How to account for the failure of public outcry to stay Davis’s execution? In short, people in Georgia support the death penalty On Wednesday, Troy Davis became the 33rd person executed in the United States in 2011 (and there are nine remaining executions scheduled for this year that have not been stayed, as of publication time ). But with with the exception of Humberto Leal , nearly all those other men went to their deaths with little public outcry. Not so Davis, whose execution had been stayed twice previously and whose conviction even sent back to the state court for review by the US supreme court. But a state judge ruled the conviction valid, a third stay was denied and a state body in Georgia denied clemency this week – despite a vast outcry in the US and from abroad. Beyond all standard legal options, Davis’s supporters – including Amnesty International – began a public, viral campaign to encourage the local prosecutor and local judge to withdraw the execution order. Though Davis was convicted in a court of law, seven eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony , with some saying they were pressured by the police; jurors in the case say they wouldn’t vote to convict him if he had been tried today. But it was all for naught: it usually takes extraordinary circumstances and new evidence that decisively rules out the person convicted – as the 17 former death row inmates exonerated by DNA know too well – to convince almost anyone of a convicted criminal’s innocence. And sometimes, even then, prosecutors, judges and politicians still choose to find such evidence less than compelling. The US legal system offers defendants the presumption of innocence before conviction. Post-conviction, though, the legal presumption is that the 12 citizen jurors made the correct decision and that the defense lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities – a reasonable theory, but unable to account for the 273 people exonerated (some posthumously) thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project . What justice campaigners and death penalty abolitionists don’t fully appreciate, perhaps, is the extent to which executions are a state matter, decided by state courts and judiciaries, with juries reflecting attitudes that pertain to that state. While 60 people sit on federal death row (and the federal government has only executed three people – all during the second Bush adminstration – since the supreme court decided it was legal in 1976), the vast majority of the nearly 3,300 people currently on death row in America were convicted in state and local courtrooms. And studies show that the people who make up the juries in those states overwhelmingly support the death penalty. That is, of course, a key feature of the American legal system: as with its political system, those powers not explicitly held by the federal government are left to the states – including the power to determine and prosecute most crimes. So, in the 34 states that have the death penalty , crimes that might net only life imprisonment in another state carry the risk of death. In California, which has death penalty statutes on the books and the greatest number of prisoners with death sentences, but which has only executed 13 people since 1976, those convicted of heinous crimes might face the ultimate sentence but are generally secure in the knowledge that they’ll likely never face the ultimate punishment. While the death penalty enjoys broad support in public polls, those same polls reveal that, like its application, support for the punishment varies regionally, with residents in liberal, coastal states less inclined to use it or support it than their southern or midwestern counterparts. While the calls for Troy Davis’s reprieve poured into Georgia from all over the country, and the world, the likelihood is that a minority of those callers spoke with a Georgia accent – a fact that, for a local prosecutor, a local judge and a state-selected board, probably mattered more than the most famous named person who picked up the phone today. All politics, it’s said, is local … and so is most crime and punishment in the United States, for better or, for many today, for worse. Troy Davis Capital punishment State of Georgia United States Amnesty International US supreme court Megan Carpentier guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …How to account for the failure of public outcry to stay Davis’s execution? In short, people in Georgia support the death penalty On Wednesday, Troy Davis became the 33rd person executed in the United States in 2011 (and there are nine remaining executions scheduled for this year that have not been stayed, as of publication time ). But with with the exception of Humberto Leal , nearly all those other men went to their deaths with little public outcry. Not so Davis, whose execution had been stayed twice previously and whose conviction even sent back to the state court for review by the US supreme court. But a state judge ruled the conviction valid, a third stay was denied and a state body in Georgia denied clemency this week – despite a vast outcry in the US and from abroad. Beyond all standard legal options, Davis’s supporters – including