Published on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by The Daily California (UC Berkeley)
International Attention Focused on Berkeley Divestment Vote
by Allie Bidwell
International attention will descend on the ASUC Senate meeting tonight as
senators consider upholding the passage of a controversial bill urging the
student government and the University of California to divest from two
companies that have provided war supplies to the Israeli military.
The bill names two companies-United Technologies and General Electric-as
supplying Israel with the technology necessary to attack civilian
populations in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The bill
originally passed the senate March 17 by a 16-4 vote following about six
hours of discussion. A two-thirds majority, or 14 votes, is needed in order
to override the veto.
Senators have received more than 13,000 e-mails, roughly split between both
sides of the controversy.
Prominent figures including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, activist
Naomi Klein and leftist MIT professor Noam Chomsky have spoken in support of
overriding ASUC President Will Smelko's March 24 veto of the bill. Local and
national pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC)-an influential Washington, D.C. lobby
organization-Berkeley Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League have each stated
the bill is divisive and unfairly targets Israel.
Supporters of the bill say divesting from the two companies would make a
powerful statement against Israeli actions in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, which supporters have compared to apartheid-era South Africa.
In a recent letter to the UC Berkeley community, Tutu, who won the 1984
Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts opposing apartheid in South Africa-said he
endorsed the bill and urged senators to uphold the original vote, which he
compared to similar efforts at UC Berkeley to divest from South Africa in
the 1980s.
He said in an e-mail Tuesday that he had a message for ASUC senators.
"I salute you for wanting to take a moral stand," he said in the e-mail.
"(Your predecessors) changed the moral climate in the U.S. and the
consequence was the Anti-Apartheid legislation, which helped to dismantle
apartheid non-violently. Today is your turn. Will you look back on this day
with pride or with shame?"
Wayne Firestone, national president of Hillel-a Jewish campus
organization-released a statement last month condemning the bill. The
statement stated that the bill is "one-sided, divisive and undermines the
pursuit of peace" and ignores human rights violations of other countries.
"The ASUC bill will not contribute a whit to the advancement of peace in the
Middle East and will only serve to divide the Berkeley community," Firestone
said in the statement.
Pro-Israel activist organization J Street U, joined 18 other
organizations-including Berkeley Hillel, the American Jewish Committee, the
Jewish Federation of the East Bay, the Jewish National Fund and
StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel-in crafting an April 5 letter to UC Berkeley
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer stating that they
felt the bill was dishonest and misleading.
Among concerns listed in the letter was that the bill "unfairly targets"
Israel while marginalizing Jewish students on campus who support Israel.
"Though it states that the 'ASUC resolution should not be considered taking
sides in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict,' the exclusive focus on Israel
suggests otherwise," the letter states.
Critics of the bill have said senators cannot make a proper judgement of an
issue as complicated as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Student Action Senator Parth Bhatt, who voted against the bill, said he felt
the ASUC should not take a stance on such an issue because it marginalizes
one community on campus.
"I don't think the ASUC should put any student in that position," Bhatt
said. "The conflict is very complex and something I don't think our senators
know enough about to vote on."
But CalSERVE Senator Ariel Boone said she supported the bill because she
felt compelled to defend human rights.
"I went to Israel and had a really interesting time with Berkeley Hillel in
January, and I have Holocaust survivors among my family," Boone said in an
e-mail. "I have never felt so uniquely qualified to speak on an issue."
AIPAC has recently stated the need for a strategy to combat anti-Israel
sentiments on U.S. university campuses.
"How are we going to beat back the anti-Israel divestment resolution at
Berkeley?" said Jonathan Kessler, leadership development director for AIPAC,
at a recent conference of the lobbying group. "We're going to make sure that
pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote.
This is how AIPAC operates in our nation's capitol. This is how AIPAC must
operate on our nation's campuses."
But according to spokesperson Josh Block, the group did not take a position
in the recent ASUC election.
"We don't rate or endorse candidates," Block said in an e-mail. "Of course
we would always, publicly and consistently encourage pro-Israel students to
be active in civic and political life."
