38] Pax Christi USA's Momentum Event – Sept. 7
39] Bridges for Peace – Aug. 26
40] Phone bank for marriage equality in Chestertown, MD – Aug. 26
41] Women’s Equality Day – Aug. 26
42] Annapolis canvass for marriage equality – Aug. 26
43] The 6th African Diaspora International Film Festival -- Aug. 26
44] Philadelphia Peace Vigil – Aug. 26
45] Soul Kitchen Dinner Program – Aug. 26
46] Red Emma’s meeting – Aug. 26
47] Pentagon Vigil – Aug. 27
48] Support Citizens United protesters – Aug. 27
49] Political Illustrations – Aug. 27 – Sept. 21
50] Death Penalty Vigil – Aug. 27
51] Marc Steiner on WEAA – Aug. 27 – Aug. 30
52] Columbia phone bank for marriage equality – Aug. 27
53] Book talk “The Education of a White Parent” – Aug. 27
54] Free School meeting – Aug. 27
55] Talk & film “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” – Aug. 27
56] Pledge of Resistance/Fund Our Communities – Aug. 27
57] Bradley Manning hearings – Aug. 28 – Aug. 31
58] War Is Not the Answer – Aug. 28
59] Book talk with Hip Hop artist – Aug. 28
-------
38] – On Fri., Sept. 7, consider attending Pax Christi USA's Momentum Event at Trinity U. in Washington, DC. from 6 PM to 9 PM. The keynote speaker will be Bishop Thomas Gumbleton. For the dinner and program, there is a $50 per person admission. No tickets will be sold at the door, so register now at www.paxchristiusa.org. Call 202.635.2741 or email info@paxchristiusa.org.
39] – Maryland Bridges for Peace welcomes you to stand for peace Sundays from noon (or thereabouts) to 1 PM on the Spa Creek Bridge in Annapolis. Contact Lucy at 410-263-7271 or mdbridgesforpeace@toadmail.com. Signs are not allowed to be on a stick or pole. If there is interest, people will be standing on the Stoney Creek Bridge on Fort Smallwood Road in Pasadena [410-437-5379 or magicalgodmom@aol.com]. Go to http://BridgePeace.blogspot.com/.
40] – Phone bank for marriage equality in Chestertown, MD on Sundays from noon to 4 PM at 106 Spring Ave. RSVP to Toney.Schloss@mdfme.org.
41] – There’s a Women's Equality Day Picnic with Hollaback! Baltimore
volunteers, supporters and friends will celebrate US Women's History with a potluck-style picnic on Sun., Aug. 26 at 1 PM at Patterson Park, 275 S. Patterson Park Ave. Call 443-869-4515 or go to http://www.peaceandacupofjoe.com/.
42] – Join an Annapolis canvass for marriage equality on Sundays from 2 to 4 PM at the UUCA Parking Lot, 333 Dubois Road, Annapolis, MD 21401. RSVP at manley@mdfme.org.
43] – The 6th African Diaspora International Film Festival continues with the film "Filling the Gap" on Sun., Aug. 26 at 3 PM at the Goethe Institute, 812 7th St. NW. Visit http://transafrica.org/events/2012/8/24/6th-african-diaspora-international-film-festival-washington.html. For tickets, go to http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/265232.
“Filling the Gap” is a spectacular docu-drama in its portrayal of historical characters like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and other lesser known African-Americans who made inventive and inspired contributions in the 1840s, the period leading to the Civil War in American History.
"Survivor" can be seen on Sat., Aug. 25 at 8 PM. In the D.C. premier, you'll see a visual testimony about life after sex-slavery and abuse. One woman's secret and fear to share what happened to her and almost ruined her life. Actress Brook Bello shares her story of survival from rape and sex-slavery in the US and goes on an emotional, spiritual and physical journey that will take her from suicidal thoughts, pain and addiction to a life of healing.
"The First Rasta" can be seen on Sun., Aug. 26 at 1 AM. It looks at the origins of Rastafarianism by way of the Leonard Percival. For many, initial exposure to the self-reliant tenets of Rastafarianism came through the life and music of Bob Marley. Fewer know that Marley, whose nickname was "Tuff Gong," the name of his record label to this day. That moniker is a tribute to the pioneer and thinker behind the movement itself, Leonard Percival "The Gong" Howell (1893-1981), the First Rasta!
44] – Every Sunday, 4 to 5 PM, there is a Quaker Peace Vigil at Independence Mall, N. side of Market between 5th and 6th Sts., Philadelphia. Call 215-421-5811.
45] – Gimmie Shelter Productions in conjunction with the Govans Presbyterian Church, 5828 York Road, announces the Soul Kitchen Dinner Program. The fourth Sunday of every month, there will be a prepared catered dinner at 5 PM for the homeless and those in need in the Govans area. Musicians and singers are needed to provide entertainment, and helping hands are needed to set up, serve, clean up, and perhaps give other volunteers a ride home. Call 410-435-9188.
46] – Red Emma’s needs volunteers. Stop in to the weekly Sunday meeting at 7 PM at 800 St. Paul St. or email info@redemmas.org. The next meeting is Aug. 26. There is no meeting on the first Sunday of the month. Call 410-230-0450. If you would be interested in volunteering or becoming a collective member of 2640, send an email to 2640@redemmas.org.
47] – There is a weekly Pentagon Peace Vigil from 7 to 8 AM on Mondays, since 1987, outside the Pentagon Metro stop. The next vigil is Mon., Aug. 27, and it is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. Call 202-882-9649.
48] – On Mon., Aug. 27 at 9 AM at D.C. Superior Court, 500 Indiana Ave. NW, attend a jury trial for 6 people (Barahona, Cruz, Hall, Le, Rea, Silvestre) facing charges of Parading and Unlawful Entry of the Supreme Court of the United States that occurred on January 20, 2012. They were participating in the Occupy the Courts action protesting the Citizens United decision. Go to https://www.facebook.com/events/221577671290591/.
49] – See the best editorial art selected from the 30-year history of INX, an artist-run illustration service--INX Battle Lines: Three Decades of Political Illustration—from Mon.,
Aug. 27 through Fri., Sept. 21 at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave. Call 410-223-2300 or visit http://www.mica.edu.
50] – 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., Aug. 27. Call 410-366-1637.
51] – 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.
52] – Protect Marriage Equality in Maryland by participating in the Columbia phone bank on Mondays from 6 to 8 PM at 7246 Cradlerock Way. RSVP to amy.adler@mdfme.org.
53] – Susan Naimark will discuss and sign her new book “The Education of a White Parent” on Mon., Aug. 27 from 6:30 to 8 PM at Busboys & Poets, 14th & V Sts. NW. Soon after enrolling her older son in a Boston public elementary school, the author began to see that opportunities offered to her kids were often unavailable to their classmates of color. She candidly describes her sometimes faltering efforts to create change in the school system, tracing what turns out to be the gradual transformation of a dismayed parent into a parent leader, school board member, and advocate for equal opportunities for all students.
Susan Naimark is an independent consultant who works with public school parents, grassroots groups, and nonprofit and public agencies to create responsive community institutions. She was a founder of the Boston Parent Organizing Network, a member of the school board for the City of Boston, and has served in leadership roles with several national nonprofit community development organizations. Susan’s home since 1977 has been the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, where she and her husband raised two now-adult sons. Go to http://www.ips-dc.org/events/author_event_the_education_of_a_white_parent.
54] – The Baltimore Free School Collective meets every other Monday at 6:30 PM at 512 W. Franklin St. The next meeting will be Aug. 27.
55] – The All Peoples Congress and Workers World Party invite you to hear Larry Hales, a contributing editor of Workers World news paper who will talk about the history and significance of Black August. Also enjoy the award-winning film: “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” which shows never-before seen footage and commentary by artists such as Harry Belafonte, Angela Davis, Erykah Badu and Questlove. The talk and film take place on Mon., Aug. 27t from 7 to 9:30 PM at the Solidarity Center, 2011 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218. Also get an update on recent news in the Mumia case. Email baltosolidaritycenter@gmail.com or call 443-221-3775.
56] – 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 Aug. 27. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions.
The proposed agenda will include reports on the vigils to support Bradley Manning & Julian Assange, arranging a meeting with Dutch Ruppersberger, and anti-drone actions, including a visit to the Hopkins campus on August 30.
57] – The pre-trial hearings for Bradley Manning start on Tues., Aug. 28 and continue through Fri., Aug. 31. For people interested in attending the hearings, they start at 9 AM in the Fort Meade Magistrate Court, 4432 Llewellyn Avenue, Fort Meade, MD. It is 2 miles from the Visitor Control Center. There is usually parking available near the courtroom. There are no electronic devices allowed through the security check to enter the courtroom-you must leave your mobile phone in your vehicle. Interested activists can email bailey@bradleymanning.org for carpooling.
To attend the hearing, go to the Fort Meade Visitor Control Center. You should arrive an hour before proceedings are set to begin; if you arrive late, you should still be able to get into the courtroom later in the morning. Bradley’s lawyer, David Coombs, has expressed how both he and his client very much appreciate the presence of supporters in the courtroom.
There will be a vigil outside of the main gate at Fort Meade, Maryland 175 & Reece Rd, Fort Meade, MD 21113, from 7 to 9 AM on Aug. 28. Go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/events/vigil-for-bradley-at-ft-meade-august-28.
58] – 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 Aug. 28 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
59] – On Tues., Aug. 28 at 6:30 PM at the Nyumburu Cultural Center, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, there will be a special book signing and discussion with local authors, Solomon Comissiong and Chen Chin, about their recent book, “A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues and The Adventures of Flat Head.” Call 301-314-8439
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, August 26, 2012
Pussy Riot Was carefully Calibrated for protest
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/arts/music/pussy-riot-was-carefully-calibrated-for-protest.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120826
August 22, 2012
Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest
By MELENA RYZIK
DEPENDING on your taste, punk died in 1979, or maybe 1994, or whenever studded leather cuffs became a must-have mall-girl accessory. Now, suddenly, punk has been resurrected, stitched together anew in the form of the well-accessorized Russian women who call themselves Pussy Riot.
The name helps. It’s its own form of culture jam, a savvy reference to feminist and musical history — riot grrrl and Susie Bright, as well as a wink to women’s appropriation of sexual agency and bodily power. Madonna has worn Pussy Riot’s name on her bare skin, a statement both of her support and of her own rebelliousness. (She still knows how to flaunt it.) The inevitable aesthetic judgment has found these girls, as they sometimes refer to themselves, on the right side of cool. For women identified with rock ’n’ roll — and for fans, especially in the West — Pussy Riot is expertly constructed, perfectly charged. Plus, it’s fun to say — unless you’re in American network news, which has been demurely referring to the group as an all-female punk band.
But for artists and activists around the world the recent travails of Pussy Riot, founded in 2011, have become a cause célèbre. When its members, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were sentenced on Aug. 17 to two years each in a prison camp for staging a flash protest against President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral in February, it served as another rallying point, at a time when many are concerned with government malfeasance, economic and social equality, and, not incidentally, women’s rights. The ladies of Pussy Riot are of-the-moment renegades.
That the group is so digestible to Western audiences has been much noted. Yes, the choppy performance that got its members arrested could have just as easily taken place at an undergrad art school, where the corresponding video might’ve been mocked for its low production value (or turned up in a flashback episode of HBO’s “Girls”). Instead, when it made the rounds online, it found eager and sympathetic spectators and an instant distribution channel aided by social media. Punk was never shy about being amateur; DIY spread wide is its hallmark. And in a country where public dissent is at a neophyte stage, Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer,” a 40-second lip sync, only served to highlight the discordantly severe punishment its members received. Supporters — like the hundreds who gathered at a reading in New York on the eve of the sentencing — viewed the group members as unfairly judged, less creatively shackled musicians than oppressed symbols of heroism.
It’s been a long time since music had the whiff of danger, and longer still since it carried the beat of political change, at least in democracies. Hardly anyone would’ve expected that to come out of Russia, where both the songcraft and the messaging seem outdated, vestiges of retro power-pop and a barely concealed propaganda machine. The women of Pussy Riot took those tools and used them for their own sophisticated means. Immediately after their conviction on charges of hooliganism based on religious hatred — a more punk indictment could scarcely be invented — Pussy Riot, though only nominally a band, released its first single. Titled, in translation, “Putin Lights Up the Fires,” it’s defiance set to bracing guitars and drum kicks. You can’t seal us in a box, the women shout in a singsong as they demand more jail time. The chorus announces that the country is taking to the streets, bidding farewell to the regime, driven by a “feminist wedge.” A few acolytes, complete with balaclavas, performed it in the courthouse during the sentencing. It’s pure agitprop, and it’s incredibly catchy.
Paul McCartney, Bjork, Peter Gabriel and many other performers have expressed solidarity, as has Amnesty International; Kathleen Hanna, a founder of riot grrrl, saw in Pussy Riot the movement’s future. Although called a punk band on TV, it’s not quite right to consider Pussy Riot as musicians yet. Instead, these women belong squarely with art provocateurs and thinkers like Judith Butler (whose pioneering feminist influence they acknowledged) and Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous rabble-rousers who took on the sexist art establishment only to be welcomed into it (now part of the permanent collection in the Museum of the Modern Art). Pussy Riot’s unapologetic court statements revealed an intellectual and philosophical rigor, and its earlier efforts with the art group Voina offered even more brazen forms of dissent.
“Pussy Riot are our kind of girls: feminist activists in masks making trouble,” Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, pseudonymous Guerrilla Girls, wrote in an e-mail. “But,” they added, “we live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.”
The Russian response to Ms. Alyokhina, 24; Ms. Samutsevich, 30; and Ms. Tolokonnikova, 23, has been mixed at best. Russians are generally deeply distrustful of feminism, even though Russian women are no shrinking violets.
Yet the stoicism of Ms. Samutsevich, Ms. Alyokhina and Ms. Tolokonnikova — the latter two, we are frequently reminded, the mothers of young children — has made a deep impact in both Russia and the West. Their symbolism as radicals — Ms. Tolokonnikova with her fist raised as she was led out of the courtroom — has been so successful in the West that there is now debate not about whether to support them but on what grounds: as social agitators, or broad critics of the Kremlin. For its part the group — along with an unofficial spokesman in Pyotr Verzilov, Ms. Tolokonnikova’s husband — has made its ambitions plain: revolution.
“One really inspiring thing about Pussy Riot is that they always make it clear that their actions are political and feminist,” the Guerrilla Girls wrote. “The world needs more feminist masked avengers. We urge everyone to make trouble, each in her own way.”
That message was not lost on Aug. 17, when thousands around the world protested the two-year sentences. A lawyer for the women, Nikolai Polozov, said they would appeal, though he noted they would not ask Mr. Putin for a pardon. “Literally this is what they said: ‘Let them go to hell with their pardon,’ ” he told Agence France-Presse of his clients.
Ms. Tolokonnikova and Mr. Verzilov’s 4-year-old daughter has been making plans to bust her mother out of jail. “She draws diagrams showing how we can go about doing this with bulldozers and buses, first by tearing down the prison walls and then by breaking open the cage,” he told the German publication Der Spiegel.
In New York, where, as in many other cities, people were arrested as they expressed their solidarity with Pussy Riot. Marian, a 12-year-old soon to enter eighth grade, came to the demonstration in Times Square from her home in Queens. She held a neon drawing of a balaclava, having been warned that wearing one might get her in trouble.
“It’s cruel — they’re in jail for two years, and they just spoke their minds; I’m here to support them,” said Marian, whose parents did not want her last name used. She wore a flowered dress and silver Doc Martens, explaining eagerly that she considered herself a riot grrrl. “It was a thing in the ’90s,” she offered, adding that she began to think of herself as a feminist at the age of 10, learning about it from her mother, Christine. “Mostly by example,” Christine said. Marian, the daughter of a Russian father, read about Pussy Riot online, absorbing its videos and ethos.
“The fact that they’re not apologizing for what they did is really inspiring to me,” she said. She looked around the sparsely attended protest. “I feel like if people did this more,” she said, “women would be more respected.”
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
August 22, 2012
Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest
By MELENA RYZIK
DEPENDING on your taste, punk died in 1979, or maybe 1994, or whenever studded leather cuffs became a must-have mall-girl accessory. Now, suddenly, punk has been resurrected, stitched together anew in the form of the well-accessorized Russian women who call themselves Pussy Riot.
The name helps. It’s its own form of culture jam, a savvy reference to feminist and musical history — riot grrrl and Susie Bright, as well as a wink to women’s appropriation of sexual agency and bodily power. Madonna has worn Pussy Riot’s name on her bare skin, a statement both of her support and of her own rebelliousness. (She still knows how to flaunt it.) The inevitable aesthetic judgment has found these girls, as they sometimes refer to themselves, on the right side of cool. For women identified with rock ’n’ roll — and for fans, especially in the West — Pussy Riot is expertly constructed, perfectly charged. Plus, it’s fun to say — unless you’re in American network news, which has been demurely referring to the group as an all-female punk band.
But for artists and activists around the world the recent travails of Pussy Riot, founded in 2011, have become a cause célèbre. When its members, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were sentenced on Aug. 17 to two years each in a prison camp for staging a flash protest against President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral in February, it served as another rallying point, at a time when many are concerned with government malfeasance, economic and social equality, and, not incidentally, women’s rights. The ladies of Pussy Riot are of-the-moment renegades.
That the group is so digestible to Western audiences has been much noted. Yes, the choppy performance that got its members arrested could have just as easily taken place at an undergrad art school, where the corresponding video might’ve been mocked for its low production value (or turned up in a flashback episode of HBO’s “Girls”). Instead, when it made the rounds online, it found eager and sympathetic spectators and an instant distribution channel aided by social media. Punk was never shy about being amateur; DIY spread wide is its hallmark. And in a country where public dissent is at a neophyte stage, Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer,” a 40-second lip sync, only served to highlight the discordantly severe punishment its members received. Supporters — like the hundreds who gathered at a reading in New York on the eve of the sentencing — viewed the group members as unfairly judged, less creatively shackled musicians than oppressed symbols of heroism.
It’s been a long time since music had the whiff of danger, and longer still since it carried the beat of political change, at least in democracies. Hardly anyone would’ve expected that to come out of Russia, where both the songcraft and the messaging seem outdated, vestiges of retro power-pop and a barely concealed propaganda machine. The women of Pussy Riot took those tools and used them for their own sophisticated means. Immediately after their conviction on charges of hooliganism based on religious hatred — a more punk indictment could scarcely be invented — Pussy Riot, though only nominally a band, released its first single. Titled, in translation, “Putin Lights Up the Fires,” it’s defiance set to bracing guitars and drum kicks. You can’t seal us in a box, the women shout in a singsong as they demand more jail time. The chorus announces that the country is taking to the streets, bidding farewell to the regime, driven by a “feminist wedge.” A few acolytes, complete with balaclavas, performed it in the courthouse during the sentencing. It’s pure agitprop, and it’s incredibly catchy.
