Chan Lowe, Copyright 2011 Tribune Media Services
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Arrested in Germany, David Duke Begs Followers for Money
Globetrotting white supremacist David Duke is asking supporters to send money, and fast, to help him fight unspecified charges stemming from his arrest last Friday in Cologne, Germany.
In a message “composed in a moving Car!” and posted this morning on his website, the former Klan leader claims that he was on his way to deliver a “message of heritage and freedom” when German authorities arrested and imprisoned him “by a gross twisting of travel laws.”
Now, he says, he’s desperate.
“To fight this case will cost a lot of money, time and effort,” he wrote. “The legal system is just as money-driven as it is in the U.S. and I must support myself far from my home during this period, never knowing from one minute to the next when shall come the proverbial knock upon the door. … While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight.”
“My dear friends, I believe you will come through with great generosity even sacrifice at this time, even with all your personal needs during the Christmas season. … Perhaps you could copy this letter and post it on this and other threads so my message is heard by all those who have the inclination to help me in this pressing matter at this difficult time for me.”
Duke has butted heads with European authorities before. In 2009, he was arrested in Prague on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in the Czech Republic. He was expelled from the country, but charges against him were eventually dropped.
Yet despite the ease with which he avoided punishment for his Prague adventure, his newest plea for help should come as no surprise – for Duke is a veteran scam artist with a long history of persuading supporters to send him a buck. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud for ripping off hundreds of thousands of dollars from white supremacist donors who thought they were helping save the white race – money that actually went to finance Duke’s gambling habit. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined $10,000.
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/11/28/arrested-in-germany-david-duke-begs-followers-for-money
Iran Protesters Storm UK Embassy in Tehran
Protesters in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have broken into the UK embassy compound during a demonstration against sanctions imposed by Britain.
Militant students are reported to have ransacked offices, burned the British flag and smashed embassy windows.
The move comes after Iran resolved to reduce ties following the UK's decision to impose further sanctions on it.
Iran expressed "regret" over the attack on the embassy. The Foreign Office has summoned an Iranian diplomat in London.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain held the Iranian government "responsible for its failure" to protect the embassy "as it is required to do".
Mr Hague said the Iranian charge d'affaires had been summoned, adding: "Clearly there will be other, further, and serious consequences. I will make a statement updating Parliament on this tomorrow."
Mr Hague said all embassy staff and their dependants had been accounted for.
Newt Gingrich, The Man Who Changed Washington
The Gingrich campaign has now confirmed a longstanding business relationship that enabled his consulting group to receive between $1.6 and $1.8 million from mortgage giant Freddie Mac. But it wasn't for "lobbying," Newt Gingrich insists. It was for "strategic advice on a wide range of issues."
OK, but then doesn't the payment, AP's Tom Beaumont asked the former House speaker, just remind people that "your background comes from being a Washington insider?"
"It reminds people," Gingrich corrected Beaumont, "that I know a great deal about Washington." And as he continued, "If you want to change Washington, we just tried four [sic] years of amateur ignorance and it didn't work very well, so having some-body who knows Washington might be a really good thing."
Newt Gingrich is certainly right about that. There is no candidate for president who has had more experience in changing Washington than Gingrich. Indeed, there may be no American since James Madison who has had more of an effect in making the institution of Congress what it is today.
For as far too few remember, more than any other living American, it is Newt Gingrich who gave us the current version of our hopelessly dysfunctional Congress — an institution which, according to a New York Times/CBS poll, now has the confidence of 9% of the American people. That monster is his baby, and no one should deny him his parental bragging rights.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/19/opinion/lessig-gingrich-change-washington/index.html
Bush and Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes for Iraq Attack
A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation’s former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of “crimes against peace” and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal — which featured an American law professor as one of its chief prosecutors — has no formal enforcement power, but was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.
http://politics.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq_attack
Monday, November 28, 2011
No Explosion in Isfahan: Iran Official
A top Iranian official has rejected media reports about an explosion being heard in the central city of Isfahan.