Amnesty International – began a public, viral campaign to encourage the local prosecutor and local judge to withdraw the execution order. Though Davis was convicted in a court of law, seven eyewitnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony , with some saying they were pressured by the police; jurors in the case say they wouldn’t vote to convict him if he had been tried today. But it was all for naught: it usually takes extraordinary circumstances and new evidence that decisively rules out the person convicted – as the 17 former death row inmates exonerated by DNA know too well – to convince almost anyone of a convicted criminal’s innocence. And sometimes, even then, prosecutors, judges and politicians still choose to find such evidence less than compelling. The US legal system offers defendants the presumption of innocence before conviction. Post-conviction, though, the legal presumption is that the 12 citizen jurors made the correct decision and that the defense lawyers and prosecutors did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities – a reasonable theory, but unable to account for the 273 people exonerated (some posthumously) thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project . What justice campaigners and death penalty abolitionists don’t fully appreciate, perhaps, is the extent to which executions are a state matter, decided by state courts and judiciaries, with juries reflecting attitudes that pertain to that state. While 60 people sit on federal death row (and the federal government has only executed three people – all during the second Bush adminstration – since the supreme court decided it was legal in 1976), the vast majority of the nearly 3,300 people currently on death row in America were convicted in state and local courtrooms. And studies show that the people who make up the juries in those states overwhelmingly support the death penalty. That is, of course, a key feature of the American legal system: as with its political system, those powers not explicitly held by the federal government are left to the states – including the power to determine and prosecute most crimes. So, in the 34 states that have the death penalty , crimes that might net only life imprisonment in another state carry the risk of death. In California, which has death penalty statutes on the books and the greatest number of prisoners with death sentences, but which has only executed 13 people since 1976, those convicted of heinous crimes might face the ultimate sentence but are generally secure in the knowledge that they’ll likely never face the ultimate punishment. While the death penalty enjoys broad support in public polls, those same polls reveal that, like its application, support for the punishment varies regionally, with residents in liberal, coastal states less inclined to use it or support it than their southern or midwestern counterparts. While the calls for Troy Davis’s reprieve poured into Georgia from all over the country, and the world, the likelihood is that a minority of those callers spoke with a Georgia accent – a fact that, for a local prosecutor, a local judge and a state-selected board, probably mattered more than the most famous named person who picked up the phone today. All politics, it’s said, is local … and so is most crime and punishment in the United States, for better or, for many today, for worse. Troy Davis Capital punishment State of Georgia United States Amnesty International US supreme court Megan Carpentier guardian.co.uk
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£12.7bn computer scheme to create patient record system is to be scrapped after years of delays An ambitious multibillion pound programme to create a computerised patient record system across the entire NHS is being scrapped, ministers have decided. The £12.7bn National Programme for IT is being ended after years of delays, technical difficulties, contractual disputes and rising costs. Health secretary Andrew Lansley, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson have decided it is better to discontinue the programme rather than put even more money into it. The axe may be wielded , with ministers likely to criticise the last Labour government for initiating the project but doing too little to ensure it delivered its objectives. An announcement has been expected for months after the National Audit Office cast serious doubt on the wisdom of ploughing further money into the scheme and David Cameron told MPs in May that he was considering that advice. Whitehall sources confirmed the decision had been made because of coalition cost-cutting and the ongoing problems. “It was meant to be a very helpful thing for NHS staff and patients but instead has become this amazingly top-heavy, hideously expensive programme. The problem is, it didn’t deliver”, said a Department of Health source. “It was too ambitious, the technology kept changing, and loads and loads of money has been put into it. It’s wasted a lot of money that should have been spent on nurses and improving patient care, and not on big international IT companies.” The move comes after ministers received fresh advice from the Cabinet Office’s major projects