Paul McCartney, Bjork, Peter Gabriel and many other performers have expressed solidarity, as has Amnesty International; Kathleen Hanna, a founder of riot grrrl, saw in Pussy Riot the movement’s future. Although called a punk band on TV, it’s not quite right to consider Pussy Riot as musicians yet. Instead, these women belong squarely with art provocateurs and thinkers like Judith Butler (whose pioneering feminist influence they acknowledged) and Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous rabble-rousers who took on the sexist art establishment only to be welcomed into it (now part of the permanent collection in the Museum of the Modern Art). Pussy Riot’s unapologetic court statements revealed an intellectual and philosophical rigor, and its earlier efforts with the art group Voina offered even more brazen forms of dissent.
“Pussy Riot are our kind of girls: feminist activists in masks making trouble,” Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, pseudonymous Guerrilla Girls, wrote in an e-mail. “But,” they added, “we live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.”
The Russian response to Ms. Alyokhina, 24; Ms. Samutsevich, 30; and Ms. Tolokonnikova, 23, has been mixed at best. Russians are generally deeply distrustful of feminism, even though Russian women are no shrinking violets.
Yet the stoicism of Ms. Samutsevich, Ms. Alyokhina and Ms. Tolokonnikova — the latter two, we are frequently reminded, the mothers of young children — has made a deep impact in both Russia and the West. Their symbolism as radicals — Ms. Tolokonnikova with her fist raised as she was led out of the courtroom — has been so successful in the West that there is now debate not about whether to support them but on what grounds: as social agitators, or broad critics of the Kremlin. For its part the group — along with an unofficial spokesman in Pyotr Verzilov, Ms. Tolokonnikova’s husband — has made its ambitions plain: revolution.
“One really inspiring thing about Pussy Riot is that they always make it clear that their actions are political and feminist,” the Guerrilla Girls wrote. “The world needs more feminist masked avengers. We urge everyone to make trouble, each in her own way.”
That message was not lost on Aug. 17, when thousands around the world protested the two-year sentences. A lawyer for the women, Nikolai Polozov, said they would appeal, though he noted they would not ask Mr. Putin for a pardon. “Literally this is what they said: ‘Let them go to hell with their pardon,’ ” he told Agence France-Presse of his clients.
Ms. Tolokonnikova and Mr. Verzilov’s 4-year-old daughter has been making plans to bust her mother out of jail. “She draws diagrams showing how we can go about doing this with bulldozers and buses, first by tearing down the prison walls and then by breaking open the cage,” he told the German publication Der Spiegel.
In New York, where, as in many other cities, people were arrested as they expressed their solidarity with Pussy Riot. Marian, a 12-year-old soon to enter eighth grade, came to the demonstration in Times Square from her home in Queens. She held a neon drawing of a balaclava, having been warned that wearing one might get her in trouble.
“It’s cruel — they’re in jail for two years, and they just spoke their minds; I’m here to support them,” said Marian, whose parents did not want her last name used. She wore a flowered dress and silver Doc Martens, explaining eagerly that she considered herself a riot grrrl. “It was a thing in the ’90s,” she offered, adding that she began to think of herself as a feminist at the age of 10, learning about it from her mother, Christine. “Mostly by example,” Christine said. Marian, the daughter of a Russian father, read about Pussy Riot online, absorbing its videos and ethos.
“The fact that they’re not apologizing for what they did is really inspiring to me,” she said. She looked around the sparsely attended protest. “I feel like if people did this more,” she said, “women would be more respected.”
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
Don't Let'em Persecute Wikileaks, It'll Make Journalists Criminals Around the Globe
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
OpEdNews.com [1] / By Michael Moore [2], Oliver Stone [3]
Don't Let'em Persecute Wikileaks, It'll Make Journalists Criminals Around the Globe
August 21, 2012
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. [4]
We have spent our careers as filmmakers making the case that the news media in the United States often fail to inform Americans about the uglier actions of our own government. We therefore have been deeply grateful for the accomplishments of WikiLeaks, and applaud Ecuador's decision to grant diplomatic asylum to its founder, Julian Assange, who is now living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Ecuador has acted in accordance with important principles of international human rights. Indeed, nothing could demonstrate the appropriateness of Ecuador's action more than the British government's threat to violate a sacrosanct principle of diplomatic relations and invade the embassy to arrest Mr. Assange.
Since WikiLeaks' founding, it has revealed the "Collateral Murder" footage that shows the seemingly indiscriminate killing of Baghdad civilians by a United States Apache attack helicopter; further fine-grained detail about the true face of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; United States collusion with Yemen's dictatorship to conceal our responsibility for bombing strikes there; the Obama administration's pressure on other nations not to prosecute Bush-era officials for torture; and much more.
Predictably, the response from those who would prefer that Americans remain in the dark has been ferocious. Top elected leaders from both parties have called Mr. Assange a "high-tech terrorist." And Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has demanded that he be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Most Americans, Britons and Swedes are unaware that Sweden has not formally charged Mr. Assange with any crime. Rather, it has issued a warrant for his arrest to question him about allegations of sexual assault in 2010.
All such allegations must be thoroughly investigated before Mr. Assange moves to a country that might put him beyond the reach of the Swedish justice system. But it is the British and Swedish governments that stand in the way of an investigation, not Mr. Assange.
Swedish authorities have traveled to other countries to conduct interrogations when needed, and the WikiLeaks founder has made clear his willingness to be questioned in London. Moreover, the Ecuadorean government made a direct offer to Sweden to allow Mr. Assange to be interviewed within Ecuador's embassy. In both instances, Sweden refused.
Mr. Assange has also committed to traveling to Sweden immediately if the Swedish government pledges that it will not extradite him to the United States. Swedish officials have shown no interest in exploring this proposal, and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt recently told a legal adviser to Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks unequivocally that Sweden would not make such a pledge. The British government would also have the right under the relevant treaty to prevent Mr. Assange's extradition to the United States from Sweden, and has also refused to pledge that it would use this power. Ecuador's attempts to facilitate that arrangement with both governments were rejected.
Taken together, the British and Swedish governments' actions suggest to us that their real agenda is to get Mr. Assange to Sweden. Because of treaty and other considerations, he probably could be more easily extradited from there to the United States to face charges. Mr. Assange has every reason to fear such an outcome.The Justice Department recently confirmed that it was continuing to investigate WikiLeaks, and just-disclosed Australian government documents from this past February state that "the U.S. investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr. Assange has been ongoing for more than a year." WikiLeaks itself has published e-mails from Stratfor, a private intelligence corporation, which state that a grand jury has already returned a sealed indictment of Mr. Assange. And history indicates Sweden would buckle to any pressure from the United States to hand over Mr. Assange. In 2001 the Swedish government delivered two Egyptians seeking asylum to the C.I.A., which rendered them to the Mubarak regime, which tortured them.
If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world. Mr. Assange is not an American citizen, and none of his actions have taken place on American soil. If the United States can prosecute a journalist in these circumstances, the governments of Russia or China could, by the same logic, demand that foreign reporters anywhere on earth be extradited for violating their laws. The setting of such a precedent should deeply concern everyone, admirers of WikiLeaks or not.
We urge the people of Britain and Sweden to demand that their governments answer some basic questions: Why do the Swedish authorities refuse to question Mr. Assange in London? And why can neither government promise that Mr. Assange will not be extradited to the United States? The citizens of Britain and Sweden have a rare opportunity to make a stand for free speech on behalf of the entire globe.
Michael Moore and Oliver Stone are Academy Award-winning filmmakers.
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/dont-letem-persecute-wikileaks-itll-make-journalists-criminals-around-globe
Links:
[1] http://www.opednews.com/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/michael-moore
[3] http://www.alternet.org/authors/oliver-stone
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/opinion/wikileaks-and-the-global-future-of-free-speech.html?_r=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
OpEdNews.com [1] / By Michael Moore [2], Oliver Stone [3]
Don't Let'em Persecute Wikileaks, It'll Make Journalists Criminals Around the Globe
August 21, 2012
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. [4]
We have spent our careers as filmmakers making the case that the news media in the United States often fail to inform Americans about the uglier actions of our own government. We therefore have been deeply grateful for the accomplishments of WikiLeaks, and applaud Ecuador's decision to grant diplomatic asylum to its founder, Julian Assange, who is now living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Ecuador has acted in accordance with important principles of international human rights. Indeed, nothing could demonstrate the appropriateness of Ecuador's action more than the British government's threat to violate a sacrosanct principle of diplomatic relations and invade the embassy to arrest Mr. Assange.
Since WikiLeaks' founding, it has revealed the "Collateral Murder" footage that shows the seemingly indiscriminate killing of Baghdad civilians by a United States Apache attack helicopter; further fine-grained detail about the true face of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; United States collusion with Yemen's dictatorship to conceal our responsibility for bombing strikes there; the Obama administration's pressure on other nations not to prosecute Bush-era officials for torture; and much more.
Predictably, the response from those who would prefer that Americans remain in the dark has been ferocious. Top elected leaders from both parties have called Mr. Assange a "high-tech terrorist." And Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has demanded that he be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Most Americans, Britons and Swedes are unaware that Sweden has not formally charged Mr. Assange with any crime. Rather, it has issued a warrant for his arrest to question him about allegations of sexual assault in 2010.
All such allegations must be thoroughly investigated before Mr. Assange moves to a country that might put him beyond the reach of the Swedish justice system. But it is the British and Swedish governments that stand in the way of an investigation, not Mr. Assange.
Swedish authorities have traveled to other countries to conduct interrogations when needed, and the WikiLeaks founder has made clear his willingness to be questioned in London. Moreover, the Ecuadorean government made a direct offer to Sweden to allow Mr. Assange to be interviewed within Ecuador's embassy. In both instances, Sweden refused.
Mr. Assange has also committed to traveling to Sweden immediately if the Swedish government pledges that it will not extradite him to the United States. Swedish officials have shown no interest in exploring this proposal, and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt recently told a legal adviser to Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks unequivocally that Sweden would not make such a pledge. The British government would also have the right under the relevant treaty to prevent Mr. Assange's extradition to the United States from Sweden, and has also refused to pledge that it would use this power. Ecuador's attempts to facilitate that arrangement with both governments were rejected.
Taken together, the British and Swedish governments' actions suggest to us that their real agenda is to get Mr. Assange to Sweden. Because of treaty and other considerations, he probably could be more easily extradited from there to the United States to face charges. Mr. Assange has every reason to fear such an outcome.The Justice Department recently confirmed that it was continuing to investigate WikiLeaks, and just-disclosed Australian government documents from this past February state that "the U.S. investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr. Assange has been ongoing for more than a year." WikiLeaks itself has published e-mails from Stratfor, a private intelligence corporation, which state that a grand jury has already returned a sealed indictment of Mr. Assange. And history indicates Sweden would buckle to any pressure from the United States to hand over Mr. Assange. In 2001 the Swedish government delivered two Egyptians seeking asylum to the C.I.A., which rendered them to the Mubarak regime, which tortured them.
If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world. Mr. Assange is not an American citizen, and none of his actions have taken place on American soil. If the United States can prosecute a journalist in these circumstances, the governments of Russia or China could, by the same logic, demand that foreign reporters anywhere on earth be extradited for violating their laws. The setting of such a precedent should deeply concern everyone, admirers of WikiLeaks or not.
We urge the people of Britain and Sweden to demand that their governments answer some basic questions: Why do the Swedish authorities refuse to question Mr. Assange in London? And why can neither government promise that Mr. Assange will not be extradited to the United States? The citizens of Britain and Sweden have a rare opportunity to make a stand for free speech on behalf of the entire globe.
Michael Moore and Oliver Stone are Academy Award-winning filmmakers.
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/dont-letem-persecute-wikileaks-itll-make-journalists-criminals-around-globe
Links:
[1] http://www.opednews.com/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/michael-moore
[3] http://www.alternet.org/authors/oliver-stone
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/opinion/wikileaks-and-the-global-future-of-free-speech.html?_r=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
Big Chem, Big Harm?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/kristof-big-chem-big-harm.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120826
August 25, 2012
Big Chem, Big Harm?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NEW research is demonstrating that some common chemicals all around us may be even more harmful than previously thought. It seems that they may damage us in ways that are transmitted generation after generation, imperiling not only us but also our descendants.
Yet following the script of Big Tobacco a generation ago, Big Chem has, so far, blocked any serious regulation of these endocrine disruptors, so called because they play havoc with hormones in the body’s endocrine system.
One of the most common and alarming is bisphenol-A, better known as BPA. The failure to regulate it means that it is unavoidable. BPA is found in everything from plastics to canned food to A.T.M. receipts. More than 90 percent of Americans have it in their urine.
Even before the latest research showing multigeneration effects, studies had linked BPA to breast cancer and diabetes, as well as to hyperactivity, aggression and depression in children.
Maybe it seems surprising to read a newspaper column about chemical safety because this isn’t an issue in the presidential campaign or even firmly on the national agenda. It’s not the kind of thing that we in the news media cover much.
Yet the evidence is growing that these are significant threats of a kind that Washington continually fails to protect Americans from. The challenge is that they involve complex science and considerable uncertainty, and the chemical companies — like the tobacco companies before them — create financial incentives to encourage politicians to sit on the fence. So nothing happens.
Yet although industry has, so far, been able to block broad national curbs on BPA, new findings on transgenerational effects may finally put a dent in Big Chem’s lobbying efforts.
One good sign: In late July, a Senate committee, for the first, time passed the Safe Chemicals Act, landmark legislation sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, that would begin to regulate the safety of chemicals.
Evidence of transgenerational effects of endocrine disruptors has been growing for a half-dozen years, but it mostly involved higher doses than humans would typically encounter.
Now Endocrinology, a peer-reviewed journal, has published a study measuring the impact of low doses of BPA. The study is devastating for the chemical industry.
Pregnant mice were exposed to BPA at dosages analogous to those humans typically receive. The offspring were less sociable than control mice (using metrics often used to assess an aspect of autism in humans), and various effects were also evident for the next three generations of mice.
The BPA seemed to interfere with the way the animals processed hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin, which affect trust and warm feelings. And while mice are not humans, research on mouse behavior is a standard way to evaluate new drugs or to measure the impact of chemicals.
“It’s scary,” said Jennifer T. Wolstenholme, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and the lead author of the report. She said that the researchers found behaviors in BPA-exposed mice and their descendants that may parallel autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit disorder in humans.
Emilie Rissman, a co-author who is professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at University of Virginia Medical School, noted that BPA doesn’t cause mutations in DNA. Rather, the impact is “epigenetic” — one of the hot concepts in biology these days — meaning that changes are transmitted not in DNA but by affecting the way genes are turned on and off.
In effect, this is a bit like evolution through transmission of acquired characteristics — the theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century scientist whom high school science classes make fun of as a foil to Charles Darwin. In epigenetics, Lamarck lives.
“These results at low doses add profoundly to concerns about endocrine disruptors,” said John Peterson Myers, chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences. “It’s going to be harder than just eliminating exposure to one generation.”
The National Institutes of Health is concerned enough that it expects to make transgenerational impacts of endocrine disruptors a priority for research funding, according to a spokeswoman, Robin Mackar.
Like a lot of Americans, I used to be skeptical of risks from chemicals like endocrine disruptors that are all around us. What could be safer than canned food? I figured that opposition came from tree-hugging Luddites prone to conspiracy theories.
Yet, a few years ago, I began to read the peer-reviewed journal articles, and it became obvious that the opposition to endocrine disruptors is led by toxicologists, endocrinologists, urologists and pediatricians. These are serious scientists, yet they don’t often have the ear of politicians or journalists.
I’m hoping these new studies can help vault the issue onto the national stage. Threats to us need to be addressed, even if they come not from Iranian nuclear weapons, but from things as banal as canned soup and A.T.M. receipts.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
© 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
August 25, 2012
Big Chem, Big Harm?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NEW research is demonstrating that some common chemicals all around us may be even more harmful than previously thought. It seems that they may damage us in ways that are transmitted generation after generation, imperiling not only us but also our descendants.
Yet following the script of Big Tobacco a generation ago, Big Chem has, so far, blocked any serious regulation of these endocrine disruptors, so called because they play havoc with hormones in the body’s endocrine system.
One of the most common and alarming is bisphenol-A, better known as BPA. The failure to regulate it means that it is unavoidable. BPA is found in everything from plastics to canned food to A.T.M. receipts. More than 90 percent of Americans have it in their urine.
Even before the latest research showing multigeneration effects, studies had linked BPA to breast cancer and diabetes, as well as to hyperactivity, aggression and depression in children.
Maybe it seems surprising to read a newspaper column about chemical safety because this isn’t an issue in the presidential campaign or even firmly on the national agenda. It’s not the kind of thing that we in the news media cover much.
Yet the evidence is growing that these are significant threats of a kind that Washington continually fails to protect Americans from. The challenge is that they involve complex science and considerable uncertainty, and the chemical companies — like the tobacco companies before them — create financial incentives to encourage politicians to sit on the fence. So nothing happens.
Yet although industry has, so far, been able to block broad national curbs on BPA, new findings on transgenerational effects may finally put a dent in Big Chem’s lobbying efforts.
One good sign: In late July, a Senate committee, for the first, time passed the Safe Chemicals Act, landmark legislation sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, that would begin to regulate the safety of chemicals.
Evidence of transgenerational effects of endocrine disruptors has been growing for a half-dozen years, but it mostly involved higher doses than humans would typically encounter.
Now Endocrinology, a peer-reviewed journal, has published a study measuring the impact of low doses of BPA. The study is devastating for the chemical industry.
Pregnant mice were exposed to BPA at dosages analogous to those humans typically receive. The offspring were less sociable than control mice (using metrics often used to assess an aspect of autism in humans), and various effects were also evident for the next three generations of mice.
The BPA seemed to interfere with the way the animals processed hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin, which affect trust and warm feelings. And while mice are not humans, research on mouse behavior is a standard way to evaluate new drugs or to measure the impact of chemicals.
“It’s scary,” said Jennifer T. Wolstenholme, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and the lead author of the report. She said that the researchers found behaviors in BPA-exposed mice and their descendants that may parallel autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit disorder in humans.
Emilie Rissman, a co-author who is professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at University of Virginia Medical School, noted that BPA doesn’t cause mutations in DNA. Rather, the impact is “epigenetic” — one of the hot concepts in biology these days — meaning that changes are transmitted not in DNA but by affecting the way genes are turned on and off.
In effect, this is a bit like evolution through transmission of acquired characteristics — the theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century scientist whom high school science classes make fun of as a foil to Charles Darwin. In epigenetics, Lamarck lives.
“These results at low doses add profoundly to concerns about endocrine disruptors,” said John Peterson Myers, chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences. “It’s going to be harder than just eliminating exposure to one generation.”
The National Institutes of Health is concerned enough that it expects to make transgenerational impacts of endocrine disruptors a priority for research funding, according to a spokeswoman, Robin Mackar.
Like a lot of Americans, I used to be skeptical of risks from chemicals like endocrine disruptors that are all around us. What could be safer than canned food? I figured that opposition came from tree-hugging Luddites prone to conspiracy theories.