Mohammad-Mehdi Ismaili, Isfahan governor's political and security deputy, said on Monday that report was completely baseless and fabricated, IRNA reported.
He added that the Isfahan governor would follow up on the report.
Ismaili made the remarks after certain media outlets reported that a powerful blast had been heard in Isfahan on Monday afternoon.
An official from Isfahan emergency services, Masoud Anayeb, rejected the report as well, saying that there have been no reports of an explosion in the city.
Mystery Explosion Rocks Iran City
A large explosion has been reported in the Iranian city of Isfahan as the regime issued conflicting reports apparently designed to deny any suggestions of a sabotage attack on its nuclear facilities.
Officials gave varying accounts of a "huge explosion" in the ancient city, which hosts one of Iran's main facilities for refining uranium in its nuclear programme.
While some sources told news agencies there had been a blast on military facilities, others said there had been a fireball at a petrol station.
Residents of the city were independently telling relatives and friends overseas that the city had been shaken by a massive blast in the early afternoon.
Isfahan is home to Iran's largest facility for research and development of ballistic missiles. Multiple reports said the blast did not emanate from the nuclear facility.
Alireza Zakeri, the provincial governor of Isfahan, was quoted as saying that the blast took place during military exercises at a military airbase.
Biggest Recipient of ‘Obamacare’? Texas
The first rule of asking for extra federal dollars in Texas is to never make it seem like you are asking for extra federal dollars.
For Gov. Rick Perry, this is a tricky line to walk. Because as much as the Republican presidential candidate bashes the federal government in his campaign speeches, Texas gets a lot of money from the feds — and a lot of it is going to the health care system he insists Texas can handle on its own.
Perry has repeatedly decried the spending culture of Washington, railing against both President Barack Obama’s health care law and the federal stimulus. But as it happens, Texas has taken a lot of money from both.
More than $380 million in early grants and other aid from the federal health law have already gone to businesses and agencies in the Lone Star State, according to figures from the Department of Health and Human Services, and Texas ended up with $17 billion from the stimulus.
Now, the state is waiting for final approval of a new waiver from federal Medicaid rules that could allow the state to draw down an additional $12 billion in funds from the federal government.
And that’s before the main parts of the Affordable Care Act even kick in, bringing billions of dollars to Texas in extra Medicaid funds and subsidies to help people buy private coverage through a new health insurance exchange.
If the law survives its upcoming review by the Supreme Court, its expansion of Medicaid alone could cost the federal government anywhere from $53 billion to $67 billion in aid to Texas by 2019, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
That’s more than any other state would get under that part of the law. The only other state that comes close is California, which would get between $45 billion and $55 billion in federal Medicaid funds.
“The only word that can describe this is hypocrisy,” said Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman. “These days, federal dollars might as well be counterfeit, they are so dirty — but Texas would not survive without them.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/nov/28/biggest-recipient-obamacare-texas
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Understanding The History And Purpose Of FOX News
You’d think a thing like FOX couldn’t happen in the United States. Although they’re free to be crazy and free to support the Republican Party, you’d think Americans would be too smart to fall for the made-up outrages, dishonest reporting and relentless appeal to our meaner nature. Unfortunately, many Americans are not as smart as we used to assume: a huge swath of Americans (especially elderly white Southerners) believe FOX is just another news media outlet. They aren’t.
What is FOX? Pensitore Review (8-18-09) pulled no punches in answering that question: “ FOX News is indisputably the most popular cable news channel. And yet in 13 years, Fox has never broken a story. That’s okay, because it is not in the news business. It is in the news-shaping business. Its programming is an admixture of right-wing propaganda and fear-porn for feeble-minded paranoiacs, served up by spokesmodels who have no clue what they are reading.”