authority, which assesses the value for money of major public spending schemes. It concluded “there can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived”, recommending ministers “dismember the programme and reconstitute it under new management and organisation arrangements”. Its highly critical verdict said: “The project has not delivered in line with the original intent as targets on dates, functionality, usage and levels of benefit have been delayed and reduced. It is not possible to identify a documented business case for the whole of the programme. Unless the work is refocused, it is hard to see how the perception can ever be shifted from the faults of the past and allowed to progress effectively to support the delivery of effective healthcare.” Health minister Simon Burns, who is responsible for the NHS, said recently: “The nationally imposed system is neither necessary nor appropriate to deliver this. We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have and add to their environment either by integrating systems purchased through the existing national contracts or elsewhere.” Providers of NHS care such as hospitals and GP surgeries will now be told to strike IT deals locally and regionally to get the best programmes they can afford. It is still unclear how much money the government has agreed to pay contractors in recent negotiations over cancellation fees for scrapping the project. Lansley told the the Daily Mail: “Labour’s IT programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers’ money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn’t fit their needs. “We will be moving to an innovative new system driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money from IT systems that better meet the needs of a modernised NHS.” Serious doubts about the project’s future were confirmed this year when the cross-party House of Commons public accounts committee said it was “unworkable” and that, despite huge investment, had failed to deliver. NHS Health policy Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
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Killing by lethal injection went ahead at 11.08pm ET in Georgia after judges turned down condemned man’s appeal The execution of Troy Davis in Georgia amid overwhelming evidence that he might have been innocent was greeted by protesters outside the prison with tears, prayers and a pledge to continue the fight against the death penalty. The killing by lethal injection went ahead at 11.08pm ET, four hours after Davis had been scheduled to go to the chamber. Members of his family who had been waiting all day to hear whether there would be a last-minute stay of execution were immediately surrounded by supporters who had turned up in their hundreds to protest against what is being seen as one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in recent US history. Larry Cox, the head of the US branch of Amnesty, which has led the campaign to save Davis’s life, said minutes after hearing the court’s decision that he would “redouble our efforts to make sure that no other innocent person goes through this again”. Benjamin Jealous, head of the civil rights group NAACP who was also outside the prison, said that a “tragedy has been committed”. He called on the many supporters still assembled in the prison grounds, some holding candles, to “remain calm, to show the same discipline as Troy Davis’s family is showing”. Jealous said he expected that “what happens here tonight will propel the movement for the abolition of the death penalty forward”. Earlier, with police helicopters buzzing overhead, armed officers stationed in the entrance and the chants of protesters wafting over the prison grounds, the excruciating waiting game continued into the warm Georgia night. For the fourth time in as many years the prisoner, 42, was put through the agonising – some say inhumane, even torturous – experience of waiting to learn whether he would be strapped to the gurney and given lethal injections in the next few hours. This time it was the turn of the US supreme court to deliberate on whether to allow the execution to go ahead – or to stay it. Now Davis looks destined to become the 52nd man executed in Georgia since the federal supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1973. In the process, his lawyers and thousands of supporters around the world insist, an innocent man will have gone to his death. A crowd of more than 500 protesters amassed into the night across the road from the prison, chanting “Not in our name” and “We are Troy Davis”. In response the officers dressed in black and with head shields, some carrying teargas rifles, lined up several rows deep at the entrance to the prison. It was an impressive visual realisation of the larger legal battle being waged at the supreme court – the appeals for clemency for a man who is probably innocent ranged against the institutionalised violence of the state. At one point a lone jogger, naked from the waist up, ran right down the middle of the road, looking understandably deeply puzzled. All week the terrible process of waiting had gone on – a process that took the case right up to the highest echelons of American justice but resulted