Yet, a few years ago, I began to read the peer-reviewed journal articles, and it became obvious that the opposition to endocrine disruptors is led by toxicologists, endocrinologists, urologists and pediatricians. These are serious scientists, yet they don’t often have the ear of politicians or journalists.
I’m hoping these new studies can help vault the issue onto the national stage. Threats to us need to be addressed, even if they come not from Iranian nuclear weapons, but from things as banal as canned soup and A.T.M. receipts.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
© 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
Anti-Fracking Protesters Confront Pennsylvania Gov During Kayaking PR Trip on Endangered River
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
AlterNet [1] / By Nora Eisenberg [2]
Anti-Fracking Protesters Confront Pennsylvania Gov During Kayaking PR Trip on Endangered River
August 24, 2012
At just after 8 am on Thursday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett got into a blue kayak in Beach Lake, Pa to begin a 15 mile trip south on the scenic Delaware, the nation's most pristine and ancient river. Some 30 kayakers, friends and associates, including Richard Allan, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources, on the misty morning, part of a two-day promotion of the region's tourism resources. But from start to finish the trip was beset with challenges.
Josh Fox, Upper Delaware resident and director of the award-winning documentary Gasland, which brought the dangers of today's extreme natural gas drilling to national attention, stood at the Beach Lake public launch along with other neighbors as the governor's regatta launched, seeing him off with chants and signs.
Posted every few miles on the river's banks were groups of protestors, challenging the governor's pro-drilling policy with signs and chants--all coordinated with clockwork precision by area artist Brandi Merolla. A number of residents took to the water to communicate their concerns to Corbett up close, some wading into shallow stretches of the river, some paddling in their own kayaks and canoes alongside the governor.
Wes Gillingham, Catskill Mountainkeeper [3], joined the governor's regatta, at Ten Mile River launch, accompanied in his canoe by his children, Iris 12, and Roan 10. Their 10 foot banner, whose ends the children held in their hands and whose middle their rowing father held with his teeth, read, “They Said It Was Safe to Drill in the Gulf.” Gillingham explained that 17 million people depend on the pure water that runs from the upper Catskills through this river valley, to New York and Philadelphia. The governor's policies--including massive industry tax breaks, dismissal of local regulations, lack of scientific review and regulator oversight--have been outrageously pro-industry, reckless, and “unacceptable," Gillingham said.
Delaware Riverkeeper [4] President, Maya van Rossum, paddled with other Riverkeeper network members alongside the governor as well. Holding signs that said, "Don't Be Frackin' Crazy," they talked to him about the dangers of drilling. When the governor capsized at some rapids, they assured him there was nothing to worry about—since the river corridor had not yet been fracked. But if it began....To stop the Riverkeepers' lecture, the governor and his associates offered a deal: If they let him enjoy the next stretch of the river in peace, he would meet with them in mid-September and hear their side.
Governor Corbett landed at Lackawaxen, where he walked through a throng of protesters for a tour of the Zane Grey Museum. After his tour, the governor told the press that he had heard no updates from the Delaware River Basin Commission about its forthcoming gas industry-related regulations, without which drilling cannot proceed in the river basin. But he said that the DRBC needs to proceed--the industry is a boon for the economy, and the River Basin would be fracked with regard for the environment.
The governor, according to protester James Barth, a member of the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability [5], is not an impartial leader. Of the four governors who sit on the DRBC, Corbett is the staunchest supporter of the natural gas industry, which contributed almost $1 million to his last campaign. Corbett does not support taxing drillers; opposes local municipaliities' regulations and stipulations; and provides little oversight. Barth also said that several legal suits still challenge the DRBC's authority to permit fracking-related activity in the river basin. The controversial method of gas extraction blasts vast amounts of water, mixed with sand and dangerous chemicals, a mile into the earth, to loosen methane from veins in the shale rock, which until a decade ago was thought too dense to drill. The process has been associated with ground water contamination, animal and human disease, and shattered roads, economies, and real estate values, wherever it has been tried, Barth said.
Corbett kayaked the Sussquehanna River earlier this year to publicize its recreational splendor. But the Sussquehanna has already suffered fracking-related toxic spills to its tributaries, and degradation of wildlife and it is considered by many environmentalist to be impaired [6].
In the afternoon, Governor Corbett visited Promised Land State Park for more nature enjoyment. Like many other Pennsylvania state parks, Promised Land sits on the Marcellus Shale, and much of the Park's untouched woods, like almost half of the vast state forest lands, has been leased for gas drilling [7].
The recreation and beauty on which the Upper Delaware's tourism depends cannot survive the massive industrialization of fracking, the protestors said. But they will have to wait till September to share findings with the governor. "We're going to hold him to his promise to meet and hear our side," Van Rossum said.
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/anti-fracking-protesters-confront-pennsylvania-gov-during-kayaking-pr-trip-endangered-river
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/nora-eisenberg
[3] http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/about/
[4] http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/about/contactus.aspx
[5] http://www.damascuscitizens.org/
[6] http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/04/17/krancer-rejects-request-to-list-susquehanna-river-as-impaired/
[7] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101022-energy-marcellus-shale-gas-parks-forests/
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
AlterNet [1] / By Nora Eisenberg [2]
Anti-Fracking Protesters Confront Pennsylvania Gov During Kayaking PR Trip on Endangered River
August 24, 2012
At just after 8 am on Thursday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett got into a blue kayak in Beach Lake, Pa to begin a 15 mile trip south on the scenic Delaware, the nation's most pristine and ancient river. Some 30 kayakers, friends and associates, including Richard Allan, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources, on the misty morning, part of a two-day promotion of the region's tourism resources. But from start to finish the trip was beset with challenges.
Josh Fox, Upper Delaware resident and director of the award-winning documentary Gasland, which brought the dangers of today's extreme natural gas drilling to national attention, stood at the Beach Lake public launch along with other neighbors as the governor's regatta launched, seeing him off with chants and signs.
Posted every few miles on the river's banks were groups of protestors, challenging the governor's pro-drilling policy with signs and chants--all coordinated with clockwork precision by area artist Brandi Merolla. A number of residents took to the water to communicate their concerns to Corbett up close, some wading into shallow stretches of the river, some paddling in their own kayaks and canoes alongside the governor.
Wes Gillingham, Catskill Mountainkeeper [3], joined the governor's regatta, at Ten Mile River launch, accompanied in his canoe by his children, Iris 12, and Roan 10. Their 10 foot banner, whose ends the children held in their hands and whose middle their rowing father held with his teeth, read, “They Said It Was Safe to Drill in the Gulf.” Gillingham explained that 17 million people depend on the pure water that runs from the upper Catskills through this river valley, to New York and Philadelphia. The governor's policies--including massive industry tax breaks, dismissal of local regulations, lack of scientific review and regulator oversight--have been outrageously pro-industry, reckless, and “unacceptable," Gillingham said.
Delaware Riverkeeper [4] President, Maya van Rossum, paddled with other Riverkeeper network members alongside the governor as well. Holding signs that said, "Don't Be Frackin' Crazy," they talked to him about the dangers of drilling. When the governor capsized at some rapids, they assured him there was nothing to worry about—since the river corridor had not yet been fracked. But if it began....To stop the Riverkeepers' lecture, the governor and his associates offered a deal: If they let him enjoy the next stretch of the river in peace, he would meet with them in mid-September and hear their side.
Governor Corbett landed at Lackawaxen, where he walked through a throng of protesters for a tour of the Zane Grey Museum. After his tour, the governor told the press that he had heard no updates from the Delaware River Basin Commission about its forthcoming gas industry-related regulations, without which drilling cannot proceed in the river basin. But he said that the DRBC needs to proceed--the industry is a boon for the economy, and the River Basin would be fracked with regard for the environment.
The governor, according to protester James Barth, a member of the Damascus Citizens for Sustainability [5], is not an impartial leader. Of the four governors who sit on the DRBC, Corbett is the staunchest supporter of the natural gas industry, which contributed almost $1 million to his last campaign. Corbett does not support taxing drillers; opposes local municipaliities' regulations and stipulations; and provides little oversight. Barth also said that several legal suits still challenge the DRBC's authority to permit fracking-related activity in the river basin. The controversial method of gas extraction blasts vast amounts of water, mixed with sand and dangerous chemicals, a mile into the earth, to loosen methane from veins in the shale rock, which until a decade ago was thought too dense to drill. The process has been associated with ground water contamination, animal and human disease, and shattered roads, economies, and real estate values, wherever it has been tried, Barth said.
Corbett kayaked the Sussquehanna River earlier this year to publicize its recreational splendor. But the Sussquehanna has already suffered fracking-related toxic spills to its tributaries, and degradation of wildlife and it is considered by many environmentalist to be impaired [6].
In the afternoon, Governor Corbett visited Promised Land State Park for more nature enjoyment. Like many other Pennsylvania state parks, Promised Land sits on the Marcellus Shale, and much of the Park's untouched woods, like almost half of the vast state forest lands, has been leased for gas drilling [7].
The recreation and beauty on which the Upper Delaware's tourism depends cannot survive the massive industrialization of fracking, the protestors said. But they will have to wait till September to share findings with the governor. "We're going to hold him to his promise to meet and hear our side," Van Rossum said.
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/anti-fracking-protesters-confront-pennsylvania-gov-during-kayaking-pr-trip-endangered-river
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/nora-eisenberg
[3] http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/about/
[4] http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/about/contactus.aspx
[5] http://www.damascuscitizens.org/
[6] http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/04/17/krancer-rejects-request-to-list-susquehanna-river-as-impaired/
[7] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101022-energy-marcellus-shale-gas-parks-forests/
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
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Arms and the Duck
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/collins-arms-and-the-duck.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120825
August 24, 2012
Arms and the Duck
By GAIL COLLINS
We had a shooting near the Empire State Building. An aggrieved ex-employee of an apparel company killed his former co-worker, and was himself killed by police. Except for the famous-landmark location, it was not actually a very big story. Remember the mass shooting at the lumberyard in North Carolina earlier this year, or the one last October at the California cement plant? No? Neither does anybody else except the grieving families.
Nine passers-by were also wounded, and it seems almost certain that some or all were accidentally hit by the police. This isn’t surprising; it’s only in movies that people are good shots during a violent encounter. In 2008, Al Baker reported in The Times that the accuracy rate for New York City officers firing in the line of duty was 34 percent.
And these are people trained for this kind of crisis. The moral is that if a lunatic starts shooting, you will not be made safer if your fellow average citizens are carrying concealed weapons.
This is not the accepted wisdom in many parts of the country. (Certainly not in Congress, where safety was cited as a rationale for letting vacationers take loaded pistols into federal parks.) Shortly after the mass murder at the movie theater in Colorado, I was waiting for a plane at a tiny airport in North Dakota, listening to a group of oil rig workers discuss how many lives would have been saved if only the other theater patrons had been armed. “They could have nipped it in the bud,” one man told another confidently.
People, try to imagine what would have happened if, instead of diving for the floor, a bunch of those moviegoers had stood up and started shooting into the dark. Or ask a cop.
We are never going to have a sane national policy on guns until the gun advocates give up on the fantasy that the best protection against armed psychopaths bent on random violence is regular people with loaded pistols on their belts.
Is there anything the other side can concede in return? Well, gun control advocates have to be careful not to say anything that demeans hunting. Virtually every politician in America has already gotten that message. (See: Senator Chuck Schumer holding dead pheasants.) But it’s true that some city-dwellers can be snotty on this point.
“You don’t mess with hunting and fishing because that’s part of who we are,” says Kathy Cramer Walsh, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who specializes in civic engagement. “A lot of times, talk about regulating guns and ammunition is seen as the outside trying to change who we are.”
I’ve been thinking about guns and Wisconsin lately, especially since Paul Ryan, a big fan of the arm-the-world theory of public safety, was picked to be a vice-presidential nominee.
Wisconsin has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. (The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives it 3 points out of a possible 100.) It was also, of course, the scene of a terrible mass shooting this month by Wade Michael Page at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee.
Page had a high-capacity magazine, which allowed him to shoot at least 17 bullets before reloading. Those magazines tend to be a common theme in all our worst mass shooting incidents. The gunman at the shopping center in Tucson where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot had one that held more than 30 bullets. The Colorado movie theater shooter had a 100-bullet magazine.
The magazines used to be illegal before Congress let the assault weapons ban elapse. Getting rid of them again would not stop mass shootings, but it would limit the number of victims. And you do not need a high-capacity magazine for hunting. In fact, many states outlaw them for hunting because they don’t want one person mowing down an entire flock or herd.
Under federal law, you only can use guns with a maximum three-bullet capacity if you’re hunting migratory birds. Even the most completely mindless faction in the National Rifle Association appears willing to give that a pass.
“Hunting’s a different thing,” said Jeff Nass, the president of Wisconsin Force, an N.R.A. affiliate. “The ducks and geese can’t shoot back.” Mass shootings, Nass contended, do not occur because crazy people have access to weapons that allow them to hit a large number of people in seconds. “Mass shootings come into play because nobody’s there defending themselves,” he said. “The solution is self-defense.”
So the guy driving toward the Sikh temple with the high-capacity magazine on his gun was legal until he started shooting. The guy sitting in the duck blind, no. Mull that one over the weekend.
Joe Nocera is off today.
© 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
August 24, 2012
Arms and the Duck
By GAIL COLLINS
We had a shooting near the Empire State Building. An aggrieved ex-employee of an apparel company killed his former co-worker, and was himself killed by police. Except for the famous-landmark location, it was not actually a very big story. Remember the mass shooting at the lumberyard in North Carolina earlier this year, or the one last October at the California cement plant? No? Neither does anybody else except the grieving families.
Nine passers-by were also wounded, and it seems almost certain that some or all were accidentally hit by the police. This isn’t surprising; it’s only in movies that people are good shots during a violent encounter. In 2008, Al Baker reported in The Times that the accuracy rate for New York City officers firing in the line of duty was 34 percent.
And these are people trained for this kind of crisis. The moral is that if a lunatic starts shooting, you will not be made safer if your fellow average citizens are carrying concealed weapons.
This is not the accepted wisdom in many parts of the country. (Certainly not in Congress, where safety was cited as a rationale for letting vacationers take loaded pistols into federal parks.) Shortly after the mass murder at the movie theater in Colorado, I was waiting for a plane at a tiny airport in North Dakota, listening to a group of oil rig workers discuss how many lives would have been saved if only the other theater patrons had been armed. “They could have nipped it in the bud,” one man told another confidently.
People, try to imagine what would have happened if, instead of diving for the floor, a bunch of those moviegoers had stood up and started shooting into the dark. Or ask a cop.
We are never going to have a sane national policy on guns until the gun advocates give up on the fantasy that the best protection against armed psychopaths bent on random violence is regular people with loaded pistols on their belts.
Is there anything the other side can concede in return? Well, gun control advocates have to be careful not to say anything that demeans hunting. Virtually every politician in America has already gotten that message. (See: Senator Chuck Schumer holding dead pheasants.) But it’s true that some city-dwellers can be snotty on this point.
“You don’t mess with hunting and fishing because that’s part of who we are,” says Kathy Cramer Walsh, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who specializes in civic engagement. “A lot of times, talk about regulating guns and ammunition is seen as the outside trying to change who we are.”
I’ve been thinking about guns and Wisconsin lately, especially since Paul Ryan, a big fan of the arm-the-world theory of public safety, was picked to be a vice-presidential nominee.
Wisconsin has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. (The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives it 3 points out of a possible 100.) It was also, of course, the scene of a terrible mass shooting this month by Wade Michael Page at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee.
Page had a high-capacity magazine, which allowed him to shoot at least 17 bullets before reloading. Those magazines tend to be a common theme in all our worst mass shooting incidents. The gunman at the shopping center in Tucson where Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot had one that held more than 30 bullets. The Colorado movie theater shooter had a 100-bullet magazine.
The magazines used to be illegal before Congress let the assault weapons ban elapse. Getting rid of them again would not stop mass shootings, but it would limit the number of victims. And you do not need a high-capacity magazine for hunting. In fact, many states outlaw them for hunting because they don’t want one person mowing down an entire flock or herd.
Under federal law, you only can use guns with a maximum three-bullet capacity if you’re hunting migratory birds. Even the most completely mindless faction in the National Rifle Association appears willing to give that a pass.
“Hunting’s a different thing,” said Jeff Nass, the president of Wisconsin Force, an N.R.A. affiliate. “The ducks and geese can’t shoot back.” Mass shootings, Nass contended, do not occur because crazy people have access to weapons that allow them to hit a large number of people in seconds. “Mass shootings come into play because nobody’s there defending themselves,” he said. “The solution is self-defense.”
So the guy driving toward the Sikh temple with the high-capacity magazine on his gun was legal until he started shooting. The guy sitting in the duck blind, no. Mull that one over the weekend.
Joe Nocera is off today.
© 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
Insight: At Guantanamo tribunals, don't mention the "T" word
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/20/us-guantanamo-tribunals-idUSBRE87J03U20120820
Insight: At Guantanamo tribunals, don't mention the "T" word
Mon, Aug 20 2012
By Jane Sutton and Josh Meyer
MIAMI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture.
Defense attorneys say that and other Kafkaesque legal restrictions on what they can discuss with their clients and raise in the courtroom undermine their ability to mount a proper defense on charges that could lead to the death penalty.
Those restrictions will be the focus of a pretrial hearing that convenes this week.
Prosecutors say every utterance of the alleged al Qaeda murderers, and what their lawyers in turn pass on to the court, must be strictly monitored precisely because of the defendants' intimate personal knowledge of highly classified CIA interrogation methods they endured in the agency's clandestine overseas prisons.
Defense attorneys called that view extreme.
"Everything is presumptively top secret. So if my client had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch, I couldn't tell you that," Cheryl Bormann, who represents defendant Walid bin Attash, said after the May arraignment of the men charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
At one point in the arraignment, another of bin Attash's attorneys, Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, was explaining why his client refused to cooperate. Just when things got interesting, a security officer cut the audio feed to the media and others observing the proceedings from behind a soundproof glass wall with a 40-second audio delay.
"The reason for that is the torture that my client was subjected to by the men and women wearing the big-boy pants down at the CIA, it makes it impossible ...," Schwartz said during the blocked portion of the arraignment, according to a partial transcript later declassified.
Prosecutors have said in court filings that any revelations about the defendants' interrogations could cause "exceptionally grave damage."
Civil libertarians argue that if those interrogation methods really are top secret, then the CIA had no business revealing them to al Qaeda suspects.
Defense attorneys will challenge the secrecy rules at the pretrial hearing that begins on Wednesday at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.
Prosecutors have about 75,000 pages of evidence to turn over to defense attorneys in the 9/11 case, but they won't do it until the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, issues protective orders aimed at safeguarding the material.
BORN CLASSIFIED
Hundreds of men suspected of supporting al Qaeda or the Taliban were rounded up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere and shipped to Guantanamo in response to the September 11 attacks. (Of the 779 men who have been held at Guantanamo since the prison operation began in 2002, 168 remain.)
