a reversal of traditional gender roles, young women now surpass young men in the importance they place on having a high-paying career or profession.”
A Gallup poll released Thursday found that a record number of people (54 percent) say that they would be willing to vote for an atheist for president, and a Gallup poll last month found that more people support same-sex marriage than oppose it.
These dramatic shifts are upending the majority-minority paradigm and are making many people uneasy.
The Republican-Democratic divide is increasingly becoming an all-white/multicultural divide, a male/female divide, and a more religious/less religious divide — the formers the traditional power classes, and the latters the emerging ones.
This has led to some increasingly unseemly attacks at traditionally marginalized groups, even as — and possibly particularly because — they grow more powerful.
Women are under attack. Hispanics are under attack. Minority voting rights are under attack. The poor are under attack. Unsurprisingly, those doing the attacking in every case are from the right.
Seldom is power freely passed and painlessly surrendered, particularly when the traditionally powerful see the realignment as an existential threat.
The bullying on that bus was awful, but so is the bullying in our politics. Those boys were trying to exert power over a person placed there to rein them in. But bullying is always about power — projecting more than you have in order to accrue more than your share.
Sounds like the frightened, insecure part of American society.
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/blow-bullies-on-the-bus.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120623
June 22, 2012
By CHARLES M. BLOW
“Making the Bus Monitor Cry.”
That’s the name of the video. It’s more than 10 minutes long, but if you make it through more than three of them with your eyes not getting misty and your blood not boiling then you are a rock, or at least your heart is.
The video shows Karen Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother and bus monitor in upstate New York, being relentlessly tormented by a group of young boys.
They hurl profanities. One asks for her address because he says he wants to go urinate on her door. Others are more explicit about defiling her.
One boy tells her that she doesn’t have a family because “they all killed themselves because they didn’t want to be near you.” (Her eldest son committed suicide.)
One suggests that if he were to stab her, his knife would go through her “like butter.”
Since the video was posted to YouTube, there has been an outpouring of shock and outrage.
An online campaign set up to raise $5,000 to send Klein on a vacation had raised more than $500,000 by midday Friday, Klein has made the media circuit recounting her ordeal and some of the children have apologized.
But what, if anything, does this say about society at large? Many things one could argue, but, for me, it is a remarkably apt metaphor for this moment in the American discourse in which hostility has been drawn out into the sunlight.
Those boys are us, or at least too many of us: America at its ugliest. It is that part of society that sees the weak and vulnerable as worthy of derision and animus.
This kind of behavior is not isolated to children and school buses and suburban communities. It stretches to the upper reaches of society — our politics and our pulpits and our public squares.
Whether it is a Republican debate audience booing a gay soldier or Rush Limbaugh’s vicious attack on a female Georgetown law student or Newt Gingrich’s salvos at the poor, bullying has become boilerplate. Hiss and taunt. Tease and intimidate. Target your enemies and torture them mercilessly. Maintain primacy through predation.
Traditionally inferior identity roles are registered in a variety of ways. For Klein, she was elderly and female and not thin or rich. For others, it is skin color, country of origin, object of affection or some other accident of birth.
The country is changing, and that change is creating friction: between the traditional ruling classes and emerging ones; between traditional social structures and altered ones; between a long-held vision of an American ideal and growing reality that its time has passed.
And that change is coming with an unrelenting swiftness.
Last month, the Census Bureau reported that for the first time in the country’s history, minority births outnumbered those of whites. And The New York Times recently highlighted a Brookings Institution demographer’s calculations that, “minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010.”
Furthermore, there are now more women in college than men, and a Pew Research Center poll published in April found that, “in a reversal of traditional gender roles, young women now surpass young men in the importance they place on having a high-paying career or profession.”
A Gallup poll released Thursday found that a record number of people (54 percent) say that they would be willing to vote for an atheist for president, and a Gallup poll last month found that more people support same-sex marriage than oppose it.
These dramatic shifts are upending the majority-minority paradigm and are making many people uneasy.
The Republican-Democratic divide is increasingly becoming an all-white/multicultural divide, a male/female divide, and a more religious/less religious divide — the formers the traditional power classes, and the latters the emerging ones.
This has led to some increasingly unseemly attacks at traditionally marginalized groups, even as — and possibly particularly because — they grow more powerful.
Women are under attack. Hispanics are under attack. Minority voting rights are under attack. The poor are under attack. Unsurprisingly, those doing the attacking in every case are from the right.
Seldom is power freely passed and painlessly surrendered, particularly when the traditionally powerful see the realignment as an existential threat.
The bullying on that bus was awful, but so is the bullying in our politics. Those boys were trying to exert power over a person placed there to rein them in. But bullying is always about power — projecting more than you have in order to accrue more than your share.
Sounds like the frightened, insecure part of American society.
•
I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
When ALEC Takes Over Your Town
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/opinion/nocera-when-alec-takes-over-your-town.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120619
June 18, 2012
By JOE NOCERA
The Rhode Island State Legislature finally adjourned its 2012 session around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It had been a brutal last few days.
In May, the State Senate had approved a supplemental property tax increase of 13.8 percent, to be imposed on the residents of Woonsocket, a struggling city with a $10 million deficit. But when the bill moved to the House of Representatives, two conservative Woonsocket representatives refused to go along, and no amount of late-night negotiating could change their minds. Everyone finally gave up and went home.
The state has named a budget commission to grapple with Woonsocket’s money woes. Ultimately, though, a receiver may have to be appointed — which is to say, a person not beholden to the voters, who would nonetheless have the power to abrogate union contracts and do whatever else he or she deems necessary to erase the deficit. Incredibly, the two Woonsocket legislators have pushed for a receiver, despite the pain that it would likely bring their city.
Or maybe it’s not so incredible. It turns out that one of them, Jon Brien, is also on the national board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Although ALEC is probably best known for its support of the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, the conservative group has a very clear agenda for dealing with state budgets. It wants to shrink them. Although Brien has denied that he is applying the ALEC philosophy to his small city, it looks, in fact, as if that’s exactly what he is doing. It’s not pretty.
Woonsocket’s problems stem from the decision of Rhode Island’s previous governor, a Republican named Don Carcieri, to balance the state’s budget by cutting state aid to the cities. All of Rhode Island’s poorer cities had become dependent on that aid, so when the economy soured, they essentially ran out of money. Providence had to renegotiate the retirement benefits of its municipal workers. Central Falls actually sought bankruptcy court protection — and a receiver was put in charge of its finances. As for Woonsocket, its current difficulties came to light last fall when the school district revealed a huge, unanticipated budget shortfall.