in its lowest manifestations. Earlier on Wednesday Georgia’s supreme court had rejected a last-ditch appeal by Davis’s lawyers over the 1989 murder of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail, for which Davis had been convicted despite overwhelming evidence that the conviction is unreliable. A Butts county superior court judge had also declined to stop the execution. Davis’s lawyers had filed an appeal challenging ballistics evidence linking Davis to the crime and eyewitness testimony identifying Davis as the killer. The White House has declined to comment, saying: “It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases.” Davis began what was expected to be his last day of life under a cloudy Georgia sky dispersed with brilliant sunlight – though it’s unlikely he got to see much of the state’s natural beauty from within Jackson’s Diagnostic and Classification Prison, the maximum security institution where death row is housed. He was allowed visitors from 9am to 3pm, at which point the prison service said he was given a routine physical, an act of benevolence from an authority that was about to take his life. At 4pm he was offered a last meal. Davis had earlier declined the privilege of specifying his final supper, so instead was given the institution’s choice of grilled cheeseburgers, oven browned potatoes, baked beans, coleslaw, cookies and a grape beverage. Shortly before 6pm the witnesses to his death were taken into the chamber, including five reporters mainly from the local media. From the vantage point of the protesters, the day was a rollercoaster of emotions – a small echo perhaps of what Davis himself must have been going through from within the walls of the prison. At about 7pm, roughly the time of his scheduled execution, word came through that the US supreme court had intervened. A huge cheer went up from the crowd. Supporters hugged each other and threw placards in the air. But doubts quickly set in. What had the court actually said? What did it mean? Talk of a reprieve melted away into thoughts of a stay and then finally the realisation that the supreme court had merely decided to take more time to consider its position. In other words the waiting game continued. The protesters, weary now, visibly slumped. Earlier in the day they had gathered at a small Baptist church over the road from the prison to hear a raft of civil rights leaders lend their support to the cause. The Reverend Al Sharpton was down from New York to deliver his usual firebrand words. “What is facing execution tonight is not just the body of Troy Davis but the spirit of due justice in the state of Georgia.” He called for a new law to be passed – he would call it the Troy Davis law – that prohibited death sentences in cases where convictions had been achieved only on the basis of eyewitness evidence. The demand was a reference to the fact that Davis was found guilty in 1991 largely on the testimony of nine witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted their evidence, some claiming police coercion. There was no DNA or other forensic evidence linking Davis to the murder and the .38-calibre gun used in the shooting was never found. Davis’s eldest sister, Martina Correia, gave an impassioned speech on behalf of the family, about 20 of whom surrounded her in the church. She lambasted the state of Georgia, accusing it of defiantly clinging to its mistakes. But she tried to draw a positive message out of the undeniably grim prospect of her brother’s imminent judicial death. She saw in his case the seeds of the end to capital punishment in America. “If we can get millions of people to stand up against this, we can end the death penalty. We have to be the carriers of the change we want to see. When you have truth on your side you should never give up.” She added she had no fear in taking on the state of Georgia, and beyond that other states in the deep south including Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, all of which have sizeable death row populations including many African Americans. Davis has received support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former president Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI. Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the EU’s human rights watchdog, have called for Davis’s sentence to be commuted. But the victim’s family lobbied the pardons board on Monday to reject Davis’s clemency appeal. A day later the board refused to stop the execution a day later. “He has had ample time to prove his innocence,” said MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. “And he is not innocent.” Amid all the cacophony at the prison, the one person who was not being heard was Troy Davis himself. And then the head of the civil rights group NAACP in Georgia, Edward DuBose, revealed that he’d had a 30-minute visit to the prisoner on Tuesday night. In what must now count as some of Davis’s final words, he told DuBose to “keep the faith. The fight is bigger than him.” Davis had said he wanted his case to set an example “that the death penalty in this country needs to end. They call it execution; we call it murder.” As DuBose stood up to leave, Davis said to him: “I’ll see you again.” Capital punishment United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media At his Tuesday speech on Israel , Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry was flanked by a number of conservative politicians and religious leaders. But one figure, who is a Democrat, may be more controversial and extreme than all of the others. Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind recieved a warm public embrace from Perry after he gave the Texas governor’s remarks his seal of approval. “I had the same speech speech, identical to what you had there,” Hikind told Perry. “I think the American people need change they can believe in. I’m not endorsing anyone today — I see it beyond the pale to support Barack Obama, having watched him these past three years.” “But I like what I heard today, both publicly from the governor, who has a record of friendship to the people of Israel way before he ever thought of running for president. Saw your article in The Wall Street Journal , and I said that sounds like me. That sounds like the speeches I have been making for years… So, governor, what you said publicly and what you said privately upstairs, God bless you and for today, I wish you all the luck in the world.” Hikind was at one time a top lieutenant in the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a group that the FBI later classified as a terrorist organization. The FBI’s website describes the JDL as “violent extremist Jewish organization” whose members conspired to use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on a California mosque and the offices of Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) in 2001. “The group has orchestrated countless terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, and has engaged in intense harassment of foreign diplomats, Muslims, Jewish scholars and community leaders, and officials,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) . In 2006, Hikind recalled to The Jewish Daily Forward the extent to which J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigated his organization. “I remember we had pictures of potential FBI informants in the JDL office,” Hikind said, adding that it was “amazing” to think of “the level of resources the government used to destroy the JDL and how [JDL leader Rabbi Meir Kahane] and a bunch of kids got them so excited.” More recently, Hikind has left behind the JDL for a different kind of extremism. At a 2005 press conference, he held up pictures of Muslim men and explained that all terrorists “look basically like this.” The assemblymen has also compared homosexuality to incest . In 1998, Hikind narrowly escaped indictment for illegally receiving thousands of dollars from a social services group. Three months after pastor John Hagee endorsed Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, the Arizona senator made the decision to reject his support over extremist comments. Only time will tell if Perry has to do the same because of Hikind’s support.
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Tripoli University was used to bolster Gaddafi regime but now it is preparing for a chance to be normal No one seems to mind that term is starting late at Tripoli University this year. It’s not every summer vacation, after all, that records the triumph of a revolution, and there are problems to sort out – not least the huge number of young men toting machine guns on campus – before the students start streaming in past the “down with Gaddafi” and “Free Libya” slogans. Staff and new intake alike are preparing for a freshers’ week with a difference. “In the circumstances I think we can be forgiven if this term is a bit delayed,” says administrator Khalifa Shakreen. “Things are changing so fast.” For the first time in 42 years the university has the chance to be a normal academic institution. “Until now we had the form of a university but not the function,” says Sami Khaskusha, a political scientist. “We fed young people garbage. [Muammar] Gaddafi just used this place to boost his cult of personality and bolster the regime. It did nothing for Libyan society.” Omar Tajouri, doing a master’s degree in international law, wants better teaching, cleaner administration and, above all, freedom. His ambition – unthinkable just months ago – is to specialise in human rights. “Gaddafi’s regime was founded on ignorance,” he says. “They were the enemies of education and of students.” Signs of change are everywhere. Last term the university was still named al-Fateh (“The Conqueror”) after Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution. Now billboards advertising the rules of the sinister revolutionary committees have been defaced. Maps of Libya have been altered to remove the word “Jamahiriya” – the unlamented “state of the masses” presided over by the now fugitive “brother leader”. The ubiquitous green flags have gone. Faisal Krekshi, a Belfast-trained gynaecologist who helped co-ordinate clandestine preparations for the Tripoli uprising, has been appointed acting president instead of the old regime placeman awaiting investigation. “There is a new spirit in the university and in Libyan society,” he says, “but I fear expectations are too