The CIA took custody of the "high-value" captives believed to have top-level information that could help the U.S. and its allies prevent further attacks.
It held them incommunicado for three or four years and transferred them among secret overseas prisons, questioning them with interrogation methods that defense attorneys say amounted to torture and which the Obama administration has since banned.
Some details of the program, including waterboarding, mock executions and sleep deprivation, have already been disclosed by Bush and the CIA itself. Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official, recently defended them in news interviews to promote his book, "Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Action After 9/11 Saved American Lives."
Yet in both the 9/11 case and that of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of sending suicide bombers to ram a boat full of explosives into the side of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000, the government presumes that every word spoken by the defendants, in the past and in the future, is classified at the highest level -- "Top Secret," with a "Sensitive Compartmented Information," which is routinely shortened to TS/SCI.
The defendants' words are also "born classified," a status their lawyers said has previously been used only to safeguard details about nuclear weapons. So are all documents and legal motions related to their cases, which cannot be made public unless they're cleared by a Department of Defense Security Classification Review team.
How that team works is a secret.
"I've never seen them. I've never communicated (with them). No one has ever been able to tell me that," said James Connell, a lawyer for 9/11 defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.
The Pentagon would say only that the review team includes both civilians and uniformed military personnel and that it can take up to 15 business days to make its decisions.
Proscribed topics include details of the defendants' capture, where they were held and under what conditions, the names and descriptions of anyone who transferred, detained or interrogated them and the methods used to get information from them, according to the court documents.
Defense lawyers say the classification system used at Guantanamo violates President Barack Obama's 2009 order that prohibits using secrecy labels to conceal lawbreaking or prevent political embarrassment. They say it also "eviscerates" the legal defense protections Congress set down in the law that authorizes the Guantanamo tribunals.
The government's secrecy rules mean that every lawyer, paralegal and expert on the prosecution and defense teams must undergo an extensive background check and obtain a TS/SCI clearance. Once they get clearance, they are briefed on what has to stay secret. The document that forms the basis of the presumptive classification is itself secret.
"It is ridiculous," said Army Captain Jason Wright, one of the lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "The briefing is classified, so I can't discuss what I can and cannot discuss."
Mohammed's lawyers have asked the UN special rapporteur for torture, Juan E. Mendez, to investigate claims that their client was tortured. But they could only share with Mendez the information that has been publicly declassified.
"We are prohibited from sharing any details of his mistreatment, even to the special rapporteur," Wright said.
FORCED TO LEARN
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a challenge arguing that the government has no legal authority to classify information that it not only disclosed to the defendants but forced them to learn.
"The question here is: Can the government subject people to torture and abuse and then prevent them from talking about it?" said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.
The ACLU said the claim of broad authority to gag defendants infringes on the American public's right to open trials and goes far beyond what the courts have allowed, namely that censorship must be narrowly tailored and aimed at protecting a compelling government interest.
"We don't think the government has any interest in classifying personal observations about conduct banned by the president of the United States," Shamsi said.
"The commission certainly will not be seen as legitimate if the proceedings revolve around judicially approved censorship of the defendants' accounts of government misconduct."
Prosecutors acknowledged the public has a right to witness the proceedings, but urged the judge not to substitute the ACLU's judgment on what should be classified for that of intelligence professionals.
ATTORNEY-CLIENT CONVERSATIONS
Security rules restrict not only what can be made public but also what the lawyers can talk about with their clients.
In December 2011 the officer then in charge of the Guantanamo detention operation, Rear Admiral David Woods, issued orders forbidding defense lawyers from discussing certain topics during client visits. Those included "historical perspectives on jihadist activities." That apparently means the lawyers cannot discuss part of the actual charges with their clients because the charges specifically mention Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans."
The defendants are alleged to be al Qaeda terrorists, but the order prohibits their lawyers from talking to them about "groups engaged in terrorist activities."
"It's sort of an illusory idea, which is that we are going to give you a lawyer but you're not going to be able to talk about the central thing that is important for you to talk about with a lawyer," said David Nevin, another of Mohammed's attorneys.
The chief prosecutor, Brigadier General Mark Martins, disputed the defense attorney's interpretation of Woods' order and said defense attorneys' conversations with their clients are not restricted.
"They can talk to their clients about anything. What they can't do is take a document that may have classified information related to sources and methods and - unless it is cleared as disclosable to the client - they can't show them that document."
Generally under U.S. law, communications between defendants and their lawyers are confidential and cannot be used as evidence. Here again, the rules are different at Guantanamo.
The military and civilian defense lawyers, who mostly live in the Washington area, are not allowed to telephone their clients at Guantanamo and can communicate with them only during visits or in writing.
The 9/11 defense lawyers have refused to send legal mail to their clients until prison camp inspectors agree to stop reading it.
The review teams are made up of Pentagon lawyers, translators and former intelligence officers - people from the same agencies that detained and interrogated the defendants and are now prosecuting them.
The lawyers contend that submitting case-related documents for screening would force them to illegally disclose trial strategy, violating the defendant's right to a fair trial. They said it was also an ethical violation that could put their law licenses in jeopardy.
As it turns out, not every word from the 9/11 defendants is treated as confidential for long. In 2009 the defendants sent a note to the judge proclaiming themselves "terrorists to the bone" and calling the charges against them "badges of honor, which we carry with pride."
The note was rapidly cleared for public release and posted on a Pentagon website. It immediately made headlines, leaving defense attorneys fuming that potential evidence from their clients had been released to the public before they knew of its existence.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton and Josh Meyer in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base and the United States; Editing by David Adams and Douglas Royalty)
© Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Insight: At Guantanamo tribunals, don't mention the "T" word
Mon, Aug 20 2012
By Jane Sutton and Josh Meyer
MIAMI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture.
Defense attorneys say that and other Kafkaesque legal restrictions on what they can discuss with their clients and raise in the courtroom undermine their ability to mount a proper defense on charges that could lead to the death penalty.
Those restrictions will be the focus of a pretrial hearing that convenes this week.
Prosecutors say every utterance of the alleged al Qaeda murderers, and what their lawyers in turn pass on to the court, must be strictly monitored precisely because of the defendants' intimate personal knowledge of highly classified CIA interrogation methods they endured in the agency's clandestine overseas prisons.
Defense attorneys called that view extreme.
"Everything is presumptively top secret. So if my client had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch, I couldn't tell you that," Cheryl Bormann, who represents defendant Walid bin Attash, said after the May arraignment of the men charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
At one point in the arraignment, another of bin Attash's attorneys, Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, was explaining why his client refused to cooperate. Just when things got interesting, a security officer cut the audio feed to the media and others observing the proceedings from behind a soundproof glass wall with a 40-second audio delay.
"The reason for that is the torture that my client was subjected to by the men and women wearing the big-boy pants down at the CIA, it makes it impossible ...," Schwartz said during the blocked portion of the arraignment, according to a partial transcript later declassified.
Prosecutors have said in court filings that any revelations about the defendants' interrogations could cause "exceptionally grave damage."
Civil libertarians argue that if those interrogation methods really are top secret, then the CIA had no business revealing them to al Qaeda suspects.
Defense attorneys will challenge the secrecy rules at the pretrial hearing that begins on Wednesday at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.
Prosecutors have about 75,000 pages of evidence to turn over to defense attorneys in the 9/11 case, but they won't do it until the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, issues protective orders aimed at safeguarding the material.
BORN CLASSIFIED
Hundreds of men suspected of supporting al Qaeda or the Taliban were rounded up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere and shipped to Guantanamo in response to the September 11 attacks. (Of the 779 men who have been held at Guantanamo since the prison operation began in 2002, 168 remain.)
The CIA took custody of the "high-value" captives believed to have top-level information that could help the U.S. and its allies prevent further attacks.
It held them incommunicado for three or four years and transferred them among secret overseas prisons, questioning them with interrogation methods that defense attorneys say amounted to torture and which the Obama administration has since banned.
Some details of the program, including waterboarding, mock executions and sleep deprivation, have already been disclosed by Bush and the CIA itself. Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official, recently defended them in news interviews to promote his book, "Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Action After 9/11 Saved American Lives."
Yet in both the 9/11 case and that of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of sending suicide bombers to ram a boat full of explosives into the side of the USS Cole off Yemen in 2000, the government presumes that every word spoken by the defendants, in the past and in the future, is classified at the highest level -- "Top Secret," with a "Sensitive Compartmented Information," which is routinely shortened to TS/SCI.
The defendants' words are also "born classified," a status their lawyers said has previously been used only to safeguard details about nuclear weapons. So are all documents and legal motions related to their cases, which cannot be made public unless they're cleared by a Department of Defense Security Classification Review team.
How that team works is a secret.
"I've never seen them. I've never communicated (with them). No one has ever been able to tell me that," said James Connell, a lawyer for 9/11 defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.
The Pentagon would say only that the review team includes both civilians and uniformed military personnel and that it can take up to 15 business days to make its decisions.
Proscribed topics include details of the defendants' capture, where they were held and under what conditions, the names and descriptions of anyone who transferred, detained or interrogated them and the methods used to get information from them, according to the court documents.
Defense lawyers say the classification system used at Guantanamo violates President Barack Obama's 2009 order that prohibits using secrecy labels to conceal lawbreaking or prevent political embarrassment. They say it also "eviscerates" the legal defense protections Congress set down in the law that authorizes the Guantanamo tribunals.
The government's secrecy rules mean that every lawyer, paralegal and expert on the prosecution and defense teams must undergo an extensive background check and obtain a TS/SCI clearance. Once they get clearance, they are briefed on what has to stay secret. The document that forms the basis of the presumptive classification is itself secret.
"It is ridiculous," said Army Captain Jason Wright, one of the lawyers for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "The briefing is classified, so I can't discuss what I can and cannot discuss."
Mohammed's lawyers have asked the UN special rapporteur for torture, Juan E. Mendez, to investigate claims that their client was tortured. But they could only share with Mendez the information that has been publicly declassified.
"We are prohibited from sharing any details of his mistreatment, even to the special rapporteur," Wright said.
FORCED TO LEARN
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a challenge arguing that the government has no legal authority to classify information that it not only disclosed to the defendants but forced them to learn.
"The question here is: Can the government subject people to torture and abuse and then prevent them from talking about it?" said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.
The ACLU said the claim of broad authority to gag defendants infringes on the American public's right to open trials and goes far beyond what the courts have allowed, namely that censorship must be narrowly tailored and aimed at protecting a compelling government interest.
"We don't think the government has any interest in classifying personal observations about conduct banned by the president of the United States," Shamsi said.
"The commission certainly will not be seen as legitimate if the proceedings revolve around judicially approved censorship of the defendants' accounts of government misconduct."
Prosecutors acknowledged the public has a right to witness the proceedings, but urged the judge not to substitute the ACLU's judgment on what should be classified for that of intelligence professionals.
ATTORNEY-CLIENT CONVERSATIONS
Security rules restrict not only what can be made public but also what the lawyers can talk about with their clients.
In December 2011 the officer then in charge of the Guantanamo detention operation, Rear Admiral David Woods, issued orders forbidding defense lawyers from discussing certain topics during client visits. Those included "historical perspectives on jihadist activities." That apparently means the lawyers cannot discuss part of the actual charges with their clients because the charges specifically mention Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans."
The defendants are alleged to be al Qaeda terrorists, but the order prohibits their lawyers from talking to them about "groups engaged in terrorist activities."
"It's sort of an illusory idea, which is that we are going to give you a lawyer but you're not going to be able to talk about the central thing that is important for you to talk about with a lawyer," said David Nevin, another of Mohammed's attorneys.
The chief prosecutor, Brigadier General Mark Martins, disputed the defense attorney's interpretation of Woods' order and said defense attorneys' conversations with their clients are not restricted.
"They can talk to their clients about anything. What they can't do is take a document that may have classified information related to sources and methods and - unless it is cleared as disclosable to the client - they can't show them that document."
Generally under U.S. law, communications between defendants and their lawyers are confidential and cannot be used as evidence. Here again, the rules are different at Guantanamo.
The military and civilian defense lawyers, who mostly live in the Washington area, are not allowed to telephone their clients at Guantanamo and can communicate with them only during visits or in writing.
The 9/11 defense lawyers have refused to send legal mail to their clients until prison camp inspectors agree to stop reading it.
The review teams are made up of Pentagon lawyers, translators and former intelligence officers - people from the same agencies that detained and interrogated the defendants and are now prosecuting them.
The lawyers contend that submitting case-related documents for screening would force them to illegally disclose trial strategy, violating the defendant's right to a fair trial. They said it was also an ethical violation that could put their law licenses in jeopardy.
As it turns out, not every word from the 9/11 defendants is treated as confidential for long. In 2009 the defendants sent a note to the judge proclaiming themselves "terrorists to the bone" and calling the charges against them "badges of honor, which we carry with pride."
The note was rapidly cleared for public release and posted on a Pentagon website. It immediately made headlines, leaving defense attorneys fuming that potential evidence from their clients had been released to the public before they knew of its existence.
(Reporting by Jane Sutton and Josh Meyer in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base and the United States; Editing by David Adams and Douglas Royalty)
© Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Friday, August 24, 2012
"Sheba, a dog of L.A.'s mean streets" by Jeff Dietrich LA Times Aug. 20, 2012
"Sheba, a dog of L.A.'s mean streets" by Jeff Dietrich LA Times Aug. 20, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dietrich-dog-skid-row-20120820,0,6492641.story
(Jeff Dietrich is a member of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker
http://lacatholicworker.org/ . His most recent book is "Broken and
Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles' Skid Row.")
For years Sheba lived on the streets with Georgina. "When it was cold,
she kept me warm," Georgina recalled recently, "and if I got attacked,
she protected me."
Sheba was a patient, loving German shepherd mix whose excess belly fat
and low-hanging nipples gave testimony to her maternal nature.
Everyone on skid row — kids, cops, prostitutes, pimps — loved her. But
her best friends were the homeless street addicts who live outside our
Catholic Worker soup kitchen, particularly Georgina.
Georgina ended up on skid row after fleeing an abusive husband. At
first she lived with her handicapped, addicted mother in the St. Agnes
Hotel, but she soon became addicted to crack cocaine herself and began
living on the streets.
I can't say that it was Georgina's relationship with Sheba that
enabled her to enter and successfully complete a recovery program. But
I can say without doubt that the maternal presence of this loving
creature was one of the few positive attachment relationships in her
life for a time, and that Sheba also touched the shattered lives of
many addicts and petty drug dealers on Gladys Street. It's possible
that, for Georgina, the steady, unconditional love she got from Sheba
provided just enough stability to make recovery seem possible.
Something I read recently made me think about all this. In his book
"In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction,"
Canadian physician Gabor Maté looks at the issue of drug addiction
through the lens of early childhood brain development. Hard-core
substance abuse in later life, he concludes, can often be traced to
early childhood trauma: abandonment, nutritional deprivation, battery,
rape.
"The majority of chronically hard-core substance dependent adults
lived as infants and children under conditions of severe adversity
that left an indelible stamp on their development," Maté writes.
"Their predispositions to addiction were programmed; their brains
never had a chance"
He notes that humans are hard-wired to need strong connections with
other humans, and that children need "an attachment connection with at
least one reliably available, protective, psychologically present, and
reasonably non-stressed adult."
A dog is no substitute, certainly, for a loving, stable family or for
strong human bonds. But most of the addicts on skid row haven't known
nurturing families for years, if they ever did. Sheba stepped into a
void in Georgina's life, and she made a difference.
On June 26, Sheba was hit by a car and killed. Her memorial service
was held in the dining garden of our soup kitchen, but Georgina was
not among the more than 30 mourners who attended. Her therapist,
fearful of a possible relapse, advised her not to attend. The
gathering was full of fond memories of Sheba, but toward the end there
was one awkward moment. Was it theologically correct, we wondered, to
pray for a dog? But then someone in the crowd called out, "Let us pray
for the loving gift that Sheba was to our community."
We did. And the people of skid row said, "Amen."
--
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dietrich-dog-skid-row-20120820,0,6492641.story
(Jeff Dietrich is a member of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker
http://lacatholicworker.org/ . His most recent book is "Broken and
Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles' Skid Row.")
For years Sheba lived on the streets with Georgina. "When it was cold,
she kept me warm," Georgina recalled recently, "and if I got attacked,
she protected me."
Sheba was a patient, loving German shepherd mix whose excess belly fat
and low-hanging nipples gave testimony to her maternal nature.
Everyone on skid row — kids, cops, prostitutes, pimps — loved her. But
her best friends were the homeless street addicts who live outside our
Catholic Worker soup kitchen, particularly Georgina.
Georgina ended up on skid row after fleeing an abusive husband. At
first she lived with her handicapped, addicted mother in the St. Agnes
Hotel, but she soon became addicted to crack cocaine herself and began
living on the streets.
I can't say that it was Georgina's relationship with Sheba that
enabled her to enter and successfully complete a recovery program. But
I can say without doubt that the maternal presence of this loving
creature was one of the few positive attachment relationships in her
life for a time, and that Sheba also touched the shattered lives of
many addicts and petty drug dealers on Gladys Street. It's possible
that, for Georgina, the steady, unconditional love she got from Sheba
provided just enough stability to make recovery seem possible.
Something I read recently made me think about all this. In his book
"In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction,"
Canadian physician Gabor Maté looks at the issue of drug addiction
through the lens of early childhood brain development. Hard-core
substance abuse in later life, he concludes, can often be traced to
early childhood trauma: abandonment, nutritional deprivation, battery,
rape.
"The majority of chronically hard-core substance dependent adults
lived as infants and children under conditions of severe adversity
that left an indelible stamp on their development," Maté writes.
"Their predispositions to addiction were programmed; their brains
never had a chance"
He notes that humans are hard-wired to need strong connections with
other humans, and that children need "an attachment connection with at
least one reliably available, protective, psychologically present, and
reasonably non-stressed adult."
A dog is no substitute, certainly, for a loving, stable family or for
strong human bonds. But most of the addicts on skid row haven't known
nurturing families for years, if they ever did. Sheba stepped into a
void in Georgina's life, and she made a difference.
On June 26, Sheba was hit by a car and killed. Her memorial service
was held in the dining garden of our soup kitchen, but Georgina was
not among the more than 30 mourners who attended. Her therapist,
fearful of a possible relapse, advised her not to attend. The
gathering was full of fond memories of Sheba, but toward the end there
was one awkward moment. Was it theologically correct, we wondered, to
pray for a dog? But then someone in the crowd called out, "Let us pray
for the loving gift that Sheba was to our community."
We did. And the people of skid row said, "Amen."
--
Secret Police Documents Reveal Plan to Arrest WikiLeaks' Assange
Published on Friday, August 24, 2012 by Common Dreams
Secret Police Documents Reveal Plan to Arrest WikiLeaks' Assange
- Common Dreams staff
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is to be arrested "under any circumstances" if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy, according to a secret police document photographed by a photographer for Britain’s Press Association news agency.