The two Woonsocket legislators quickly decided to apply Rahm Emanuel’s famous maxim about never letting a crisis go to waste. The fact that their town had a big budget deficit meant that if they played their cards right, they could do a lot more than just fix the schools’ problem. They could actually shrink the town government!
And how does one go about doing that? By refusing to go along with tax increases and forcing the city to the edge of bankruptcy, thus raising the possibility of bringing in a receiver. “You never move faster than when you have a piano hanging over your head,” Brien told me. “The receiver is that piano.”
He went on to say that the municipal unions — police, firefighters, teachers — “have been given pensions and benefits the city can no longer afford” but have no incentive to renegotiate. But a receiver, with the wave of a magic wand, can instantly cut their pensions, and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. When I asked Brien how bad the pension problem was in Woonsocket, he told me he didn’t know. “I’m a state legislator,” he said. “I don’t get into that level of municipal finance.”
Here’s the rub. Pensions are not the core problem in Woonsocket. Yes, Woonsocket has a pension shortfall, but it is more manageable than many other places and has almost nothing to do with the current crisis. “The meme in Rhode Island is that if there is a problem, you can trace it back to the public employees,” says Bob Plain, a journalist who runs the Web site RIFuture.org. In Providence, the pensions, with annual cost of living adjustment of up to 6 percent, were, indeed, a huge problem. (Note: My brother used to work for Angel Taveras, the city’s mayor.) But that’s just not true in Woonsocket.
Yet, in Central Falls, the receiver took an ax to retiree benefits, cutting them by 55 percent, meaning that many retirees are now getting pensions of under $20,000. The receiver has also laid off city workers, closed the city’s library and shuttered a popular community center. This is the future Woonsocket now faces, thanks to its own legislators.
Shrinking government sounds appealing. We all have our favorite examples of silly regulations and bloated bureaucracies. But struggling municipalities like Woonsocket don’t have a lot of fat; cutting means reducing or eliminating programs that citizens depend on. And, in any case, in a democracy, the decision of what — and whether — to cut should rest with elected officials who are responsible to voters, not to an unelected receiver using bankruptcy law to unilaterally make cuts.
That may be the ALEC solution, but it shouldn’t be ours.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/opinion/nocera-when-alec-takes-over-your-town.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120619
June 18, 2012
By JOE NOCERA
The Rhode Island State Legislature finally adjourned its 2012 session around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It had been a brutal last few days.
In May, the State Senate had approved a supplemental property tax increase of 13.8 percent, to be imposed on the residents of Woonsocket, a struggling city with a $10 million deficit. But when the bill moved to the House of Representatives, two conservative Woonsocket representatives refused to go along, and no amount of late-night negotiating could change their minds. Everyone finally gave up and went home.
The state has named a budget commission to grapple with Woonsocket’s money woes. Ultimately, though, a receiver may have to be appointed — which is to say, a person not beholden to the voters, who would nonetheless have the power to abrogate union contracts and do whatever else he or she deems necessary to erase the deficit. Incredibly, the two Woonsocket legislators have pushed for a receiver, despite the pain that it would likely bring their city.
Or maybe it’s not so incredible. It turns out that one of them, Jon Brien, is also on the national board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Although ALEC is probably best known for its support of the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, the conservative group has a very clear agenda for dealing with state budgets. It wants to shrink them. Although Brien has denied that he is applying the ALEC philosophy to his small city, it looks, in fact, as if that’s exactly what he is doing. It’s not pretty.
Woonsocket’s problems stem from the decision of Rhode Island’s previous governor, a Republican named Don Carcieri, to balance the state’s budget by cutting state aid to the cities. All of Rhode Island’s poorer cities had become dependent on that aid, so when the economy soured, they essentially ran out of money. Providence had to renegotiate the retirement benefits of its municipal workers. Central Falls actually sought bankruptcy court protection — and a receiver was put in charge of its finances. As for Woonsocket, its current difficulties came to light last fall when the school district revealed a huge, unanticipated budget shortfall.
The two Woonsocket legislators quickly decided to apply Rahm Emanuel’s famous maxim about never letting a crisis go to waste. The fact that their town had a big budget deficit meant that if they played their cards right, they could do a lot more than just fix the schools’ problem. They could actually shrink the town government!
And how does one go about doing that? By refusing to go along with tax increases and forcing the city to the edge of bankruptcy, thus raising the possibility of bringing in a receiver. “You never move faster than when you have a piano hanging over your head,” Brien told me. “The receiver is that piano.”
He went on to say that the municipal unions — police, firefighters, teachers — “have been given pensions and benefits the city can no longer afford” but have no incentive to renegotiate. But a receiver, with the wave of a magic wand, can instantly cut their pensions, and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. When I asked Brien how bad the pension problem was in Woonsocket, he told me he didn’t know. “I’m a state legislator,” he said. “I don’t get into that level of municipal finance.”
Here’s the rub. Pensions are not the core problem in Woonsocket. Yes, Woonsocket has a pension shortfall, but it is more manageable than many other places and has almost nothing to do with the current crisis. “The meme in Rhode Island is that if there is a problem, you can trace it back to the public employees,” says Bob Plain, a journalist who runs the Web site RIFuture.org. In Providence, the pensions, with annual cost of living adjustment of up to 6 percent, were, indeed, a huge problem. (Note: My brother used to work for Angel Taveras, the city’s mayor.) But that’s just not true in Woonsocket.
Yet, in Central Falls, the receiver took an ax to retiree benefits, cutting them by 55 percent, meaning that many retirees are now getting pensions of under $20,000. The receiver has also laid off city workers, closed the city’s library and shuttered a popular community center. This is the future Woonsocket now faces, thanks to its own legislators.
Shrinking government sounds appealing. We all have our favorite examples of silly regulations and bloated bureaucracies. But struggling municipalities like Woonsocket don’t have a lot of fat; cutting means reducing or eliminating programs that citizens depend on. And, in any case, in a democracy, the decision of what — and whether — to cut should rest with elected officials who are responsible to voters, not to an unelected receiver using bankruptcy law to unilaterally make cuts.
That may be the ALEC solution, but it shouldn’t be ours.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
Are you a constituent of Rep. John Sarbanes? Can you join us at his Towson office on June 20 at 4:30 PM? Can you sign on to this letter? Please send your address. Thanks.
Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore/Fund Our Communities, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Rep. John Sarbanes
600 Baltimore Ave.
Suite 303
Baltimore, MD 21204
Re: Important Legislation
June 19, 2012
Dear Congressperson Sarbanes:
Progressive Democrats of America and its partners, including the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, launched the Brown Bag Vigil campaign in January 2010. We've met at district offices of senators and representatives as part of this ongoing national effort. Today, we ask you to support legislation to stop global warming, and for Healthcare NOT Warfare. We are citizen activists in our community, and your response will be shared with our colleagues.