Whew! Could that be true? I report/You decide:
Nixon White House aide Roger Ailes in the 1970′s created fake news stories that favored President Nixon. He shipped these pre-mixed video packages to TV stations around the country at the expense of rightwing extremist Joseph Coors. It was all b.s. all the time, but the TV stations, pretending they had a correspondent in Washington, ran this propaganda as straight news. Now that Ailes runs FOX News, his goals are the same: to spread republicanism by altering the news.
FOX is a “relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system” ~Jon Stewart
“They’re a Republican brand. They’re an extension of the Republican Party with some exceptions” ~Larry King
”[Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news organization like CNN is.” ~Anita Dunn
There are thousands of examples of FOX not just “leaning” in a particular direction on an issue… but actively changing around the words and meanings of interviews to make them seem to say the opposite of what the person interviewed actually said; of lies about what happened; of incorrect graphics…for example, calling Congressman Mark Foley a Democrat when he got caught in gay chatter with pages and calling Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a Republican when there was an outpouring of sympathy for her after she got shot.
FOX took a sparsely-attended tea-party rally in Washington and spliced in video of a heavily-attended event of an entirely different nature from months earlier.
FOX has gotten caught using image manipulation software to edit the appearance of people they don’t like to make them appear more sinister.
FOX alters poll results to mislead its viewers; in one case, their massacre of a Rasmussen poll on climate change ended up with a poll number of 120%–mathematically impossible, of course, except in FOX world.
On 4-24-09… White House correspondent Wendell Goler cropped a comment by Obama and took it out of context — effectively reversing the statement’s meaning — to falsely suggest that Obama supports creating a health care system “like the European countries.”
A 2010 Ohio State University study of public misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” found that viewers who relied on Fox News were 66% more likely to believe incorrect rumors than those with “low reliance” on Fox News ~Wikipedia
A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes showed 67% of Fox viewers believed that the “U.S. has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization” (He wasn’t. He hated, feared and banned them, but you’d never know that by watching FOX).
Wait, it gets worse: For all other networks and news sources, the MORE you watch them, the MORE you know about the actual facts. Those who view CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, & NPR the MOST, have the BEST grasp of the FACTS. With FOX it – is- the – opposite!! Which is what gave birth to the mocking slogan: THE MORE YOU WATCH FOX, THE LESS YOU KNOW.
In the summer of 2003, 34% of Americans who did not follow the news very closely believed evidence had been found that linked Iraq with al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion. 42% of people who were moderate consumers of FOX news had that opinion. Among those who “watched FOX News very closely” … that number was 80% !! ~Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 118, #4 THE MORE YOU WATCH FOX, THE LESS YOU KNOW!
FOX News’ Happening Now cropped clips of Obama from an April 3 speech in France to falsely suggest that Obama only criticized the United States. In doing so, Happening Now joined conservative commentators and Fox News hosts who have cropped or misrepresented Obama’s overseas remarks to falsely suggest, in the words of host Sean Hannity, that Obama was “blam[ing] America first” and, more broadly, that Obama’s earlier overseas trip constituted an “apology tour.”
Fox News presented a clip of Joe Biden criticizing John McCain’s “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” statement…. Problem is, this was something Biden was QUOTING…from SIX MONTHS EARLIER… but it was edited by FOX to make it seem that Biden was stating it as his own opinion. The bogus clip was introduced by Live Desk co-host Martha MacCallum as comments Biden had made in interviews THIS WEEKEND.
FOX pushed the bogus stat that cap-and-trade would cost “every American family $1,761 annually.” PolitiFact.com has labeled the statistic false and noted that the talking point has been pushed by Republicans.
On 9/30/09 FOX Gregg Jarrett said on the air that the Obama Department of Justice “thinks it’s OK to intimidate white people, not OK to intimidate black people at the polls.”
”If we went back … to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and a something called ACORN.” ~Anita Dunn
A 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation survey on U.S. misperceptions about health care reform found that Fox News viewers scored lower for factual knowledge than other news viewers – Wikipedia
It’s against the law to lie on television in Canada. Canadian conservatives tried to change that law so FOX could broadcast in Canada. They were unable to get the law changed, so FOX does not operate in Canada!