A police officer holds notes on Julian Assange’s exile at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Lewis Whyld/PA) “Assange to be arrested under all circumstances,” the hand-written note says.
Lewis Whyld shot the photos of the documents on a clipboard carried by a police standing outside the embassy, half-covered by the officer's arm.
Diplomatic cars and bags are also sanctuaries for foreign nations, as are embassies, but the police document refers to "dip bag, as dip bag, in dip vehicle" as places they would arrest Assange.
The document appears to read:
"Brief - EQ. Embassy Brief Summery of current position Re: Assange. Action required Assange to be arrested under all circumstances. He comes out with dip [presumably a diplomat] ... as dip bag [which allows immunity from search for diplomatic communications, and which could be as large as a suitcase, crate or even a shipping container], in dip car .... in dip vehicle. ARRESTED.
"Discuss possibilities of distraction SS10 to liaise...provide additional support."
Scotland Yard said the document was the officer's own handwritten notes from a briefing.
The UK government has made it clear Assange will be arrested if he steps outside of the embassy.
# # #
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/24-2
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
Secret Police Documents Reveal Plan to Arrest WikiLeaks' Assange
- Common Dreams staff
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is to be arrested "under any circumstances" if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy, according to a secret police document photographed by a photographer for Britain’s Press Association news agency.
A police officer holds notes on Julian Assange’s exile at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. (Lewis Whyld/PA) “Assange to be arrested under all circumstances,” the hand-written note says.
Lewis Whyld shot the photos of the documents on a clipboard carried by a police standing outside the embassy, half-covered by the officer's arm.
Diplomatic cars and bags are also sanctuaries for foreign nations, as are embassies, but the police document refers to "dip bag, as dip bag, in dip vehicle" as places they would arrest Assange.
The document appears to read:
"Brief - EQ. Embassy Brief Summery of current position Re: Assange. Action required Assange to be arrested under all circumstances. He comes out with dip [presumably a diplomat] ... as dip bag [which allows immunity from search for diplomatic communications, and which could be as large as a suitcase, crate or even a shipping container], in dip car .... in dip vehicle. ARRESTED.
"Discuss possibilities of distraction SS10 to liaise...provide additional support."
Scotland Yard said the document was the officer's own handwritten notes from a briefing.
The UK government has made it clear Assange will be arrested if he steps outside of the embassy.
# # #
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/24-2
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
Susan Crane is incarcerated
Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 11:29 PM
Dear Friends,
After a wonderful Peace Walk, Susan Crane is back at the Federal
Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. I heard from her
earlier this evening, and she is well, and is settling in for her
relatively brief stay
The Walk for Nuclear Disarmament: From Lockheed to Lock-Up was the
embodiment of community. Many people and communities came together to
help plan, provide support and hospitality, and of course WALK. We've
been posting daily at the Disarm Now Plowshares Blog
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/.
I won't get into all the details here. The best way to get up close
and personal with the walk is to read the blog posts that started on
August 19th. With photos, reflections from the walkers, video, and
audio from a news broadcast, you can get a real sense of the Peace
Walk.
Click here to read all the posts on the walk
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/tag/walk-for-nuclear-disarmament-lockheed-martin-to-lockup/.
I know many of you are waiting for Susan's mailing address. I've just
confirmed that she is, indeed, at the FCI Dublin and not at the
adjacent Camp Parks military installation. As Susan said, "I guess
they decided not to put a plowshares activist on a military
base....only makes sense."
Here is the address to which you can address mail to Susan:
Susan Crane 87783-011
Federal Correctional Institution Dublin
5701 8th Street, Camp Parks
Dublin CA 94568
For anyone not familiar with prison mail rules, they ARE strict.
Basically, letters are OK, but not much else. Here are excerpts from
the FCI Dublin Handbook:
Inmates may not receive packages in the mail. A package includes any
box or envelope more than sixteen (16) ounces, that is padded,
reinforced or contains any material other than paper. Unauthorized
packages are rejected at the local Post Office and returned to the
sender marked "Unauthorized Package." The inmate does not receive a
notice the item was refused.
All incoming inmate mail, except "legal mail," is opened by the Mail
Room Officer to inspect for unauthorized items and contraband.
An inmate may receive soft cover publications (paperback books, etc.)
from any source. An inmate may receive hardcover publications only
from the publisher or book club.
I'm sure you get the picture - No files, hacksaw blades, seditious
literature, etc. You can read more (of this exciting stuff) in the
FCI Dublin Admissions and Orientation Handbook
http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/dub/DUB_aohandbook.pdf
This week's Peace Walk is just a memory now, although our greater walk
together in pursuit of a nuclear weapons free world is very much on
the move. So many people around the country, and around the world,
working on many different, yet connected, issues. The more people
march with us, the more our footsteps are heard. Spread the word -
More and more, people are ready to listen... and get involved. The
time is NOW!
Peace,
Leonard Eiger
Puget Sound Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (Coordinator) www.psnukefree.org
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (Media & Outreach) www.gzcenter.org
Disarm Now Plowshares (Media & Outreach)
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com
Email: subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
Blog: http://theloosenukes.blogspot.com/
Blog: http://nuclearabolitionist.blogspot.com
Blog: http://subversivepeacemaking.blogspot.com
Dear Friends,
After a wonderful Peace Walk, Susan Crane is back at the Federal
Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. I heard from her
earlier this evening, and she is well, and is settling in for her
relatively brief stay
The Walk for Nuclear Disarmament: From Lockheed to Lock-Up was the
embodiment of community. Many people and communities came together to
help plan, provide support and hospitality, and of course WALK. We've
been posting daily at the Disarm Now Plowshares Blog
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/.
I won't get into all the details here. The best way to get up close
and personal with the walk is to read the blog posts that started on
August 19th. With photos, reflections from the walkers, video, and
audio from a news broadcast, you can get a real sense of the Peace
Walk.
Click here to read all the posts on the walk
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/tag/walk-for-nuclear-disarmament-lockheed-martin-to-lockup/.
I know many of you are waiting for Susan's mailing address. I've just
confirmed that she is, indeed, at the FCI Dublin and not at the
adjacent Camp Parks military installation. As Susan said, "I guess
they decided not to put a plowshares activist on a military
base....only makes sense."
Here is the address to which you can address mail to Susan:
Susan Crane 87783-011
Federal Correctional Institution Dublin
5701 8th Street, Camp Parks
Dublin CA 94568
For anyone not familiar with prison mail rules, they ARE strict.
Basically, letters are OK, but not much else. Here are excerpts from
the FCI Dublin Handbook:
Inmates may not receive packages in the mail. A package includes any
box or envelope more than sixteen (16) ounces, that is padded,
reinforced or contains any material other than paper. Unauthorized
packages are rejected at the local Post Office and returned to the
sender marked "Unauthorized Package." The inmate does not receive a
notice the item was refused.
All incoming inmate mail, except "legal mail," is opened by the Mail
Room Officer to inspect for unauthorized items and contraband.
An inmate may receive soft cover publications (paperback books, etc.)
from any source. An inmate may receive hardcover publications only
from the publisher or book club.
I'm sure you get the picture - No files, hacksaw blades, seditious
literature, etc. You can read more (of this exciting stuff) in the
FCI Dublin Admissions and Orientation Handbook
http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/dub/DUB_aohandbook.pdf
This week's Peace Walk is just a memory now, although our greater walk
together in pursuit of a nuclear weapons free world is very much on
the move. So many people around the country, and around the world,
working on many different, yet connected, issues. The more people
march with us, the more our footsteps are heard. Spread the word -
More and more, people are ready to listen... and get involved. The
time is NOW!
Peace,
Leonard Eiger
Puget Sound Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (Coordinator) www.psnukefree.org
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (Media & Outreach) www.gzcenter.org
Disarm Now Plowshares (Media & Outreach)
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com
Email: subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com
Blog: http://theloosenukes.blogspot.com/
Blog: http://nuclearabolitionist.blogspot.com
Blog: http://subversivepeacemaking.blogspot.com
The Crackpot Caucus
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/the-crackpot-caucus/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120824
August 23, 2012, 9:45 pm
The Crackpot Caucus
By TIMOTHY EGAN
The tutorial in 8th grade biology that Republicans got after one of their members of Congress went public with something from the wackosphere was instructive, and not just because it offered female anatomy lessons to those who get their science from the Bible.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you'll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri's Representative Todd Akin's take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who's been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates and insulates these knuckle-draggers.
Let's take a quick tour of the crazies in the House. Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why the United States is laughed at on the global stage, and why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.
We're currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it's all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is - you guessed it - a climate-change denier.
At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. "The earth will end only when God declares it to be over," he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It's worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.
On the same committee is an oil-company tool and 27-year veteran of Congress, Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas. You may remember Barton as the politician who apologized to the head of BP in 2010 after the government dared to insist that the company pay for those whose livelihoods were ruined by the gulf oil spill.
Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, "wind is God's way of balancing heat." Clean energy, he said, "would slow the winds down" and thus could make it hotter. You never know.
"You can't regulate God!" Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.
The Catholic Church long ago made its peace with evolution, but the same cannot be said of House Republicans. Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can't see the indent where his ancestors' monkey tail used to be. "Where's the missing link?" he said in 2011. "I just want to know what it is." He serves on a committee that oversees education.
In his party, Kingston is in the mainstream. A Gallup poll in June found that 58 percent of Republicans believe God created humans in the present form just within the last 10,000 years - a wealth of anthropological evidence to the contrary.
Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House - backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan - that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.
Broun is on the same science, space and technology committee that Akin is. Yes, science is part of their purview.
Where do they get this stuff? The Bible, yes, but much of the misinformation and the fables that inform Republican politicians comes from hearsay, often amplified by their media wing.
Remember the crazy statement that helped to kill the presidential aspirations of Michele Bachmann? A vaccine, designed to prevent a virus linked to cervical cancer, could cause mental retardation, she proclaimed. Bachmann knew this, she insisted, because some random lady told her so at a campaign event. Fearful of the genuine damage Bachmann's assertion could do to public health, the American Academy of Pediatrics promptly rushed out a notice, saying, "there is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement."
Nor is there is reputable scientific validity to those who deny that the globe's climate is changing for the worst. But Bachmann calls that authoritative consensus a hoax, and faces no censure from her party.
It's encouraging that Republican heavyweights have since told Akin that uttering scientific nonsense about sex and rape is not good for the party's image. But where are these fact-enforcers on the other idiocies professed by elected representatives of their party?
Akin, if he stays in the race, may still win the Senate seat in Missouri. Bachmann, who makes things up on a regular basis, is a leader of the Tea Party caucus in Congress and, in an unintended joke, a member of the Committee on Intelligence. None of these folks are without power; they govern, and have significant followings.
A handful of Republicans have tried to fight the know-nothings. "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming," said Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor, during his ill-fated run for his party's presidential nomination. "Call me crazy."
And in an on-air plea for sanity, Joe Scarborough, the former G.O.P. congressman and MSNBC host, said, "I'm just tired of the Republican Party being the stupid party." I feel for him. But don't expect the reality chorus to grow. For if intelligence were contagious, his party would be giving out vaccines for it.
· Copyright 2012 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
August 23, 2012, 9:45 pm
The Crackpot Caucus
By TIMOTHY EGAN
The tutorial in 8th grade biology that Republicans got after one of their members of Congress went public with something from the wackosphere was instructive, and not just because it offered female anatomy lessons to those who get their science from the Bible.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you'll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri's Representative Todd Akin's take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who's been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates and insulates these knuckle-draggers.
Let's take a quick tour of the crazies in the House. Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why the United States is laughed at on the global stage, and why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.
We're currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it's all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is - you guessed it - a climate-change denier.
At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. "The earth will end only when God declares it to be over," he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It's worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.
On the same committee is an oil-company tool and 27-year veteran of Congress, Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas. You may remember Barton as the politician who apologized to the head of BP in 2010 after the government dared to insist that the company pay for those whose livelihoods were ruined by the gulf oil spill.
Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, "wind is God's way of balancing heat." Clean energy, he said, "would slow the winds down" and thus could make it hotter. You never know.
"You can't regulate God!" Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.
The Catholic Church long ago made its peace with evolution, but the same cannot be said of House Republicans. Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can't see the indent where his ancestors' monkey tail used to be. "Where's the missing link?" he said in 2011. "I just want to know what it is." He serves on a committee that oversees education.
In his party, Kingston is in the mainstream. A Gallup poll in June found that 58 percent of Republicans believe God created humans in the present form just within the last 10,000 years - a wealth of anthropological evidence to the contrary.
Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House - backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan - that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.
Broun is on the same science, space and technology committee that Akin is. Yes, science is part of their purview.
Where do they get this stuff? The Bible, yes, but much of the misinformation and the fables that inform Republican politicians comes from hearsay, often amplified by their media wing.
Remember the crazy statement that helped to kill the presidential aspirations of Michele Bachmann? A vaccine, designed to prevent a virus linked to cervical cancer, could cause mental retardation, she proclaimed. Bachmann knew this, she insisted, because some random lady told her so at a campaign event. Fearful of the genuine damage Bachmann's assertion could do to public health, the American Academy of Pediatrics promptly rushed out a notice, saying, "there is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement."
Nor is there is reputable scientific validity to those who deny that the globe's climate is changing for the worst. But Bachmann calls that authoritative consensus a hoax, and faces no censure from her party.
It's encouraging that Republican heavyweights have since told Akin that uttering scientific nonsense about sex and rape is not good for the party's image. But where are these fact-enforcers on the other idiocies professed by elected representatives of their party?
Akin, if he stays in the race, may still win the Senate seat in Missouri. Bachmann, who makes things up on a regular basis, is a leader of the Tea Party caucus in Congress and, in an unintended joke, a member of the Committee on Intelligence. None of these folks are without power; they govern, and have significant followings.
A handful of Republicans have tried to fight the know-nothings. "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming," said Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor, during his ill-fated run for his party's presidential nomination. "Call me crazy."
And in an on-air plea for sanity, Joe Scarborough, the former G.O.P. congressman and MSNBC host, said, "I'm just tired of the Republican Party being the stupid party." I feel for him. But don't expect the reality chorus to grow. For if intelligence were contagious, his party would be giving out vaccines for it.
· Copyright 2012 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
Former ACORN Worker Can Sue Right-Winger on Privacy Claim
Tuesday, August 14, 2012Last Update: 9:25 AM PT
Former ACORN Worker Can Sue Right-Winger on Privacy Claim
By MATT REYNOLDS
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/08/14/49281.htm
SAN DIEGO (CN) - A federal judge refused to throw out claims that a right-wing activist violated the privacy of an ACORN worker who was taped counseling defendant James O'Keefe, who sought advice on how to fill his house with underage prostitutes.
Juan Carlos Vera sued O'Keefe and his associate Hanna Giles in Federal Court on privacy claims, after O'Keefe secretly filmed Vera at an ACORN office in National City in 2009.
The now-famous series of ACORN recordings featured O'Keefe posing as pimp, dressed in a chinchilla coat, while Giles was disguised as a prostitute.
"The edited video depicted plaintiff as conspiring to promote an underage prostitution business by agreeing to help defendants file fraudulent tax forms and smuggle underage girls from Mexico," U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz wrote in his order denying defendants' request for summary judgment.
Vera, who said he contacted police shortly after the activists' peculiar visit, sued them in the summer of 2010.
O'Keefe sought summary judgment, claiming that Vera had no expectation of privacy when the conversation was taped.
But Judge Lorenz found a "genuine dispute as to whether plaintiff's [Vera's] expectation of privacy was reasonable."
"ACORN is in the business of providing counseling and support for the community on various matters," Lorenz wrote. "By its very nature, the organization handles personal matters with individual clients. Defendants walked into ACORN and asked for plaintiff's help with tax forms. ... Specifically, they solicited his help with setting up an illegal prostitution business with underaged girls. ... Plaintiff, as a worker for an organization like ACORN, reasonably believed that the content of the conversation was sensitive enough that it would remain private."
O'Keefe duped Vera by asking if the conversation would remain confidential, before he launched into details of the nonexistent scheme, Lorenz wrote.
Over the course of a 40-minute conversation, Lorenz noted, the three "abruptly paused their conversation" after Vera's supervisor, David Lagstein, entered the office, and continued talking after the supervisor left.
"Based on the surrounding circumstances, plaintiff reasonably believed that the conversation was private because it was held in his office with no one else present, and he believed that no one else was listening in on his conversation," Lorenz wrote.
Because of this "genuine dispute," Lorenz denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment.
"Defendant O'Keefe testified that he had previously recorded investigative videos like this without obtaining permission from the person being recorded. He misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential. Defendants further affirmed the confidential nature of the conversation by asking plaintiff whether the conversation was recorded," Lorenz wrote.
O'Keefe shot undercover videos in several ACORN offices and prompted outrage after being broadcast on Fox News and BigGovernment.com.
Congress voted to freeze funding to ACORN, which was known for voter drives and organizing in poor communities. The nonprofit closed up shop after filing for Chapter 7 liquidation in late 2010.
Neither Vera nor O'Keefe's attorney immediately responded to requests for comment.
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
Former ACORN Worker Can Sue Right-Winger on Privacy Claim
By MATT REYNOLDS
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/08/14/49281.htm
SAN DIEGO (CN) - A federal judge refused to throw out claims that a right-wing activist violated the privacy of an ACORN worker who was taped counseling defendant James O'Keefe, who sought advice on how to fill his house with underage prostitutes.
Juan Carlos Vera sued O'Keefe and his associate Hanna Giles in Federal Court on privacy claims, after O'Keefe secretly filmed Vera at an ACORN office in National City in 2009.
The now-famous series of ACORN recordings featured O'Keefe posing as pimp, dressed in a chinchilla coat, while Giles was disguised as a prostitute.
"The edited video depicted plaintiff as conspiring to promote an underage prostitution business by agreeing to help defendants file fraudulent tax forms and smuggle underage girls from Mexico," U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz wrote in his order denying defendants' request for summary judgment.
Vera, who said he contacted police shortly after the activists' peculiar visit, sued them in the summer of 2010.
O'Keefe sought summary judgment, claiming that Vera had no expectation of privacy when the conversation was taped.
But Judge Lorenz found a "genuine dispute as to whether plaintiff's [Vera's] expectation of privacy was reasonable."
"ACORN is in the business of providing counseling and support for the community on various matters," Lorenz wrote. "By its very nature, the organization handles personal matters with individual clients. Defendants walked into ACORN and asked for plaintiff's help with tax forms. ... Specifically, they solicited his help with setting up an illegal prostitution business with underaged girls. ... Plaintiff, as a worker for an organization like ACORN, reasonably believed that the content of the conversation was sensitive enough that it would remain private."
O'Keefe duped Vera by asking if the conversation would remain confidential, before he launched into details of the nonexistent scheme, Lorenz wrote.
Over the course of a 40-minute conversation, Lorenz noted, the three "abruptly paused their conversation" after Vera's supervisor, David Lagstein, entered the office, and continued talking after the supervisor left.