The recovery is weak, and our economy is not creating jobs is the quantity or quality needed. We desperately need strong leadership from the Federal Government to help create jobs, and to train Americans to contribute in the new economy. Therefore, we urge you to support HR 870 / 4277 - Rep. Conyers “21st Century Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act” which would establish the National Full Employment Trust Fund to create employment opportunities for the unemployed. And, also to support H.R. 2914 - Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act” which would create an emergency jobs program that will fund 2,242,000 jobs in the near-term.
It is long over due to pull out of Afghanistan, and we can't afford war with Iran. We urge you to join the Out of Afghanistan Caucus; and to cosponsor and support HR 780, Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to fund the safe and orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan; and HR 4173, Rep. Lee’s "Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons and Stop War Through Diplomacy Act."
Healthcare is a human right. We urge you to cosponsor and support legislation to guarantee healthcare for all: HR 676, Rep. John Conyers’s bill to establish an improved and expanded Medicare for All program; and HR 1200, Rep. Jim McDermott’s American Health Security Act of 2011 to deliver universal health care coverage.
Finally, we are seeking an end to the use of killer drone strikes, which we believe to be illegal and unconstitutional. Would you be willing to speak out in Congress against the use of drones which are killing civilians in at least five countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen?
We look forward to your response. And when you are ready, we would like to meet with you, preferably in Baltimore. But if necessary, we will travel to your D.C. office. Thank you for your time and attention.
Peace,
Max Obuszewski, on behalf of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore/Fund Our Communities
325 East 25th Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
410-366-1637
"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
Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore/Fund Our Communities, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Rep. John Sarbanes
600 Baltimore Ave.
Suite 303
Baltimore, MD 21204
Re: Important Legislation
June 19, 2012
Dear Congressperson Sarbanes:
Progressive Democrats of America and its partners, including the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, launched the Brown Bag Vigil campaign in January 2010. We've met at district offices of senators and representatives as part of this ongoing national effort. Today, we ask you to support legislation to stop global warming, and for Healthcare NOT Warfare. We are citizen activists in our community, and your response will be shared with our colleagues.
The recovery is weak, and our economy is not creating jobs is the quantity or quality needed. We desperately need strong leadership from the Federal Government to help create jobs, and to train Americans to contribute in the new economy. Therefore, we urge you to support HR 870 / 4277 - Rep. Conyers “21st Century Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act” which would establish the National Full Employment Trust Fund to create employment opportunities for the unemployed. And, also to support H.R. 2914 - Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act” which would create an emergency jobs program that will fund 2,242,000 jobs in the near-term.
It is long over due to pull out of Afghanistan, and we can't afford war with Iran. We urge you to join the Out of Afghanistan Caucus; and to cosponsor and support HR 780, Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to fund the safe and orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan; and HR 4173, Rep. Lee’s "Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons and Stop War Through Diplomacy Act."
Healthcare is a human right. We urge you to cosponsor and support legislation to guarantee healthcare for all: HR 676, Rep. John Conyers’s bill to establish an improved and expanded Medicare for All program; and HR 1200, Rep. Jim McDermott’s American Health Security Act of 2011 to deliver universal health care coverage.
Finally, we are seeking an end to the use of killer drone strikes, which we believe to be illegal and unconstitutional. Would you be willing to speak out in Congress against the use of drones which are killing civilians in at least five countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen?
We look forward to your response. And when you are ready, we would like to meet with you, preferably in Baltimore. But if necessary, we will travel to your D.C. office. Thank you for your time and attention.
Peace,
Max Obuszewski, on behalf of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore/Fund Our Communities
325 East 25th Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
410-366-1637
"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
Lost in Recession, Toll on Underemployed and Underpaid
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/many-american-workers-are-underemployed-and-underpaid.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120619
June 18, 2012
By MICHAEL COOPER
Throughout the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery, the most commonly discussed measure of misery has been unemployment. But many middle-class and working-class people who are fortunate enough to have work are struggling as well, which is why Sherry Woods, a 59-year-old van driver from Atlanta, found herself standing in line at a jobs fair this month, with her résumé tucked inside a Bible.
She opened it occasionally to reread a favorite verse from Philippians: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ.”
Ms. Woods’s current job has not been meeting her needs. When she began driving a passenger van last year, she earned $9 an hour and worked 40 hours a week. Then her wage was cut to $8 an hour, and her hours were drastically scaled back. Last month she earned just $233. So Ms. Woods, who said that she had been threatened with eviction for missing rent payments and had been postponing an appointment with the eye doctor because she lacks insurance, has been looking for another, better job. It has not been easy.
“I’m looking for something else, anything else,” she said. “More hours. Better pay. Actual benefits.”
These are anxious days for American workers. Many, like Ms. Woods, are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not keeping up with their expenses: adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America, 12th Edition.” Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.
“Unfortunately, the wage problems brought on by the recession pile on top of a three-decade stagnation of wages for low- and middle-wage workers,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington that studies the labor market. “In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there has been persistent high unemployment as households reduced debt and scaled back purchases. The consequence for wages has been substantially slower growth across the board, including white-collar and college-educated workers.”
Now, with the economy shaping up as the central issue of the presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have been relentlessly trying to make the case that their policies would bring prosperity back. The unease of voters is striking: in a New York Times/CBS News poll in April, half of the respondents said they thought the next generation of Americans would be worse off, while only about a quarter said it would have a better future.
And household wealth is dropping. The Federal Reserve reported last week that the economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, wiping away two decades of gains. With stocks too risky for many small investors and savings accounts paying little interest, building up a nest egg is a challenge even for those who can afford to sock away some of their money.
Expenses like putting a child through college — where tuition has been rising faster than inflation or wages — can be a daunting task. When Morgan Woodward, 21, began her freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, three years ago, her parents paid about $9,000 a year in tuition and fees. Now they pay closer to $13,000, and they are bracing for the possibility of another jump next year. With their incomes flat, though, they recently borrowed money to pay for her final year, and to begin paying the tuition of their son, who plans to start college this fall.
“You know there is going to be small incremental increases in tuition, but not the 8, 10, 12 percent increase every year we’ve seen,” said Ms. Woodward’s father, Cliff Woodward, 52, who lives in Pleasanton, Calif., and is an independent sales representative for an eyeglass company. So the Woodwards, who drive cars with 150,000 and 120,000 miles on them, have cut back.
“No vacations, no big screens,” Mr. Woodward said. “We’ve cut down on going out a little bit, but it’s worth it.”
People with college degrees still get jobs with better pay and benefits than those without, but many recent college graduates are finding it hard to land the kinds of jobs they had envisioned. David Thande, 27, who graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, five years ago, works part time as a clerk in an Apple Store.
