Saturday, July 13, 2013

‘Two American Families’






Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of these two middle-class families — one black, one white — as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. He first met the Stanleys and Neumanns when they were featured in his 1990 documentary Minimum Wages: The New Economy. The families were revisited in 1995 for Living on the Edge, and again in 2000 for Surviving the Good Times.
Bill Moyers revisited his reports on the Stanleys and Neumanns and talked about issues raised with authors Barbara Miner and Barbara Garson on the July 5 episode of Moyers & Company, “Surviving the New American Economy.”

Wal-Mart to DC: We'll Skip Town Before We Pay a Living Wage

Wal-Mart threatens to abandon Washington DC if living wage bill passes. Communities say 'good riddance!'

- Sarah Lazare

(Photo: Techno Buffalo)Wal-Mart executives claim they will slam the brakes on plans to open six mega-stores in Washington DC if the city council passes a living-wage bill that would force billion dollar retailers to pay workers at least $12.50 an hour.
Wal-Mart officials spread the 'threat' in a massive Tuesday public relations blitz, reaching out to city council members and publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post.
The PR maneuvers appear to be timed to influence a Washington DC city council final decision Wednesday on a 'living-wage' bill that would mandate that city retailers—with buildings greater than 75,000 square feet and with corporate sales over one billion dollars—pay an elevated minimum wage.
Wal-Mart general manager Alex Barren charged that the local bill is "discriminatory" and "discourages investment in Washington."
Community groups scoff at the large multinational's public tantrum at the elevated minimum wage, in a city beset with severe unemployment, poverty and wage inequality. Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director of community organization Empower DC, told Common Dreams:
We know that the cost of housing in this city has become so high that someone working at minimum wage would have to work 140 hours a week to afford the average market rate unit. They would have to earn $29 an hour to afford average rate at 40 hours. Pay of $12.50 is very little to ask, in context of how much [Wal-Mart] would earn and draw out of our city to send to their corporate headquarters.
Many Washington DC community members and workers—who deride the company's discriminatory employment and development practices and atrocious human rights record—would be happy to see the retailer go.
"We have opposed Wal-Mart from beginning because of their poverty wages, horrible healthcare, efforts to prevent workers from organizing and unionizing, and because of the Walden family's dedication to using money and power to influence other kinds of harmful policies like promoting privatization of public education," Norouzi declared.
"Furthermore, the building of six Wal-Mart stores would spell out the end of black-owned businesses in our city."
A large coalition of unions and community organizations along with Washington DC Jobs with Justice have been mobilizing for months to win a boosted minimum wage. Some local organizers suspect Wal-Mart is bluffing and worry that local city officials with close ties to the multinational corporation will undermine the living wage bill.

In 'Chilling' Ruling, Chevron Granted Access to Activists' Private Internet Data

"Sweeping" subpoena violates rights of those who spoke out against oil giant's devastating actions in Ecuador

- Lauren McCauley

 

Following their guilty sentence for the dumping of 18.5bn gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron is amassing the personal information of the environmentalists and attorneys who fought against them in an effort to prove 'conspiracy.' (Photo: Rainforest Action Network/ cc/ Flickr)The US government is not the only entity who, with judicial approval, is amassing massive amounts of personal information against their so-called enemies.
A federal judge has ruled to allow Chevron, through a subpoena to Microsoft, to collect the IP usage records and identity information for email accounts owned by over 100 environmental activists, journalists and attorneys.
The oil giant is demanding the records in an attempt to cull together a lawsuit which alleges that the company was the victim of a conspiracy in the $18.2 billion judgment against it for dumping 18.5 billion gallons of oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon, causing untold damage to the rainforest.
The "sweeping" subpoena was one of three issued to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.
"Environmental advocates have the right to speak anonymously and travel without their every move and association being exposed to Chevron," said Marcia Hofmann, Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who—along with environmental rights group EarthRights International (ERI)—had filed a motion last fall to "quash" the subpoenas.
"These sweeping subpoenas create a chilling effect among those who have spoken out against the oil giant's activities in Ecuador," she added at the time.
According to ERI, the subpoena demands the personal information about each account holder as well as the IP addresses associated with every login to each account over a nine-year period. "This could allow Chevron to determine the countries, states, cities or even buildings where the account-holders were checking their email," they write, "so as to 'infer the movements of the users over the relevant period and might permit Chevron to makes inferences about some of the user’s professional and personal relationships.'"
In their statement about the ruling, ERI notes that the argument given by presiding US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan—who was previously accused of prejudice against the Ecuadorians and their lawyers—was as "breathtaking as the subpoena itself." They continue:
According to Judge Kaplan, none of the account holders could benefit from First Amendment protections since the account holders had “not shown that they were U.S. citizens.”
Now, let’s break this down. The account-holders in this case were proceeding anonymously, which the First Amendment permits. Because of this, Judge Kaplan was provided with no information about the account holders’ residency or places of birth. It is somewhat amazing then, that Judge Kaplan assumed that the account holders were not US citizens. As far as I know, a judge has never before made this assumption when presented with a First Amendment claim. We have to ask then: on what basis did Judge Kaplan reach out and make this assumption?

Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower Gives Advice to Snowden

"Everyone is corrupt, I've come to learn."
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
 
John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who blew the whistle on Bush’s torture program and is now in prison, sent an open letter to Edward Snowden last week warning him not to trust the FBI.
“DO NOT,” Kiriakou wrote, “under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI. FBI agents will lie, trick, and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not – supporters, well-wishers, and friends – all the while wearing wires to record your out-of-context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy; it’s part of the problem, not the solution.”
These are the words of a registered Republican who voted for Gary Johnson, whom the Rosenberg Fund for Children denied a grant, informing him that he wasn’t “liberal enough,” Kiriakou says, for the award — and who last year received a birthday card from Jerry Falwell Jr.
Kiriakou is the first CIA veteran to be imprisoned. It was after he blew the whistle on Bush’s torture program that the CIA, FBI and Justice Department came down on him, at first charging him with aiding the enemy and later convicting him of disclosing the identities of undercover colleagues at the CIA.
The FBI raided his house in the process. They took his computers. They also took his family photos because, they said, he could have embedded secret messages in them.
“I did not start this thing with the idea that I was going to be a whistle-blower,” Kiriakou told Salon in December, two months before being sent off to a low-security prison in Loretto, Pa., with a 30-month sentence.
I interviewed Kiriakou for about an hour and half at that time, a couple of months before he went to prison, waiting to publish it until he was well into serving his sentence. The idea was to outline the slope of his descent – his journey from the powerful to the powerless.
“In this weird, roundabout way,” he told me then, “the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA made me the anti-torture guy, which I never set out to be … But over the years,” despite the initial intentions, “my feelings have grown stronger and stronger” against torture, “that torture is not right under any circumstances.”
Recruited by the CIA while in graduate school, Kiriakou spent most of his life on the side of the establishment, leading raids against top al-Qaida officials in Pakistan as the chief of counterterrorism operations, including the one in which Abu Zubaydah was captured.
He had said in an ABC interview with Brian Ross that al-Qaida members “hate us more than they love life,” that they wanted to kill every American and every Jew because, he said, it’s just who they are.
That was also the interview in which Kiriakou pissed off the power establishment, becoming the whistle-blower he had never set out to be. He was on Ross’ show defending himself against allegations that he, personally, had tortured Zubaydah. But what he didn’t know was that torture as a state policy had never been confirmed in any official capacity, even though everyone in Washington knew about it.
Five years before, in 2002, Kiriakou had never heard of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” He’d just left Greece where he was doing counterterrorism work when the CIA decided to move him to a different office in Pakistan. In the interim, a fellow CIA officer approached Kiriakou and said that they were going to use some of these interrogation techniques on Zubaydah.

Snowden Calls Out for Justice and Support: 'I Did What I Believed Right'

NSA whistleblower officially accepts all asylum offers, and asks for continued support from international community and human rights campaigners