For statements in opposition and in support of the divestment bill,
click on http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/14-7,
then the following, at the bottome of the article:
Naomi Klein
Noam Chomsky
Desmond Tutu
Hillel
Letter to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of UC Berkeley George
Breslauer
AIPAC Video
© 2010 The Daily Californian
***
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/massey_disaster_not_just_tragic_but_criminal_20100413/
Massey Disaster Not Just Tragic, but Criminal
By Amy Goodman
Truthdig: Apr 13, 2010
Massey Energy runs the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine in Montcoal, W.Va., where
29 miners were killed last week. The loss of life is tragic, but the UBB
explosion is more than tragic; it is criminal. When corporations are guilty
of crimes, however, they don't go to prison, they don't forfeit their
freedom-they just get fined, which often amounts to a slap on the wrist, the
cost of doing business. No one makes this clearer than the CEO of Massey
Energy, Don Blankenship. He has been the bane of climate-change activists
and mine safety advocates for years. This latest mine disaster, if nothing
else, will surely bring needed attention to this poster boy for malevolent
big business trampling on communities, the environment and workers' rights.
Days after the Massey explosion, Blankenship admitted in a radio interview:
"Violations are, you know, unfortunately, a normal part of the mining
process ... there are violations at every coal mine in America. And UBB was
a mine that had violations." The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette has consistently
reported critically on Massey Energy and Blankenship, prompting him to
attack its editors in a November 2008 speech, saying: "It is as great a
pleasure to me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the
Gazette ... would we be upset if Osama bin Laden were to be critical of us?
I don't think so."
Initial speculation on the cause of the explosion is methane in the mine.
The Massey UBB mine has received thousands of citations for violations,
including many for failing to remove the methane with ventilation. Another
cause may be the mine's proximity to Massey mountaintop removal operations.
Mountaintop removal involves the massive blasting away of mountaintops,
providing access to seams of coal, but causing widespread destruction of the
environment. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that a West Virginia
state investigation into the explosion will include possible impact of
nearby mountaintop mining operations. Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Lisa Jackson issued new rules restricting mountaintop removal
on April 1, just days before the Massey explosion. Massey is the principal
target of a growing grass-roots campaign against mountaintop removal. Among
those arrested at protests have been renowned climate scientist James
Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and
actress Daryl Hannah.
Sixteen miners died in Massey mines between the years 2000 and 2007. Elvis
Hatfield, 46, and Don Bragg, 33, were killed in January 2006 in the Aracoma
mine fire. Their widows sued Massey Energy and Blankenship. At the trial,
their lawyers presented a memo written by Blankenship months before the
fatal fire, instructing his deep-mine superintendents to focus on extracting
coal over safety projects: "If any of you have been asked by your group
presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other
than run coal (i.e. build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you
need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we
seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills."
Coal pays the bills. And pays Blankenship's salary, which, estimated by The
Associated Press at $19.7 million, is the highest in the coal industry.
Massey, who is a board member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a fierce
opponent of organized labor, a relentless denier of climate change and a
staunch opponent of regulation. He said of government regulators, last Labor
Day at an anti-union rally, "The very idea that they care more about
coal-miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."
Blankenship poured $3 million into the election campaign of a candidate for
the West Virginia Supreme Court, in order to replace a sitting judge who he
feared would rule against Massey in an appeal against a $50 million
judgment. The candidate he backed, Brent Benjamin, won the seat and voted to
overturn the judgment. (The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision,
citing Blankenship's funding of the election, and the case served as the
basis of John Grisham's 2008 legal thriller, "The Appeal.")
Pension funds and other large institutional investors are demanding that
Massey fire Blankenship. The last of the 29 bodies of the miners killed in
the Massey mine have been recovered. Their deaths should not be counted by
Don Blankenship as the cost of doing business, but, rather, should top his
criminal indictment.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio
news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the
author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and
now a New York Times best-seller.
© 2010 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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