“I’m not even full time, so I spend about 45 minutes every day begging people for hours, checking if someone canceled, struggling to make it work,” Mr. Thande said, adding that he had fallen behind on paying back his student loans.
Garland Miller, 28, who has degrees in finance and accounting from the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University, had hoped to land a job at a big accounting firm, and to have been able to buy a home by now. Instead he finds himself working as the lead server at a steakhouse. But he has not given up on trying to move into the field that he prepared himself for: This month, he attended a jobs fair in Duluth, a suburb of Atlanta, organized by the University of Georgia for its alumni.
“I’m not in a job where I’m using all of my skills,” Mr. Miller said. He said that with many baby boomers unable to retire as early as they had hoped, there are fewer opportunities for younger workers to move up and take their places. “Instead you have everybody competing for entry-level positions,” he said.
Things are much worse for people without college degrees, though. The real entry-level hourly wage for men who recently graduated from high school fell to $11.68 last year, from $15.64 in 1979, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. And the percentage of those jobs that offer health insurance has plummeted to 22.8 percent, from 63.3 percent in 1979.
Though inflation has stayed relatively low in recent years, it has remained high for some of the most important things: college, health care and even, recently, food. The price of food in the home rose by 4.8 percent last year, one of the biggest jumps in the last two decades.
Sam Chea, 38, who lives in Oakland and works nights delivering pizzas for Domino’s, said that he had been feeling the pinch at grocery stores, and worried that his lack of a college education was making it harder for him to find decent work. The other day he went to the nearby city of El Cerrito to apply for a second job at Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, a regional chain.
“I’ll be more secure with another job,” he said. “It’s scary. I don’t have an education, and I’m worried about my rent.”
“Everything’s gone up. Rent went up, gas went up, food went up, milk went up, cheeseburgers went up, even cigarettes went up,” said Mr. Chea, who had stopped at the barbershop to spiff up before his job interview. “I’m used to getting a haircut for $6 or $7, but they charged me $9. Even haircuts have gone up.”
Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta; Malia Wollan from El Cerrito, Calif.; and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/many-american-workers-are-underemployed-and-underpaid.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120619
June 18, 2012
By MICHAEL COOPER
Throughout the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery, the most commonly discussed measure of misery has been unemployment. But many middle-class and working-class people who are fortunate enough to have work are struggling as well, which is why Sherry Woods, a 59-year-old van driver from Atlanta, found herself standing in line at a jobs fair this month, with her résumé tucked inside a Bible.
She opened it occasionally to reread a favorite verse from Philippians: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ.”
Ms. Woods’s current job has not been meeting her needs. When she began driving a passenger van last year, she earned $9 an hour and worked 40 hours a week. Then her wage was cut to $8 an hour, and her hours were drastically scaled back. Last month she earned just $233. So Ms. Woods, who said that she had been threatened with eviction for missing rent payments and had been postponing an appointment with the eye doctor because she lacks insurance, has been looking for another, better job. It has not been easy.
“I’m looking for something else, anything else,” she said. “More hours. Better pay. Actual benefits.”
These are anxious days for American workers. Many, like Ms. Woods, are underemployed. Others find pay that is simply not keeping up with their expenses: adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America, 12th Edition.” Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.
“Unfortunately, the wage problems brought on by the recession pile on top of a three-decade stagnation of wages for low- and middle-wage workers,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington that studies the labor market. “In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there has been persistent high unemployment as households reduced debt and scaled back purchases. The consequence for wages has been substantially slower growth across the board, including white-collar and college-educated workers.”
Now, with the economy shaping up as the central issue of the presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have been relentlessly trying to make the case that their policies would bring prosperity back. The unease of voters is striking: in a New York Times/CBS News poll in April, half of the respondents said they thought the next generation of Americans would be worse off, while only about a quarter said it would have a better future.
And household wealth is dropping. The Federal Reserve reported last week that the economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, wiping away two decades of gains. With stocks too risky for many small investors and savings accounts paying little interest, building up a nest egg is a challenge even for those who can afford to sock away some of their money.
Expenses like putting a child through college — where tuition has been rising faster than inflation or wages — can be a daunting task. When Morgan Woodward, 21, began her freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, three years ago, her parents paid about $9,000 a year in tuition and fees. Now they pay closer to $13,000, and they are bracing for the possibility of another jump next year. With their incomes flat, though, they recently borrowed money to pay for her final year, and to begin paying the tuition of their son, who plans to start college this fall.
“You know there is going to be small incremental increases in tuition, but not the 8, 10, 12 percent increase every year we’ve seen,” said Ms. Woodward’s father, Cliff Woodward, 52, who lives in Pleasanton, Calif., and is an independent sales representative for an eyeglass company. So the Woodwards, who drive cars with 150,000 and 120,000 miles on them, have cut back.
“No vacations, no big screens,” Mr. Woodward said. “We’ve cut down on going out a little bit, but it’s worth it.”
People with college degrees still get jobs with better pay and benefits than those without, but many recent college graduates are finding it hard to land the kinds of jobs they had envisioned. David Thande, 27, who graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, five years ago, works part time as a clerk in an Apple Store.
“I’m not even full time, so I spend about 45 minutes every day begging people for hours, checking if someone canceled, struggling to make it work,” Mr. Thande said, adding that he had fallen behind on paying back his student loans.
Garland Miller, 28, who has degrees in finance and accounting from the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University, had hoped to land a job at a big accounting firm, and to have been able to buy a home by now. Instead he finds himself working as the lead server at a steakhouse. But he has not given up on trying to move into the field that he prepared himself for: This month, he attended a jobs fair in Duluth, a suburb of Atlanta, organized by the University of Georgia for its alumni.
“I’m not in a job where I’m using all of my skills,” Mr. Miller said. He said that with many baby boomers unable to retire as early as they had hoped, there are fewer opportunities for younger workers to move up and take their places. “Instead you have everybody competing for entry-level positions,” he said.
Things are much worse for people without college degrees, though. The real entry-level hourly wage for men who recently graduated from high school fell to $11.68 last year, from $15.64 in 1979, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. And the percentage of those jobs that offer health insurance has plummeted to 22.8 percent, from 63.3 percent in 1979.
Though inflation has stayed relatively low in recent years, it has remained high for some of the most important things: college, health care and even, recently, food. The price of food in the home rose by 4.8 percent last year, one of the biggest jumps in the last two decades.
Sam Chea, 38, who lives in Oakland and works nights delivering pizzas for Domino’s, said that he had been feeling the pinch at grocery stores, and worried that his lack of a college education was making it harder for him to find decent work. The other day he went to the nearby city of El Cerrito to apply for a second job at Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, a regional chain.