"Based on the surrounding circumstances, plaintiff reasonably believed that the conversation was private because it was held in his office with no one else present, and he believed that no one else was listening in on his conversation," Lorenz wrote.
Because of this "genuine dispute," Lorenz denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment.
"Defendant O'Keefe testified that he had previously recorded investigative videos like this without obtaining permission from the person being recorded. He misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential. Defendants further affirmed the confidential nature of the conversation by asking plaintiff whether the conversation was recorded," Lorenz wrote.
O'Keefe shot undercover videos in several ACORN offices and prompted outrage after being broadcast on Fox News and BigGovernment.com.
Congress voted to freeze funding to ACORN, which was known for voter drives and organizing in poor communities. The nonprofit closed up shop after filing for Chapter 7 liquidation in late 2010.
Neither Vera nor O'Keefe's attorney immediately responded to requests for comment.
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
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Uprising in Montana: Activists Take a Stand Against Coal Exports
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
AlterNet [1] / By Scott Parkin [2]
Uprising in Montana: Activists Take a Stand Against Coal Exports
August 21, 2012
It wasn’t as big as we’d hoped. These things never are, until, well, they are.
It didn’t really matter though: Hundreds converged from across the country for the Coal Export Action and 23 participated in five days of civil disobedience in protest of the coal industry’s latest scheme to save itself from obsolescence. The message we sent reverberated around the state capitol here in Helena, MT: We will not sit idly by while King Coal attempts to export coal from the Powder River Basin through port towns in Oregon and Washington to Asian energy markets.
Every day, people sat-in in the middle of the Montana statehouse until it closed at 6 pm. At 5:30, the nervous facilities manager, Marv Eicholtz, would awkwardly give the larger group the first dispersal order. At 5:50, he’d issue a second one with Helena policemen standing in the background. At 6 pm, Eicholtz would approach and say, “I’m giving you the third and final dispersal warning. Anyone refusing to leave the building will be turned over to the Helena Police Dept.” Those not risking arrested would circle around those sitting in and ask them why we were going to jail, sing civil rights songs, or chant. They’d then quickly leave and wait outside as the police brought the arrestees out to idling sheriff’s vans and took them to the Lewis and Clark county jail.
Every day for five days this routine happened over and over. By the end of the week, 23 had been arrested. Most of the arrestees were from Montana, Oregon and Washington—all states expected to be impacted by coal exports, coal trains and expanded western coal mining.
On the fourth day, I joined the sit-in with my friends Griff (an Episcopal minister from Portland), Jasmine and Gloria (who are Rising Tide organizers in Portland and Chicago, respectively), and younger activists Mia and Kai’l (both from Portland). Every day was a theme day, and on our day it was “climate change day.” Quite fitting since everyone arrested that day had worked on climate campaigns from Appalachia to the South Side of Chicago to Oregon port towns at one time or another. All six of us opted not to pay the $340 bond and be bailed out. We spent the night in the Lewis and Clark county lock up in general population, a small sacrifice for making a statement against coal exports.
Montana Rising
The Coal Export Action was initiated and led by grassroots, youth, and student organizers from Montana, Oregon, and Washington, most of them affiliated with the Blue Skies Campaign and the Cascade Climate Network. It was also supported by a number of environmental and climate groups like Rainforest Action Network, 350.org, and Rising Tide North America. It was inspired by the Tar Sands Action called for by writer Bill McKibben at the White House in 2011, which resulted in over 1,200 arrests. Some of the 23 arrested in Helena last week were also participants in the actions at the White House.
For months, we’d organized, done outreach, and built a buzz calling on people from the coastal and mountain regions of the West to join the Coal Export Action. It was eight days of rolling sit-ins and protests at the Montana statehouse designed to pressure the state’s land board to deny Arch Coal’s permit application to mine Otter Creek and create a new source of greenhouse gas emissions.
While not the same size as the Tar Sands Action, the Coal Exports Action was not lacking in spirit. Noted Montana environmental writer and poet Rick Bass sat-in and was arrested on the first day with six others. On the second day, three Montana men sat in and were arrested. On the third day, a group of women called “Montana Women For” led a ladies-only occupation of the capitol rotunda. On the fourth day, our climate crew was arrested. On the last day, three men were taken away.
More importantly, the Coal Export Action turned a spark of grassroots climate activism in the Northwest into a blaze. “We are here to demonstrate mass citizen opposition to big coal corporations’ dirty plan to export millions of tons of Powder River basin coal each year to the international energy market,” said Lowell Chandler, a construction worker and volunteer with the Blue Skies Campaign. “We’re here to pressure the state Land Board to stand with us against these massive coal export proposals.”
Every day the Coal Export Action transformed the Montana statehouse into participatory space where people from around the country held teach-ins and strategized the next steps for coal export campaigns in the West. A No Coal Exports grassroots coalition is coming out of Helena fired up and ready to fight.
The Coal Industry is Dying
In the middle of the week, Arch Coal issued a press release stating that they’d officially applied for the permit to strip mine Otter Creek. Otter Creek is a tract of land in southeast Montana sitting between two national forests and on top of over a billion tons of coal. The permit spreads over 7,639 acres of state, federal and private land. Arch paid the state of Montana $86 million for the coal and will also build new rail lines to get the coal transported out.
It became obvious the tension we’d hoped to create was working. The day after Arch’s announcement, we picketed the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality’s offices and began a dialogue with the agency’s amiable director, Richard Opper. He was obviously sympathetic but also said he had to abide by state laws and regulations.
The coal industry is dying. Coal has peaked in Appalachia. Environmental regulation, litigation, community-led campaigns, and the price of natural gas have all drastically reduced the amount of electricity generated by coal nationally, from 50% to 35%. The shrinking demand has led to large layoffs and fading quarterly profits for the biggest coal companies.
Now the coal industry is moving into an endgame scenario and coal exports are its last hope. Coal reserves in the Powder River Basin area of Montana and Wyoming are still abundant and the industry is hoping to export coal through proposed mega-ports on the Oregon and Washington coast to international energy markets in China and India.
At the end of the Coal Export Action, I traveled to Missoula to unwind for a few days. On one of those days I took a six-mile hike into the Bitterroot Wilderness. Sharing a name with Montana’s state flower, the Bitteroot is populated with majestic trees, diverse wildlife and flowing waterways. Along the trails I encountered fellow hikers, fisherman, and horse packers. It was an opportunity to reconnect, if only for a moment, with the forests and mountains I’d spent a night in jail to preserve.
In the late 1990’s and the early part of the last decade, Wild Rockies Earth First! fought fierce campaigns in the Bitterroot against timber sales initiated by the forest service and logging companies. Many of these activists spent weeks and months in Montana jails for using escalated tactics like blockades and tree-sits to protect thousands of acres of Montana forests. As the anti-coal and climate movements resist fossil fuels with harder and harder campaigns and actions, it’s best to remember that the more we escalate, the more we will sacrifice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/uprising-montana-activists-take-stand-against-coal-exports
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/scott-parkin
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
AlterNet [1] / By Scott Parkin [2]
Uprising in Montana: Activists Take a Stand Against Coal Exports
August 21, 2012
It wasn’t as big as we’d hoped. These things never are, until, well, they are.
It didn’t really matter though: Hundreds converged from across the country for the Coal Export Action and 23 participated in five days of civil disobedience in protest of the coal industry’s latest scheme to save itself from obsolescence. The message we sent reverberated around the state capitol here in Helena, MT: We will not sit idly by while King Coal attempts to export coal from the Powder River Basin through port towns in Oregon and Washington to Asian energy markets.
Every day, people sat-in in the middle of the Montana statehouse until it closed at 6 pm. At 5:30, the nervous facilities manager, Marv Eicholtz, would awkwardly give the larger group the first dispersal order. At 5:50, he’d issue a second one with Helena policemen standing in the background. At 6 pm, Eicholtz would approach and say, “I’m giving you the third and final dispersal warning. Anyone refusing to leave the building will be turned over to the Helena Police Dept.” Those not risking arrested would circle around those sitting in and ask them why we were going to jail, sing civil rights songs, or chant. They’d then quickly leave and wait outside as the police brought the arrestees out to idling sheriff’s vans and took them to the Lewis and Clark county jail.
Every day for five days this routine happened over and over. By the end of the week, 23 had been arrested. Most of the arrestees were from Montana, Oregon and Washington—all states expected to be impacted by coal exports, coal trains and expanded western coal mining.
On the fourth day, I joined the sit-in with my friends Griff (an Episcopal minister from Portland), Jasmine and Gloria (who are Rising Tide organizers in Portland and Chicago, respectively), and younger activists Mia and Kai’l (both from Portland). Every day was a theme day, and on our day it was “climate change day.” Quite fitting since everyone arrested that day had worked on climate campaigns from Appalachia to the South Side of Chicago to Oregon port towns at one time or another. All six of us opted not to pay the $340 bond and be bailed out. We spent the night in the Lewis and Clark county lock up in general population, a small sacrifice for making a statement against coal exports.
Montana Rising
The Coal Export Action was initiated and led by grassroots, youth, and student organizers from Montana, Oregon, and Washington, most of them affiliated with the Blue Skies Campaign and the Cascade Climate Network. It was also supported by a number of environmental and climate groups like Rainforest Action Network, 350.org, and Rising Tide North America. It was inspired by the Tar Sands Action called for by writer Bill McKibben at the White House in 2011, which resulted in over 1,200 arrests. Some of the 23 arrested in Helena last week were also participants in the actions at the White House.
For months, we’d organized, done outreach, and built a buzz calling on people from the coastal and mountain regions of the West to join the Coal Export Action. It was eight days of rolling sit-ins and protests at the Montana statehouse designed to pressure the state’s land board to deny Arch Coal’s permit application to mine Otter Creek and create a new source of greenhouse gas emissions.
While not the same size as the Tar Sands Action, the Coal Exports Action was not lacking in spirit. Noted Montana environmental writer and poet Rick Bass sat-in and was arrested on the first day with six others. On the second day, three Montana men sat in and were arrested. On the third day, a group of women called “Montana Women For” led a ladies-only occupation of the capitol rotunda. On the fourth day, our climate crew was arrested. On the last day, three men were taken away.
More importantly, the Coal Export Action turned a spark of grassroots climate activism in the Northwest into a blaze. “We are here to demonstrate mass citizen opposition to big coal corporations’ dirty plan to export millions of tons of Powder River basin coal each year to the international energy market,” said Lowell Chandler, a construction worker and volunteer with the Blue Skies Campaign. “We’re here to pressure the state Land Board to stand with us against these massive coal export proposals.”
Every day the Coal Export Action transformed the Montana statehouse into participatory space where people from around the country held teach-ins and strategized the next steps for coal export campaigns in the West. A No Coal Exports grassroots coalition is coming out of Helena fired up and ready to fight.
The Coal Industry is Dying
In the middle of the week, Arch Coal issued a press release stating that they’d officially applied for the permit to strip mine Otter Creek. Otter Creek is a tract of land in southeast Montana sitting between two national forests and on top of over a billion tons of coal. The permit spreads over 7,639 acres of state, federal and private land. Arch paid the state of Montana $86 million for the coal and will also build new rail lines to get the coal transported out.
It became obvious the tension we’d hoped to create was working. The day after Arch’s announcement, we picketed the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality’s offices and began a dialogue with the agency’s amiable director, Richard Opper. He was obviously sympathetic but also said he had to abide by state laws and regulations.
The coal industry is dying. Coal has peaked in Appalachia. Environmental regulation, litigation, community-led campaigns, and the price of natural gas have all drastically reduced the amount of electricity generated by coal nationally, from 50% to 35%. The shrinking demand has led to large layoffs and fading quarterly profits for the biggest coal companies.
Now the coal industry is moving into an endgame scenario and coal exports are its last hope. Coal reserves in the Powder River Basin area of Montana and Wyoming are still abundant and the industry is hoping to export coal through proposed mega-ports on the Oregon and Washington coast to international energy markets in China and India.
At the end of the Coal Export Action, I traveled to Missoula to unwind for a few days. On one of those days I took a six-mile hike into the Bitterroot Wilderness. Sharing a name with Montana’s state flower, the Bitteroot is populated with majestic trees, diverse wildlife and flowing waterways. Along the trails I encountered fellow hikers, fisherman, and horse packers. It was an opportunity to reconnect, if only for a moment, with the forests and mountains I’d spent a night in jail to preserve.
In the late 1990’s and the early part of the last decade, Wild Rockies Earth First! fought fierce campaigns in the Bitterroot against timber sales initiated by the forest service and logging companies. Many of these activists spent weeks and months in Montana jails for using escalated tactics like blockades and tree-sits to protect thousands of acres of Montana forests. As the anti-coal and climate movements resist fossil fuels with harder and harder campaigns and actions, it’s best to remember that the more we escalate, the more we will sacrifice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/uprising-montana-activists-take-stand-against-coal-exports
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/scott-parkin
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
Meet the Washington Sugar Daddies Who Keep Wall St. Flush with Cash
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
YES! Magazine [1] / By Hillary Lehr [2]
Meet the Washington Sugar Daddies Who Keep Wall St. Flush with Cash
August 21, 2012
How much is democracy worth to you?
If you’re like most people, it’s priceless. But for the hedge funds and insurance companies on Wall Street, it does have a price tag. And now, thanks to a new report by Global Exchange, we know the number on it: approximately $4.2 billion. That’s how much the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) sector has invested in political influence through campaign contributions and lobbying since 2006. That comes to $1,331 a minute spent on political power.
The new report is called “Meet the F.I.R.E. Sector: How Wall Street Is Burning Democracy.” It was developed by Elect Democracy, a nonpartisan effort by Global Exchange to expose and challenge the impact of corporate money in U.S. politics. The report contains extensive research tracking Wall Street’s investment in political power, and analyzes exactly how Wall Street has secured what Global Exchange calls “industry-loyal voting practices” in Congress: by shoveling stacks of campaign cash in the direction of Congressional hopefuls from both major political parties.
That money lets these industries get what they want in Washington. The F.I.R.E. sector contributed $879 million to members of Congress since 2006, and took positions on 383 bills during the 112th Congress. For instance, they supported Free Trade Agreements with Korea [3], Panama, and Colombia in 2007, and backed the bailout in 2008. Bills they opposed include the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, the Limited Homeowner and Investor Loss in Foreclosure Act of 2010, and the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2011.
At every turn, the F.I.R.E. sector demands special treatment for Wall Street while consumers, homeowners, and students get stuck with the bills. As Senator Bernie Sanders put it an interview with MSNBC [4] this May, "Wall Street is extraordinarily powerful. Congress doesn't regulate them. The big banks regulate what Congress does."
That’s no exaggeration. The Wall Street banks that received the lion’s share of the $700 billion bailout in 2008 comprise the most vocal and deep-pocketed opposition to regulation of risky financial practices.
Luckily, the F.I.R.E sector does have a weakness. It only works in the dark. When people know that their representatives are only supporting Wall Street causes because they’ve been bought off, they tend to stop wanting to vote for those representatives.
Elect Democracy has used the report to develop a new legislative scorecard [5] that makes it easy for you to trace how your legislators voted on key issues such as the bank bailout, Wall Street reform, and free trade agreements. Not only that, but you can see for yourself how much money they received in campaign contributions from the F.I.R.E. sector, as well as what we call their “industry loyalty voting rate.”
Global Exchange researchers calculated that rate for each Congressperson by comparing how often their votes matched the F.I.R.E. sector’s lobbying position on the seven bills examined in the scorecard. As it turns out, the representatives who received the 25 biggest campaign contributions from the F.I.R.E. sector voted identically to Wall Street’s lobby position 73 percent of the time, while the average House “loyalty rate” was a mere 56 percent.
Many complex factors affect how legislators vote, but corporate sponsorship shouldn’t be one of them. Even on Wall Street’s gilded beltway, the F.I.R.E sector companies can’t literally buy political representation—at least, not yet. Instead, they use money to buy influence over voters to elect certain legislators, who they then use lobbyists to influence.
Most Americans value democracy and despise corruption, so a spotlight on this process could leave the F.I.R.E. sugar daddies powerless. The more toxic bank money candidates accept, the more vulnerable they are to having the source of their money exposed.
The goals of this project are not to tell anyone who to vote for, but to get everyone to follow the money; not to influence the outcome of any one election, but to spark dialogue about accountability and transparency, and to stop Wall Street from burning our priceless democracy; to together expose how Wall Street’s campaign money is toxic for democracy, and amplify the message that our democracy is not for sale.
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/meet-washington-sugar-daddies-who-keep-wall-st-flush-cash
Links:
[1] http://www.yesmagazine.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/hillary-lehr
[3] http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-tricks-of-the-trade-deals
[4] http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-ed-show/47454093#47454093
[5] http://www.globalexchange.org/sites/default/files/ED_LegislativeScorecard.pdf
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
YES! Magazine [1] / By Hillary Lehr [2]
Meet the Washington Sugar Daddies Who Keep Wall St. Flush with Cash
August 21, 2012
How much is democracy worth to you?
If you’re like most people, it’s priceless. But for the hedge funds and insurance companies on Wall Street, it does have a price tag. And now, thanks to a new report by Global Exchange, we know the number on it: approximately $4.2 billion. That’s how much the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (F.I.R.E.) sector has invested in political influence through campaign contributions and lobbying since 2006. That comes to $1,331 a minute spent on political power.
The new report is called “Meet the F.I.R.E. Sector: How Wall Street Is Burning Democracy.” It was developed by Elect Democracy, a nonpartisan effort by Global Exchange to expose and challenge the impact of corporate money in U.S. politics. The report contains extensive research tracking Wall Street’s investment in political power, and analyzes exactly how Wall Street has secured what Global Exchange calls “industry-loyal voting practices” in Congress: by shoveling stacks of campaign cash in the direction of Congressional hopefuls from both major political parties.
That money lets these industries get what they want in Washington. The F.I.R.E. sector contributed $879 million to members of Congress since 2006, and took positions on 383 bills during the 112th Congress. For instance, they supported Free Trade Agreements with Korea [3], Panama, and Colombia in 2007, and backed the bailout in 2008. Bills they opposed include the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, the Limited Homeowner and Investor Loss in Foreclosure Act of 2010, and the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2011.
At every turn, the F.I.R.E. sector demands special treatment for Wall Street while consumers, homeowners, and students get stuck with the bills. As Senator Bernie Sanders put it an interview with MSNBC [4] this May, "Wall Street is extraordinarily powerful. Congress doesn't regulate them. The big banks regulate what Congress does."
That’s no exaggeration. The Wall Street banks that received the lion’s share of the $700 billion bailout in 2008 comprise the most vocal and deep-pocketed opposition to regulation of risky financial practices.
Luckily, the F.I.R.E sector does have a weakness. It only works in the dark. When people know that their representatives are only supporting Wall Street causes because they’ve been bought off, they tend to stop wanting to vote for those representatives.