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/26/understanding-the-history-and-purpose-of-fox-news
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Baptist Church Leaders Cover-Up Sex Scandal
In Colorado, two pastors, a former principal and a teacher have been arrested by the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in a sexual assault case involving a 15 year-old boy.
The alleged sexual abuse involved a teacher at Hilltop Baptist School. First reported in December 2010, the police say that the boy was in a sexual relationship with a female teacher in 2007 and 2008.
Terah Allyn Rawlings, 32, is charged with eight counts of sexual assault on a child by a person in position of trust and obscenity-promotion.
Franklin “Wayne” Knight, 63, is the senior pastor at Hilltop Baptist Church and former superintendent of Hilltop Baptist School. He is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect and accessory to a crime. He is also the uncle to Terah Allyn Rawlings.
Raymond “Allen” Knight, 57, is the associate pastor of Hilltop Baptist Church and former athletic director at Hilltop Baptist School. He is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect. He is also Terah Allyn Rawlings' father.
Jan Ocvirk, 51, is the former principal of Hilltop Baptist School. She is charged with failure to report child abuse or neglect.
The alleged relationship occurred in the fall of 2007 and ended when the boy broke it off in the summer of 2008. The two allegedly had sex for the first time in her vehicle in an apartment parking lot. The boy told his friend and showed him pictures of the teacher mostly topless, allegedly.
The pastor of the church, according to the grand jury report, was told about the sexual relationship and did not report it to the police and discouraged other witnesses from going to the police. The pastor allegedly told members of the congregation in effect that they would be expelled from the church if they told police.
The other arrested leaders of the church are alleged to have participated one way of the other with the alleged cover-up. From their own Bible, these leaders need to consider that the all liars will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/baptist-church-leaders-cover-up-sex
Friday, November 25, 2011
Naomi Wolf: The Shocking Truth about the Crackdown on Occupy
The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality
US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.
To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.
I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.
That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.
The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.
For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).
In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.
But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.
Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On
The People’s Library at Zuccotti Park—a collection of more than 5,000 donated books of every genre and subject, all free for the taking—was created not only to serve the Occupy Wall Street protesters; it was meant to provide knowledge and reading pleasure for the wider public as well, including residents of Lower Manhattan. It was also a library to the world at large, since many visitors to the park stopped by the library to browse our collection, to donate books of their own and to take books for themselves.
At about 2:30 am on November 15, the People’s Library was destroyed by the NYPD, acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With no advance notice, an army of police in riot gear raided the park, seized everything in it and threw it all into garbage trucks and dumpsters. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s Twitter promise that the library was safely stored and could be retrieved, only about 1,100 books were recovered, and some of those are in unreadable condition. Four library laptops were also destroyed, as well as all the bookshelves, storage bins, stamps and cataloging supplies and the large tent that housed the library.
For the past six weeks I have been living and working as a librarian in the People’s Library, camping out on the ground next to it. I’m an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and I’ve chosen to spend my sabbatical at Occupy Wall Street to participate in the movement and to build and maintain the collection of books at the People’s Library. I love books—reading them, writing in them, arranging them, holding them, even smelling them. I also love having access to books for free. I love libraries and everything they represent. To see an entire collection of donated books, including many titles I would have liked to read, thoughtlessly ransacked and destroyed by the forces of law and order was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life. My students in Pittsburgh struggle to afford to buy the books they need for their courses. Our extensive collection of scholarly books and journals alone would have sufficed to provide reading materials for dozens of college classrooms. With public libraries around the country fighting to survive in the face of budget cuts, layoffs and closings, the People’s Library has served as a model of what a public library can be: operated for the people and by the people.