“I’ll be more secure with another job,” he said. “It’s scary. I don’t have an education, and I’m worried about my rent.”
“Everything’s gone up. Rent went up, gas went up, food went up, milk went up, cheeseburgers went up, even cigarettes went up,” said Mr. Chea, who had stopped at the barbershop to spiff up before his job interview. “I’m used to getting a haircut for $6 or $7, but they charged me $9. Even haircuts have gone up.”
Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta; Malia Wollan from El Cerrito, Calif.; and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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
Friday, June 15, 2012
Baltimore Activist Alert June 15 – June 21, 2012
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, this list and other email documents which I send out are done under the auspices of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. Go to www.baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com. If you appreciate this information and would like to make a donation, send contributions to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. Max Obuszewski can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski [at] verizon.net.
Tune into the Maryland Progressive Blog at http://mdprogblog.org.
1] Books, buttons and stickers
2] Web site for info on federal legislation
3] Join Nonviolent Resistance lists
4] Buy coffee through HoCoFoLA
5] Baltimore 500 -- through June 30
6] White House vigil – June 15
7] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – June 15
8] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 15
9] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 15
10] Silent peace vigil – June 15
11] SPCA benefit – June 15
12] Sounds of Hope – June 15
13] Cuban Five – June 15
15] Ballroom dancing – June 15
16] Virginia’s death penalty -- June 16
17] Solar Flare – June 16
18] Foreclosure Conference – June 16
19] K9 – 9K benefit – June 16
20] Olney peace vigil – June 16
21] Support Marriage Equality – June 16 & 17
22] West Chester, PA demo – June 16
23] Statehood Summit – June 16
23] Silent vigil at Capitol – June 16
23] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – June 16
24] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 16
25] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 16
26] Party Under the Stars – June 16
27] Final Exit – June 17
24] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 16
28] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 16
29] Party Under the Stars – June 16
30] Final Exit – June 17
------
1] – Buttons, bumperstickers and books are available. “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” stickers are in stock. Donate your books to Max. Call him at 410-366-1637.
2] – To obtain information how your federal legislators voted on particular bills, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. Congressional toll-free numbers are 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073. The White House Comment Email is accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
3] – THE ORGANIZING LIST will be the primary decision-making mechanism of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR]. It will be augmented by conference calls and possibly in-person meetings as needed. It will consist of 1 or 2 representatives from each local, regional, or national organization (not coalitions) that wishes to actively work to carry out the NCNR campaign of facilitating and organizing nonviolent resistance to the war in Iraq.
To join the ORGANIZING List, please send your name, group affiliation, city and email address to donmuller@msn.com. Different local chapters of a national organization are encouraged to subscribe.
THE NOTICES LIST will include only notices of NCNR actions and related information and is open to any interested person to subscribe. It will be moderated to maintain focus & will include periodic notices about getting involved in NCNR national organizing. To join the NOTICES List, send an email message to ncnrnotices-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You will get a confirmation message once subscribed. If you have problems, please write to the list manager at ncnrnotices-admin@lists.riseup.net.
4] – You can help safeguard human rights and fragile ecosystems through your purchase of HOCOFOLA Café Quetzal. Bags of ground coffee or whole beans can be ordered by mailing in an order form. Also note organic cocoa and sugar are for sale. For more details and to download the order form, go to http://friendsoflatinamerica.typepad.com/hocofola/2010/02/hocofola-cafe-quetzal-order-form-2010.html. The coffee comes in one-pound bags.
Fill out the form and mail it with a check made out to HOCOFOLA on or before the second week of the month. Be sure you indicate ground or beans for each type of coffee ordered. Send it to Adela Hirsch, 5358 Eliots Oak Rd., Columbia, MD 21044. Be sure you indicate ground (G) or bean (B) for each type of coffee ordered. The coffee will arrive some time the following week and you will be notified where to pick it up. Contact Adela at 410-997-5662 or via e-mail at adela4peace@verizon.net.
5] – Baltimore 500: A Race to Save Lives is an effort organized by the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, 301 Stockholm St., Baltimore Humane Society, 1601 Nicodemus Road, and Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Road. During the month of June, the Maryland SPCA, Baltimore Humane Society, and Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) will waive their adoption fees for cats and kittens. Their goal is to find homes for 500 cats and kittens throughout the month. Call 410-833-8848 or go to http://www.baltimorehumane.org.
6] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. Contact Art Laffin: artlaffin@hotmail.com.
7] – Every Friday from noon to 1 PM, Women in Black, Baltimore, host a vigil at Pratt and Light Sts. in the Inner Harbor. Peace signs will be available. See http://www.peacepath911.com/ or write wibbaltimore@hotmail.com or call 410-467-9114.
8] – There is also a noon vigil on June 15 at Roland Park Place at 830 W. 40th St. Call 410-467-9114.
9] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel (now in its 8th year) takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/.
10] – There is a silent vigil on Fri., June 15 from 5 to 6 PM outside of Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St., in opposition to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Placards say: "War Is Not the Answer." The silent vigil is sponsored by AFSC, Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings.
11] – There is a Wine and Wag Happy Hour hosted by the Maryland SPCA to benefit the homeless pets in its adoption center. The event will include drinks, appetizers, and tours of the adoption center, as well as activities for dogs, including paw painting and bobbing for hot dogs. Attendees may bring one dog per person; dogs must be kept on a leash except when within the play runs. The event takes place on Fri., June 15 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at the Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Road. Call 410-235-8826 or go to http://www.mdspca.org. The price is $10 in advance, $15 at the event.
12] – On Fridays, from 7 to 10:30 PM at the Potter's House, 1658 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009, enjoy the Sounds of Hope is Good Music, Good Food, for a Good Cause! Go to www.reverbnation.com/venue/soundsofhope. Contact Mary Shapiro, Sounds of Hope producer, at
soundsofhopebooking@gmail.com or 202-294-2906.
13] – The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed,Why They Should Be Free is a talk on Fri., June 15 at 7:30 PM at 143 Kennedy St. NW, Suite 15, WDC. Since Cuba underwent a Communist revolution in the late 1950s the United States has been dedicated to terrorizing and alienating the country. A major event in US-Cuba relations following the Cuban revolution was the arrest of The Cuban Five (Five Cuban Nationals accused of espionage by the US). Panelists include Kamau Benjamin-DC Metro Coalition to Free The Cuban Five, Cindy Zavala-Latin American Student Organization at AU, Sonia Umanzor-Takoma Park Coalition to Free the Five, and Omari Musa, Socialist Workers Party. Call 202-536-5080.
14] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be June 8. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725.