Elect Democracy has used the report to develop a new legislative scorecard [5] that makes it easy for you to trace how your legislators voted on key issues such as the bank bailout, Wall Street reform, and free trade agreements. Not only that, but you can see for yourself how much money they received in campaign contributions from the F.I.R.E. sector, as well as what we call their “industry loyalty voting rate.”
Global Exchange researchers calculated that rate for each Congressperson by comparing how often their votes matched the F.I.R.E. sector’s lobbying position on the seven bills examined in the scorecard. As it turns out, the representatives who received the 25 biggest campaign contributions from the F.I.R.E. sector voted identically to Wall Street’s lobby position 73 percent of the time, while the average House “loyalty rate” was a mere 56 percent.
Many complex factors affect how legislators vote, but corporate sponsorship shouldn’t be one of them. Even on Wall Street’s gilded beltway, the F.I.R.E sector companies can’t literally buy political representation—at least, not yet. Instead, they use money to buy influence over voters to elect certain legislators, who they then use lobbyists to influence.
Most Americans value democracy and despise corruption, so a spotlight on this process could leave the F.I.R.E. sugar daddies powerless. The more toxic bank money candidates accept, the more vulnerable they are to having the source of their money exposed.
The goals of this project are not to tell anyone who to vote for, but to get everyone to follow the money; not to influence the outcome of any one election, but to spark dialogue about accountability and transparency, and to stop Wall Street from burning our priceless democracy; to together expose how Wall Street’s campaign money is toxic for democracy, and amplify the message that our democracy is not for sale.
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/meet-washington-sugar-daddies-who-keep-wall-st-flush-cash
Links:
[1] http://www.yesmagazine.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/hillary-lehr
[3] http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-tricks-of-the-trade-deals
[4] http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-ed-show/47454093#47454093
[5] http://www.globalexchange.org/sites/default/files/ED_LegislativeScorecard.pdf
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
The Bizarre, Unhealthy, Blinding Media Contempt for Julian Assange
Published on Thursday, August 23, 2012 by the Guardian/UK
The Bizarre, Unhealthy, Blinding Media Contempt for Julian Assange
It is possible to protect the rights of the complainants in Sweden and Assange's rights against political persecution, but a vindictive thirst for vengeance is preventing that.
by Glenn Greenwald
Earlier this week, British lawyer and legal correspondent for the New Statesman David Allen Green generated a fair amount of attention by announcing that he would use his objective legal expertise to bust what he called "legal myths about the Assange extradition." These myths, he said, are being irresponsibly spread by Assange defenders and "are like 'zombie facts' which stagger on even when shot down."
In addition to his other credentials, Green – like virtually the entire British press – is a long-time and deeply devoted Assange-basher, and his purported myth-busting was predictably regurgitated by those who reflexively grasp onto anything that reflects poorly on western establishmentarians' public enemy No1. It's really worth examining what Green argued to understand the behavior in which Assange detractors engage to advance this collective vendetta, and also to see how frequently blatant ideological agendas masquerade as high-minded, objective legal expertise.
But before getting to that, let us pause to reflect on a truly amazing and revealing fact, one that calls for formal study in several academic fields of discipline. Is it not remarkable that one of the very few individuals over the past decade to risk his welfare, liberty and even life to meaningfully challenge the secrecy regime on which the American national security state (and those of its obedient allies) depends just so happens to have become – long before he sought asylum from Ecuador – the most intensely and personally despised figure among the American and British media class and the British "liberal" intelligentsia?
In 2008 – two years before the release of the "collateral murder" video, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and the diplomatic cables – the Pentagon prepared a secret report which proclaimed WikiLeaks to be an enemy of the state and plotted ways to destroy its credibility and reputation. But in a stroke of amazing luck, Pentagon operatives never needed to do any of that, because the establishment media in the US and Britain harbor at least as much intense personal loathing for the group's founder as the US government does, and eagerly took the lead in targeting him. Many people like to posit the US national security state and western media outlets as adversarial forces, but here – as is so often the case – they have so harmoniously joined in common cause.
Whatever else is true, establishment media outlets show unlimited personal animus toward the person who, as a panel of judges put it when they awarded him the the 2011 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism, "has given the public more scoops than most journalists can imagine." Similarly, when the Australian version of the Pulitzers – the Walkley Foundation – awarded its highest distinction (for "Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism") to WikiLeaks in 2011, it cited the group's "courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency," and observed: "So many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime."
When it comes to the American media, I've long noted this revealing paradox. The person who (along with whomever is the heroic leaker) enabled "more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime" – and who was quickly branded an enemy by the Pentagon and a terrorist by high U.S. officials – is the most hated figure among establishment journalists, even though they are ostensibly devoted to precisely these values of transparency and exposing serious government wrongdoing. (This transparency was imposed not only on the US and its allies, but also some of the most oppressive regimes in the Arab world).
But the contempt is far more intense, and bizarrely personal, from the British press, much of which behaves with staggering levels of mutually-reinforcing vindictiveness and groupthink when it's time to scorn an outsider like Assange. On Tuesday, Guardian columnist Seumas Milne wrote a superb analysis of British media coverage of Assange, and observed that "the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting." Milne noted that to the British press, Assange "is nothing but a 'monstrous narcissist', a bail-jumping 'sex pest' and an exhibitionist maniac" – venom spewed at someone "who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything."
Indeed, the personalized nature of this contempt from self-styled sober journalists often borders on the creepy (when it's not wildly transgressing that border). Former New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller infamously quoted an email from a Times reporter claiming that Assange wore "filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles" and "smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days." On the very same day WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents showing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian deaths in the Iraq war and US complicity in torture by Iraqi forces, the New York Times front-paged an article purporting to diagnose Assange with a variety of psychological afflictions and concealed, malicious motives, based on its own pop-psychology observations and those of Assange's enemies ("erratic and imperious behavior", "a nearly delusional grandeur", "he is not in his right mind", "pursuing a vendetta against the United States").
A columnist for the Independent, Joan Smith, recently watched Assange's interview of Ecuadorean president Rafeal Correa and offered up this wisdom: "He's put on weight, his face is puffy and he didn't bother to shave before his interview with Correa." And perhaps most psychologically twisted of all: a team of New York Times reporters and editors last week, in its lead article about Ecuador's decision to grant asylum, decided it would be appropriate to include a quote from one of Assange's most dedicated enemies claiming that when the WikiLeaks founder was a visitor in his apartment, he "refused to flush the toilet during his entire stay" (faced with a barrage of mockery and disgust over their reporting on Assange's alleged toilet habits, the NYT sheepishly deleted that passage without comment).
It is difficult to think of anyone this side of Saddam Hussein who triggers this level of personalized, deeply ingrained hatred from establishment journalists. Few who spew this vitriol would dare speak with the type of personalized scorn toward, say, George Bush or Tony Blair – who actually launched an aggressive war that resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 innocent people and kidnapped people from around the globe with no due process and sent them to be tortured. The reaction Assange inspires among establishment media figures is really sui generis.
It is vital to note, as was just demonstrated, that this media contempt long pre-dates, and exists wholly independent of, the controversy surrounding the sex assault allegations in Sweden, and certainly long pre-dates his seeking of asylum from Ecuador. Indeed, given that he has not been convicted of anything, to assume Assange's guilt would be reprehensible – every bit as reprehensible as concluding that the allegations are a CIA ruse or that the complainants' allegations should be dismissed as frivolous or inherently untrustworthy.
It would be genuinely nice to think that the same British government that refused to extradite the mass rapist Augusto Pinochet has suddenly developed a devoted passion for ensuring that alleged sex assault offenders are brought to justice – just as it would be nice to believe that the sudden interest in denouncing Ecuador's press freedom record was driven by some newly discovered and authentic concern in the west for civil liberties protections in South America. But as Milne put it last night with great understatement: "such posturing looks increasingly specious." As he rhetorically asked:
"Can anyone seriously believe the dispute would have gone global, or that the British government would have made its asinine threat to suspend the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and enter it by force, or that scores of police would have surrounded the building, swarming up and down the fire escape and guarding every window, if it was all about one man wanted for questioning over sex crime allegations in Stockholm?"
Like those who suddenly discover the imperatives of feminism when it comes time to justify the war in Afghanistan, or those who become overnight advocates of gay rights when it comes time to demonize the regime in Tehran, or those who took a very recent interest in Ecuadorean press freedoms, these sex assault allegations -- as serious and deserving of legal resolution as they are -- are being cynically exploited as a political weapon by many who have long despised Assange for reasons entirely independent of this case.
* * * * *
There are several obvious reasons why Assange provokes such unhinged media contempt. The most obvious among them is competition: the resentment generated by watching someone outside their profession generate more critical scoops in a year than all other media outlets combined (see this brilliant 2008 post, in the context of the Clintons, about how professional and ego-based competition produces personal hatred like nothing else can).
Other causes are more subtle though substantive. Many journalists (and liberals) like to wear the costume of outsider-insurgent, but are, at their core, devoted institutionalists, faithful believers in the goodness of their society's power centers, and thus resent those (like Assange) who actually and deliberately place themselves outside of it. By putting his own liberty and security at risk to oppose the world's most powerful factions, Assange has clearly demonstrated what happens to real adversarial dissidents and insurgents – they're persecuted, demonized, and threatened, not befriended by and invited to parties within the halls of imperial power – and he thus causes many journalists to stand revealed as posers, servants to power, and courtiers.
Then there's the ideological cause. As one long-time British journalist told me this week when discussing the vitriol of the British press toward Assange: "Nothing delights British former lefties more than an opportunity to defend power while pretending it is a brave stance in defence of a left liberal principle." That's the warped mindset that led to so many of these self-styled liberal journalists to support the attack on Iraq and other acts of Western aggression in the name of liberal values. And it's why nothing triggers their rage like fundamental critiques of, and especially meaningful opposition to, the institutions of power to which they are unfailingly loyal.
* * * * *
With that context established, let us return to David Allen Green. The attacks on those who have defended Assange's extradition and asylum arguments has depended on the disgusting slander that such advocates are indifferent to the allegations of sexual assault made against him or, worse, are "rape apologists."
The reality is exactly the opposite. I have spoken to countless Assange defenders over the last couple of years and not a single one – literally not one – is dismissive of the need for those allegations in Sweden to be taken seriously and to be legally and fairly resolved. Typifying this view is Milne's column last night, which in the midst of scorning the attacks on Assange, embraced "the seriousness of the rape allegations made against Assange, for which he should clearly answer and, if charges are brought, stand trial."
That is the view of every Assange defender with a platform that I know of, including me (one can certainly find anonymous internet commenters, or the occasional named one, making actual, horrific rape apologist claims, but one can find stray advocates saying anything; imputing those views to Assange defenders generally would be like claiming that all Assange critics want to see him illegally shot in the head or encaged for life because some prominent American and other commentators have called for this).
Not only Assange defenders, but also his own lawyers and the Ecuadorean government, have worked relentlessly to ensure that he faces those allegations in Sweden. They have merely sought to do so in a way that protects him from extradition to the US to face espionage charges for his journalism – a threat that could send him to prison for life (likely in a torturous super-max facility), and a threat only the willfully blind could deny is serious and real.
In their New York Times op-ed this week, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone correctly argue that it is "the British and Swedish governments that stand in the way of [the sex assault] investigation, not Mr Assange." That's because, they note, Assange has repeatedly offered to be questioned by Swedish authorities in London, or to travel today to Sweden to face those allegations if he could be assured that his doing so would not result in his extradition to the US to face espionage charges.
Time and again, "Correa said Ecuador never intended to stop Assange from facing justice in Sweden. 'What we've asked for is guarantees that he won't be extradited to a third country,' he said." Both Britain and Sweden have steadfastly refused even to discuss any agreement that could safeguard both the rights of the complainants and Assange's rights not to be imprisoned for basic journalism.
These facts – and they are facts – pose a lethal threat to the key false narrative that Assange and his defenders are motivated by a desire to evade his facing the sex assault allegations in Sweden. So these facts need to be impugned, and that's where David Allen Green and his "myth-busting" legal expertise comes into play.
One myth Green purports to debunk is the notion that "the Swedes should interview Assange in London." This cannot be, Green argues, because "Assange is not wanted merely for questioning. He is wanted for arrest." He also echoes numerous other Assange critics by arguing that the "he-has-not-yet-been-charged" claim is a mere technical irrelevancy: the only reason this is true, he says, is because he must be in Sweden for that to happen.
But back in early 2011, Assange critics were telling a much different story. Back then, they were arguing that Assange was wildly overstating the danger he faced from extradition to Sweden because the investigation there was at such a preliminary stage and he was merely wanted for questioning. Indeed, here's what the very same David Allen Green wrote on 28 February 2011 when explaining the status of the investigation to his readers [my emphasis]:
"This extradition order does not necessarily mean, of course, that he will be extradited, still less that he will be charged, tried, or convicted. Assange may win an appeal of the extradition order, or Sweden may decide either not to continue or to interview him while he remains in England. However, unless some such external event intervenes, Assange will be shortly extradited to Sweden to be questioned about an allegation of rape, two allegations of sexual molestation, and an allegation of unlawful coercion."
Back when it suited Green, he emphasized that Assange has not been charged with any crime, that there is far from any certainty that he would be, and that extradition to Sweden is merely for him "to be questioned" on these allegations: exactly the "myths" and "zombie facts" which he now purports to bust. Moreover, Swedish law professor Marten Schultz, who strongly supports Assange's extradition to Sweden, has said the same [my emphasis]:
"The UK supreme court's decision means only that Assange will be transferred to Sweden for interrogation. It does not mean that he will be tried, or even charged. It is entirely possible that he will be transferred to Sweden, questioned, and released if the Swedish authorities find that there are insufficient grounds for prosecution. It is impossible – as it should be – to predict how the case will unfold."
Clearly, as Green himself used to acknowledge, Assange at this point is wanted for questioning in this case, and has not been charged. Once he's questioned, he might be charged, or the case might be dropped. That is what has made the Swedes' steadfast refusal to question him in England so mystifying, of such concern to Assange, and is the real reason that the investigation has thus far been obstructed. Indeed, Swedish legal expert Ove Bring has made clear, in the context of discussing Assange, that "under Swedish law it is possible to interrogate people abroad," but that Sweden is refusing to do so simply for reasons of "prestige" (he added: "If he goes to Sweden, is interrogated, then I expect the case would be dropped, as the evidence is not enough to charge him with a crime").
Then there's the very strange argument Green makes about why extradition to the US would be more easily accomplished if he's in Britain rather than Sweden. I've previously set out the reasons and supporting evidence showing the reverse is true and won't repeat those here, but let's look at what Green says to support his claim:
One can add that there is no evidence whatsoever that the United Kingdom would not swiftly comply with any extradition request from the United States; quite the reverse. Ask Gary McKinnon, or Richard O'Dwyer, or the NatWest Three.
The US has been seeking McKinnon's extradition from Britain for a full seven years and counting; O'Dwyer also remains in England and is the subject of a popular campaign to block his shipment to the U.S.; the NatWest Three were able to resist extradition to the US for four full years. These cases disprove, rather than prove, that an extradition demand from the US would be "swiftly complied with" in Britain. In contrast to the secretive Swedish judicial system, there is substantial public debate along with transparent (and protracted) judicial proceedings in Britain over extradition.
It is true, as Green notes, that the Swedish government cannot provide an iron-clad "guarantee" that Assange would not be extradited to the US. That's because it is Swedish courts, and not the government, that make the ultimate decision on extradition. But both the British and Swedish governments play an important role in any extradition proceeding: they take influential positions on whether extradition is legally warranted. Under Britain's extradition treaty, it must consent to the subsequent extradition of any individual it extradites (meaning its consent would be needed for Sweden to send Assange to the U.S.), while in Sweden, the government must formally opine on whether extradition should take place (some Swedes have made the case that the government's position would be dispositive).
At the very least, there is ample room for negotiation. Both the British and Swedish governments could – and should – take the position that to prosecute Assange under espionage statutes for acts of journalism would be political crimes that are not subject to their extradition treaties with the U.S. or are otherwise not cognizable extradition offenses. Rather than explore any of those possible grounds for agreement, both governments have simply refused to negotiate either with Assange's lawyers or the Ecuadorean government over any proposals to safeguard his rights. That refusal on the part of those governments – and not any desire to obstruct the investigation or evade facing those allegations – is what led the Ecuadoreans to conclude that asylum was necessary to protect Assange from political persecution.
The complainants in Sweden have the absolute right to have their serious allegations against Assange investigated and legally resolved. But Assange has the equally compelling right under international law and treaties to be free of political persecution: which is exactly what prosecuting him (and perhaps imprisoning him for life) in the US for WikiLeaks' disclosures would be.
It is vital that both sets of rights be safeguarded, not just one. The only just solution is one that protects both. Assange's lawyers and the Ecuadorians have repeatedly pursued arrangements to vindicate all substantial rights at stake so that he can travel to Sweden – today – to face those allegations while being protected against unjust extradition to the US. It is the refusal of the British and Swedish authorities even to consider any such proposals that have brought this situation to the unfortunate standstill it is in.
It is incredibly telling that media attacks on Assange do not even pay lip service to, let alone evince any actual interest in, the profound threats to press freedom that would come if he were extradited to and tried in the United States. In lieu of being informed about any of this, readers and viewers are bombarded with disturbing, and often quite disturbed, rants driven by unrestrained personal contempt. That contempt not only drowns out every important value at stake in this case, but also any regard for the basic facts.
* * *
UPDATE: Numerous people objected that I too readily conceded the point that Swedish courts, rather than the Swedish government, are the ultimate decision-makers on extradition requests, and the Swedish government therefore cannot provide Assange with a guarantee that he will not be extradited to the U.S. This article by a lawyer -- who fervently believes that Assange should be extradited to Sweden -- makes the case very compellingly that the Swedish government most certainly can provide such a guarantee if it chose to [my emphasis]:
Extradition procedures are typically of a mixed nature, where courts and governments share the final decision – it is not unknown for governments to reject an extradition request in spite of court verdict allowing it. . . .
Article 12 [of Sweden's extradition law] adds that the government may put conditions on its decision to accept an extradition request. The deciding body is thus the government, with an input by the Prosecutor general and a veto right given to the Supreme Court in case where the requested person doesn't accept to be extradited.
The article goes on to cite the Swedish extradition law to outline two possible outcomes where the target of an extradition request challenges its validity: (1) the Swedish supreme court rules that extradition is not legally permissible, in which case the Swedish government is not free to extradite; (2) the Swedish supreme court rules that extradition is legally permissible, in which case the Swedish government is free to decide that it will not extradite for policy or other prudential reasons. In other words, the Swedish judiciary has the right to block an extradition request on legal grounds, but it lacks the power to compel extradition; if the courts approve of the legal basis, the Swedish government still retains the authority to decide if extradition should take place.