high.” Anxious to quickly demonstrate some tangible benefits, he plans to provide free transport to and from the campus. And the new independent student union has been given computers and other equipment confiscated from the revolutionary committees, whose members are lying low or are in detention. If the sense of freedom is intoxicating, painful memories have not faded. In the 1970s and 1980s students were forced to watch public hangings next to the medical faculty to punish dissent and inspire fear. Purges and book bannings were common. Executions stopped years ago but other abuses continued: two weeks ago a secret underground chamber was discovered under a lecture hall. It contained a bedroom, a Jacuzzi, and a fully-equipped gynaecological operating theatre that was used for officially sanctioned but illegal abortions. Repression was routine under Gaddafi. But many say the corruption and cronyism were as bad. The highly qualified Krekshi only got his teaching job because he had treated the wife of a revolutionary committee member. Huda Shadi, preparing a thesis on linguistics, was told she could not study English because she had good marks in sciences and was only able to switch through the intervention of a friend in the university administration. “The whole system was corrupt,” she muses. “You had to do what the people with the files told you to do. It wasn’t about what the student wanted. It was dictatorial – like everything else in Libya.” Khaskusha describes being questioned by the revolutionary committee after telling an international relations class on the global north-south divide about the issue of corruption in southern (developing) countries. He was ordered to clarify to his students that he had not been referring to Libya. “It was terrible,” he says. “You had to act like a robot and simply repeat what they said. If you spoke your mind you would be classified as a counter-revolutionary.” The sprawling campus is pleasant enough but badly dilapidated. It is also strikingly relaxed: couples – many women wearing headscarves – walk hand-in-hand through leafy passageways that offer shelter from the baking heat. But facilities and academic standards, staff say, urgently need improving. Curriculum reform is a big issue though the interim government – the National Transitional Council – has scrapped previously compulsory nonsense such as Gaddafi’s “universal theory” and “Green Book studies” – a speciality of the University of Tarhouna, south of Tripoli. Improving language teaching is expected to be an early focus: many young and middle-aged Libyans speak nothing but Arabic because of abysmal standards and a formal ban on “imperialist” tongues in one of Gaddafi’s zanier periods in the 1980s. Financial resources were never the problem – true generally of a country blessed with vast oil wealth and a relatively small population. “The priorities were always providing funds for the student union so they could jump up and down and declare their allegiance to the Gaddafi regime,” says Hussein al-Ageli, who runs the university language centre. “Proposals for spending on the library or other improvements were just brushed aside.” Now, in a world without Gaddafi, exciting possibilities beckon. “If Libya is going to move forward and people can understand the new liberties and build a civil society, the universities are where it has to happen,” Ageli says. “We must raise standards and play a role in scientific research. We are supposed to be the backbone of the intelligentsia.” Law student Tajouri expects things will improve. “But it will take time,” he admits. “This is a country which has to be built from scratch.” Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Muammar Gaddafi International education news Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Some may think it’s already too late, but Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says there will be no pandering from his campaign. “I wrote a book two years ago,” Romney said at a town hall event in Florida Wednesday. “I laid out my positions: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, federal spending, productivity growth, international trade, my military policy.” “I know that may make it more difficult in both the primary — because I can’t run to the right and then run to the left — and in the general. But that’s where I am. I think the American people recognize we’re at a point of crisis and they want to hear the truth. And they can tell when people are being phony and are pandering to an audience. You’ll see that in politics. You’re not going to see it in my campaign.” He continued: “I can tell you this: President Obama is doing a great job rallying our base… I’m convinced that anyone on that stage at the Republican debate — we’ll have a debate on Thursday in Orlando. We’ll probably have eight or nine people on the stage. Any one of them would be a better president than President Obama.” In the last few months alone, Romney has been accused of pandering on the START treaty , an anti-gay marriage pledge , right-to-work legislation , American exceptionalism , ethanol , and the tea party . Washington Monthly ‘s Steve Benen has even called the candidate a “pandering robot.”