15] – On Sat., June 16 from 8 AM to 1 PM at All Saints Catholic Church, 9300 Stonewall Road, Manassas, VA, take a look Inside the Human Costs in Light of Catholic Teaching of Virginia’s Death Penalty: the Law, the Process, the Victims. The keynote address will be by Michael Stone, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. There will be a panel discussion with Stephen Northup, Virginians for Alternatives to the Penalty; Jerry Givens, former chief executioner, Virginia, Linell Patterson, daughter of a murder victim and Terri Steinberg, mother of a death row inmate. RSVP to Marisa Vertrees at mvertrees@stcharleschurch.org or 703-527-5500 ext. 24.
16] – DC Solar Flare is happening on Sat., June 16 from 9 AM to 4:30 PM at HD Woodson Senior High School, 540 55th St. NE. Visit booths of over 60 exhibitors. Vendors include local solar installers and green business owners who can help you green your home. There will also be community groups and representatives from a number of DC government offices. Hear from over 20 speakers and panel participants about a variety of topics. Panels discussions include how to go solar, bringing green jobs to our communities, and how solar can help address challenges in our communities. Apostle Stephen E. Young Sr. and Tyrell Holcomb of Holy Christian House of Praise for All People will be giving the Keynote Speech on “Powering our Future for our Community.” VISIT www.dcsolarflare.com .
17] – Elijah Cummings' Foreclosure Prevention Workshop is on Sat., June 16 from 9 AM to 3 PM at Woodlawn High School, 1801 Woodlawn Dr., Gwynn Oak, Maryland 21207. More information and registration available at www.cummings.house.gov. This event will assist homeowners delinquent on their mortgages or facing potential foreclosure in getting the information and resources they need to save their homes. Homeowners who attend the event will receive free loan counseling, learn about refinancing options, and have the opportunity to meet with HUD approved housing counselors, attorneys and mortgage lenders.
18] – On Sat., June 16 from 9:30 AM to 2 PM, the Marshall Legacy Institute's K9-9K Walkathon will take place through the 87-acre campus of Glenelg Country School, 12793 Folly Quarter Road, and showcase a demonstration from Mine Detection Dog Utsi, who uses her keen sense of smell to sniff out land mines and save lives. The event will also include fare from local restaurants, raffles, games, canine agility courses, canine massage therapy, and more. All proceeds will go toward sponsoring a life-saving dog that will sniff out land mines in Angola, Africa. Go to http://www.glenelg.org. Registration includes a t-shirt; the cost for students is $15, adults $25, and children, 5 years old and younger get in free.
19] – 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. in Olney, MD. The next vigil is June 16. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.
20] – The Human Rights Campaign and Marylanders for Marriage Equality are ramping up efforts to talk to supporters across the state. The new marriage law doesn't go into effect until next year, and only if the voters decide to uphold it in November. HRC is sponsoring a Frederick Canvass on Saturdays from 11 AM to 1 PM at the corner of E. Patrick St & N Market St., Frederick, Maryland 21701. RSVP at manley@mdfme.org. HRC [field@hrc.org] is sponsoring an Annapolis Canvass on Sundays from 2 to 4 PM in the UUCA Parking Lot, 333 Dubois Road, Annapolis, Maryland 21401. RSVP at manley@mdfme.org.
21] – 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.
22] – The DC Statehood Summit is on Sat., June 16 from 11 AM to 2 PM at Howard U., Blackburn Center, 2397 6th St. NW. There will be information on DC history, the ongoing efforts for equal rights in DC and why statehood will change life in DC for the better! Join elected officials, educators, activists and your friends and neighbors and add your voice to ways to make DC statehood a reality! And a little music and poetry will add some “flava” to the day! Light Lunch Provided! Email billmosley@comcast.net .
23] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., June 9. 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.
24] – A DC Labor Walking Tour will be happening on Sat., June 16 from 1 to 3 PM at Columbus Circle, across from Union Station, WDC. From the Labor Hall of Fame to Joe Hill’s ashes, worker history is around just about every corner in the nation’s capital, if you know where to look. This 2-hour walking tour will reveal labor’s often-untold story of protest and resistance. Metro Washington Council Union Cities Coordinator Chris Garlock - who usually helps local and national activists make history on DC’s streets - leads the tour. Contact Lillian at 202-543-1542 or Lillian@dcjwj.org.
25] – See the film "Race to Execution" on Sat., June 16 from 2 to 4 PM at Sankofa Video, Books & cafe, 2714 Georgia Ave. NW. After the film, there will be a discussion of the Troy Davis case with Davis' post conviction lawyer, Thomas Ruffin. The rising incarceration rate of people of color coupled with the growing privitazation of the US prison system makes the event a must see. Call 202-234-4755 or www.sankofa.com.
26] – There is a reception with the LGBT Caucus of the Maryland General Assembly, pro-equality champions, and you on Sat., June 16 from 2 to 4 PM at the City Café, 1001 Cathedral St., Baltimore 21201. Email director@NewWaysMinistry.org for ticket info.
27] – March With ANSWER Baltimore at Pride 2012 on Sat., June 16. The parade steps off at 4 PM from the corners of Monument and Charles Sts. in Mount Vernon. Meet at 3:30 PM on Charles St. between W. Centre and W. Franklin Sts. ANSWER is Group F, Spot.68. March with progressive banners and signs defending same-sex marriage in Maryland and for LGBT equality. Email baltimore@answercoalition.org with "Baltimore Pride" in the subject line. Call 443-759-9968.
28] – A Night for Palestine occurs on Sat., June 16 from 7:30 to 10 PM at Busboys & Poets, Loft, 1025 K St. (5th &K). Join US Palestinian Community Network and meet representatives from other US cities. There will be guest speakers, and a report by Philip Farah who recently co-led Interfaith Peace Builders 40th delegation to the holy land. Enjoy a musical performance by Shawkat Sayyad. A $10 donation will help support the work of US Palestinian Community Network. Visit www.uspcn.org.
29] – Party Under the Stars on Sat., June 16 at 10 PM at the Magnum House, 707 Ingraham St. NW. The Magnum House will provide food and drink and music. This is a fundraiser for the Washington Peace Center and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). There’s a $10-20 sliding scale at the door. The Peace Center is a local DC grassroots organization, working for peace and justice since 1963 (about to celebrate 50 years!) and CISPES has been a great model of long-haul solidarity work for over 32 years. Email info@washingtonpeacecenter.org.
30] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore, MD 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. On Sun., June 17, the topic is “Final Exit Explained” by Em Sabatiuk. Final Exit is a group that emerged in 2004 from the Hemlock Society with its primary mission being to serve U.S. residents who suffer intolerable medical circumstances, are mentally competent, want to end their lives, and meet the criteria established by Final Exit. Sabatiuk, one of a group of seniors with the all-volunteer Final Exit and a BES member, will explore the purposes and procedures of the organization and answer questions about its mission and criteria. Call 410-581-2322 or visit www.baltimoreethicalsociety.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
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, this list and other email documents which I send out are done under the auspices of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. Go to www.baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com. If you appreciate this information and would like to make a donation, send contributions to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. Max Obuszewski can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski [at] verizon.net.
Tune into the Maryland Progressive Blog at http://mdprogblog.org.
1] Books, buttons and stickers
2] Web site for info on federal legislation
3] Join Nonviolent Resistance lists
4] Buy coffee through HoCoFoLA
5] Baltimore 500 -- through June 30
6] White House vigil – June 15
7] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – June 15
8] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 15
9] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 15
10] Silent peace vigil – June 15
11] SPCA benefit – June 15
12] Sounds of Hope – June 15
13] Cuban Five – June 15
15] Ballroom dancing – June 15
16] Virginia’s death penalty -- June 16
17] Solar Flare – June 16
18] Foreclosure Conference – June 16
19] K9 – 9K benefit – June 16
20] Olney peace vigil – June 16
21] Support Marriage Equality – June 16 & 17
22] West Chester, PA demo – June 16
23] Statehood Summit – June 16
23] Silent vigil at Capitol – June 16
23] WIB Inner Harbor vigil – June 16
24] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 16
25] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 16
26] Party Under the Stars – June 16
27] Final Exit – June 17
24] WIB Roland Park vigil – June 16
28] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – June 16
29] Party Under the Stars – June 16
30] Final Exit – June 17
------
1] – Buttons, bumperstickers and books are available. “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” stickers are in stock. Donate your books to Max. Call him at 410-366-1637.
2] – To obtain information how your federal legislators voted on particular bills, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. Congressional toll-free numbers are 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073. The White House Comment Email is accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
3] – THE ORGANIZING LIST will be the primary decision-making mechanism of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR]. It will be augmented by conference calls and possibly in-person meetings as needed. It will consist of 1 or 2 representatives from each local, regional, or national organization (not coalitions) that wishes to actively work to carry out the NCNR campaign of facilitating and organizing nonviolent resistance to the war in Iraq.
To join the ORGANIZING List, please send your name, group affiliation, city and email address to donmuller@msn.com. Different local chapters of a national organization are encouraged to subscribe.
THE NOTICES LIST will include only notices of NCNR actions and related information and is open to any interested person to subscribe. It will be moderated to maintain focus & will include periodic notices about getting involved in NCNR national organizing. To join the NOTICES List, send an email message to ncnrnotices-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You will get a confirmation message once subscribed. If you have problems, please write to the list manager at ncnrnotices-admin@lists.riseup.net.
4] – You can help safeguard human rights and fragile ecosystems through your purchase of HOCOFOLA Café Quetzal. Bags of ground coffee or whole beans can be ordered by mailing in an order form. Also note organic cocoa and sugar are for sale. For more details and to download the order form, go to http://friendsoflatinamerica.typepad.com/hocofola/2010/02/hocofola-cafe-quetzal-order-form-2010.html. The coffee comes in one-pound bags.
Fill out the form and mail it with a check made out to HOCOFOLA on or before the second week of the month. Be sure you indicate ground or beans for each type of coffee ordered. Send it to Adela Hirsch, 5358 Eliots Oak Rd., Columbia, MD 21044. Be sure you indicate ground (G) or bean (B) for each type of coffee ordered. The coffee will arrive some time the following week and you will be notified where to pick it up. Contact Adela at 410-997-5662 or via e-mail at adela4peace@verizon.net.
5] – Baltimore 500: A Race to Save Lives is an effort organized by the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, 301 Stockholm St., Baltimore Humane Society, 1601 Nicodemus Road, and Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Road. During the month of June, the Maryland SPCA, Baltimore Humane Society, and Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) will waive their adoption fees for cats and kittens. Their goal is to find homes for 500 cats and kittens throughout the month. Call 410-833-8848 or go to http://www.baltimorehumane.org.
6] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. Contact Art Laffin: artlaffin@hotmail.com.
7] – Every Friday from noon to 1 PM, Women in Black, Baltimore, host a vigil at Pratt and Light Sts. in the Inner Harbor. Peace signs will be available. See http://www.peacepath911.com/ or write wibbaltimore@hotmail.com or call 410-467-9114.
8] – There is also a noon vigil on June 15 at Roland Park Place at 830 W. 40th St. Call 410-467-9114.
9] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel (now in its 8th year) takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/.
10] – There is a silent vigil on Fri., June 15 from 5 to 6 PM outside of Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N. Charles St., in opposition to war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Placards say: "War Is Not the Answer." The silent vigil is sponsored by AFSC, Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings.
11] – There is a Wine and Wag Happy Hour hosted by the Maryland SPCA to benefit the homeless pets in its adoption center. The event will include drinks, appetizers, and tours of the adoption center, as well as activities for dogs, including paw painting and bobbing for hot dogs. Attendees may bring one dog per person; dogs must be kept on a leash except when within the play runs. The event takes place on Fri., June 15 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at the Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Road. Call 410-235-8826 or go to http://www.mdspca.org. The price is $10 in advance, $15 at the event.
12] – On Fridays, from 7 to 10:30 PM at the Potter's House, 1658 Columbia Rd. NW, WDC 20009, enjoy the Sounds of Hope is Good Music, Good Food, for a Good Cause! Go to www.reverbnation.com/venue/soundsofhope. Contact Mary Shapiro, Sounds of Hope producer, at
soundsofhopebooking@gmail.com or 202-294-2906.
13] – The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed,Why They Should Be Free is a talk on Fri., June 15 at 7:30 PM at 143 Kennedy St. NW, Suite 15, WDC. Since Cuba underwent a Communist revolution in the late 1950s the United States has been dedicated to terrorizing and alienating the country. A major event in US-Cuba relations following the Cuban revolution was the arrest of The Cuban Five (Five Cuban Nationals accused of espionage by the US). Panelists include Kamau Benjamin-DC Metro Coalition to Free The Cuban Five, Cindy Zavala-Latin American Student Organization at AU, Sonia Umanzor-Takoma Park Coalition to Free the Five, and Omari Musa, Socialist Workers Party. Call 202-536-5080.
14] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be June 8. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725.