During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS librarian, read poems from the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com) aloud directly into the faces of riot police. As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us. The next day, an officer who was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen how touched he was by the poetry, how moved he was to see that we cared enough about words and books that we would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend our love of books and the wisdom they contain.
At 6 pm on November 15, a group of writers and supporters of the People’s Library appeared at the reopened park carrying books, and within minutes we received around 200 donations. All night and into the next day folks stopped by to donate to and take from the collection. Because the new rules of the park forbid us from lying down or leaving anything there, Stephen and I stayed up all night to protect the books until other librarians came to take over for us. Frustrated and exhausted, but still exhilarated and eager to maintain the momentum of the movement, we kept the People’s Library open all day in the pouring rain, storing books in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry.
Then at 7:30 pm on November 16, the People’s Library was again raided and thrown in the trash—this time by a combination of police and Brookfield Properties’ sanitation team. The NYPD first barricaded the library by lining up in front of it, forming an impenetrable wall of cops. An officer then announced through a bullhorn that we should come and collect our books, or they would be confiscated and removed. Seconds later, they began dumping books into trash bins that they had wheeled into the park for that purpose. As they were throwing out the books, a fellow OWS librarian asked one of the NYPD patrolmen why they were doing this. His answer: “I don’t know.”
Five minutes after it started, the raid was over and the People’s Library’s collection was once again sitting in a pile of garbage. Yet just as the trash bins were being carted off, a man stepped out of the crowd with a book in his hand to donate to us: Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We joyously accepted and cataloged it, placing it on display under a new sign for the library that we made right then on a blank sheet of paper. A true people’s library, after all, doesn’t depend on any particular number of books, since it’s ultimately about the way those books are collected and lent out to the public.
We’re still accepting donations and lending books just as we always have, but we’ve reorganized ourselves somewhat. We now have three mobile units staffed by OWS librarians, which we can take anywhere we want. For the November 17 Day of Action, we made sure the People’s Library was there to supply books to anyone who wanted them. All day long, OWS librarians walked among the crowds shouting, “The People’s Library 3.0, mobile and in the streets!” For me, it was easily the most rewarding day in the six weeks I’ve been with the movement. The people we met at our mobile units—Occupiers from New York and other states, friends of the People’s Library, tourists—went out of their way to express their joy that we were still here. They also struggled to articulate their feelings of loss, frustration, anger, disgust and outrage over the seizure and destruction of the library. All we could say in response was, “We’re here to stay! Please take a book! They belong to you!” A group of eight OWS librarians even started a new chant: “Whose books? Your books!” It quickly caught fire with the other marchers.
Libraries are where we learn about things that are new to us. Their books broaden our perspectives, change the way we see the world and, at the most basic level, provide us with free and open access to knowledge and information. Over the two months that the People’s Library has been in operation at Zuccotti Park, we librarians have come to see how vital this mission is to the enrichment of our broader society. What’s more, in the course of our day-to-day work there, we had—and are still having—the best time of our lives. The library provides a space of dialogue, creativity, intellectual and cultural exchange and personal growth. When freshmen and sophomores in college ask me, “What should I be reading to understand what this movement is all about?” I see it as an opening for a great conversation. And when they come back to the library to return the books they took, I love to hear about the new horizons that the books helped to open for them.
Although we often shout, “This is what democracy looks like!” on our marches, it’s also something we can say every day to those who pay a visit to the OWS library. In fact, it’s something that the People’s Library, by its very presence—in any location, in any form, with any number of books—is perfectly capable of saying for itself.
http://www.thenation.com/article/164766/peoples-library-occupy-wall-street-lives
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Campaign Seeks Repeal of Alabama’s Harsh Immigration Law
U.S. congressional leaders and pro-immigrant activists rallied here to demand the repeal of Alabama’s harsh immigration law, a measure one lawmaker said “deserves to be placed on the trash heap of history.”
Gathering Monday night at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, a center of the black civil rights struggle in the 1960s, lawmakers along with civic and religious leaders said that HB 56 does not belong in the United States of the 21st century.