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Huge scale of natural gas field in north-west England revealed, but environmentalists concerned about safety issues The huge scale of a natural gas field discovered under the north-west of England has been revealed, potentially revolutionising the UK’s energy outlook and creating thousands of jobs, but environmental groups are alarmed at the controversial method by which the gas is extracted. Preliminary wells drilled around Blackpool have uncovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas – equal to the kind of recoverable reserves of big energy exporting countries such as Venezuela, according to Cuadrilla Resources, a small energy company which has the former BP boss Lord Browne on its board. It said up to 800 more wells might be drilled in the region, creating 5,600 jobs and promising a repeat of the “shale gas revolution” that swept the US, sending local energy prices spinning downwards. Even if only a relatively small fraction of gas could be exploited, it could trigger an explosion of drilling in other parts of the UK at a time when Britain is running out of North Sea reserves. But Cuadrilla’s extravagant claims have alarmed environmentalists and unnerved supporters of wind power. Green groups are opposed to the hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – process by which the gas is unlocked from shale rock, pointing out it remains banned in parts of the US and France over fears that water aquifers could be contaminated. The process involves drilling a well then pumping in millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure. The pressure fractures underground shale deposits and opens fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. For each frack, 80-300 tonnes of chemicals may be used, critics claim. The natural gas industry does not have to disclose the chemicals used, but scientists have identified volatile organic compounds such as toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and benzene, the latter of which is a strong carcinogen. A 2010 US documentary film, Gasland, showed homeowners setting fire to the water coming out of their taps, such was the volume of methane contained in the water. The flames were said to be the result of nearby fracking operations contaminating the water supply, but the oil industry has denied this. Mark Miller, chief executive of Cuadrilla, said he was enormously encouraged by the potential of the Lancashire region, which appeared to have the same potential as the best shale gas producing areas in Texas. He said it was not possible to say what the exact amount of recoverable reserves would be without further drilling and he admitted 200 trillion cubic feet was a very large number “Typical extraction rates in the US on a well by well basis would be between 10% and 30% [of the reserves in place] but it all depends on the number of wells we drill,” he added. Around 400 wells could be expected as a conservative estimate, he said, with up to 800 in the licence area between Blackpool and Southport over the next 15 years. Cuadrilla, which used the fracking process five times on the first well but has since stopped, said it was drawing up a plan to be handed over to Department of Energy and Climate Change shortly. “We won’t carry forward [any further fracking] till DECC has seen the report and is happy about public safety,” said Miller. The shale gas finds are largely due to new technology being used to produce the wells, and oil companies are busy looking for new discoveries in places as far afield as Poland and China. Shale gas represents a potential problem for governments trying to reduce CO 2 emissions, as there are significant emissions when it is burned. However, it is also a potentially much cheaper alternative to wind and solar power, which both currently require public subsidies. The environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth said it remained totally opposed to any more fracking until the safety and environmental impact was fully understood. “We are also worried that a new shale gas goldmine would take money away from renewables,” said a spokeswoman. The Co-operative, which is championing renewables in its new retail energy business, also expressed concerns about the upbeat statements coming out of Cuadrilla, which is partly owned by the Australian oil services group AJ Lucas. “On the face of it new natural gas finds appear to be good news, but the government must not be seduced by this without considering all the impacts of shale gas extraction,” said Paul Monaghan, head of social goals at the Co-operative group. “That is why we are calling for a moratorium on any further exploitation of shale gas, which will allow the wider environmental concerns to be fully exposed and addressed.” Oil Oil Commodities Energy Fossil fuels Friends of the Earth Oil and gas companies Energy industry Terry Macalister guardian.co.uk