- Jon Queally

Edward Snowden along with Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks (left) at a meeting with human rights campaigners in Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Friday. (Photograph: Tanya Lokshina/Human Rights Watch)"I did the right thing."
That's what NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Friday at a meeting held at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow where he sat down with representatives from international human rights groups to explain his case and ask for their support.
"I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing," Snowden said to those gathered at the meeting.
"I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice." –Edward Snowden
"I did not seek to enrich myself," he said. "I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice."
"That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly," Snowden continued, "but... I have no regrets."
In addition, Snowden clarified that his asylum status remained perilous. Though he formally accepted all offers of asylum that have been granted him so far—including Russia's—Snowdent said that until he can travel without fear the US will attempt to capture him, his rights are being unlawfully abridged.
"As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law," he said, making a clear reference to the forced landing of Bolivian President Evo Morales' airplane earlier this month. "This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights."
Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International's Moscow office, was at the meeting and said his organization was please to reiterate its previously stated support for Snowden in person.
“We will continue to pressure governments to ensure his rights are respected - this includes the unassailable right to claim asylum wherever he may choose," Nikitin said. “What he has disclosed is patently in the public interest and as a whistleblower his actions were justified. He has exposed unlawful sweeping surveillance programmes that unquestionably interfere with an individual’s right to privacy."
He said that US behavior so far has been an affront to international protections for asylum seekers and an attack on the freedom of expression.
“Instead of addressing or even owning up to these blatant breaches, the US government is more intent on persecuting him. Attempts to pressure governments to block his efforts to seek asylum are deplorable,” he concluded.
Common Dreams has posted his full statement here, but the Guardian provided this breakdown of key points (bolding theirs):
• He said that his revelations of his professional “capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications, anyone’s communications, at any time” had drawn attention to “a serious violations of the law”, under the US constitution and the universal declaration of human rights. He hit back at US claims that secret court rulings legalised such surveillance, saying: “These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done.”
He invoked the second world war and the crimes of the Nazis by claiming he was acting according to principles set down at the Nuremburg trials, namely that individuals have a duty to humanity over and above their duty to their country. “individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring,” he said.
Snowden said that he had not aimed to enrich himself by passing on his secrets, and nor had he “partnered” with any foreign government to guarantee his safety.
• He said the US had violated international laws in putting pressure on other countries not to take him in, something he said represented a threat to “the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum”.
• He said nations including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador had offered him asylum and said he accepted all of the offers and any others he may be given in the future. Referring specifically to Venezuela, he said his “asylee status” was now formal and said no country had a right to limit his right to take up that offer. But because of the “unlawful threat” of the US and European countries it was currently “impossible” for him to travel to Latin America to take up such an offer.
He asked Human Rights Watch and Amnesty to assist him in securing guarantees of safe passage to Latin America, and to help him with his asylum request to Moscow.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Oscar López Rivera: After 32 Years in Prison, Calls Grow for Release of Puerto Rican Activist



Hundreds of Puerto Ricans rallied this week to call for the United States to release the Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera. Wednesday marked his 32nd year in prison. In 1981, López was convicted on federal charges, including seditious conspiracy — conspiring to oppose U.S. authority over Puerto Rico by force. He was accused of being a member of the FALN, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings to call attention to the colonial case of Puerto Rico. In 1999 President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 members of the FALN, but López refused to accept the deal because it did not include two fellow activists who have since been released. In a rare video recording from prison, López said the charges against him were strictly political. Calls are increasing for López to be released from Nobel Peace Laureate South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Eduardo Bhatia, president of the Puerto Rican Senate. To talk more about the case, we speak with Luis Nieves Falcón, a renowned Puerto Rican lawyer, sociologist, and educator. He is the editor of the new book of López’s letters and reflections called, "Oscar López Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance." We also talk with Matt Meyer, long-time member of the War Resisters League. TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: In the next segment, we’ll be going to the clinic of George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, four years after he was murdered. But right now we turn to another issue and another anniversary. Juan? JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, hundreds of Puerto Ricans rallied this week to call for the United States to release Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera. Wednesday marked his 32nd year in prison. In 1981, López was convicted on federal charges, including seditious conspiracy—conspiring to oppose U.S. authority over Puerto Rico by force. He was accused of being a member of the FALN, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings to call attention to the colonial case of Puerto Rico. In 1999, President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 members of the FALN, but López refused to accept the deal because it did not include two fellow activists who have since been released. In a rare video recording from prison, Oscar López Rivera said the charges against him were strictly political. OSCAR LÓPEZ RIVERA: I think the fact that I was charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States speaks for itself. But the charge in reference to Puerto Ricans has always been used for political purposes. It goes back to 1936. The first time that a group of Puerto Ricans was put in prison was by using the seditious conspiracy charge. And this has always been a strictly political charge used against Puerto Ricans. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Calls are increasing for Oscar López Rivera to be released. Eduardo Bhatia, president of the Puerto Rican Senate, recently sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking that López’s sentence be commuted. In 2011, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote to Obama after López was denied parole. This is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. DESMOND TUTU: After more than 30 years, Oscar López Rivera is in prison for the crime of seditious conspiracy, conspiring to free his people from the shackles of imperial injustice. Now is the time for his immediate and unconditional release. In working for reconciliation and peace, we once again feel compelled to repeat the biblical call of Isaiah to set free those who are bound. May God bless all of us in our efforts for justice with peace. SHOW FULL TRANSCRIPT ›