15] – On Sat., June 16 from 8 AM to 1 PM at All Saints Catholic Church, 9300 Stonewall Road, Manassas, VA, take a look Inside the Human Costs in Light of Catholic Teaching of Virginia’s Death Penalty: the Law, the Process, the Victims. The keynote address will be by Michael Stone, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. There will be a panel discussion with Stephen Northup, Virginians for Alternatives to the Penalty; Jerry Givens, former chief executioner, Virginia, Linell Patterson, daughter of a murder victim and Terri Steinberg, mother of a death row inmate. RSVP to Marisa Vertrees at mvertrees@stcharleschurch.org or 703-527-5500 ext. 24.
16] – DC Solar Flare is happening on Sat., June 16 from 9 AM to 4:30 PM at HD Woodson Senior High School, 540 55th St. NE. Visit booths of over 60 exhibitors. Vendors include local solar installers and green business owners who can help you green your home. There will also be community groups and representatives from a number of DC government offices. Hear from over 20 speakers and panel participants about a variety of topics. Panels discussions include how to go solar, bringing green jobs to our communities, and how solar can help address challenges in our communities. Apostle Stephen E. Young Sr. and Tyrell Holcomb of Holy Christian House of Praise for All People will be giving the Keynote Speech on “Powering our Future for our Community.” VISIT www.dcsolarflare.com .
17] – Elijah Cummings' Foreclosure Prevention Workshop is on Sat., June 16 from 9 AM to 3 PM at Woodlawn High School, 1801 Woodlawn Dr., Gwynn Oak, Maryland 21207. More information and registration available at www.cummings.house.gov. This event will assist homeowners delinquent on their mortgages or facing potential foreclosure in getting the information and resources they need to save their homes. Homeowners who attend the event will receive free loan counseling, learn about refinancing options, and have the opportunity to meet with HUD approved housing counselors, attorneys and mortgage lenders.
18] – On Sat., June 16 from 9:30 AM to 2 PM, the Marshall Legacy Institute's K9-9K Walkathon will take place through the 87-acre campus of Glenelg Country School, 12793 Folly Quarter Road, and showcase a demonstration from Mine Detection Dog Utsi, who uses her keen sense of smell to sniff out land mines and save lives. The event will also include fare from local restaurants, raffles, games, canine agility courses, canine massage therapy, and more. All proceeds will go toward sponsoring a life-saving dog that will sniff out land mines in Angola, Africa. Go to http://www.glenelg.org. Registration includes a t-shirt; the cost for students is $15, adults $25, and children, 5 years old and younger get in free.
19] – 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. in Olney, MD. The next vigil is June 16. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.
20] – The Human Rights Campaign and Marylanders for Marriage Equality are ramping up efforts to talk to supporters across the state. The new marriage law doesn't go into effect until next year, and only if the voters decide to uphold it in November. HRC is sponsoring a Frederick Canvass on Saturdays from 11 AM to 1 PM at the corner of E. Patrick St & N Market St., Frederick, Maryland 21701. RSVP at manley@mdfme.org. HRC [field@hrc.org] is sponsoring an Annapolis Canvass on Sundays from 2 to 4 PM in the UUCA Parking Lot, 333 Dubois Road, Annapolis, Maryland 21401. RSVP at manley@mdfme.org.
21] – 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.
22] – The DC Statehood Summit is on Sat., June 16 from 11 AM to 2 PM at Howard U., Blackburn Center, 2397 6th St. NW. There will be information on DC history, the ongoing efforts for equal rights in DC and why statehood will change life in DC for the better! Join elected officials, educators, activists and your friends and neighbors and add your voice to ways to make DC statehood a reality! And a little music and poetry will add some “flava” to the day! Light Lunch Provided! Email billmosley@comcast.net .
23] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., June 9. 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.
24] – A DC Labor Walking Tour will be happening on Sat., June 16 from 1 to 3 PM at Columbus Circle, across from Union Station, WDC. From the Labor Hall of Fame to Joe Hill’s ashes, worker history is around just about every corner in the nation’s capital, if you know where to look. This 2-hour walking tour will reveal labor’s often-untold story of protest and resistance. Metro Washington Council Union Cities Coordinator Chris Garlock - who usually helps local and national activists make history on DC’s streets - leads the tour. Contact Lillian at 202-543-1542 or Lillian@dcjwj.org.
25] – See the film "Race to Execution" on Sat., June 16 from 2 to 4 PM at Sankofa Video, Books & cafe, 2714 Georgia Ave. NW. After the film, there will be a discussion of the Troy Davis case with Davis' post conviction lawyer, Thomas Ruffin. The rising incarceration rate of people of color coupled with the growing privitazation of the US prison system makes the event a must see. Call 202-234-4755 or www.sankofa.com.
26] – There is a reception with the LGBT Caucus of the Maryland General Assembly, pro-equality champions, and you on Sat., June 16 from 2 to 4 PM at the City Café, 1001 Cathedral St., Baltimore 21201. Email director@NewWaysMinistry.org for ticket info.
27] – March With ANSWER Baltimore at Pride 2012 on Sat., June 16. The parade steps off at 4 PM from the corners of Monument and Charles Sts. in Mount Vernon. Meet at 3:30 PM on Charles St. between W. Centre and W. Franklin Sts. ANSWER is Group F, Spot.68. March with progressive banners and signs defending same-sex marriage in Maryland and for LGBT equality. Email baltimore@answercoalition.org with "Baltimore Pride" in the subject line. Call 443-759-9968.
28] – A Night for Palestine occurs on Sat., June 16 from 7:30 to 10 PM at Busboys & Poets, Loft, 1025 K St. (5th &K). Join US Palestinian Community Network and meet representatives from other US cities. There will be guest speakers, and a report by Philip Farah who recently co-led Interfaith Peace Builders 40th delegation to the holy land. Enjoy a musical performance by Shawkat Sayyad. A $10 donation will help support the work of US Palestinian Community Network. Visit www.uspcn.org.
29] – Party Under the Stars on Sat., June 16 at 10 PM at the Magnum House, 707 Ingraham St. NW. The Magnum House will provide food and drink and music. This is a fundraiser for the Washington Peace Center and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). There’s a $10-20 sliding scale at the door. The Peace Center is a local DC grassroots organization, working for peace and justice since 1963 (about to celebrate 50 years!) and CISPES has been a great model of long-haul solidarity work for over 32 years. Email info@washingtonpeacecenter.org.
30] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore, MD 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. On Sun., June 17, the topic is “Final Exit Explained” by Em Sabatiuk. Final Exit is a group that emerged in 2004 from the Hemlock Society with its primary mission being to serve U.S. residents who suffer intolerable medical circumstances, are mentally competent, want to end their lives, and meet the criteria established by Final Exit. Sabatiuk, one of a group of seniors with the all-volunteer Final Exit and a BES member, will explore the purposes and procedures of the organization and answer questions about its mission and criteria. Call 410-581-2322 or visit www.baltimoreethicalsociety.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
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