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Federal Reserve moves to push down long-term interest rates and kickstart housing market The Federal Reserve ramped up its aid to the beleaguered US economy on Wednesday, launching an effort to put more downward pressure on long-term interest rates over time and help the battered housing sector. The Fed said it would launch a new $400bn program that will tilt its $2.85tn balance sheet more heavily towards longer-term securities by selling shorter-term notes and using those funds to purchase longer-dated treasuries – a strategy dubbed “Operation Twist”, from the card game pontoon. It will now also reinvest proceeds from maturing mortgage and agency bonds back into the mortgage market, an acknowledgement of just how weak conditions in the sector have remained. “Recent indicators point to continuing weakness in overall labor market conditions, and the unemployment rate remains elevated,” the Fed said in its statement. Faced with a lofty 9.1% jobless rate, consumer and business confidence sapped by a troubling US credit downgrade, and an escalating sovereign debt crisis in Europe, Fed officials have signaleld they would seek to prevent already sluggish US growth from weakening further. But although Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated the central bank’s reluctance to stay on the sidelines, Fed activism has become a punching bag for politicians as an election year nears. Top Republican congressional leaders wrote to Bernanke this week urging the central bank to desist from further economic interventions, echoing criticism voiced by Republican presidential candidates in recent weeks. Fed officials, however, believe that by shifting their bond holdings they could encourage mortgage refinancing and push investors into riskier assets, such as corporate bonds and stocks, without stoking a run-up in consumer prices. The US central bank is not alone in its concerns. The Bank of England on Wednesday signalled it was ready to pump more money into the weakening British economy, potentially as soon as October. Similarly, the Norwegian central bank held its main interest rate unchanged and signaled it might refrain from rate increases for longer than previously expected due to a weaker global economy and the euro zone debt crisis. The US economy grew at less than 1% annual rate over the first half of the year, and analysts have warned of a heightened risk of recession. A report showing US employers added no new jobs on net in August provoked widespread fears growth could stall. The Fed has already embarked far down one of the most aggressive monetary easing paths on record. It cut overnight interest rates to near zero in December 2008 and then moved to more than triple its balance sheet to $2.8tn through a series of bond purchases. After its last meeting on August 9, the Fed said it expected to hold rates at rock-bottom levels at least through the middle of 2013, a decision that drew three dissenting votes. US economy Ben Bernanke US housing and sub-prime crisis United States Mortgage lending figures US politics guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Occupy Wall Street Protesters Hit by Cops…Not Exactly the Bernie Madoff Treatment
September 21, 2011 No CommentYes, it’s a children’s campaign, and poorly organized to boot. But those kids are doing something when so many people are doing nothing. (If you want to go, there’s a Facebook ride board here .) It’s inevitable that Occupy Wall Street becomes less than peaceful, but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch kids being knocked around by cops for remaining in the same place police corralled them. How ironic, that the cops whose jobs and pensions are being attacked are the very people arresting the ones trying to protect their jobs: NEW YORK — Police have arrested seven more people at an ongoing protest on Wall Street. A New York City police spokesman said Tuesday that one of the seven suffered a minor leg injury while resisting arrest. He was treated by paramedics at a police station. The seven were part of a group of a few hundred protesters who have gathered in lower Manhattan to target financial firms. They’re challenging political connections between the firms and Washington lawmakers. From OccupyWallSt.org: The first arrest was a protester who objected to the police removing a tarp that was protecting our media equipment from the rain. The police said that the tarp constituted a tent, in spite of it not being a habitat in any way. Police continued pressuring protesters with extralegal tactics, saying that a protester on a bullhorn was breaking a law. The protester refused to cease exercising his first amendment rights and was also arrested. Then the police began to indiscriminately attempt to arrest protesters, many of them unsheathed their batons , in spite of the fact that the protest remained peaceful. And how about Mayor Bloomberg’s “free speech is what makes New York New York”? Guess he was kidding! New York City police monitoring a social media-fueled protest in Manhattan’s Financial District have charged demonstrators with violating an obscure 150-year-old state statute that bans masked gatherings. Since Saturday, five people connected with the protest to “occupy” Wall Street have been issued a violation for running afoul of the antimask law, according to police. “People here are very acutely aware of it now because of the arrests,” Laura MacAuley, a spokeswoman for the social media-fueled event, said Monday. So they’re hit and dragged by the feet for the equivalent of a parking ticket. Freedom, New York style! The man who filmed the police action — who said he was an activist, Iraq war veteran and law student and insisted that his name not be used out of fear of retribution by the police — said that at around 9:30 a.m., a group of officers, led by an officer “with four stars on his collar” pulled out batons and moved in on the protesters who have occupied the park. Read here for a list of their crimes. Oh, and apparently Yahoo is censoring email sent out with a link to the protest site.
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