As indicated, even if it were true that Swedish government was an unable to offer Assange a so-called "iron-clad guarantee" against extradition, there is still grounds to negotiate in order to have him travel to Sweden to face these allegations; given that the Swedish government clearly has, at the very least, a significant role to play in the process, its advanced position against Assange's extradition to the U.S. on the basis of WikiLeaks' journalistic disclosures would be significant. But there is at least a strong argument to make, if not an irrefutable one, that the Swedish government is able to offer precisely the guarantee that both Assange and Ecuadorean authorities have sought in order to enable him immediately to travel to Sweden to face the sex assault allegations against him. Independently, the British government is also clearly in a position to contribute to those assurances, given the need for its consent if extradition to the U.S. from Sweden is to take place.
If one wants to find a culprit for why these sex assault allegations are not being resolved the way they should be, the refusal of these two governments even to negotiate to secure Assange's clear rights against unjust extradition is the place to begin.
* * *
UPDATE II: For even more compelling evidence that the Swedish government is the final decision-maker in extradition matters and does indeed have the power to guarantee Assange that he would not be extradited to the U.S. based on his journalism, see the citations in Point 3 of this excellent reply to Green.
© 2012 The Guardian/UK
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His just-released book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/23-5
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
The Bizarre, Unhealthy, Blinding Media Contempt for Julian Assange
It is possible to protect the rights of the complainants in Sweden and Assange's rights against political persecution, but a vindictive thirst for vengeance is preventing that.
by Glenn Greenwald
Earlier this week, British lawyer and legal correspondent for the New Statesman David Allen Green generated a fair amount of attention by announcing that he would use his objective legal expertise to bust what he called "legal myths about the Assange extradition." These myths, he said, are being irresponsibly spread by Assange defenders and "are like 'zombie facts' which stagger on even when shot down."
In addition to his other credentials, Green – like virtually the entire British press – is a long-time and deeply devoted Assange-basher, and his purported myth-busting was predictably regurgitated by those who reflexively grasp onto anything that reflects poorly on western establishmentarians' public enemy No1. It's really worth examining what Green argued to understand the behavior in which Assange detractors engage to advance this collective vendetta, and also to see how frequently blatant ideological agendas masquerade as high-minded, objective legal expertise.
But before getting to that, let us pause to reflect on a truly amazing and revealing fact, one that calls for formal study in several academic fields of discipline. Is it not remarkable that one of the very few individuals over the past decade to risk his welfare, liberty and even life to meaningfully challenge the secrecy regime on which the American national security state (and those of its obedient allies) depends just so happens to have become – long before he sought asylum from Ecuador – the most intensely and personally despised figure among the American and British media class and the British "liberal" intelligentsia?
In 2008 – two years before the release of the "collateral murder" video, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and the diplomatic cables – the Pentagon prepared a secret report which proclaimed WikiLeaks to be an enemy of the state and plotted ways to destroy its credibility and reputation. But in a stroke of amazing luck, Pentagon operatives never needed to do any of that, because the establishment media in the US and Britain harbor at least as much intense personal loathing for the group's founder as the US government does, and eagerly took the lead in targeting him. Many people like to posit the US national security state and western media outlets as adversarial forces, but here – as is so often the case – they have so harmoniously joined in common cause.
Whatever else is true, establishment media outlets show unlimited personal animus toward the person who, as a panel of judges put it when they awarded him the the 2011 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism, "has given the public more scoops than most journalists can imagine." Similarly, when the Australian version of the Pulitzers – the Walkley Foundation – awarded its highest distinction (for "Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism") to WikiLeaks in 2011, it cited the group's "courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency," and observed: "So many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime."
When it comes to the American media, I've long noted this revealing paradox. The person who (along with whomever is the heroic leaker) enabled "more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime" – and who was quickly branded an enemy by the Pentagon and a terrorist by high U.S. officials – is the most hated figure among establishment journalists, even though they are ostensibly devoted to precisely these values of transparency and exposing serious government wrongdoing. (This transparency was imposed not only on the US and its allies, but also some of the most oppressive regimes in the Arab world).
But the contempt is far more intense, and bizarrely personal, from the British press, much of which behaves with staggering levels of mutually-reinforcing vindictiveness and groupthink when it's time to scorn an outsider like Assange. On Tuesday, Guardian columnist Seumas Milne wrote a superb analysis of British media coverage of Assange, and observed that "the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting." Milne noted that to the British press, Assange "is nothing but a 'monstrous narcissist', a bail-jumping 'sex pest' and an exhibitionist maniac" – venom spewed at someone "who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything."
Indeed, the personalized nature of this contempt from self-styled sober journalists often borders on the creepy (when it's not wildly transgressing that border). Former New York Times' executive editor Bill Keller infamously quoted an email from a Times reporter claiming that Assange wore "filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles" and "smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days." On the very same day WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents showing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian deaths in the Iraq war and US complicity in torture by Iraqi forces, the New York Times front-paged an article purporting to diagnose Assange with a variety of psychological afflictions and concealed, malicious motives, based on its own pop-psychology observations and those of Assange's enemies ("erratic and imperious behavior", "a nearly delusional grandeur", "he is not in his right mind", "pursuing a vendetta against the United States").
A columnist for the Independent, Joan Smith, recently watched Assange's interview of Ecuadorean president Rafeal Correa and offered up this wisdom: "He's put on weight, his face is puffy and he didn't bother to shave before his interview with Correa." And perhaps most psychologically twisted of all: a team of New York Times reporters and editors last week, in its lead article about Ecuador's decision to grant asylum, decided it would be appropriate to include a quote from one of Assange's most dedicated enemies claiming that when the WikiLeaks founder was a visitor in his apartment, he "refused to flush the toilet during his entire stay" (faced with a barrage of mockery and disgust over their reporting on Assange's alleged toilet habits, the NYT sheepishly deleted that passage without comment).
It is difficult to think of anyone this side of Saddam Hussein who triggers this level of personalized, deeply ingrained hatred from establishment journalists. Few who spew this vitriol would dare speak with the type of personalized scorn toward, say, George Bush or Tony Blair – who actually launched an aggressive war that resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 innocent people and kidnapped people from around the globe with no due process and sent them to be tortured. The reaction Assange inspires among establishment media figures is really sui generis.
It is vital to note, as was just demonstrated, that this media contempt long pre-dates, and exists wholly independent of, the controversy surrounding the sex assault allegations in Sweden, and certainly long pre-dates his seeking of asylum from Ecuador. Indeed, given that he has not been convicted of anything, to assume Assange's guilt would be reprehensible – every bit as reprehensible as concluding that the allegations are a CIA ruse or that the complainants' allegations should be dismissed as frivolous or inherently untrustworthy.
It would be genuinely nice to think that the same British government that refused to extradite the mass rapist Augusto Pinochet has suddenly developed a devoted passion for ensuring that alleged sex assault offenders are brought to justice – just as it would be nice to believe that the sudden interest in denouncing Ecuador's press freedom record was driven by some newly discovered and authentic concern in the west for civil liberties protections in South America. But as Milne put it last night with great understatement: "such posturing looks increasingly specious." As he rhetorically asked:
"Can anyone seriously believe the dispute would have gone global, or that the British government would have made its asinine threat to suspend the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and enter it by force, or that scores of police would have surrounded the building, swarming up and down the fire escape and guarding every window, if it was all about one man wanted for questioning over sex crime allegations in Stockholm?"
Like those who suddenly discover the imperatives of feminism when it comes time to justify the war in Afghanistan, or those who become overnight advocates of gay rights when it comes time to demonize the regime in Tehran, or those who took a very recent interest in Ecuadorean press freedoms, these sex assault allegations -- as serious and deserving of legal resolution as they are -- are being cynically exploited as a political weapon by many who have long despised Assange for reasons entirely independent of this case.
* * * * *
There are several obvious reasons why Assange provokes such unhinged media contempt. The most obvious among them is competition: the resentment generated by watching someone outside their profession generate more critical scoops in a year than all other media outlets combined (see this brilliant 2008 post, in the context of the Clintons, about how professional and ego-based competition produces personal hatred like nothing else can).
Other causes are more subtle though substantive. Many journalists (and liberals) like to wear the costume of outsider-insurgent, but are, at their core, devoted institutionalists, faithful believers in the goodness of their society's power centers, and thus resent those (like Assange) who actually and deliberately place themselves outside of it. By putting his own liberty and security at risk to oppose the world's most powerful factions, Assange has clearly demonstrated what happens to real adversarial dissidents and insurgents – they're persecuted, demonized, and threatened, not befriended by and invited to parties within the halls of imperial power – and he thus causes many journalists to stand revealed as posers, servants to power, and courtiers.
Then there's the ideological cause. As one long-time British journalist told me this week when discussing the vitriol of the British press toward Assange: "Nothing delights British former lefties more than an opportunity to defend power while pretending it is a brave stance in defence of a left liberal principle." That's the warped mindset that led to so many of these self-styled liberal journalists to support the attack on Iraq and other acts of Western aggression in the name of liberal values. And it's why nothing triggers their rage like fundamental critiques of, and especially meaningful opposition to, the institutions of power to which they are unfailingly loyal.
* * * * *
With that context established, let us return to David Allen Green. The attacks on those who have defended Assange's extradition and asylum arguments has depended on the disgusting slander that such advocates are indifferent to the allegations of sexual assault made against him or, worse, are "rape apologists."
The reality is exactly the opposite. I have spoken to countless Assange defenders over the last couple of years and not a single one – literally not one – is dismissive of the need for those allegations in Sweden to be taken seriously and to be legally and fairly resolved. Typifying this view is Milne's column last night, which in the midst of scorning the attacks on Assange, embraced "the seriousness of the rape allegations made against Assange, for which he should clearly answer and, if charges are brought, stand trial."
That is the view of every Assange defender with a platform that I know of, including me (one can certainly find anonymous internet commenters, or the occasional named one, making actual, horrific rape apologist claims, but one can find stray advocates saying anything; imputing those views to Assange defenders generally would be like claiming that all Assange critics want to see him illegally shot in the head or encaged for life because some prominent American and other commentators have called for this).
Not only Assange defenders, but also his own lawyers and the Ecuadorean government, have worked relentlessly to ensure that he faces those allegations in Sweden. They have merely sought to do so in a way that protects him from extradition to the US to face espionage charges for his journalism – a threat that could send him to prison for life (likely in a torturous super-max facility), and a threat only the willfully blind could deny is serious and real.
In their New York Times op-ed this week, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone correctly argue that it is "the British and Swedish governments that stand in the way of [the sex assault] investigation, not Mr Assange." That's because, they note, Assange has repeatedly offered to be questioned by Swedish authorities in London, or to travel today to Sweden to face those allegations if he could be assured that his doing so would not result in his extradition to the US to face espionage charges.
Time and again, "Correa said Ecuador never intended to stop Assange from facing justice in Sweden. 'What we've asked for is guarantees that he won't be extradited to a third country,' he said." Both Britain and Sweden have steadfastly refused even to discuss any agreement that could safeguard both the rights of the complainants and Assange's rights not to be imprisoned for basic journalism.
These facts – and they are facts – pose a lethal threat to the key false narrative that Assange and his defenders are motivated by a desire to evade his facing the sex assault allegations in Sweden. So these facts need to be impugned, and that's where David Allen Green and his "myth-busting" legal expertise comes into play.
One myth Green purports to debunk is the notion that "the Swedes should interview Assange in London." This cannot be, Green argues, because "Assange is not wanted merely for questioning. He is wanted for arrest." He also echoes numerous other Assange critics by arguing that the "he-has-not-yet-been-charged" claim is a mere technical irrelevancy: the only reason this is true, he says, is because he must be in Sweden for that to happen.
But back in early 2011, Assange critics were telling a much different story. Back then, they were arguing that Assange was wildly overstating the danger he faced from extradition to Sweden because the investigation there was at such a preliminary stage and he was merely wanted for questioning. Indeed, here's what the very same David Allen Green wrote on 28 February 2011 when explaining the status of the investigation to his readers [my emphasis]:
"This extradition order does not necessarily mean, of course, that he will be extradited, still less that he will be charged, tried, or convicted. Assange may win an appeal of the extradition order, or Sweden may decide either not to continue or to interview him while he remains in England. However, unless some such external event intervenes, Assange will be shortly extradited to Sweden to be questioned about an allegation of rape, two allegations of sexual molestation, and an allegation of unlawful coercion."
Back when it suited Green, he emphasized that Assange has not been charged with any crime, that there is far from any certainty that he would be, and that extradition to Sweden is merely for him "to be questioned" on these allegations: exactly the "myths" and "zombie facts" which he now purports to bust. Moreover, Swedish law professor Marten Schultz, who strongly supports Assange's extradition to Sweden, has said the same [my emphasis]:
"The UK supreme court's decision means only that Assange will be transferred to Sweden for interrogation. It does not mean that he will be tried, or even charged. It is entirely possible that he will be transferred to Sweden, questioned, and released if the Swedish authorities find that there are insufficient grounds for prosecution. It is impossible – as it should be – to predict how the case will unfold."
Clearly, as Green himself used to acknowledge, Assange at this point is wanted for questioning in this case, and has not been charged. Once he's questioned, he might be charged, or the case might be dropped. That is what has made the Swedes' steadfast refusal to question him in England so mystifying, of such concern to Assange, and is the real reason that the investigation has thus far been obstructed. Indeed, Swedish legal expert Ove Bring has made clear, in the context of discussing Assange, that "under Swedish law it is possible to interrogate people abroad," but that Sweden is refusing to do so simply for reasons of "prestige" (he added: "If he goes to Sweden, is interrogated, then I expect the case would be dropped, as the evidence is not enough to charge him with a crime").
Then there's the very strange argument Green makes about why extradition to the US would be more easily accomplished if he's in Britain rather than Sweden. I've previously set out the reasons and supporting evidence showing the reverse is true and won't repeat those here, but let's look at what Green says to support his claim:
One can add that there is no evidence whatsoever that the United Kingdom would not swiftly comply with any extradition request from the United States; quite the reverse. Ask Gary McKinnon, or Richard O'Dwyer, or the NatWest Three.
The US has been seeking McKinnon's extradition from Britain for a full seven years and counting; O'Dwyer also remains in England and is the subject of a popular campaign to block his shipment to the U.S.; the NatWest Three were able to resist extradition to the US for four full years. These cases disprove, rather than prove, that an extradition demand from the US would be "swiftly complied with" in Britain. In contrast to the secretive Swedish judicial system, there is substantial public debate along with transparent (and protracted) judicial proceedings in Britain over extradition.
It is true, as Green notes, that the Swedish government cannot provide an iron-clad "guarantee" that Assange would not be extradited to the US. That's because it is Swedish courts, and not the government, that make the ultimate decision on extradition. But both the British and Swedish governments play an important role in any extradition proceeding: they take influential positions on whether extradition is legally warranted. Under Britain's extradition treaty, it must consent to the subsequent extradition of any individual it extradites (meaning its consent would be needed for Sweden to send Assange to the U.S.), while in Sweden, the government must formally opine on whether extradition should take place (some Swedes have made the case that the government's position would be dispositive).
At the very least, there is ample room for negotiation. Both the British and Swedish governments could – and should – take the position that to prosecute Assange under espionage statutes for acts of journalism would be political crimes that are not subject to their extradition treaties with the U.S. or are otherwise not cognizable extradition offenses. Rather than explore any of those possible grounds for agreement, both governments have simply refused to negotiate either with Assange's lawyers or the Ecuadorean government over any proposals to safeguard his rights. That refusal on the part of those governments – and not any desire to obstruct the investigation or evade facing those allegations – is what led the Ecuadoreans to conclude that asylum was necessary to protect Assange from political persecution.
The complainants in Sweden have the absolute right to have their serious allegations against Assange investigated and legally resolved. But Assange has the equally compelling right under international law and treaties to be free of political persecution: which is exactly what prosecuting him (and perhaps imprisoning him for life) in the US for WikiLeaks' disclosures would be.
It is vital that both sets of rights be safeguarded, not just one. The only just solution is one that protects both. Assange's lawyers and the Ecuadorians have repeatedly pursued arrangements to vindicate all substantial rights at stake so that he can travel to Sweden – today – to face those allegations while being protected against unjust extradition to the US. It is the refusal of the British and Swedish authorities even to consider any such proposals that have brought this situation to the unfortunate standstill it is in.
It is incredibly telling that media attacks on Assange do not even pay lip service to, let alone evince any actual interest in, the profound threats to press freedom that would come if he were extradited to and tried in the United States. In lieu of being informed about any of this, readers and viewers are bombarded with disturbing, and often quite disturbed, rants driven by unrestrained personal contempt. That contempt not only drowns out every important value at stake in this case, but also any regard for the basic facts.
* * *
UPDATE: Numerous people objected that I too readily conceded the point that Swedish courts, rather than the Swedish government, are the ultimate decision-makers on extradition requests, and the Swedish government therefore cannot provide Assange with a guarantee that he will not be extradited to the U.S. This article by a lawyer -- who fervently believes that Assange should be extradited to Sweden -- makes the case very compellingly that the Swedish government most certainly can provide such a guarantee if it chose to [my emphasis]:
Extradition procedures are typically of a mixed nature, where courts and governments share the final decision – it is not unknown for governments to reject an extradition request in spite of court verdict allowing it. . . .
Article 12 [of Sweden's extradition law] adds that the government may put conditions on its decision to accept an extradition request. The deciding body is thus the government, with an input by the Prosecutor general and a veto right given to the Supreme Court in case where the requested person doesn't accept to be extradited.
The article goes on to cite the Swedish extradition law to outline two possible outcomes where the target of an extradition request challenges its validity: (1) the Swedish supreme court rules that extradition is not legally permissible, in which case the Swedish government is not free to extradite; (2) the Swedish supreme court rules that extradition is legally permissible, in which case the Swedish government is free to decide that it will not extradite for policy or other prudential reasons. In other words, the Swedish judiciary has the right to block an extradition request on legal grounds, but it lacks the power to compel extradition; if the courts approve of the legal basis, the Swedish government still retains the authority to decide if extradition should take place.
As indicated, even if it were true that Swedish government was an unable to offer Assange a so-called "iron-clad guarantee" against extradition, there is still grounds to negotiate in order to have him travel to Sweden to face these allegations; given that the Swedish government clearly has, at the very least, a significant role to play in the process, its advanced position against Assange's extradition to the U.S. on the basis of WikiLeaks' journalistic disclosures would be significant. But there is at least a strong argument to make, if not an irrefutable one, that the Swedish government is able to offer precisely the guarantee that both Assange and Ecuadorean authorities have sought in order to enable him immediately to travel to Sweden to face the sex assault allegations against him. Independently, the British government is also clearly in a position to contribute to those assurances, given the need for its consent if extradition to the U.S. from Sweden is to take place.
If one wants to find a culprit for why these sex assault allegations are not being resolved the way they should be, the refusal of these two governments even to negotiate to secure Assange's clear rights against unjust extradition is the place to begin.
* * *
UPDATE II: For even more compelling evidence that the Swedish government is the final decision-maker in extradition matters and does indeed have the power to guarantee Assange that he would not be extradited to the U.S. based on his journalism, see the citations in Point 3 of this excellent reply to Green.
© 2012 The Guardian/UK
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His just-released book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/23-5
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