The activists launched a campaign under the slogan “One Family, One Alabama,” promoted by the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, amid applause and the shouting of “Yes we can!” and “We are Alabama!”
More than 3,000 people gathered at the rally inside and outside the church as part of an incipient movement to end discrimination against Alabama’s undocumented, most of them Hispanics.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who led a delegation of congressmen, was received as a hero soon after the visiting lawmakers concluded a hearing at Birmingham city hall.
In a statement to Efe, both Gutierrez and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, said they will fight in the streets and in the courts until HB 56 is abolished.
“We can’t go back to the past, and we’ll fight until this law is annulled,” Gutierrez said, adding that the testimonies collected Monday will serve “to raise awareness about how harmful this law is.”
During the hearing, the legislators listened to testimonies from state officials, school administrators, parents, teachers, students and activists about the impact of the law, which went into effect Sept. 28.
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) told Efe that the undocumented pay taxes and contribute to society and their persecution in Alabama is not only “dehumanizing” but also “a violation of civil rights and a humanitarian crisis.”
“It is a story that we have unfortunately seen in other times and must not be repeated,” Clarke said.
“HB 56 has devastated Alabama’s immigrant community. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this law has unleashed a human tragedy in Alabama,” Mary Bauer, director of legal affairs at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said.
The congressional delegation focused on the HB 56 provision that allows police to demand proof of legal status of anyone detained and which, according to activists, makes discrimination based on accent or physical appearance legal.
Such was the case of a German manager at the Mercedes-Benz auto assembly plant that has brought thousands of jobs to Alabama, who was detained last Friday because his rental car lacked the required license plate.
The executive was freed when he was able to show his driver’s license and his visa.
Federal courts have blocked several of the more controversial articles of HB 56 while their constitutionality is being reviewed – one of them requires public schools to ascertain the immigration status of new foreign students.
HB 56 has been criticized by businessmen who are losing employees and customers, and Republican state Sen. Gerald Dial is leading a group of legislators who are trying to modify the law, acknowledging that it “has had consequences we didn’t see coming.” EFE
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=446985&CategoryId=12395
Pregnant Woman Miscarries After Being Sprayed With Pepper Spray
"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'"
At that point, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.
She was fine for a couple days, until she started feeling sick.
Jennifer went to the doctor and found out her baby had no heartbeat. "They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/pregnant-woman-miscarries-after-being-sprayed-with
UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Once Involved in Anti-Gay Lawsuit
The riot-clad police officer who pepper sprayed a row of peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters at a California university last week is a retired U.S. Marines sergeant twice honored for his police work on campus.
Lt. John Pike started working for the University of California, Davis police force in 2001. Now, as one of four lieutenants, he supervises more than one-third of the force including the investigations unit.
Pike has been honored twice for meritorious service, including a 2006 incident when he decided against using pepper spray against a patient in the campus hospital who was threatening his colleagues with scissors.
But an alleged anti-gay slur by Pike also figured in a discrimination lawsuit a former police officer filed against the department, which ended in a $240,000 settlement in 2008.
The footage of Pike pepper spraying students has set off a debate about how far law enforcement can and should go to disperse peaceful demonstrators
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57329900/uc-davis-pepper-spray-cop-once-lauded
Texas Court Suspends Judge Taped Beating Daughter
Judge William Adams, who made national headlines after the release of a 2004 video of him beating his then-teenage daughter, has been suspended by the Texas Supreme Court.
The reason for the action was not mentioned in an order of suspension that was made public Tuesday.
Adams, a court-at-law judge in Aransas County, was roundly criticized when his now-adult daughter posted online a video of him beating her with a belt when she was 16.
The video also showed the judge cursing and berating Hillary Adams.
Adams was punishing the girl for using the Internet "to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time," Hillary Adams wrote on the web posting.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/23/justice/texas-beating-video/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
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